Update 0.4.0 – A World of People

01 · The dialogue screen

Talking face to face

Every conversation happens in a box along the bottom of the screen: the speaker’s face on the left, the boy’s on the right, the one talking lit. The game stands still.
Lines type out with a mumbled voice at the speaker’s pitch (higher for women and the girl, lower for old men). Space, E or a click goes on; answers are numbered 1–9.
Faces are 40×48 hard pixels drawn from the same look as the 3D figure: helmet, knitted hat, balaclava, vest, beard, glasses, grey hair with age. The boy’s follows what he wears.
Every soldier and rebel has a name (a rank and surname in the army, a first name in Varden) and a face of their own.

Kari Lindvik, the goat woman, on the dialogue screen.

02 · Kroner, values, traders

Money and trading

Kroner are carried apart from the inventory slots, like a wallet. Tills, drawers, desks, bars, lockers and the dead can hold some.
Every item has a value. A trader marks it up or down and buys at about half. His stock comes back at dawn, and what you sell him he sells on.
Halvdan Kroken, a scrap dealer with a stall by the camping reception: neutral, trades with anyone. The first townsperson you can talk to: why and how he stayed, his theory (the Russians), what he saw of Grandpa.
Sersjant Moen, the army’s quartermaster at the roadblock nearest town, and Bjørg at Varden’s stores: for their own side only.

The trade screen: mine at his buying price, his at his asking price.

Kroken’s stall by the camping cabins: a table under a tarp, a board, a fire in a barrel.

03 · Classes and hiring

Classes, guns and hiring

Seven classes besides the plain rifleman: marksman, heavy weapons (machine gun), sniper, shotgun, SMG, demolitions (grenade launcher) and combat medic. Each with its own health, speed, gun, accuracy and fighting distance; all carry a pistol.
Grenades go off where they land: damage over a radius, a fireball, smoke, a flash, and a bang every animal hears.
The medic goes to the worst hurt (or the boy) and patches him up.
Experience: Green, Trained, Seasoned, Veteran, Elite. Time in the squad and fights; better aim, better errands, a higher price.
Recruiters (Løytnant Brekke for the army, Arvid for Varden) offer five candidates a day. Up to three in the squad.
The boy can use the new guns too: shotgun, SMG, a scoped hunting rifle, machine gun, grenade launcher.

Classes on the showcase pad, each with its own gun.

A 40 mm grenade going off on the showcase pad (Roar Haugland, in orange, a little too close).

04 · Orders, errands, transport

The field radio

The field radio (Y) lists each man’s class and level. Orders as before: follow, hold, rally, defensive or offensive, fire or hold fire, formation.
Errands (E on the radio): who, then the job: scout the place, search it, fetch food, water, ammunition or medicine. The map opens to click where.
A car parked near them goes with them; otherwise they walk. They’re off the map until they’re due back: a roll weighted by experience and danger. They can come back hurt, or not at all.
Scouting puts every group near the place on the map with a head count, in a tighter circle. Searching and fetching bring things back.
Transport: H calls the helicopter, K a car with a driver.
Without the radio, orders are shouted: only men within 40 m hear them.

05 · Looters

Looters in town

Three gangs of out-of-town lads hold the co-op, the hotel and the petrol station: a fire in a barrel, a dragged-out sofa, a trolley, bottles.
They shout when you come near. Step onto their turf and one walks up to have it out face to face. No walking away.
Comply, stand your ground, or now and then “Can we be friends?” or “Wanna join me?”. Comply and come back: a reminder. The third time they attack.
Armed to match you: fists and knives if you’re unarmed, your kind of gun and as many rounds as you have (or a few more) if you carry one, the odd one a step better.
People fight hand to hand now (fists, knife, bat, crowbar, axe). A looter who joins you keeps his own gun; a boy on nobody’s side gets a squad of his own.

Kenny «Smeden» blocks the way, bat in hand.

06 · The army in town

Roadblocks and patrols

Up to four roadblocks where the main roads cross a ring round the centre: a red and white bar on a pivot, concrete blocks along the verges, a booth, a KONTROLLPOST board.
The bar stops vehicles; soldiers stop people on foot. Out of their sight you can sneak past.
They won’t tell you anything (“we know there’s people still in town; not our job”), but by temper some let a secret slip. Most can be bribed to look the other way for three hours, and the bar lifts. The strict ones refuse.
Patrols of four walk the town’s streets, led by a sergeant who gives the same orders you give your squad: against an armed boy far off they go on the offensive and hunt him; otherwise they hold and shoot, in a line. A moment after their shout before anyone fires.

