The Unreal window
The same island, drawn properly.
Every other window into this world is a web page, which is most of what makes them good: nothing is installed and nothing can be taken away from you. This one is a download, because a renderer of this size is not a web page. What it buys is the island in three dimensions, with weather, an hour of the day that passes, and people you can see coming down the road.
It comes in two pieces, and that is the point
Inside the download are the window and the bridge. The window draws pixels. It holds no key, signs nothing, and knows no rule of this world: it is told what to draw and it draws it. The bridge holds the key that is you, talks to a node, and answers the window's questions.
So your key never goes near the game. It is a file on your own machine, written the first time you play, and the title card tells you exactly where it is. Back it up and you can carry your citizen to another computer; lose it and there is nobody to ask for it back, because there is nobody.
interval.command. It starts
the bridge, opens the window, and stops the bridge again when you quit. The
first time, it asks which node to talk to and remembers the answer.Which node
There is no authoritative server, so there is no address this
has to point at. interval.place is simply a node that is usually
up, and it is the default for that reason and no other. Run your own and put
its address in instead: the island is the same, computed from the same
founding by the same rules, and your key does not move because it was never
there. You are choosing who you ask, not where your account lives.
Change it any time with choose node.command,
beside the launcher.
What it does not do yet
macOS only for now. What it will do is everything: the world allows ninety verbs, and every one of them that a window is permitted to reach can be reached here with a mouse. Eight are things the world does to you rather than things you do, and five more no window can reach at all: two the world refuses outright in this founding, two that ask for a merkle path over the ledger, and the vigil in Nought, which you cross rather than click. The count is measured against the engine's own tables rather than guessed.
A citizen may be in the world ninety minutes a day. That is not a limit this window imposes; it is in the rules, and every window obeys it. Before you cross, you are in Nought: the same island, computed privately by your own machine, where nothing is recorded and nothing is scarce. Walk to the fountain when you are ready to cross over. You only get to do that once.
The browser windows need no download at all and are the right place to start if you are unsure.