The city guide

You arrive at the airport. At the police station desk you give a first and last name: that is the name the city will know you by, not your Minecraft username. It shows above your head, in chat, in the phone directory and on police paperwork.

The desk hands you two things at once: your ID card and your plot of land. Keep the card on you — the metro turnstiles read it, and the police ask for it. A card can be lost or stolen; your name stays yours.

Nothing is crafted. Crafting tables are closed, and so are the stonecutter and the smithing table: everything you own is bought at a counter. The two exceptions are restaurant kitchens and the product chain your server runs.

Money enters the city when you sell, and leaves it when you buy. That is what keeps it from inflating out of nothing: a round trip at a counter never earns anything, because the buyback price is always lower than the purchase price. And anything that grows back on its own — vines, kelp, cactus — is not bought back at all.

The ATM holds what you would rather not carry, and what you carry can be lost in a search. The account pays 2% per period, compounded: one period's interest earns interest in turn. It is calculated whenever you use the account, so a forgotten account loses nothing by being forgotten.

You take a job at the town hall. Every task you do is paid: there is no boss and no employee, and nobody to wait for before you can work. A counter is a trade, not a business.

About ranks, to be clear. Every job declares some, but only one action in the whole game grants experience today: the raid, carried out by a police officer. A cook, a miner or a pizza maker will therefore stay at their first rank whatever they do. Ranks exist; progression does not yet.

The police are the only ones paid by time rather than per task, because they have nothing to sell — and they are only paid while on duty.

Restaurants are the only thing a city really makes. Six restaurants, six jobs, but one way of working: take an order at the till, prepare it, serve it.

• The fridge, the freezer and the shelf hold the stock. Each restaurant has its own, and what you find in it depends on what it serves.
• The machines cook: fryer, grill, oven. Put in a raw piece, wait, and take out a cooked piece or a finished dish.
• The prep counter assembles. Lay a dish's pieces on it and it hands back the plate.

Assembly follows three rules, and they are strict on purpose. You need all the base pieces — a kebab without meat is not a kebab missing a filling, it is a mistake. You need at least one filling. And you need nothing foreign and nothing doubled: two buns do not make a taller burger, they make nothing at all.

An order asks for a dish, sometimes a side, sometimes a drink. Serving exactly what was asked for is what pays; the point is not to be fast but to read the ticket.

Machines and their times

Dishes to assemble

Pizza, a case apart

Pizza is built on a dough base and then goes in the oven, and its menu is made of named recipes rather than free toppings. The available toppings are: Sauce tomate, Creme, Mozzarella, Basilic, Jambon, Champignon, Chevre, Miel, Chorizo, Poivron, Oignon.

Drinks

On tap: Soda Orange, Limonade, Cola, Cola Zero, Eau. In cans: Canette soda orange, Canette lemonade, Canette cola, Canette cola zero, Canette blue energy, Canette green energy.

Restaurant by restaurant

Each restaurant's stock is different: what it keeps in the fridge, the freezer and on the shelf is exactly what its recipes call for.

The metro links the city, your plot and your workplaces. You need a ticket to get through the turnstile, and your ID card. The police can close a platform.

You can bring an animal along, as long as you keep it on a lead.

The city map shows the shops, the service desks and the three stations, with their coordinates.

Your plot is handed to you at the airport, along with your papers. It is 44 blocks on each side, with about ten blocks of earth underneath — enough to dig a cellar. A road is built around it the moment it is assigned to you.

No rent. You build whatever you like on it and buy it block by block. Nobody touches it without your permission — except the police, with a reason.

The city centre, on the other hand, is protected: shops, restaurants and services cannot be broken.

The police enforce the law, protect residents and arrest traffickers. On duty, the uniform is mandatory and the tools are lent by the station; off duty, an officer is a resident like any other.

• A search — an officer sees what you are carrying, without being able to touch it.
• The taser immobilises for 5 seconds; zip-tie cuffs hold for 3 minutes, and while cuffed you can no longer use your hands.
• Prison — the sentence is served in connected play time. Logging off serves nothing.
• A lawyer, at the town hall, costs 15 000,00 and divides your next sentence by 2.
• The licence to produce costs 40 000,00 and lasts 7 days. An officer can ask to see it.

Since nothing is crafted, everything goes through a counter. The city has 15, for 1,887 items in total. Each has its own shopkeeper at its own address: buying is a trip, not a menu.

At a counter, the Buy column is what you pay and Buyback is what the shop gives you. A dash means it does not buy that item back. Search looks through the whole shop, not just the section on screen, and ignores accents.

A Cube RP city is rented with its mod already installed. The owner sets its sentences, wages, prices and penal code from their server's page, and the server picks them up on its own: no file to edit, no restart to request.

See the plans.