Player: you, in first personPL

PL3: one way to use things

Today the hub and the store pick what you look at (GarageWalker) and mostly act on a press, while gardens pick the nearest thing from a fixed priority list (PlayerInteraction) and everything is a hold, each with its own prompt. PL3 makes it one system, everywhere.

What E acts on, in this order:

1. What's in your hands: the mower you're pushing (unclog, empty the bag, fold), the fuel can at a tank (pour).
2. What you look at: every usable thing has a focus point and a reach (reach by default; the client 2.6 m, the mower 2.4 m, a stone 1.9 m, a pour 1.6 m). It's a candidate when the focus point is within lookCone of the view and within reach, less than 2.4 m above or below you, with nothing solid between your head and it. The candidate closest to the centre of the view wins, not the nearest one and not a fixed priority.
3. Nothing: holding E puts down what you carry (PL4).

Press or hold, one rule for every action:

• Press when the action is instant: open a screen, talk, take, put back, pick a tool, start.
• Hold when the action takes time (pouring, unclogging, emptying, scrubbing: it lasts while you hold, as long as it needs) or when it ends something (end the day, sleep: holdEnd). A ring fills around the dot. Letting go of a timed action keeps its progress, draining at holdDrain; letting go of an ending does nothing.
• Holds as presses (PL6): with the setting on, a timed hold becomes press to start, press again (or walk away) to stop; an ending becomes press, then press again within confirmWindow to confirm.
• A second action on the same thing is the hold (the bench: press opens the skills screen, hold trains, SK1).

What you see:

• The dot: a small dot in the middle of the screen, always there, faint. The hold ring grows from it.
• The outline: the target gets a soft warm outline (in the How to Fish palette, never pure white).
• The prompt: next to the dot, the key and a verb ("E Talk", "Hold E Empty the bag"), in the device's glyph (PL5). Its look belongs to the HUD & UI spec.
• Never a silent no: a thing you can't use right now stays the target, its prompt greyed with the reason ("The bag's empty", "Turn the engine off first"). Nothing just ignores E.

Code: one Interactable component (focus point, reach, press and hold verbs, Why not? for the greyed reason) replaces GarageStation's targeting and PlayerInteraction's priority list; the stations keep their kinds and screens. Both scenes use the same picker and the same prompt.

Needs: - · Done when: in the hub, the house, the store and a garden, every usable thing is picked by looking at it, with the outline, the dot and the same prompt; every action follows the press/hold rule; the compost bin next to the van is picked by looking at one or the other; a blocked action shows its reason; in 2-player co-op, one player can't empty the bag the other is emptying, and sees why.

PL4: what's in your hands

One thing in your hands at a time, the same rules for all of them.

• The belt and the hands: tools you own sit on the belt (1-6, PL5); the one you hold is out. The mower's bar counts as holding (taking the mower parks the hand tool, picking a hand tool parks the mower: built).
• What's on the belt: in a job, the tools loaded for it (in grandma's car, later the van), the same list in the same order for every sibling, so "slot 2" means the same tool to everyone. Away from a job (the hub, the house, the store) the belt is empty: tools live on the garage shelf, and your hands only take carried things.
• One tool, one sibling: a tool is a real thing, so only one sibling holds it at a time. Its slot shows who has it, and picking it says so ("Sam has the trimmer") instead of handing you a copy. It's free again when they pick something else or put it down. The mower is the open question below.
• Carried things: the fuel can, a junk bag, the paint roller. Each is a real model in your hands (hand IK, like the tools), not a prop stuck to the camera. Taking one when your hands are full first puts the tool back on the belt; a carried thing has to be put down first ("Hands full").
• Putting it down: E on its home puts it back (the can at the van, the bag at the skip, the roller at the tray). Hold E with nothing targeted puts it down where you stand, on the ground; any sibling can pick it up. A thing put down outside the walk area, or left behind when the scene ends, goes back to its home: never lost, never stuck.
• Weight: a junk bag or a full can slows you to carryMul (SK2's carrying bonus applies at full strength).
• Seen by the others: what you hold shows on your avatar for everyone (MO17 covers the can; PL4 adds the bags and the roller).

Needs: PL3 · Done when: the fuel can, a junk bag and the roller are held in both hands as real models; in 2-player co-op both belts list the same tools in the same order, and a hand tool one sibling holds can't be taken by the other, who sees who has it; each goes back with E on its home and down with a hold of E on nothing; a can left in the garden is back at the van next job; in 2-player co-op one sibling puts a bag down and the other picks it up.

