Moonlight In Garland News

[p]Hey neighbours![/p][p][/p][p]We made it to the last update of the year, thank god because my brain is soup![/p][p][/p][p]This update has some fun things I hope you'll love including:[/p]

• [p]Custom flooring[/p]
• [p]A special winter hat[/p]
• [p]A holiday bonus as a thank you for being a great neighbours this year[/p]
• [p]Schedule updates so you can now have roommates![/p]
• [p]Quality of life upgrades to some apps [/p]
• [p]Accessibility updates.[/p]

[p]As we close out the year here I want to take a minute to say thank you. I'm just one person but making a game like this takes a whole city of people supporting me.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you to my husband James, bffs Celina and Tobias and all of my friends and family who have allowed me to pour my focus into this. [/p][p][/p][p]Thank you to Garland's amazing support team Pritika, Meredith, Tash and Kayla and to our tireless Building Managers Mandee and Bailey. [/p][p][/p][p]And the biggest thank you to you, the Garland community! I'm so grateful for everyone who takes the time to send a bug report, test a beta version or leave a review. So much of Garland comes from us just listening to each other and having fun together so I'm really proud of the community we've built.[/p][p][/p][p]Little kindnesses we give to each other never seem like a big deal at the time but from little seeds big forests can grow.[/p][p][/p][p]Personally and professionally it's been a pretty difficult year for me so I'm going to be taking a break over the next month or so to regroup. That means the next update to Garland will probably be late Jan/early Feb but I promise it will be worth the wait.[/p][p][/p][p]I hope you all have a really relaxing break and I'm looking forward to hanging out more next year![/p][p][/p][p] cat food.[/p][p]- Farm - Removed legacy pop ups.[/p][p]- Rocks - Added rocks to nightly garbage collection.[/p][p]- Sophie’s cats - Adjusted height placement.[/p][p]- NPCs - Fixed apartment access not loading in correctly in some situations.[/p][p]- Movement -Adjusted some movement mechanics during cutscene to avoid stuck situations.[/p][p]- Mirror - Added remove clothes buttons.[/p][p]- Collisions - Fixed slipping into various buildings.[/p][p]- Fixed various typos.[/p][p][/p][p]Menus:[/p][p]- Added hover selection in menus rather than click selection when using keyboard/controller in residents, help, news, notes, photos, buildings, weddings, pets.[/p][p]- Residents - Added icons for if you’ve given a gift or talked to a resident that day.[/p][p]- Banking - Changed “loans” to “bills”.[/p][p]- Banking - Revamp transactions page to include sorting by type etc.[/p][p]- Calendar - Fixed player birthday not updating when loading in[/p][p]- Pet shop - added auto select on pet click.[/p][p]- Fixed some issues with saving buttons in scrolls when forcing selections manually.[/p][p]- Settings > Help - Removed help tab on title screen.[/p][p]- Settings > Help - added a bunch of new reset help options.[/p][p]- Settings > Audio - Added a reset all audio option.[/p][p]- Settings > Audio - Changed Master > Main[/p][p]- Settings > Accessibility - Added timer options for Private Detective and FoP fishing mini games.[/p][p]- Settings > Accessibility - Added Pixel Interpolation toggle option (sorry, it’s just Gamemaker’s basic version for now).[/p][p]- Save - Removed ability to overwrite other saves, must save to an empty slot.[/p][p]- Save - Added highlight to currently loaded slot.[/p][p]- Removed outdated Early Access references in menus.[/p][p][/p][p]Inventory/Items:[/p][p]- Added take/store/buy/sell 5 items to submenu.[/p][p]- Hammer - Can now use hammer to remove plants BUT you will lose the seedling[/p][p]- Stacking - You can now stack consumable items eg. Cat food. Note - You can’t stack important tool items eg. Cleaning Cloths.[/p][p]- Watering Cans - Fixed Efficient and Magic watering cans not working on pet food or other situations[/p][p]- Cleaning Cloths - Fixed Absorbent and Super cloths not working in some situations.[/p][p]- Cameras - Fixed Efficient and Digital cameras not working in various situations.[/p][p]- Plain black pot - fixed typo[/p][p]- Added correct sprites to cooking items.[/p][p][/p][p]Furniture:[/p][p]- Flooring - After 29 Spring, Surface Studios now stocks flooring.[/p][p]- Flooring - Added floor covering to all apartments.[/p][p]- Flooring - Added 8 styles of flooring in various colours (total 39 options).[/p][p]- Wallpaper - Fixed top pixel of custom wallpaper showing at top of some rooms.[/p][p]- Wallpaper - Converted existing wallpaper to nineslice sprites and optimised code in anticipation of adding new wallpaper soon.[/p][p][/p][p]Roommates:[/p][p]- You can now invite NPCs to move in with you when you marry them or by using a key if you are good enough friends. [/p][p]- If you are already married, just get a key from the Wedding Boutique and ask your spouse to move in.