hold the HI-WAY CITY sign, or press P, to open this.
in touch driving, tapping the road sends the car there and tapping a building drives it to the door. keyboard: arrows and space drive, enter goes in at the door he is parked at, and the numbers pick a colour on the wash's paint tools. driving into his house parks the car under the roof out of the rain, and that is the moment the town is written down - though it saves quietly by itself too, so nothing he builds is ever lost.
in the long wash, pressing SOAP keeps piling bubbles on and they do not stop at the car any more - keep pressing and the foam fills the whole screen, about eighteen presses, getting faster as it goes. the bar at the top right fills up with it. WATER takes it off: tap it to rinse a good share, or HOLD it down and it sprays until everything is gone, about three or four seconds from a full screen, with the car coming back roof-first. the three buttons are always on top of the foam and always work. just the car keeps the bubbles on the car the way they were before. the quick wash has no bubbles either way.
with hold and move, tapping a wash tool also puts it in his hand: SOAP becomes a fuzzy roller that turns as he pushes it and lays bubbles wherever it touches the car, so he can foam the bonnet and leave the boot bare; WATER becomes a hose whose spray washes the foam off where it lands, carving a full screen away in strokes; and DRY, once the car is clean, is a two-second hold with a ring round the button that fills - letting go early costs nothing. held perfectly still every tool still works, only slower, so he never has to be good at dragging. tapping the button he is holding puts the tool down again. TAPPING STILL DOES EVERYTHING IT ALWAYS DID either way, so a child who only taps still gets a whole wash - three or four taps on DRY fill the ring. with tap the buttons, the tools are never held: SOAP puffs, WATER rinses a share or drains the whole screen while it is held down, and DRY finishes on one tap. on a keyboard 1 2 3 hold the tool at the car and use it there, and 0 puts it down. the quick wash has no tools to hold either way.
the car dealership is a building he can put down like any other, and inside it every other vehicle in the game is standing in a bay - cars, a street sweeper, a lorry, a roller, a digger. he taps one and it swaps places with the one he drove in, then drives out in it. it comes in the colour it was standing in and he paints it at home the way he always has; nothing costs anything, nothing is locked, and the one he leaves behind is simply back in the showroom. a street sweeper of his own wipes mud puddles away as he drives over them. with this off, the dealership's door does not open and he keeps whatever he is driving - the building stays where it is.
the construction yard is another building he can put down with the hard hat, and it is where the tipper, the roller and the digger sleep instead of appearing out of nowhere. inside it there is a bay for each of them, one spare bay, a painted parking space and a mat by the gate. he taps a machine to take it out; his car slides into the parking space and waits for him there in its colour with its mud, and tapping it gives it straight back - ANY yard hands it back, so he can never be stranded a section away from where he left it. the backhoe lives here and nowhere else, and it is the one thing in the game that can drive off the road and onto the grass, at about two-thirds speed. it still cannot cross rock, water, a building or the edge of a section, and it still has to be on the road to drive out of one. with this off, the yard's gate does not open and he keeps whatever he is driving - the building stays where it is, and a machine he is already out in is not taken away.
the backhoe from the construction yard can be driven onto the grass, and tapping the square it is standing on swings its bucket for a second and a half and leaves a pile of dirt there. the pile stays until a street sweeper passes it or a road is laid over it. some digs turn up a wooden chest: tapping it flips the lid and a toy pops out and flies home to his house, where it lands on the living room floor - through the door in the left wall of the paint room. taking a road up with the digger leaves a pile of dirt too, and very occasionally a chest, the way things turn up at a real building site. this row sets how often the chests come: now and then is about one dig in six, normal one in three, lots one in two, and each of them promises one before too long so a run of bad luck always ends. off means no chests at all, from the backhoe or the roadworks; he can still dig and still make his piles of dirt.
the toys he digs up land on the living room floor, through the door in the left wall of the paint room, and the floor has no ceiling - it keeps filling. once there are about a hundred and twenty of them, two boxes appear by the door: his own toy box on the left, which keeps what he puts in it and lets him take it back out again, and a cardboard shipping box on the right with a heart on it, which sends a toy away for good. this row is about the shipping box only. with it off there is no shipping box, that corner is empty floor, and nothing he drags there is ever given away - his toy box, the toys, the pile and the door are all exactly as they were. turn it back on and the box is there again the next time he walks in.
