Moonlight In Garland News

Hey Neighbours!

Petal event time yo! Today we have the first two romancables: building manager Dan with that golden retriever energy and budding writer Sophie who might seem a little shy but who has once you get her going on her fandoms!

A few things to keep in mind if you're embarking on a romance journey:
- Currently there is not a way for you to break up with someone if you change your mind but that will be available shortly.
- You can date as many NPCs as you like with no consequences currently.
- There are 2 petal events per person that are only available via friendship or romance.
- There is a final married/committed event which is in there but you won't be able to access it yet because you need to be married/committed to do it and that option isn't enabled yet.
- I'm planning to add those functions after a couple more of the NPCs have all their events enabled so I can test properly.

In the meantime, enjoy romancing!

See you in Garland!



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Early Access 1.3.6F - Patch (PC and Mac) (Full and Demo) - 10/05/24

General:
- Added visual items to mall fashion shop (not open yet but coming soon)
- Added Sophie’s cats and a chicken.
- Fixed Pinewood Building Event 1 Dan follower getting stuck.
- Fixed getting stuck after refusing sleep.

Petal Events:
- Added functionality for events to occur in multiple apartment settings for apartment upgrades.
- Small fix with accepting dating choices which would default some characters to romance each time.
- Dan PE 1, 2, 3 - Polished, recoded, minor text edits.
- Dan PE 4F, 5F - Platonic - Added and enabled.
- Dan PE 4D, 5D - Romance - Added and enabled.
- Dan PE 6M - Added but not currently enabled due to required marriage event
- Sophie PE 1, 2, 3 - Polished, recoded, minor text edits.
- Sophie PE 4F, 5F - Platonic - Added and enabled.
- Sophie PE 4D, 5D - Romance - Added and enabled.
- Sophie PE 6M - Added but not currently enabled due to required marriage event
- George PE 1 Polished, recoded, minor text edits. PE 2/3 temporarily deactivated for fixes next update.
- April PE 1, 2, 3 - Polished, recoded, minor text edits.

Hey Neighbours!

We're getting deep in those petal events now baby! All of the platonic only route NPCS have now had their Petal Events added! Also in this update: bug fixes and bird seed! You can now purchase bird seed and feed the birds around town (though the animation is still a WIP). The art gallery has also had a make over to look a little more pretentious :D

Now that's out of the way, I'll be deep into the romance events over the next few weeks. We're currently having a Garland Sims Battle Royale to decide who's commitment events get added in first so some join us in the Discord if you want to join in!

Other than that I'm still chugging along behind the scenes with quality of life fixes including the layering issues with scroll areas when using controller.

See you in Garland!




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Early Access 1.3.6D - Patch (PC and Mac) (Full and Demo) - 26/04/24

General:
- Fixes scroll bars so don’t run off edges and adjust their spacing properly.
- Birds - Adjusted flight logic and collision (still a WIP).
- Tools - Added birdseed item which can be used to feed the birds (animation still a WIP lol)
- Shops - Removed items from pet rescue and added bird seed
- Fixed crash when entering multiple rooms with no NPC schedules in sequence.
- Added sparkle to item create in some circumstances.
- Updated art gallery level.
- Fixed crash when using keyboard during favourite food input.
- Temporarily removed Chloe’s headshot from the PD noticeboard.
- Changed Hannah’s first greeting to be less time sensitive.
- Changed ok to okay in a lot of built in text (still a WIP)

Petal events:
- Cecile PE 1, 2, 3 - Polished, recoded, minor text edits.
- Cecile PE 4F, 5F, 6F - Added and enabled.
- Liv PE 1, 2, 3 - Polished, recoded, minor text edits. (Added outfit choice art)
- Liv PE 4F, 5F, 6F - Added and enabled.
- Harper PE 1, 2, 3 - Polished, recoded, minor text edits. (Added quest for PE 2 and adjusted spawn conditions of second quest half)
- Harper PE 4F, 5F, 6F - Added and enabled.
- Fixed dating choice event script not registering choice (this will be fully fixed in the first romance event release but should be ok for now).
- Fixed timed petal events not triggering on room move.
- Added functionality for petal event related mail and added mail for Cecile, Leon, Liv, Harper events.
- Started adding recurring emotes to alert when NPCs are waiting for events to start

Back end and optimisations:
- Lots of general clean up on code.
- Added function to dialogue to create relevant NPC if not found for fewer crashes.
- Added import of scripts for spreadsheet functions.