[/p][p]- If you break up or divorce, NPCs will move out. There currently isn’t a way to evict a platonic roommate but that’s coming soon.[/p][p]- You can have multiple roommates.[/p][p]- Roommates will pay $500 rent weekly.[/p][p]- Added key item to wedding boutique shop to invite NPCs to move in with you.[/p][p][/p][p]Schedules/Paths:[/p][p]- Full rewrite of NPC schedules (update to wiki coming soon) to accomodate for reactive schedules when things change eg. marriage, festivals etc.[/p][p]- Full rewrite of NPC spawn logic.[/p][p]- Fixed NPCs stuttering on each other[/p][p]- NPCs now remember where they were in the room when on wandering actions[/p][p]- Updated transition nodes.[/p][p]- Adjusted random spawn logic.[/p][p]- Spawn locations - adjust various placements eg. justice centre doors.[/p][p]- Added auto exit to pathfinding if not path found.[/p][p][/p][p]Weddings:[/p][p]- Added 4 new colours per outfit (22 total now). If you have an event already booked, you’ll need to cancel and rebook to get the right clothes.[/p][p]- Fixed clothes not changing during the wedding sometimes.[/p][p]- Fixed wedding not triggering easily if you’ve previously cancelled an event.[/p][p]- Fixed final line of celebrant dialogue not firing sometimes.[/p][p]- Adjusted marking wedding active until the second part so it’s easier to retrigger if you have to exit in the room.[/p][p]- Added NPC move in option to planning stage.[/p][p]- Fixed Spouse not spawning into apartment after event in some situations.[/p][p][/p][p]Events:[/p][p]- MP BE 1 - Adjusted bag guy path.[/p][p]- MP BE 4 - Adjusted path and added time out to mini game in case the bad guy gets stuck.[/p][p]- CC BE 2 - Fixed crash from typo.[/p][p]- Changed nightly Petal Event check to not run at midnight unless you’re in your apartment to prevent jump in events.[/p][p]- Ryan PE 1 - removed Ryan’s shirt.[/p][p]- Max PE 2 - Fix massive slow down caused by activating instances while collecting papers.[/p][p]- Max PE 3 - Adjusted dialogue.[/p][p]- Sage PE 2 - Adjusted portraits.[/p][p]- Sage PE 5D - Adjusted dialogue.[/p][p][/p][p]Private Detective:[/p][p]- Man Hunt - Fixed ending early when NPC is spawned off screen on small screens.[/p][p]- Man Hunt - Added new levels to randomisation (University, beach, farm, recycling centre, mountains, some of these are pretty hard!)[/p][p]- Gather Evidence - Adjusted some wording.[/p][p]- Stake Out - Fixed perfect completion text not firing in some situations.[/p][p]- Fixed music not reverting after games if lost.[/p][p][/p][p]Festival of Petals:[/p][p]- Fishing mini game - Fixed crash.[/p][p]- Fixed festival shops spawning in wrong rooms or not resetting when swapping between save files..[/p][p]- Fixed tree tops not displaying correctly in some situations.[/p][p]- Adjusted interaction logic for stalls and added highlights where possible.[/p][p]- Swan boat - Fixed swan boat backs not displaying in some situations.[/p][p]- Swan boat - Fixed NPCs not showing up in boat and soft locking scenes.[/p][p][/p][p]Optimisations/backend:[/p][p]- Timing - Replaced various smoothed dt references with raw dt for more accurate speed calculations.[/p][p]- Speed - Fixed a couple of inconsistent speed issues.[/p][p]- Replaced mp_grids with A* pathfinding for dynamic movement.[/p][p]- Recategorised textures because they keep reverting to ignore the goddamn texture groupings.[/p][p]- Removed a bunch of unused sprites.[/p][p]- General code clean ups (initiatives, notifications)[/p][p]- Weather - moved management and adjusted particle creation numbers, speeds etc.[/p][p]- Weather - Small optimisations for speed and frequency.[/p][p]- Input - refactored input to avoid local variable struct references.[/p][p]- Input - adjusted various controller connection issues.[/p][p]- Input - various other general fixes.[/p][p]- Depth - Removed sorting running in a few situations.[/p][p]- Collisions - removed unrequited collisions checks from par_decor[/p][p]- UI - Converted toggles and surface dim to dot accessors and enums for speed. [/p][p]- UI - Optimised rectangle coord calls to remove struct references.[/p][p]- Cutscenes - added some array checks when running cutscenes for stability.[/p][p]- Depth sorting - removed shops from deactivations and adjusted sorting timing.[/p][p]- Cutscenes - Fixed instance activate during various cutscenes running too often.[/p][p]- Player - Added sprite rebake in a few cutscenes where clothing in changed.[/p][p]- Interactions - adjust outline reset.[/p][p]- Inventory - Various changes to allow for stacking consumables, updating usages, destroying on consumption.[/p][p]- Saves - Added better handling for user id in file handling.[/p][p]- Notifications - removed various unneeded notifications.[/p][p][/p]

