i think i'm understanding a bit more about the paradigm from looking at the source, but it's rather incomprehensible to me.
what if the player object was driving gameplay by moving through rooms, something like that?
then rooms become more like discretised game segments, whatever that may be, including cut-scenes, controller set-up, whatever...
the player moves from room (game-state) to room... but i still don't know what i'm looking at anywhere i admit.
I'm just going to comb through examples until I grasp it better.