1. Moonlight In Garland
  2. News

Moonlight In Garland News

2.0.0F - Let's Get Cooking!

[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]

2.0.0E - Tea making!

[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!

2.0.0D - Steal from Fridges!

[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]

2.0.0C Patch - Fixies

[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]

Release - Thank you

[p]Hey Neighbours!

Hope you’re having a great day! Release day omg wtf?

Garland is officially out of Early Access and there’s a 30% off launch discount for the first 2 weeks so go get it while it’s hot babyyyyy!

To be honest, I was never 100% sure I’d get this far so now we’re here I’m not sure what to say… being reflective usually makes me feel like throwing up, but when would be a better time than reaching a milestone like this?

[/p][p]
This is me sitting on the first map of Garland which I still have rolled up in a cupboard somewhere!

I started Garland in Jan 2020 and thought it would just be a silly little hobby. But I’ve never had much chill when setting appropriately sized goals so, like all of my silly little hobbies, things quickly spiralled into a life changing, all encompassing city.[/p][p][/p][p]

Every new dev bites off more than they can chew with their first project… but I guess I’m stubborn enough that I just kind of continued on regardless. [/p][p]

10 year old Violet her natural habitat: playing Donkey Kong on a train. The vibes have not changed tbh.

Did I scope creep myself into burn out? Yes. Did I make a lot of mistakes? Hell yes. Am I still learning and getting a little better every day? Fuck yeah I am.
[/p][p]

[/p][p]Above you can see me working where I did 90% of Garland: the couch. And my first play test, panel talk and live demo!

So 5.5 years in, what has Garland meant for me?

- A career and a huuuuge number of new skills?
- New lifelong friends and neighbours who I couldn’t have done this without?
- An unhealthy fear of opening my emails and new level of social anxiety?
- A million creative ways to dodge the question when friends and family give me and ask “So when do you think you’ll actually be done?”

Yes, but also the confidence that no matter what comes up in development (or life), I’ll be able to figure it out and keep going.



And yet, even with all that, somehow leaving Early Access still doesn’t feel very milestone-y? There’s still so much to do, so many features I’m planning to implement and my actual end goal: porting! It’s not… , so celebrating feels weird? And everyone has different expectations and I never want to over promise and under deliver.

So far every time I’ve hit a proper milestone with Garland, something has come up that makes it hard to celebrate. Game breaking bugs! Lockdown! Family deaths! Timezones and distance with friends! Burn out! Tech problems! Health problems! The all encompassing sinking feeling that yes I devoted a chunk of my life to this, but hard work doesn’t mean it’s actually a good game…



And if Tom Cardy has taught me anything, it’s that it’s that being in an endless loop with no pauses just ends with eating a lot of ham on stream so sometimes you need to celebrate that you cleared the damn level! (:medal: :earth_asia: :key: #inspirational)

[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]

So after stream today I’m going to order some take away then go to sleep.

And tomorrow I’ll start again and we’ll see where this city takes us.

Continue?
>Yes
No



[/p]