how fast his car drives - `cv.max`, one number everything else about speed is worked out from: how hard he brakes coming into a stop, how close he may follow the sweeper or another car, going round somebody, backing up, driving into a door. normal is how the game has always driven. even at very slow he is still clearly quicker than the street sweeper (0.0946px/ms) and the backhoe the phone can call (0.11px/ms), so going round either of them is still going round something slower, never a crawl behind something his own size.
for a child who is easily wound up, or who wants more going on. the roadworks dial stretches out the lorry and the roller so he can watch them properly (very slow takes about six seconds a square). rain is what makes new puddles; the orange phone button (S on a keyboard) calls the street sweeper, which drives a lap and wipes them away, and with mud puddles off it still rains but leaves nothing behind. with traffic on, whichever of the two is behind gives way: the car crawls along behind the sweeper and the sweeper waits behind the car; backing into the sweeper pushes it along; when he is stuck behind it, an arrow appears on the road and tapping twice past the sweeper takes him round. the red triangle is the hazard button (H on a keyboard): it blinks the car's four corners and tells the sweeper to go round him instead of queueing. R makes it rain right now, and works inside his house too so he can watch it arrive in the window.
picking one of these sets the rain, mud puddles, street sweeper and roadworks rows below to match, right away - so scroll down and you will see them move. it does not touch driving, the wash or sound, and it never comes back on its own: change one of the rows below by hand afterwards and it simply stays changed, because this is a button that writes rows once, not a mode that watches them.
the whole world lets him drive off the edge of the screen into new sections and build there - the road runs off the edge with an arrow on it, and tapping that takes him next door. one section keeps him on the single screen he started with: no arrows, no way out, and his own town to build in. nothing he has built is lost either way - the other sections are still there, exactly as he left them, the moment you switch back. if he is out in another section when you switch to one section, he comes straight home. on one section he can dig up the roads that used to run off the edge, and they are laid back for him when the whole world comes back, so a section he built is never left with no road to it.
cooking in the kitchen makes a mess, and it builds up faster the messier it already is - about thirty things he does take it from spotless to a room he cannot see the worktop in, with flour up the walls, dirty dishes stacked out of the sink and the chef hat gone crooked. IT STAYS: leaving without cleaning means it is just as bad when he comes back tomorrow, which is what makes the rags on the wall worth pressing. the door and the rags are always on top of it and always work. wipes itself up keeps the mess small and lets it tidy itself away behind him. this is a different thing from mud puddles above - that one is about the town.
the orange phone can call the construction yard's backhoe as well as the street sweeper. with both on, pressing the phone shows two pictures - the sweeper on the left, in the same place every time, and the backhoe on the right - and he taps the one he wants; tapping anywhere else puts the pictures away again. the backhoe comes out of the yard's gate and stops on the road outside it. that costs him a second tap to get the sweeper he already knows, so THIS ROW TURNS IT OFF: with the backhoe off, the phone is exactly the button it has always been and one press sends the sweeper. calling something this part of town has not got - a sweeper with no depot, a backhoe with no construction yard - answers with a low note rather than nothing, and he can build the missing one himself with the hard hat. the row above still owns the button itself: with the street sweeper off there is no phone at all.
another car drives itself around the town: it picks a road square, drives there, waits a moment with its hazard lights blinking and then goes somewhere else. it is somebody else's car, so it is never the colour his is. it obeys the same traffic rules the sweeper does - he crawls along behind it, backing into it pushes it along, and the red hazard button tells it to go round him. it never goes into a building and it never follows him into the next section. this is also how a FRIEND'S car will arrive later, when he and somebody else are driving round the same town from two screens; today the game drives it, and that is the only difference.
how much things blink: the hazard button's four corners, a sweeper's amber beacon (his own if he is driving one, the council's out on a lap, and the depot's when he taps one), the little pulse a door gives back when he taps somewhere that does nothing, and the fidget his car and the sweeper do when one of them is held up before the go-round arrow appears. this slows all of them down together, the same way the roadworks dial does - it never turns one off. even at very slow the hazard button, which is his, still clearly blinks.