[p]Hey neighbours![/p][p][/p][p]I hope you’re well! I’ve been loving all the rain we’ve been having in Melbourne this week. Today’s update is a nice chunky one so let’s go to it![/p][p][/p][p]First up the most exciting thing: cooking! You have been invited to a taping of Jordon Gamsey’s kitchen make over show at the pub in Garland East. Afterwards you’ll be able to purchase a pot (or borrow the one in the pub) and cook your own meals. The mini game is a memory game where each ingredient is assigned an action and you select the action to complete the recipe before the timer runs out. [/p][p][/p][p]Each NPC has a recipe for their favourite comfort food, you can collect them around the city after becoming good enough friends. Eating the meals you make comes with a buff specific to the NPC. Some of them are silly and some are useful so make sure you try them all![/p][p][/p][p]This update also has some nice quality of life features including:[/p][p]- NPCs now have a chance of giving you a gift back when you gift them, the chance is higher the better your relationships is.[/p][p]- Ravens now have a chance of dropping gifts when you pat them.[/p][p]- Recycling bins now sell stuff people have recycled (items, furniture etc). They restock daily and each one has its own items so check them all![/p][p]- Big updates to interaction radius to better handle stacked items and different kinds of input.[/p][p]- Tea recipes now only require one of each ingredient.[/p][p]- Using the toilet now removes any food related buffs you have that day.[/p][p]- Lots of new accessibility features including adjusting the timers on mini games, custom cursors and toggles for the sleep requirements.[/p][p]- You can now also use the back button to force progression and auto select the final option of text if you want to spam though long scenes.[/p][p][/p][p]In addition to all of that, this update has major changes to how the graphics and textures are handled in the back end. This is the last of the major optimisations I had planned, I’m sure there will be some more that come to me but now this is out of the way I’ll be full steam ahead on more QoL stuff and tasks.[/p][p]Thanks as always for your bug reports and sorry I’ve been a bit slower with replies lately, life has really being life-ing! But I really appreciate your support and I’m excited for the next bits![/p][p]I’ll most likely have one more update before the end of the year and then I’ll be taking a little break over the holidays to regroup and update the roadmap.[/p][p] step event.[/p][p]- Weather - Adjusted for low fps and per platform, decoupled the emitter and timer updates.[/p][p]- Player - adjust radius checks so they update when we change facing directions.[/p][p]- Changed room order effecting room start[/p][p]- Transitions - Added run_load_transition_complete for stuff that needs to happen on load when transition completed[/p][p]- Transitions - Added optional z placement control[/p][p]- Started adding positioning struct to all objects[/p][p]Depth sorting:[/p][p]- Full rework of depth sorting to group like textures and use passthrough shader. Note - there are still some transparency issues there for stacked objects.[/p][p]- Updated onscreen checks to stop things popping on and off screen across all objects[/p][p]- Added z control to depth transparency[/p][p]- Added tie breaker to prevent clipping.[/p][p]UI:[/p][p]- Refactored some UI areas for speed.[/p][p]- Added UI creation numbers and fixed context menu exit cases.[/p][p]- Fixed better button memory for tabs.[/p][p]- Fixed scrolls saving not from context menu refresh.[/p][p]- Better scroll and button memory for selections.[/p][p]Sprite baking:[/p][p]- Added sprite baking to NPCS with compressed sprites in general play.[/p][p]- Added sprite baking to player.[/p][p]- Added sprite cache control[/p][p]Surfaces and textures:[/p][p]- Added texture and surface tracking[/p][p]- Fixed UI scroll surfaces not being cleared properly.[/p][p]- Added texture flushing at various points including room change, dialogue box end.[/p][p]- Change all platforms back to 2048x2048 texture page sizes[/p][p][/p]

