Evan, 2026-10-23, 9:58 to 10:03 AM: "imagine a new england suburban town ... give us typical highlights ... the coffee shop (that will become abbies after she logs into the game) ... putting the school game into muraco ... letting her see my childhood through a modern lens." Then: "a compressed charming version .. not a map of winchester just inspired by ... with the same spots ... it should loosely follow the geographic orientation and it should 100% follow the topology to scale."
The land is real and at true scale: the hills, the lakes and the brooks of Winchester, Massachusetts, from the state's public maps. The places are where they really are. The town on top is grown, not traced: fewer, chunkier houses on generous lots, in the real mix of styles for each hectare.
The places
Tap one to fly there. Places marked "from the map" sit where the public data puts them. The shops have no name in the public data, so they are placed on the main street by the common: tell me where they really are and they move.
What is real and what is grown
Real, at true scale
The ground: every hill and hollow from the state's 1:5,000 contours, 6.8 by 4.8 km, 1.5 m to 111 m above the sea. Nothing is stretched up or squashed.
Water: Upper Mystic Lake, Wedge Pond, Mill Pond, Horn Pond and the reservoirs at their own levels, and the brooks between them.
The railway through the centre, and the main roads (the town's 68 km of arterial and collector roads), so north is north and Main Street is where it is.
The places: Muraco, Leonard Field, Ginn Field and Horn Pond from the state's schools and open-space maps.
Grown, not traced
Lanes: cut from the main roads only where the real hectare behind is built up, each ending in a turning circle. They stop at water, a steep bank or another street.
Houses: the real buildings are reduced to a count and a style mix for each hectare (colonial, cape, Victorian, ranch, triple-decker, shop). The town draws houses from that mix, fewer and bigger as the slider goes to charming.
Trees: yard trees behind the houses, street trees on the main roads, woods where nobody built, in October colours.
No real street layout, lot, address or owner is in the page. The local streets are only a number (274 km in all).
Asset manifest
Everything a New England suburban town needs, down to the soccer ball (22 cm). Each row is counted by a rule from what the town has: houses, street length, junctions, shops, shoreline and trees. Two counts: Abbie's town as grown above, and a real town of Winchester's size. The rates are written-down estimates unless the note says counted. "kit" means we already have it.
Item
Size
Abbie's town
Real town
Have
Priority
How it shows
In the world, the characters know (diegetic)
The church steeple marks the centre, the train comes through, the café turns pink when it becomes Abbie's, the places that hold a memory keep it to themselves, with nothing floating over them. October colours on every tree.
In the world, only you know (spatial)
A glass pin over each place you can visit, and a bubble on the place when you arrive: its name and one line.
On the screen, the characters know (meta)
Next: the school bell from Muraco at three o'clock, the train's horn, the music of the centre growing as you walk in.
On the screen, only you know (overlay)
One glass bar, no words: the whole town, the previous and next place, the charm slider, and Abbie signing in. About 5% of the stage.
Design card
What the player should feel: this is my town, and Daddy's town is inside it.
How would a character know where things are? The steeple, the pond, the train line, the school's flagpole: the same landmarks a kid in Winchester steers by.
Who it is for: Abbie (her coffee shop, her school, her fields), Evan (his childhood places, the coins), the grown-up (this manifest and the rules).
The whole game adapts: one signal, the time of day, will drive the light, the school bell, the trains and people going home.
Tour: no. It is a study, not yet a place in the play loop.
Rules and numbers
Rule
Value
Data: MassGIS (Commonwealth of Massachusetts), public layers. The land and counts are made by docs/oracle/abbietown/tools/extract_land.py into simulations/abbietown/land.json; the town by simulations/abbietown/town.mjs; the manifest by manifest.mjs.
Still to decide
Where the coffee shop, Comella's and Frozen Hoagies really are on Main Street (they are placed by the common for now).
Launch and New Nova are on the horizon: Launch up the road north, New Nova past the lakes to the south, where Boston would be. Say if they belong elsewhere.
The real names on a public page: the town is only inspired by Winchester, but the places carry their real names. Fictional names are one switch away.
Next: dress the houses from the manifest, the café interior from the café study, and the school jump in Muraco.