PMAP: a map of the whole world, his town outlined. It is a picture, not a control - tapping it does nothing. Every square he has driven into and built a road in gets a small road mark; his house, the sweeper depot and the car wash each get their own small dot wherever he has put them. It redraws every time you open this panel.
press the yellow hard hat button (B on a keyboard) and the grid's squares appear: the road tool lays a road (a lorry and a roller come and do it), the house tool puts a building on a grass square that has a road below it - it always offers a kind he has not got yet first, and the button shows a PICTURE of whatever it is about to build - tap it again to cycle to the next kind. only once he owns one of everything will it offer a second car wash or a second depot, which the row below turns off. there are two tool buttons, not three: the road tool cycles between laying and taking up, and its picture changes - tarmac when the next tap lays a road, a yellow digger when it takes one up. it always comes back on tarmac. roads work out their own shape from their neighbours, and a road square with a building over it cannot be dug up, so no door is ever left stranded.
every beep in the game - the buttons, arriving, splashing, the chimes.
a grown-up opens a room for the car game on realppl and sends the link for a seat in it. opening that link once on this device brings the game back here and leaves the seat behind in this browser, and the address it came on is wiped straight away so a reload, a back button or somebody else picking the phone up never carries it.
OPENING A NEW SEAT LINK ON THIS DEVICE TURNS THE ROW BELOW ON, once, by itself. That is deliberate and it is the thing that went wrong the first evening: this row lives on THIS device, so a room turned on on the laptop is still off on the phone, and nothing on either screen says a second switch exists. WHAT IT COSTS, said plainly: the game starts talking to realppl as soon as a grown-up opens a seat link here, rather than waiting for a second deliberate act. It happens once per link - opening the SAME link again, a reload and a back button all change nothing - so turning this off below turns it off for good, and it stays off until somebody sends a new seat link. When a room ENDS, the seat it was for is forgotten along with it, so opening that room's link again next time counts as a new seat and turns this on again. A game opened with no link at all has never had a room and still does not.
with it on, a strip of the room sits in the empty page above the map (below it, on a wide screen) - it is realppl's own page in a small window, not something this game draws, and there are no words in it for him to read. with it off, nothing here talks to realppl at all: this is the same game it has always been, offline, with no room and nothing sent anywhere. turning this off, or the room ending on realppl's side, takes the strip away and the game is simply a one-player game again, with no message and nothing for him to notice.
faces are ON to start with, because he cannot read - a strip of his grandma's and his cousins' faces is the whole point of the room for him, the way a video call is. THIS ROW ONLY ASKS: the lever that actually decides whether any camera opens is realppl's own, on the grown-up's console, and it wins. Turning this off here asks realppl to put the cameras down.
when a friend is in his town they see HIS town and everything in it - his roads, his buildings, his mud puddles, his piles of dirt and the tyre marks he has left on the grass - and driving round it in a monster truck or a street sweeper marks it and cleans it exactly as his own driving does. this row says whether they can also CHANGE it - lay a road, take one up, put a building down, fill a hole back in. it starts off, which is the safe side: another toddler pulling his roads up is a fight, and an older cousin or a grown-up building a road with him is the good version. it is this device's row, not the friend's - their copy of this panel does not have it - and it can be moved while they are playing, which takes effect the next time his town goes over to their screen, with no reload and nothing for either of them to notice. whatever they build, HIS town is the one that is real: their tap comes here, this game does the roadworks, and the finished town goes back to them.
no seat is kept in this browser yet, so there is no room to turn on. either open the link a grown-up sent you, paste it in the box below, or go to a friend's town with the button below that.
if the game is kept on the home screen, a seat link opens safari instead - a different copy, with an empty town. paste the link here and it lands in THIS one. the whole link or just the key both work, and the box empties the moment you press.
going to a friend's town LEAVES this game and opens realppl's page for it, where a grown-up types the four pictures. the town is written down first, so nothing he has built is lost by going.