[p]Hey neighbours! [/p][p]Hope you’re having a good week! Here in Garland we have some fun news: a tea shop is opening on the north side, just next to the Early Risers Bakery :D After day 11 in Spring, you’ll be able to take a tea brewing class with Cecile, purchase a kettle and brew tea at home using your foraged herbs with a fun little mini game. This update also gives functionality to the rock tumbler and adds a dehydrator that you will use to dry herbs for the tea.[/p][p][/p][p]Drinking tea gives you some fun buffs depending on the blend too. From standard stuff like boosts to total mental/physical energy to bigger things like regaining energy when in range of trees or in the rain or lighting up herbs at night so you can forage more easily, I've tried to make them fun![/p][p][/p][p]In other news, Moonlight in Garland has been nominated for an Australian Game Developer Awards for Excellence in Accessibility! The awards ceremony will be happening next week and you can stream it on the AGDAs Twitch channel if you want to watch. Make sure you check out the other games nominated too, they’re all amazing: https://agdas.com.au/2025-finalists/[/p][p]

I’ve also started streaming on Twitch again every Friday (Melbourne time) while I draw artwork for upcoming updates. So if you want to hang out and have a chill afternoon drop by! [dynamiclink][/dynamiclink]

Next update will be a big back end optimisation push as well as the cooking mini game but that needs a little more testing before I release it.

See you in Garland!

[p]Hey Neighbours! [/p][p][/p][p]Back to our regularly scheduled updates, though I'm a bit early this week! This update ticks off a lot of the left over furniture functionality from the roadmap as well as some accessibility features as well as community requests. Additionally there are some fixes for when multiple controllers are detected as well as windowed mode. If you're someone who plays across multiple devices (eg. swapping between steam deck and desktop) you may need to reset some settings but I'm working on making them more device specific.[/p][p][/p][p]Also: steal food from NPC fridges once you have access to their apartment :D[/p][p][/p][p]And of course lots of bug fixes, I always appreciate reading your reports so don't hesitate to send them![/p][p][/p][p] See you in Garland! [/p][p]

[p]Hey Neighbours! [/p][p][/p][p]Thanks so much everyone for making the release last week so fun and thank you to everyone who has submitted a bug report so far! I'm making my way through everything now and today's update will take care of the major reported ones. Next stop: getting more of the roadmap features out of the way![/p][p][/p][p]Just a note that I recommend playing at the default 60fps, and if you're using any of the settings in the Experimental area they might cause unexpected issues.[/p][p][/p][p] See you in Garland! [/p][p]