OpenRange as physical-space simulation

[larstalian]

Vision

OpenRange as a physical-space simulation substrate: an entire
building, with offices, desks, hallways, kitchens; people moving
through it, sitting at desks, talking, opening laptops. The cyber
webapp pack is the first scenario rendered on top of this — not the
goal.

The goal is a generic multi-agent environment where world state is
grounded (positions, rooms, objects, conversations) and agents
(LLM-driven employees, attackers, defenders, future household /
warehouse / logistics agents) act through that grounding rather than
through a thin HTTP-only API.

Why this matters

For cyber specifically (which is where we have the strongest pull
today):

• Insider scenarios with a body. Phishing isn't a click; it's
  an employee at a specific desk, mid-conversation with a colleague,
  who clicks at 2:47pm. Physical context is what makes the
  attacker's chain realistic and the defender's correlation
  problem hard.
• Hybrid attacks. Tailgating, USB drops, badge cloning. None of
  these have a cyber-only abstraction.
• Realistic noise. Why is this laptop suddenly hitting
  /admin? Because Maria walked over and they're pair-debugging.
  Co-occurrences ground signal vs. noise.

For everything else: the same engine can host warehouse robotics,
household assistance, office-process simulation, multi-agent
logistics. Cyber is a forcing function, not the destination.

Reference: Concordia

google-deepmind/concordia
is the closest existing thing. LLM-driven agents composed from
components (memory, observation, plan, somatic state, goal),
acting against a GameMaster that resolves each tick — with
explicit support for spatial/physical state. Their examples/
folder is the right place to read; the API is small, the patterns
are in the configs.

The agent shape they land on maps cleanly onto our AgentNPC +
AgentBackend work in #74 / #217.

Where we are

Already in tree:

• AgentNPC + AgentBackend — agent loops with tools, opt-in
  LLM, swappable provider. Concordia's "agent driven by some model"
  primitive is essentially this.
• Dashboard with a Three.js 3D office renderer (sim-canvas) —
  desks, walls, walking characters, idle NPC wandering. Currently
  fed by topology services + green_personas; ready to scale.

Missing for the full vision:

• Physical backing parallel to HTTPBacking — exposes
  move_to(room), observe_nearby(), pick_up(object),
  say_to(actor, text) as the interface mapping. NPCs/agents
  bind their tools to these instead of (or alongside) http_get.
• GameMaster-shaped tick model. Concordia's GM resolves
  everyone's intended actions per tick; our current _step_npcs
  iterates with no contention model. Fine for HTTP, picky for
  physical (two NPCs picking up the same object, queuing for the
  printer, etc.).
• Per-actor memory + observation streams. Today NPCs are
  stateless across ticks. Concordia's associative memory component
  is a good shape to copy when a real physical pack needs it.
• A real physical pack. Probably a small office (5-10 employees,
  one floor, low-fidelity rooms) is the right first cut — domestic
  / warehouse can come later. Choice constrains what the backing's
  interface needs to look like first.

Phasing

Each step is its own PR; don't try to design the whole system up
front.

1. Office-shaped demo on top of the cyber pack. No new
   abstractions. Spawn ~6 chatter NPCs in the existing renderer,
   wire speech-event rendering. Goal: a gif that shows the vision.
   (In flight — see linked PR.)
2. Physical backing protocol. Define the interface shape
   (move_to, observe_nearby, say_to, ...). Implement a
   minimal in-memory backing driving the existing dashboard
   renderer.
3. First standalone physical pack. Small office, separate from
   the cyber pack — proves the substrate generalizes.
4. GameMaster tick. Per-tick action resolution with simple
   contention rules (one actor per object, rate-limited speech).
5. Memory + observation primitives. Concordia-shape components
   (associative recall, recent buffer). Gated on a pack that
   actually needs them.
6. LLM-driven employees as the default. Agent loops driving
   movement / speech from persona + memory + nearby observations,
   not from canned phrases.

Out of scope (for this issue)

• Cost/budget story for LLM-driven NPCs (separate concern).
• Defender-vs-attacker game theory.
• Specific Concordia API choices (different runtime model; we may
  borrow the patterns, not the codebase).

Acceptance

• Per phase: each step lands as its own PR with its own acceptance
  criteria. This issue is the umbrella, not a single deliverable.
• Issue stays open until phase 3 lands (first standalone physical
  pack) — at that point the substrate has proven itself and the
  remaining phases are incremental polish.

[larstalian]

Triage 2026-05-29: keeping on the roadmap but tagged research / far-future — below enterprise-scale (#212) in priority. The cyber-relevant slices (multi-channel, phishing-with-a-body) are tracked separately and nearer-term via #87.