Cars Official

CARS - PLAYER GUIDE

WHAT A CAR IS
A car is hired from the shops and carried in your bag until you set it down. Stand on a clear square outdoors, use the car from your bag, and it is parked right there with the key handed to you. A car cannot be parked on a square that already has something on it (a door, a board, a travel point, a plant, a piano, a stall); the game tells you exactly what is in the way, so take a step and try again. Cars do not go indoors.

THE FOUR CARS
Larkspur Estate: the cheap and cheerful family estate, the slowest of the four.
Aurora Saloon: a comfortable family car, a fifth quicker, with a bigger tank.
Falcon GT: a sports coupe, half again as fast as the family car.
Meridian Veloce: a supercar, nearly twice the speed of the Larkspur.

HIRING ONE
Cars are hired, not bought. The points shop hires a car for one day: five thousand points for the Larkspur, ten thousand for the Aurora, fifteen thousand for the Falcon, twenty thousand for the Meridian. The credit shop hires the same four for three days: two hundred, four hundred, six hundred and eight hundred credits.

GETTING IN AND OUT
Walk onto the parked car and press shift and enter. The first person in takes the driver's seat and everybody after that rides along. If something else is standing on the same square, a short menu asks which one you meant. Getting out is in the car menu, and enter gets you out from the driver's seat.

THE CONTROLS
Hold the up arrow to accelerate and the down arrow to brake. The left and right arrows turn you forty five degrees at a time and speak the direction; the car goes where you are facing, so you steer by turning and then holding the accelerator. It does not slide sideways. T changes up a gear and alt plus T changes down. Q sounds the horn, and only the person at the wheel can use it: passengers and taxi customers cannot. Enter gets you out and shift and enter opens the car menu from the driver's seat. While you are in a car you do not walk at all, there are no footsteps, and you cannot stand up until you get out.

THE GEARBOX
Neutral, five forward gears and reverse. The engine is started from the car menu; then T selects first. You cannot jump to second until first has been wound right out to the top, and the same holds all the way up to fifth. Alt plus T drops a gear, and dropping one while you are flying makes the engine scream and hauls the car back. From neutral with the car stopped, alt plus T selects reverse and you hear the reversing beep; the up arrow then backs the car up, and coming out of reverse gives the second beep.

LETTING GO
The car does not stop dead when you release the accelerator. It slows the way a car does, so leave yourself room. The brake sings high while you are travelling fast and drops as you slow, then stops when the car stops.

WHAT YOU HEAR
Inside the car you hear your own engine rising and falling with the revs, and the world outside goes quiet. You do not hear your own car from the outside. Everybody else, including people sitting in other cars, hears your car go past, and the faster you are travelling the higher it sings. Somebody watching you hears whatever you hear.

WALLS, WATER AND TRAVEL POINTS
A car drives through walls and through water, so nothing blocks your route. Driving onto a travel point takes the car and everybody in it through to the next map; the car checks every square it drives over, so crossing at speed works. After a crossing it waits a few seconds before it can cross again. Maps that ask for a card at the door cannot be driven into: leave the car and go in on foot.

FUEL AND REPAIRS
The tank goes about a hundred and fifty squares to the litre, so a full tank is a long journey. You are warned at twenty, ten and five litres, and at zero the engine stops where it is. A can of fuel adds forty litres and a repair kit takes forty points off the bodywork damage; both are sold in the points shop and both can be used from the car menu. Hard driving in the top gears slowly wears the car, and a car above seventy damage can break down on you.

THE ENGINE
The engine is started and stopped from the car menu, not by the accelerator. Getting out does not switch it off: it keeps idling, and idling costs fuel, so stop it when you are done. The owner can stop it from outside the car as well.

RADIO, HORN, LOCK AND TAXI
There is a radio with twelve stations; it plays for everyone in the car and follows you down the road. Your car key is the horn from the driver's seat and locks or unlocks the doors when used standing outside. A locked car can only be entered by you and the people on your allowed list. If your car ends up somewhere you cannot reach it, stuck in a wall or on the far side of the map, you do not need staff: open the car menu (tab menu, village, then the car entry) and choose to pack the car away. As long as nobody else is sitting in it, it comes back to your bag from wherever it is, and you can set it down again on open ground. If you are the only one in the car you no longer have to get out first either. From the car menu the owner or the driver can also see who is in the car and put somebody out, and can hand the wheel to any passenger; both need the car to be stopped. Set a fare from the car menu and the car becomes a taxi: passengers pay when they get out, and the money goes straight to you even if you are offline at that moment.

FINDING YOUR CAR
The car menu tells you where your car is standing, and a parked car shows up in your surroundings scan by model name. The health check key reads out the engine, the gear, how fast you are going, the fuel, the bodywork, the distance driven and your taxi fare.

THE HIRE RUNS ON THE CLOCK
Packing the car away puts it back in your bag, but it does not stop the hire; the clock runs whether the car is parked or in your bag, and the menu tells you how long is left. When the time is up the car goes back wherever it is: parked on a map it is collected on the spot even if you are offline, and sitting in your bag it is taken out of your bag, either straight away or the next time you log in. Setting down a car whose hire has already ended just tells you the hire is over.

CARS CANNOT CHANGE HANDS
A car or a car key cannot be dropped, traded, gifted, put in a safe or a vault, sent to a partner or handed to a courier. Whoever hires a car keeps it.

IF YOU DROP OUT
If the server restarts or you lose your connection while you are sitting in a car, you are put back in that car, in the same seat, when you come in again.

