Settings and help for the 3D visit

On the village map

The map shows the whole demo village in 3D, with its options panel alongside (on a phone, tap “Filters and views” to open it). Drag to turn around, use the wheel or two fingers to zoom, double-click a street to land there at eye level, and click a building to read its sheet.

Visit the show interiors

Six buttons at the top of the panel: the house, the bakery, the grocery, the tavern, the church and the keep. Hover one and the building lights up on the map. Click it and you step inside.

What are you looking for?

Live (the houses, and the homes above the shops), Work (shops, workshops, tavern, inn, farms, mill…) or Stay (the inn, the tavern, the square, the gardens). A golden marker appears above the places that suit you, and the panel suggests a few “to discover”. Click the same button again to clear it.

Display: 3D, Plan, List

3D is the model you move through. Plan shows the village from above, lighter, and also works with the keyboard. List is a table of every place, handy with a screen reader. Without 3D on the device, the plan and the list keep the same information.

Walking tour from the bridge

You go down into the streets, at eye level, at the bridge leading to the village: see “Walking around”, below.

Show building names

In 3D: each place’s name floats above it. Otherwise, a name appears on hover, or when you pick a place.

Filters

By use (homes, shops and workshops, inn, tavern and welcome house, square and gardens, monuments and town walls, farms and forest) or by project phase: the other places fade, and the panel counts the ones that remain. “Clear the filters” brings everything back.

Project statuses

The colour key of the sheets: Envisaged, Under study, Confirmed, Under construction, Completed, with how many places have each. To date, no building is confirmed, under construction or completed.

The village phases

At the bottom of the map, the numbers 1 to 4 show the village phase by phase; the phase name gives its details, and the eye shows what comes next as translucent volumes, or hides it. An illustrative scenario, whose order may change.

Open the 3D map

Settings: weather and 3D quality

In the “Settings” section of the map panel. They stay on this device, and also apply to the walking tour and the interiors.

Today’s real weather

The village sky follows the weather in Mauricie right now: clouds, rain, snow, mist and wind, updated every fifteen minutes, from Open-Meteo. The season and the calendar follow the real date too: the maples turn red in autumn, the trees are bare in winter, Saturday is market day, everything is closed on Sunday, and the feasts of the year come back on their day. When a real downpour falls, the village takes shelter.

Always fair weather

An ordinary summer day, barely cloudy, with no rain or snow, whatever the season: the trees stay green. The “Fair weather” or “Real weather” button on the weather chip does the same in one click.

The moon

At night it follows its real phase, worked out on your device: crescent, half moon, full moon, or a moonless night; clouds may hide it. With “Always fair weather”, it is full.

3D quality: High

The starting setting on a computer or a tablet: everything the visit can show. All the villagers and animals, the miller’s cart and the knight’s riders, the finest sun shadows, cloud shadows on the ground, the densest forest, the morning mist and the sharpest picture.

3D quality: Automatic

The starting setting on a phone: the visit chooses for your device. A well-equipped computer gets everything. An iPad, or a computer with integrated graphics, a medium level: the main villagers, without the cart or the riders, a less dense forest. A phone, an iPhone or a modest device, Economy.

3D quality: Economy

For a modest device, or a battery to spare. The streets, houses and interiors remain, but there are no villagers or animals outdoors (the show interiors keep theirs), and no sun or cloud shadows; the clouds are simpler, the forest sparser, the water less detailed, the picture less smooth. The game is played with the villagers: for it, prefer High (on a phone, Automatic amounts to Economy).

Which one to choose?

On a computer or a tablet, keep High as long as everything runs smoothly: if the device struggles, the visit lightens itself, a slightly less sharp picture first, then no sun shadows. If the picture still stutters, if the device heats up or the battery drains, switch to Automatic, then to Economy. On a phone, Automatic is the safest; High shows the villagers and animals there, but walking often gets choppy: try it, and step back if need be.

On iPhone and iPad

High stops at the medium level there, and the selector says so (“capped here”): beyond it, Safari runs out of memory and reloads the page.

After the 3D stops

If the 3D stops dead and the page reloads, the visit goes back to Economy for that tab, and tells you. Your choice is not erased: a new tab picks it up again, and you can set it back right away in the map settings.

Walking around

The walking tour starts at the bridge, at the entrance to the village. Choose who is walking, “Woman” or “Man”, and a first name if you like: the villagers and the town crier will call you by it. Then “Start walking”, to go wherever you like, or “Take the guided tour”.

The guided tourSpacePage UpPage Down

It takes you from the bridge to the keep, stop by stop, with a short text at each: play or pause (Space), previous or next stop, “Pace ×2” to go faster. “Free tour” hands control back to you where you are; “Guided tour” resumes it. At the top of the keep, you can sign the guestbook.

WalkingW A S Darrows

With the keyboard, W A S D or the arrow keys (Z Q S D on an AZERTY keyboard); Q and E (A and E on AZERTY) turn the camera, and the wheel brings it closer or further. With the mouse, drag to look around, and click the ground to go there: the walker steps around whatever is in the way.

On a touch screen

Tap the ground to go there, drag to look around, or use the arrow pad: forward, back, turn, and, with its top-right arrow, jump. A quick tap takes one step.

RunningShift

Hold Shift while walking.

JumpingSpace

In the free tour: the space bar, or the top-right arrow of the pad.

CrouchingC

Or the “Crouch” button: you move bent low, you stay hidden, and shy animals let you come closer. Press again to stand up.

SneakingX

Or the “Sneak” button: upright, silent, without running. To approach the ginger cat or the herd of deer, or to follow someone without being noticed.

