Hey Neighbours!
We’re coming to the end of the year so this is the second last update for Garland for 2024 and it’s a fun one: PETS!
After Spring 25, the Pet Rescue adoption program will open (via a letter) and you’ll be able to adopt some furry friends! Currently there are 3 colours of cats with 3 personality types and different combinations will be available every morning. Once you adopt a friend, you’ll need to give them a bed and bowl to eat/drink from and take care of their needs every day. You can check your pet’s stats from the bed too and see if you’ve earned their love yet :D
Their reactions to you and how they respond to your care is based on personality so it’s going to take time and work to earn respect from the grumpier animals. Check the full changelog for more details of all the changes. I’ll be adding more mechanics and types of pets once I’ve got some more data on how we can balance the gameplay so feel free to give me your feedback in the discord community!
Also, a special thank you to our discord community for all the random cat names included so far too!
This update also brings the start of the furniture mechanics for decoration (so many sure you buy a hammer if you wanna redecorate!).
There will be one more update in Mid December before I take a break over the December holidays. It will include some more furniture and a couple of other big things for you to play with over the holiday break.
That’s all for today, see you in Garland!
<3 Violet
See you in Garland!
<3 Violet
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General:
- Updated overnight transition to be smoother, now you wake up with an emote for some pep in your step too.
- Minor wording adjustment to controls image.
- Moved phone portrait placement during text conversations.
- Save/load menu - Removed save button when opened on title screen.
- Added “Accuse!” label to Private Detective Man Hunt mini game.
- Adjusted random spawn mechanics to be more precise and have less change of void spawning.
- Temporarily turned off some highlights on interaction to prepare for furniture system (furniture, chairs etc).
- Fix for the nightly spawn running twice in some cases.
PETS!!
- Cats are now available as adoptable pets from the pet shop.
- Pet adoption will unlock via a letter after Spring 25th, visit the pet rescue after reading the letter to trigger the cutscene.
- 3 colours of cat with 3 personality types are available to start with.
- Once adopted, pets will appear in your apartment.
- Added pet information tracking system.
- Pet interactions added : food, water, cleaning, patting.
- Added Pet adoption cutscene event.
- Upgrade to pet shop ui, redid shop tab and added adoptions tab.
- Added cat food, pet beds, pet bowls in 4 colours to pet shop.
- Added overnight resets for food, water, other pet systems.
Pet care instructions:
- Adopt a pet from the pet rescue, a basic bed/bowl is included in the adoption fee but you can purchase other colours (and soon styles) in the pet shop).
- Feed once a day by adding cat food to the pet bowl.
- Water once a day by adding water to the pet bowl via the watering can.
- Pat daily.
- Wash weekly with the cleaning cloth.
- Gain points towards hearts by meeting your pet’s daily needs, lose points if you don’t care for them.
- Points are determined by pet personalities, so grumpy animals will take longer to earn a relationship with while cheerful animals will be quicker etc.
- Each pet requires its own food/water bowl.
- Pets can share beds.
- Check on your pet’s stats, thoughts and mood by interacting with the pet bed (highlight for this interaction is coming soon).
NPCs/Events:
- Oliver PE 1 - Fixed last line repeating
- Chloe PE 2 - Minor dialogue changes.
- Fixed issues with NPC dialogue not progressing in some situations, updated associated scripts.
- Small changes to NPCs who are path walking when talking (this is still not fixed fully but soon!).
- Adjusted NPC spawn logic (still WIP).
- Pathfinding - Fixed NPCs randomly disappearing while walking their paths.
- Adjusted a bunch of doorway nodes to have the correct facing directions for NPCs starting and ending paths there.
Inventory/Furniture:
- Bird seed now has 10 uses, Cat food now has 3 before being empty and removed from inventory.
- Hammer - Now if you place a furniture item, you will need to use the hammer to pick it up again as an item. (Update for the label coming soon, currently it’s using the “pick up label”).
- Added furniture system including colour handling (only current placeable furniture items are pet bed/pet bowl).
- Added ability for furniture items to link to menu ui.
- Added room persistence for player placed furniture items.
- Added special item tracking for shops.
- Added colour of furniture/clothing objects to inventory, storage and shop listings. Note: some thumbnails will have a default colour eg. pet bowl/pet bed will display their thumbnails as the red version currently.
- Cat food - Will refill pet bowl.
- Watering can - Will refill pet bowl - Note: must be on “Water” action NOT refill, this label will be updated soon.
Back end/Optimisations:
- Debugger - New scripts added: petal_points, go_to, npc_romance
- Debugger - Adjusted time_season to accept text input for eg. “spring”, etc
- Fixed crash if wedding menu system is somehow called outside of mall level.
- UI - fixed issues with UI button auto button selection and added recursive search for button selection in scroll area stacks.
- Updated a few other random scripts to have silent exits.