Hey Neighbours!

Hope you're having a good month! Today's update marks the start of fortnightly patches again after I completed a massive chunk of behind the scenes work. That means every update from now on you'll be able to further your friendships or relationships with a few more of Garland's residents.

The first to be added is Léon, the less than cheerful building manager of Cedar Court. There are now 6 events you can complete with him to learn a little more about his past, family and life. Maybe he'll warm up to you eventually... or maybe not!

I'll be releasing the characters that only have platonic options first (Léon, Cecile, Liv and Harper) and then we'll vote in the Discord Community for who will be the first to get their romantic commitment options!

Speaking of Discord, this month's community theme is Gardening and I'd love to see your irl and in game gardens! For those of you looking to get to know your Garland neighbours a bit better, we've started a monthly Book Club and Movie Night so come hang with us for sarcastic jokes, hot takes and good times with friends. I post a lot of behind the scenes stuff there too so if you're curious about what's going on that's the place to find out!

See you in Garland!




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Early Access 1.3.6C - Patch (PC and Mac) - 12/04/24

General:
- Fixed some obj_game references in game text.
- Fixed NPCs getting pushed during cutscenes.
- Fixed player getting up from sitting during cutscenes.
- Fixed crash on room start for areas with no assigned npc schedules.
- Fixed issue with collection tallies

Petal Events:
- Leon Petal Events 1, 2, 3, 4F, 5F, 6F completed and polished.
- Leon Petal Events 1, 2, 3 - minor changes to text and positioning.
- Back end: Set up for all other petal event triggers.
- Back end: Remaining petal event text formatted and added.

Back end and optimisations:
- Optimised camera and window resizing, windowed mode now works properly and is resizable.
- Optimised building fades and window timing.
- Minor changes to world and UI zooming.
- Cleaned up layer swapping code
- Cleaned up log files
- Cleaned up and reorganised font handling to prep for system changes
- Cleaned up and reorganised set up scripts.
- Cleaned up camera settings.

Hey Neighbours!

Hope you're having a good week! This update mainly focuses on some back end optimizations and reworkings that have been a long time coming and will help me work faster and more efficiently for future updates. That said, there are still some changes that you might notice including ability to change the player voice, volume control for dialogue sounds and some petal event fixes. Also lot of the work I've done this time is around handling data in more efficient ways so if you previously experienced slow downs or lagging I'd love to know if this has made any difference!

As voted in our Discord community the next major content I'll be working on will be petal events (and I'm going to get going on polishing off the UI stuff too) so look forward to more relationship progression soon!


General:
- Private detective - Fixed incorrect bank transfer after completing quests.
- Lift menus - Fixed occasional soft lock when spamming exit buttons.
- Adjusted NPC spawn logic for less chance of them spawning into awkward spots (still WIP)

UI/Accessibility:
- Added option to turn off debug logging.
- Redesigned settings page
- Added volume options for dialogue box sfx.
- Fixed energy saver not saving/loading correctly.
- Fixed toggle/hold to run not saving/loading correctly.
- Fixed soft lock on title screen when exiting news.
- Adjusted text for toggle/hold to run to be clearer.

Player:
- Optimised movement functions for less conflicts during Petal Events.
- Adjusted collision system to prevent getting stuck in collisions .
- Adjusted collision system to prevent being sucked through circular collision objects and updated tree collisions.
- Added 2 customisation options for dialogue box voice.
- Re-added bonk sfx to collisions.
- Fix long pants doubling up during sitting facing right.