07 · Helicopters

The flight course

Four kinds of helicopter with their own paint, marks and handling: the army’s FH-1; Varden’s stolen one with the roundels sprayed out and their cairn on the doors; an old red JetRanger; a light blue two-seater.
The army’s airfield at the base (two helicopters, Kaptein Wold). Varden’s airfield in the forest near their camp: three pads, a windsock, fuel drums, Ragnar.
Nobody flies without the course. Your side’s pilot teaches it for a fee, in the helicopter you pick: start, lift, hover, turn to the smoke, fly there and back, land.
Then the test: three smokes and a gentle landing on the pad in five minutes. Pass and you can fly any helicopter. Retakes are free.

Varden’s airfield: the stolen army helicopter, the red and the blue.

The four kinds side by side on the showcase pad.

08 · Crews

A helicopter or a car on call

The helicopter: your side’s pilot flies in, lands on open ground near you and waits. Get in, pick a place on the map, and he flies you there, then goes home. Two hours between calls.
The pilot flies by the same controls you do: start, climb over the ground ahead, cruise with room to stop, hover, come down.
The car: a squad mate drives his side’s car along the roads to you. Get in and choose: be driven somewhere picked on the map, or drive yourself and he walks back.
With someone else at the controls you can’t touch them, though a parachute still works. A figure sits in the pilot’s or driver’s seat.

Called on the field radio (K): the army’s car has driven up the road to Grandpa’s and waits, a soldier at the wheel (the camper in front).

09 · The townspeople

The people who stayed

Seven besides Kroken, each with a reason why and a way how they stayed, tied into papers already in the game. Among them: Aslaug Vik, 82, who rings the church bell at six; Roar Haugland, who thinks everyone went to the capital for the holiday.
Their days go by the hour: they walk the roads between their places, work, sit, fish, and go indoors at night.
Quests: Kari’s cheese for Varden, medicine for Mari’s grandmother, Kjell’s bottle and logbook, a drink for Torvald, Birger’s dogs, candles for Aslaug’s church.

Kjell Hegge, fisherman, “K. H.” of the bottle: the north jetty at dawn.

Torvald Ness, whom nobody counted: by the King’s statue at noon.

Mari Strand, 11: the playground after lunch.

Kari Lindvik, goats past the waterworks: her pasture, late morning.

Birger Fosse, loyal farmer: out at his farm.

10 · Rumours on Grandpa’s map

What they saw

Nobody knows the whole truth. What each person has seen of soldiers, Varden and the looters goes in the journal, ARMA-style: what, where, and at what time.
It goes on the map as a pencilled circle where they believe it was, labelled with who said it. Poor eyes put it in the wrong place or mistake one group for another; some are sure of everything.
Asking “who else stayed?” puts that person’s place on the map in blue ballpoint.
In this picture, half-blind Aslaug and the drinker Torvald both call something in town “Varden?”. They’re wrong.

Grandpa’s O-map after talking to four people.

11 · Fixes

Fixed along the way

Road and pavement flicker where they overlap: they now paint over each other in a fixed order.
The walk twitching downhill.
Board walls shimmering far off; still hard pixels up close.
Animals hurting you up a tree or a tower: every bite, maul and gore checks you’re within reach (bears and moose too).
The church tower’s side walls ran down the whole roof.
The churchyard path: no graves on it, and a gap in the dyke where it goes through.
People stood in the water under jetties (now on the deck); a grenade’s fireball lingered as a huge grey ball; map labels printed over each other; every group of soldiers or rebels looked the same.

The church tower from the side, after the fix.

12 · The showcase

See it yourself

Open the developer console (§ on a Norwegian keyboard, or F10) and type showcase: a flat pad out on the fjord with one of everything, labelled. It’s noon there.
Rows: the four helicopters, the places (the stall, a looters’ corner, a roadblock, the car), the army’s classes, Varden’s classes, the looters and their weapons, the townspeople, and every dialogue face on a wall. Guns, ammunition and kroner lie at your feet to try.
showcase back returns you. showcase kari (or kroken, kjell, mari, torvald, birger, aslaug, roar, gate, patrol, gang, roadblock, camp, airfield, base) takes you to the real, live one.
Also new: faction military|rebels|none joins a side with a squad; pilot on passes the flight course.