THE PUMP AND THE MECHANIC
There is a fuel pump and a mechanic's bay on the garage forecourt in the village, around 95 across and 305 up, a few steps from the door of the old gas station. Drive your car onto the forecourt, stop it, and open the car menu: at the pump you can fill the tank at three points a unit, and at the bay the mechanic takes forty off the damage for three hundred points and one bronze or iron bar. On foot, stand on either spot and press shift and enter to buy a can of fuel (two hundred and fifty points) or a repair kit (six hundred points and one bar) to carry with you.

THE METER
If a driver charges by the square, a passenger hears what the ride has cost so far every twenty squares, so there is never a surprise at the end. When a driver leaves the wheel they hear their own shift: how many rides and how many points today, and how many rides they have driven altogether. The taxi list shows every working driver's experience next to their name.

A LOCKED CAR AND CUSTOMERS
A car is locked to its owner by default. That no longer keeps customers out: while somebody is at the wheel and the car is set up as a taxi, a passenger can get in even though it is locked. Only the owner and the people on the allowed list can ever drive it.

THE COLOUR OF YOUR CAR
When you hire a car you are asked what colour you want it in. There are twenty to choose from: black, white, silver, grey, red, dark red, blue, navy blue, sky blue, green, dark green, yellow, orange, brown, beige, purple, pink, gold, bronze and turquoise. The colour is written into the car itself, so anybody who looks around near it is told what colour it is, and it is named in the car menu and wherever the car is described.
The colour changes nothing about how the car behaves. Speed, the fuel tank, the number of seats and how much punishment it takes are exactly the same in every colour. It is there so that your car is yours and so that people can tell two cars apart on the same square.
You are asked once, when the car is hired. You cannot change it again while that hire is still running. When the hire runs out and you take a car out again, you are asked afresh.

HOW MANY PEOPLE FIT
Every model has a fixed number of seats, and the driver takes one of them. The Larkspur Estate seats two. The Aurora Saloon seats two. The Falcon GT seats three. The Meridian Veloce seats four. The Police Interceptor seats six. If more people are somehow already aboard than the car has seats for, the ones over the limit are put out at the kerb.

RUNNING INTO SOMEBODY
A moving car that runs into a person now does real damage, and the damage falls on the RIGHT side. The person who was standing there is not hurt at all. The driver who drove into them is the one who pays: the car is wrecked on the spot, the engine dies, the driver loses between a hundred and two hundred health, is thrown about for ten seconds and can break a bone in the crash.
You get fair warning. From a hundred steps away you are told there is somebody in your path, and an alarm keeps sounding for as long as you are still heading at them. Slow down, steer off the line, or stop. If you hear the alarm and keep going, what happens next is on you.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS
Every map big enough to drive across has one set of lights, in the middle of town. It runs green for twenty seconds, amber for four, then red for twenty, and round again. Each colour has its own sound: a single bell for red, a short beep for amber and a bright chime for green.
You only hear it when you are within a hundred steps of the lights. Further off than that and the junction is nothing to do with you, so it stays quiet. You never hear it at all from inside a building, a shop or any other indoor place, and buildings do not have lights of their own.
When you are driving and the light is not green, you are warned from a hundred steps away and again as you close on it. Stopping is the whole of it: wait for green and drive on.
The light also ticks quietly from its own square, several times a second, so you can walk or drive to the junction by ear instead of guessing where it is. And once you have gone past it, it stops warning you: the warning only counts a light that is actually in front of you, worked out from the way you are facing.
Going through on red costs between fifty and two hundred points, and only one time in four. The dice are rolled on every crossing: three times out of four the state lets you off with a warning and tells you so. The fine never rises however often you do it, and it does not care how much you are carrying. If you cannot pay the full amount only what you have is taken. The police on duty on that map are told either way, because being let off covers the money and not the offence.
A fine is only ever taken if you were warned about that light in the last three seconds, and never twice within three minutes.
Not every map has a light. A light is only built where a car could actually stand, so maps that are open water or marsh have none at all.
The money is not destroyed. It goes into the governor's treasury and the governor sends it out to town treasuries as aid, where the mayor shares it among the officers, teachers and guides. So the fine you pay comes back to the towns. Every point of it is written in a record anybody can read.
On foot the lights do not restrict you at all and they no longer tell you anything either. The colour change sound and the spoken warning only reach people who are actually in a vehicle. If you are walking and you want to know about a light, you have two ways and both are your own choice: follow its quiet tick to walk to the junction, or press the object tracking key, which lists the light with its direction, its distance and the colour it is showing right now.


WHERE YOU MAY AND MAY NOT LEAVE A CAR
You may park a car almost anywhere, including inside a wall if that is what you want. There is one exception: a travel point. A driver cannot get out of the car within four steps of one. If you try, you are asked to pull a few steps clear first, or to put the car away in your bag. This is not to make parking harder. It is because somebody crossing from the other side cannot hear a car that is not on their map yet, so a car left in a doorway is a trap they cannot avoid.
The rule only holds the driver, and only a car that can still be driven. A passenger may get out anywhere, and if the car has run out of fuel or is wrecked you may leave it where it stands, so nobody can ever be shut inside their own car.
Crossing over is protected as well. For five seconds after you drive into a new map you cannot crash at all. If a car is standing on the far side you pull up hard and stop just short of it, with no damage to either car and no injury to anybody. You are also told as you arrive if a car is standing within fifteen steps, before you touch the accelerator.