Update 0.5.0 – The Border

01 · From playtesting

People on the move

Fifteen groups roam the map on loops of their own: five of soldiers and five of Varden in twos to fours (the army’s led by a sergeant), six of looters alone or up to four, armed to match you.
They start on roads, fields and forest that isn’t steep, never on water, more often near their own side’s posts. Out of reach they keep walking on paper; near, they shout once and fight with their leader’s orders.
Squad errands have a range now: 250 m on foot, a kilometre with a car standing nearby (to a road), anywhere the helicopter can land when it’s free.
Field radio 0: Default orders: follow me, wedge, defensive, weapons free.

02 · From playtesting

Hold the right mouse button with fists or a tool to raise a guard: a blow or a bite from in front loses most of its damage, and is sometimes stopped altogether. Guns keep the button for squinting and the scope.
No more than four dogs (or wolves) come for you at once; a fifth hangs back, barking.
The parachute opens by itself as soon as you’re clear of the helicopter, unless you set the pack to free fall in the inventory: then it’s Space, and your timing.
Three new views in the developer console: wireframe (wf), infrared (ir), nightvision (nv).

03 · New

Where the map’s edge is land, a 3.6 m chain-link fence runs 25 m in from it: about 13.5 km, with gaps where the roads cross for the roadblocks.
Every 450 m a watchtower, a marksman on the platform. Come within 110 m of the wire and he warns you on the dialogue screen. Come closer, or stay, and the towers open fire.

04 · New

Eight grey cutters keep the sea border, following set routes: one back and forth on each of four lines along the edges, and two on each of two loops (the big fjord and the open sea in the north-west).
Their routes are worked out over the water so they keep off the headlands. Row out near one and the radio tells you to turn back; keep coming and the deck gun opens up.

05 · New

The farmland on the map grows wheat now, in rows, gold and heavy-eared.
Each of the farms keeps two or three kinds of its animals in the fields round it: cows, sheep, pigs and horses, and most of them a dog that stayed. They graze, move off when you come close (a horse bolts), and can be butchered for meat.

06 · New

Feral cats, always alone, in the town and the villages, as many as the dogs. They hiss and go for you. Dogs and cats fight each other.
Loudspeakers on masts along the streets carry the King’s voice: a chime, two or three lines, flat and slow, round and round. You hear them from 150 m; within 70 m the words come up as subtitles.
Up in a helicopter there is music now: a march-rock for the army, a folk-rock with a joik for Varden.