Moonlight In Garland News

Welcome neighbors to a whole new year of Garland!

I hope you all had a great break and are reset and ready for the next year because it’s going to be a pretty great one.

Over the break I visited Japan with friends, bought a lot of electronic dictionaries, got pretty sick and had some mental refresh time so now I’m pumped and ready to get back to our regular routine!

🌙🌙🌙Game Updates🌙🌙🌙
Last Friday I released the first update of the year which took care of some big bugs along with updating the window view rooms. This year, I’ll be updating on a fortnightly schedule so the updates will be a little less frequent but chunkier ❤️

🌿 🌿 🌿 Community Updates 🌿 🌿 🌿
Community nights are coming back to the Discord and we will have a vote for the first date tomorrow in the cafe. They’re always so much fun so I hope you can join!

📆📆📆 Schedule📆📆📆
✨ Game updates will still be Friday mornings (the next one will be on the 16th of Feb)

I'm also streaming development twice a week so come join me on Twitch for some fun:
✨ Tuesday 1:30PM AEDT - Drawing and coding.
✨Friday 1:30PM AEDT - Fun time things for the community.

That’s everything for now. Thanks so much for being such a wonderful community, I can’t wait to grow with you this year ❤️

See you in Garland!
💖 Violet

Hi Neighbours!

First update of the new year, I'm back into it and ready to go! I had an issue with the Mac files during upload and had to roll back and reupload (ugh) so you may need to close steam and update a few times if you're on Mac sorry!

I've consolidated all major bug reports so far and from now on each update will have a mix of bug fixes and also new content. This means that I'll be updating every two weeks rather than every week like last year. I'm really excited to start adding stuff again!

General:
Fixed not being able to reach Dan’s bedroom.
Added logging for called line to get_event_dialogue.
Added more silent exits if called line in get_event_dialogue fails.
Fixed textbox crash when incorrectly formatted sprites/voices/etc are called (still needs some work).
Updated to Gamemaker 2023.11.1.1.160
Many minor code fixes.
Updated room transitions for better troubleshooting (if anything gets stuck please let me know).
Title screen - fixe crash on settings creation (intermittent, plz let me know if this happens to you).

Window view:
Updated phone to new UI system.
Removed pink bars.
Added animation.
Fixed bug getting stuck with no input during music control.
This is a WIP, there is still an issue where the pink bars may appear when you exit the window scene, for now if this happens please view the window scene again and it should toggle off again.

Tutorials:
Fixed get map quest ending with player getting stuck in desk.

Player:
Fixed fringe colour change not working.
Removed partial accessory colour change temporarily

Passing out:
Fixed getting stuck indivisible during transition.
Fixed not being able to pass out twice in a row.
Fixed not being able to pass out in player apartment.
Added NPC emotes.

Notifications/Achievements:
Changed notification sound to only alert during the first notification when there are multiples.
Fixed Achievements being intermittently stuck open with no input.

Petal Events:
Added a check to fix debug object visibility when not debugging.
April PE 2 - Fixed stuck in dialogue issue.

Hi everyone!

What a year it’s been! It feels kind of weird writing an end of year wrap up because it feels like it’s been about 5 years crammed into one for me. So much has happened that it’s all kind of blurred together.

This year we hung out on stream together for over 207 hours, you witnessed my diminishing sanity drawing 201 portraits, we had 4 fun community nights, did Steam festivals, attended dev events and since Garland was released into public Early Access 2 months ago I’ve put out 10 updates. What a fricking year!

Game Updates
The biggest updates recently have been around controller UI and Steamdeck compatibility. It’s taken me a bit longer than I’d like to get it all moving smoothly and while I think I can say it’s now functional, every update I’m getting things closer to polished. Moving this up has taken a chunk of time I was originally planning to put towards content but I’ll be back working on that again now dividing time between Petal Events and daily activities.

Community Updates
A special thank you goes to our tireless Building Managers who have taken everything that I (and the year) has thrown at them with grace and managed Garland’s growing community wonderfully, I’m so proud and lucky to have been able to work together with them!

Following on from that: thank you to every member of the Garland community. Whether you’ve been here from the start, came from the streams or found us after the Early Access release, you’ve all been so supportive. I could never have dreamed that the community would grow like this and every time I get a Discord notification it makes me so happy to get to know you all better.

Holiday Break Schedule
So personally, on top of game dev, this year has been a lot for me. I’ve never done anything like this before so it’s all been navigating uncharted. I’ve balanced actual game dev, working with 2 government agencies and running a business, while trying to make time for everyone and just general life stuff.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to take a little time away from my full work schedule, reset my brain, touch grass and not think about code 24/7. I’ll still be hanging out in the Discord but I won’t be streaming or putting out any patches until mid-late January. Next year I'll be back at it full force so get ready for some fun content updates!

Whether you celebrate holidays this season or not, I hope you have a wonderful December and a Happy New Year. Thank you for every post, chat, bug report, minute of play and emote.

2023 has been wonderful for Garland and I can’t wait to see how we grow together as a community in 2024

See you in Garland!

Last patch of the year! This is a smaller one because it was split up with the one earlier in the week. I'll do a full wrap up of the year next week but thanks everyone for all of your suggestions, bug reports and playing this year! This year has been a dream come true, you are all so appreciated and I can't wait for Garland to keep growing with you next year.


UI:
- Removed hotbar/notification button auto selection.
- Removed player walk six on title screen
- Fixed phone app selection/unselection issues when going app>phone on controller.

Just a quick update today to polish a bit of the controls and patch a crash on Steam Deck so I can continue the rest of the testing before the last update before the break on Friday this week.

Controls:
- Steam Deck - Fixed crash when menu called in title screens
- Steam Deck - Fixed general menu calls issues

UI:
- Added stack identifiers for menu frames for better button controls when menus are overlayed
- Fixed button selection issues on title screens.
- Lots of general polishing for menus selection areas.