PL5: one control map

Every binding lives in GameInput; no key is read anywhere else (the dev keys F1, F9-F12 excepted, dev builds only).

The mower's own actions are MO8a's table; they use these same keys.

• Every action on both: nothing exists only on one device.
• One meaning per key: Tab is the next tool in a garden and does nothing elsewhere: the house has no menu of its own, its things are the way in, and Esc is the only menu (UI15). The gamepad's B is choke everywhere and View is free.
• New: Q for the previous tool (it had no key); the hub menu's Tab and B leave GarageWalker (UI15).
• Prompts follow the device: every prompt and hint shows the glyph of the device you touched last, and every hint names every key that works (the blade height hint says the wheel and [ ]; the mower's start hint says R).

Needs: - · Done when: every row of the table works on both devices in a garden and in the hub; no key is read outside GameInput; a prompt switches its glyph as soon as you touch the other device.

PL6: player settings

Per machine (each player's own, never in the company save), in the settings screen (the menus spec).

The built "Look speed" becomes the mouse look speed; the stick gets its own. Bar hold/toggle and Gauges stay with the mower (MO8a).

Needs: - · Done when: each setting changes the game at once, survives a restart, and a guest's settings never touch the host's; with holds as presses, every hold in the game (unclog, pour, empty, scrub, end the day, sleep) works with presses alone.

PL7: siblings you can bump into

Today other siblings are ghosts: you walk through them, their heads only turn with their bodies, and free look doesn't show at all.

• Bodies: each remote sibling gets a kinematic capsule (the player's size) on a Sibling layer. Your own controller collides with it, so you stop at their shoulder and slide past. Nobody pushes anybody (each player owns their own movement); a shove is PL10.
• The mower too: the deck's sweep treats a sibling like a wall: you can't mow your brother's feet.
• Heads: the pose carries where the head looks: its pitch, and its turn away from the body (free look, PL2; a scene's look, PL14), one byte each. The other sibling's head, and their googly pupils, follow it, eased like the rest of the pose. Pushing the mower while looking over your shoulder shows as exactly that on the other screen.
• Spawns: siblings spawn side by side, never inside each other.

Needs: - · Done when: on two instances, walking into the other stops you at their shoulder and you slide past; pushing the mower into them stops the deck; looking down at the lawn tilts your head on the other screen; free look while pushing turns your head, not your body, on the other screen.

PL14: looking away in scenes

When a scene is seen through your own eyes (the drop-off at grandma's, ST3; later Chad's scene, ST9), the script points your head at whoever talks, but the mouse or the stick can turn it away: up to sceneLookYaw either side and sceneLookPitch up and down, from where the script looks. Let go for sceneLookIdle and the head eases back to the script. The scene never waits for you: the lines play on, so staring at the dumpster while dad talks is your choice.

• Seen by the others: in co-op, every sibling's head follows its own player (PL7's head byte), so while dad gives his speech your sister can watch you gaze at the garage, or at her.
• What's left alone: shots that aren't your eyes (ST1's montage, the end-of-job fly-over, the computer, the bed) stay fixed; the ride has its own free look (DY2, PL13).
• Code: the scene's CinematicShot gives the scripted direction; PL14 adds the player's offset on top, clamped, and the head bone follows it on the avatar.

Needs: PL7 · Done when: during the drop-off, solo and on two instances, you can look away from dad, your head eases back when you let go, the lines play on regardless, and the other player sees your head turned.

PL16: never stuck

Whatever happens to the geometry, you're never trapped. Two ways out, both free, both your own (no host needed: you own your movement).

• Falling out: below the scene's lowest ground by fallDepth, or outside its bounds, the screen dips to black and you're back at your last safe spot: the last place you stood on walkable ground for safeDwell, at least 1 m from anything solid. If you were pushing the mower it comes back with you, beside you.
• Wedged: "I'm stuck" in the Esc menu, always there and never greyed, puts you (and the mower you push) at the nearest safe spot, or at the scene's arrival point (the curb, the gate, the front door) if there's none.
• What comes along: what's in your hands and on the belt; nothing is lost, nothing costs anything.
• Telling us: in dev builds each rescue logs the scene and position, so the hole gets fixed.

Needs: - · Done when: in the sandbox, solo and as a guest, falling through a gap in the ground puts you back on safe ground within 2 s, and "I'm stuck" frees you from inside a wall and from between the van and a fence, mower included.