Vintage Phones and You: A Consolidated Power Co. Guide.

An easy, breezy, lemon-squeezy guide to changing your Here and There Along the Echo digitized dialing software's vintage phone model. Provided to you by your friends at the Consolidated Power Co.

Introduction, or, how do you do?

With the release of the newfangled side-chapter, "Here and There Along the Echo[kentuckyroutezero.com]", many new questions have arisen. One might ask themselves:

• Can I recognize the sound of a motorboat engine dying in an underground cave?
  
• How brushed up am I on my batcalls?
  
• Am I a little damp in the hand area, the foot area, or am I not particularly damp at all?

While the public service line Here and There Along the Echo can, and may in fact, answer such troublesome conundrums, there was at least one mystery it didn't have an answer for. Several screenshots had made way to print, showing off several different models of phone used to dial into the service line. There didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason for who got what, but we can all agree that everyone has fine taste in vintage telephone equipment.

This'n that on how to get yourself that phone you desire.

Now, a couple of our boys here have figured out how to make your phone just a little bit more like their phones. What you're gonna need to do is boot up your ol' Xanadu mainframes or other digital typewriter machines and open up your save file folder for the program Kentucky Route Zero. You will find this under "Users/yourusernamehere/Documents/KentuckyRouteZero" if you are on a Windows machine. And uh, I recommend puttin' some spitshine on those windows, if I can be so bold. Kinda lookin' a little grimy, you know?

Anyways, once you've got that window open and lettin' in the fresh mountain breeze, you'll notice two settings just sittin there. Like warm apple pie on a fresh summer Sunday. You'll want the one called "settings.krz". The other one isn't quite ready yet. Do yourself a favor and copy that "settings.krz" pie into another window for safe keeping. Always good to have a backup, right? Now, open this file up using your favorite digital typewriter and white-out software. I prefer notepad++, but I'm sure you could use Sublime Text or just plain ol' notepad just fine. Look for the following line:

<setting name="console" value="False" />

And then change it to this:

<setting name="console" value="True" />

Make sure to save your work, no use changing something if it isn't gonna stay that way. For those of you who are older or more challenged when it comes to things of a technological nature, see the highlighted line in fig. a here to get a good idea of how the finished product should look.


Fig. a


You still with me? Good, good. That's good. Once that change has been made and settled into its new home, go ahead and open your digitized Here and There Along the Echo dialing software. Once you're in there, you should be able to use the 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 & 5 keys on your keyboard to switch between 5 different makes and models of vintage phone. If you're using a more modern version of this dialing software, such as one "PC Edition", you can change phones using Z, X, C, V, & B keys instead. You can also use the Q key to dial in to the service line directly, or press W if you're feelin kinda hungry after all that talk of some pie. I know I could sure go for some right about now. Try to take your mind off of that pie by resting your eyeballs on the five available models below.

That about wraps it up, dunnit?

And that's it! Now you can enjoy the other models of vintage phone and all of the tactile pleasures they can endow upon folks such as yourself who appreciate the finer things in life. Oh, and do yourself a favor. After you're done toying around, be sure to change the console bit back to "False". We can't be held responsible for any debt that is incurred as a result of messing with things that weren't meant to be messed with. That will lie solely on you.

Special thanks goes out to NoKnownOrigin on the Steam BBS for discovering what bit needed to be flipped.

[a victim of stars #legdebt]

there are certain things the game scans your kr0 save for to determine which phone you get, which we have been able to figure out and list on the consolidated power co wiki [consolidatedpower.co]:

If there is no save data found, or none of the below conditions are met, the classic pink phone will be present.

If a player has followed the bureaucracy loop in the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces more than three times, the yellow office-style phone will be present.

If a player has seen most or all of the overworld sights, and has talked to all of the distillery skeletons, the modern-style tan phone will be present.

If a player has not met any of the above conditions, but has named their dog Homer, the vintage-style black phone will be present.

If a player has not met any of the above conditions, but has named their dog Blue, the white classic phone will be present.

[Stellar]

Love that second phone, the flat brown electronic one.

So Cardboard Computer added these to the game but hid them, only using 1? Or do you get a random phone each time you play this section?

["Cactus Jack" Gamer]

i called a number

[nvls]

Ha - thanks for this! Really cool

[eli]

Woo, there exists another KRZ-related guide besides mine! :D Thanks for this—helpful and well-written. Love the tone of the writing and that it's straight from "Consolidated Power Co." :)