Petal Events:
- Fixed Avery PE1 crash.
- Fixed Quinn PE 1 speed problem after event.
- Added kill script for all cutscene obj.
- Fixed crash when “Exit to apartment” is used during events.

Back end and optimisations:
- Added a LOT of new trouble shooting logs
- Fixed NPC distance calculation.
- Consolidated MANY functions.
- Removed MANY depreciated variables, objects and scripts.
- Fixed naming conventions for debugger, camera, daycycle, crops, obj_crop, depthsorter, inventory, game.
- Fixed naming conventions for various enums.
- Depth sorting - added exists check for objects to prevent crashes.
- Depth sorting - no longer depth sorting or drawing objects outside of the camera window slice.
- Optimised ds_grid deletion on cleanup.
- Optimised for loops to have fewer array/grid size calls.
- Completely overhauled player sitting functions in preparation for future features.
- Completely overhauled player state functions in preparation for future features.
- Optimised NPC schedules to split into multiple grids swapped on room start.
- Optimised logging functions to be less heavy.
- Optimised tally check functions and switched to be once per second.
- Optimised shadow calculations.
- Optimised fences to call flower check less.
- Updated pathfinding grid update to only call when someone is walking a path.
- Freed a bunch of player and npc scripts to be used by multiple items.
- Removed button saving from hotbar and notifications

Hey Neighbours!

Wooo a whole version number change!! And yay another content update! The biggest things in this version are the addition of Stock Trading with Quinn, an app for cataloguing your music collection and another app for cataloguing the rest of your collections (crystals only to begin with). This is also the start of your work with the museum which is fun!

After you unlock the investment club with Quinn you'll be able to discover a new company to invest with every week and make trades from his computer. Will you make big wins or big losses? Who knows!

Next update will be focused on bug fixes. We'll be voting for the next content features I add in the discord soon too so make sure you check it out!

See you in Garland!



Here's the full changelog:

General:
- Added many more debug codes and dev shortcuts, adjusted logging.
- Old save files: Added error catch for quests in old format to convert them on next save.
- Old save files: Added error catch for very old saves if the world is open but the hotel quest is detected as being open to convert tutorial quests to closed then set welcome quests open again just in case of emergency.
- Old save files: Fixed crash on import for old save files with custom highlight colours.
- Weather - added to train travel scenes.
- Apps - Added beginnings of functionality for reordering apps.
- Apps - Changed structure for future stability.
- Apps - Fixed notification icons occasionally not matching the required app.
- Apps - Fixed a rare crash on exiting apps during global button selection.
- UI - Added custom number pad function for general future UI uses.
- Money - added maximum money amounts.
- Mail - Fixed letter refresh so taking items from letters doesn’t close them anymore.
- Shops - Added ability for shops to run custom cutscenes.
- Relationships - Added additional tally for petal event tracking.
- Hotbar - Tentative fix for hotbar continually setting itself as having a button selected in mouse mode. This is a WIP.
- Time - Fixed an issue where sleeping during months that had more than 28 days would bump you to the next month.
- Time - Reworked the time keeping system.
- Dialogue - Fix for portraits not displaying correctly.

Player:
- Fixed eyes sticking closed (please set them again in the menu if yours are currently saved as closed).
- Adjusted player info scripts for optimisation.
- Adjusted player tool selection as it wasn’t updating correctly for gifting NPCs. This will be adjusted more at the next tool addition.

Museum/Crystals:
- Added Collections app
- Added Collections app mail.
- Added Collections app cutscenes (go to Museum after receiving invitation in the mail and talk to the staff to trigger).

Music:
- Added Music collections app
- Added Music app cutscene (go to Music shop and talk to the staff to trigger)

Quinn’s Stock Trading:
- Added stock market trading mini game to Quinn’s desktop computer, unlocks after Quinn’s second petal event. If you have already completed the event, you should receive mail which unlocks it now.
- Added weekly mail for new trades and trade result information.
- Added stock info to save info.
- Updated Quinn’s Petal Event cutscene dialogue.