Gestures12345

Wave, dance, bow, clap, pray: keys 1 to 5, or the gesture bar at the bottom of the screen. When the Angelus rings, the “Pray” slot glows softly.

TalkingF

Walk up to a villager and press F, or click them: they turn towards you and answer. “Goodbye”, or Escape, to leave them.

Petting an animal, trying a tradeEnter

Close to a dog, the greyhound or the ginger cat, Enter (or the button that appears) to pet it: the village dog ends up following you. At the forge, on the threshing floor of the Grange, at the archery butt or at the spinning wheel of the show home, a button invites you to lend a hand.

Sitting down

Click a bench, a stone or a stool: the walker goes and sits on it. Start walking again to get up. At the travellers’ camp, the bench by the fire: at night, a tale is told there; you can also sit up there until dawn, or wait for the evening. Facing the fortune teller, she reads your cards.

Going in through the doorsEnter

A golden handle marks the door of the show interiors: click it, or press Enter in front of it (the “Enter” button appears). From inside, the door handle takes you back to the street, in front of it.

The lantern

At night, the “Lantern” button puts it out, to walk by moonlight, or lights it again.

The round mapM

At the top of the screen, the mini-map follows your steps, north at the top. A click, or M, enlarges it: you can read the names of places, drag it to see further, and zoom (+ and −, or the wheel). Below it, the name of where you are: a click shows or hides the help.

The “?” help

The “?” button at the top of the screen shows or hides the walking help: the keys, and three settings (passers-by talk, sound captions, the hourglass). It opens by itself on your first visit, then folds away.

Full screen

The button next to the sound puts the visit in full screen; a second click, or Escape, leaves it.

Leave the tour

The button at the bottom takes you back to the village map.

Start the walking tour

Sound, listening and talk

Sound

It is off at the start. The speaker at the top of the page turns on the ambience: wind, birds, animals and the sounds of the village. If the device interrupts it (a call, an alarm), tap the page to bring it back.

Listening closelyV

Hold V, or the “Listen” button: the wind and the birds quieten, and labels around the walker tell where each sound comes from (“the forge, ahead”). A short press keeps you listening for a few seconds. Even with the sound off, you can read what you would hear.

Sound captions

A setting in the “?” help: the sound labels stay on screen at all times, even with the sound off. For anyone hard of hearing, or walking without sound.

Passers-by talk

Another setting in the help: what villagers say as you pass close to them, in a bubble above them. On at the start; one click silences it, another brings it back.

The hourglass

The third setting, for the game’s quests played against the clock: normal, more time (double), or no limit. Each click moves to the next one.

Day, night and village time

Village time

Time passes during the visit: one village hour lasts two and a half minutes, and night passes twice as fast (a quarter of an hour at most); a whole day fits in less than an hour. Every visit starts in the morning, at 8 a.m., and time stops when the tab is hidden.

The dial on the chip

On the weather chip, a small dial: the arc of the day, the sun travelling along it from east to west, and at night a crescent moon. On the map, the word for the moment goes with it (Dawn, Morning, Noon, Afternoon, Evening, Dusk, Night). No numbers, no hands: this is the Middle Ages.

The “Night” button

It brings on the night: evening comes quickly, the Angelus rings, then night. The village goes to bed: everyone goes home, the shops close, the stalls are covered, the windows light up.

Back to “Day”

The same button, now “Day”, makes the night pass quickly, to dawn and then morning. Night also falls by itself, in its own time.

Playing the game

Castel Roc has its own role-playing game, in the same village: a work of fiction, where villagers and quests are invented. You start it from the game page; the game is saved on this device, and you walk around as anywhere else.

The quest book

On the game page, one tab per book: the first chapter, then three campaigns, and separately the feasts of the year. Choose a quest to open its page: its objectives, your investigation notes, the places discovered and its reward.

The quest counterO

Under the round map, it counts your quests in progress. A click, or O, opens their sheet: what is left to do, the clues noted, and from there the bundle or the notebook.

The bundleB

What you are carrying, slot by slot: B, or the “Bundle” button.

The traveller’s notebookJ

Your story, what you have been told, the documents in full, and what the village says about you: J, or “Notebook” in the sheet of quests in progress.

Talking, picking up, investigatingFEnter

Anyone with a seal above their head has something to tell you: walk up, then F or Enter. A seal also marks what to pick up, and a “?” seal the clues of an investigation. The round map leads you there.

The hourglass

Some quests are played against the clock: an hourglass appears under the counter. It stops during a conversation, while a window is open, or during the pause. If it runs out, the story carries on differently: nothing fails.

Leaving, resuming

“Leave the game” keeps your game saved: you pick it up again from the game page, where you left off.

Open the quest book

Inside a show interior

Looking, walkingW A S Darrows

Drag to look around, and move from one room or viewpoint to another from the sheet. If you came in on foot, from the street, you walk around as outdoors: W A S D or the arrow keys, or click the ground. The “?” reopens the starting help.

Sitting down

Having come in on foot, click a bench or a chair: you sit on it, facing the table; a key gets you up.

At the tavern, at the keep

Having come in on foot, at the Bear Tavern, click the tavern keeper for a mead; in the keep, near the staircase, the trapdoor or the grate, a button offers to go up or down. The golden door handle takes you back to the street.

Good to know

Without 3D

If the device cannot show 3D, the map switches to the plan and the list, and the tour gives its stops to read.

Fewer animations

If your device asks for reduced motion, the tour moves from stop to stop, without walking by itself, and the home page keeps the artist’s view.

Your settings stay with you

Quality, weather, first name, character, walking settings and your game stay in your browser, on this device: nothing is sent. The village weather comes from Open-Meteo, which our server queries itself: your address is not passed on to it.