UNDER THE BONNET *** WHAT IS ACTUALLY RUNNING BEHIND THE PIXELS *** MEMORY, TRUST, REFEREES, MONEY *** EVERY PICTURE IS A REAL SAVE ***

UNDER THE BONNET

What is actually running — and the rest of the club.

WHAT IS ACTUALLY RUNNING

THE CLUB IS A MODEL, NOT A MENU.

Fifteen named people and six referees are held in the same structure. Each one carries a personality, a warmth, and a running trust and respect figure. Every notable thing you do is written into a permanent record against the person who witnessed it — what happened, what they made of it, how big a moment it was, and which season and week it landed.

How far it moves them is not a flat number. Each event is weighed on its own terms — who it happened to, how they were already disposed toward you, how much history they have with you already — and the resulting score is what shifts their trust. A big moment from someone who barely knows you lands differently to the same moment from someone who has watched you for four seasons.

And it does not stop with the person who saw it. Anything that lands hard enough becomes a Gazette story, moves the mood of the town, and reaches people who were never in the room. Roy and Derek do not merely hear things. They broadcast them.

The referees run on the same machinery rather than a separate one. Six of them, each with a temperament that multiplies card odds, and each keeping the same permanent record of you. Alongside the reputation the town gives him, the game also tracks what he has actually done in the matches you have lived through, so his billing and his record can disagree.

The money is one continuous economy across a whole career. Costs rise season on season; wages, training, prize money, transfer fees and sponsorship all move with them, and each is scaled again by the division you are in. Your own salary comes out of the same account as the players’ and is counted in every calculation of how long the club can survive — including the board’s own judgement of you.

The club status screen, showing town belief, dressing room mood, supporter hope and anger, and chairman patience as running figures.
AND YOU CAN READ ALL OF ITNone of it is hidden from you. TOWN BELIEF out of 100 and what it is currently doing to your gate money. The dressing room. Supporter hope, anger and loyalty as separate figures. Chairman patience. Which of your under-23s are still short of their ceiling and which one has already hit his. It is a dashboard on a running machine, not a summary written after the fact.

None of the above is decoration. It is the game.

THE SHIRT ON YOUR BACK

SPONSORSHIP IS EARNED, NOT GIVEN.

At the bottom of the Fourth Division nobody good wants their name on your shirt. You get the small local deals and you take one: the food chain, the travel agency, the builders’ merchant. Ten or twelve thousand a season, and each one comes with a favour attached — cheaper transfer fees, a lighter wage bill, cut-price training.

The club carries a reputation out of 100, and it is not a mystery. It is your league position, your last six league games, how far up the pyramid you have climbed, and what the board currently make of you. Nothing hidden, nothing random. It is recalculated at every review and you can read it off the screen.

Three tiers of sponsor exist. Your division sets the ceiling on what you can reach; your reputation decides how much of that ceiling you have actually earned; and the ladder moves one rung at a time. You cannot win one promotion and have the big names come flooding in. Mid-season, if you have earned it, the review tells you bigger firms are willing to talk now — and you can walk away from the deal you have.

It runs the other way too. Get relegated and the ceiling drops, and the tier you spent three seasons earning steps back down just as slowly. Even the cheque you already signed for moves: good form gets it topped up, a bad run gets it cut. The deal you struck in Division Four does not stay a Division Four deal when you go up, and it does not stay a good one when you fall apart.

And there is one sponsor on that list that is not part of the fiction.

PITCHWORK STUDIOS is on offer from the very bottom, on the same tier and the same terms as every other small local firm. Eleven thousand a season, and the perk is BUG FIXES — training injury risk cut in half, because we patch you up before it happens. Sign us and our name goes up on the hoardings round the pitch in C64 red, and you will see it in the background of every match you play. It is the only joke in the game that costs you a sponsorship slot to hear.

HOW THE WORLD SPEAKS

THE SIMULATION DECIDES. THE WORDING IS A SETTING.

The in-game screen where the player chooses which system words the club's dialogue.
TWO WAYS TO SAY ITWho trusts you, who has turned, what the board will tolerate and what gets remembered are settled by the model of the club described above. That never changes. What this setting picks is only how those conclusions get put into words — from the game’s own hand-written banks, or by a language model running locally on your own machine. Both are finished and both are in the build. Neither invents the club’s opinion of you.

We are not selling you a language model. It is a phrasing layer over a simulation that stands up perfectly well without it, and it is off unless you go and turn it on. Nothing is sent anywhere in either mode, and the game plays identically offline.

Which of the two ships first is still being decided.

The offline system is the one the game is designed around and the one it should be judged on. The local-model option is functional but remains in internal testing, and will only be included in a release once we are satisfied it meets the standards required of it. The first release may well be offline-only, with the option following later as a free update.

AROUND THE CLUB

ALL OF THAT, WITH A DOOR ON IT.

Everything above is a screenshot of the game as it stands, taken from real saves. Here is the rest of it — the same machinery, wearing the club.

The club hub, and below it the regulars drinking in Hooligans Manor.
THE HUB AND THE PUBTen areas, one club. Underneath them, Hooligans Manor: Norman behind the bar, Colin and Maureen at their table, Alf, Ray, Roy, Degsy and Frank round the next one, and every one of them with an opinion about what you have just done. You can watch them all night. You can never go in.
The transfer market, with players listed by rating, fee, wage and former club.
THE TRANSFER MARKETEvery man on the list comes with a fee, a weekly wage, an age, a fitness figure and the club he came from — ex-Ipswich, ex-Brighton, ex-Hartlepool, or nowhere at all if he is out of somebody’s youth setup. Your budget and your wage bill sit at the top of the screen and both of them are real. Bids on your own players come the other way, and the academy is where you find the ones you did not have to pay for.
Derek from the Gazette waiting outside the club offices at dusk after a signing.
AND DEREK IS WAITING OUTSIDESign somebody and the Gazette catches you on the way out, notebook already open. He wants to know what makes the man think he can make it here, and then he wants to know about the asking price for a player you were doing all right without. Answer badly and you watch his trust drop on screen, in the moment, by a number. He snaps the notebook shut and goes to file it. The signing stands either way.

WHEN IT GOES RIGHT

THE TOWN COMES ONTO THE PITCH.

A division title celebration, the trophy up and the pitch full of players and supporters.
CHAMPIONS — AND UPWin a division and the trophy goes up in the middle of the pitch with the whole squad round it and half the town over the barriers with them. Uncle Ray, Norman, Frank, Big Colin — the same faces you have been dealing with all season are out there, and they have got things to say to you.
Derek from the Gazette interviewing the manager on the pitch after the cup final, confetti still falling.
THEN DEREK WANTS A WORDConfetti still falling, notebook already out. “Some afternoon, gaffer,” he says, drier than a bone. “Give me something for the back page they'll still be reading in twenty years.” Whatever you type, he prints it.
The end of season write-up in the Football Gazette, listing the record, the top scorer and the moments of the season.
THE SEASON, WRITTEN UPEvery season closes with the Gazette’s own account of it: your record, your top scorer, your best day and your worst one, how far you got in both cups, which referee you saw most of, and what the bank looks like. Underneath that, MOMENTS OF THE SEASON — the things people actually remember. What you said on the radio. What Maureen made of it. Which interview Terry the Ultra taped for the scrapbook. It is kept, and the next one is written under it.
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