Trash Hauler

The city

Maplewood is not hand-built. It is generated from real OpenStreetMap data for Maplewood, New Jersey, so the streets, buildings and neighbourhoods are the actual ones. Roads follow a proper grid with intersections, stop signs, painted lanes, sidewalks and streetlights that come on at night.

• Residential districts — rows of houses with cans at the curb on collection day
• Downtown — restaurants, shops and offices with dumpsters out back
• Industrial quarter — warehouses and factories making bulk waste
• City park — public bins that fill up on event days
• Civic buildings — school, fire station, city hall, police station
• Municipal Waste Facility — home base: dump loads, upgrade the truck, start a route

How a shift works

1. Start your shift at the Waste Facility and pick a route off the dispatch board.
2. Drive the truck out through the neighbourhoods you have been assigned.
3. Collect cans and dumpsters as you go — right-click to load them.
4. Keep an eye on capacity. The bed only holds so much before it has to be emptied.
5. Head back to the Facility to dump the load and log the pickup.
6. Finish the route before the shift timer runs out.

The truck tracks three things while you work: load (how full the bed is), fuel (refill at the depot or a gas station), and condition (it wears down, and the garage fixes it).

What is in the bins

Not all trash is worth the same.

Better trucks

Finish routes efficiently and you earn City Credits, which buy a bigger truck at the Facility.

You can also hire crew at the crew board to ride along:

• Loader — picks up cans automatically as you drive past, slowly
• Navigator — highlights your next three pickups
• Mechanic — slows down how fast the truck wears out

Things that go wrong

Routes are never the same twice. Any of these can turn up mid-shift:

• Dog knocked it over — the can is tipped and the contents are across the yard
• Car blocking the bin — honk for the resident, then wait
• Raccoon situation — clean up everything they scattered for a bonus, or take the penalty
• Spill emergency — a can has gone over in the road; clear it for a bonus
• Block party — extra bins, but the street is closed
• Rainstorm — poor visibility and slippery roads
• Dispatch call — a bonus route added to your shift

Achievements

Playing it

It ships as two add-on packs plus the Maplewood world, and it is built to work on an iPad — joystick driving is fully supported, and the Touch control scheme is the one to use.

1. Copy the two pack files and the world file onto the device.
2. Tap each pack to import it into Minecraft, then tap the world.
3. In the world list, tap the pencil icon, open Add-Ons and apply both packs.
4. Open the world in Creative once to place the Dispatch Board, Dump Station and truck.
5. Switch to Adventure mode and start your first shift.

Still to come

• Two-player co-op routes — one driving, one loading
• Night shift, with its own route timing
• Seasonal events: Halloween hazmat, Christmas tree pickup
• A compost facility side route
• City expansion out to the suburbs and the highway interchange
• Leaderboards for competitive play