Hey Neighbours!
Welcome to 2025 in Garland! I hope you’ve all been well even though it’s certainly been an intense start to the new year.
The first update for the year in Garland is a fun one both with front end stuff and polishing off a lot of back end junk so I can move on to more featurezzzz
First up is furniture! The antiques store is now selling some nice furniture so go check it out! By placing different kinds of furniture in your apartment you'll unlock category organisation tabs in your main storage area (which btw looks super nice now). I can't wait to see how you decorate your apartments :D
Next up I've added in the first batch of Steam Achievements. I know that this has been a long time request and once I'm sure everything is working properly in this update I'll be adding more with proper artwork. If you have any achievement suggestions let me know in the Garland discord!
The Council Initiatives stampcards have also gotten a rework and now you can have the satisfaction of smacking that stamp down when you complete them as well as: actual rewards for doing them. I know, very exciting! Just a quick note that while you can receive the reward items from Patrick, some of the tools attached aren't functional yet (speedy shoes don't make you go any faster right now but the kitty ear beret sure looks damn cute!). Hang on to them until next update and you'll be able to use them properly :D
Back end I’ve done a lot of optimising including adding fps control and texture changes which should help out those of you who are playing on machines with integrated graphics. There are still areas that are a work in progress so I’ll be ticking them off as I go along this year.
Last thing I wanted to mention is that this year I'm going to be doing updates monthly rather than fortnightly. This will give me more time to fix bugs before updates go out and add larger features without having to stress about getting things out while I'm working on bug reports. The updates will be a lot chunkier for you guys too so it should be more fun coming back every month!
Anyway, hope you're all well and I'll be back next time possibly with the ability to move between apartments or upgrade!
See you in Garland!
<3 Violet
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General:
- Fish- Fixed crash when trying to take photos of fish.
- Fish - Fixed fish spawning in recycling centre grass.
- Credits. - Fixed being stuck in credits room with no credits displaying.
- Credits - Added fast forward button to credits (hold d/right).
- Hotel tv - fixed some trigger issues, will be updating text/images soon.
- Fixed some conflicts with menu hotkeys.
- Weather - Fixed train level displaying weather incorrectly.
- Fixed collisions in Real Estate area.
- Npcs: fixed collisions causing them to occasionally walk through things.
- Help app: fixed Relationships info displaying incorrect text.
- Tourist booth - Sage will now cycle through various handy tips.
- Wallpaper - added moonflower wallpaper as stamp card rewards.
Player:
- Adjusted highlight logic and detection zones.
- Added highlight when interacting with fridge, vanity, recycling bin, vending machine, noticeboard, mailbox, detective cabinet, stock market desk, hotel tv, apartment rental window, shower, hotel vanity.
- No more getting sucked into stuff with circular collisions!
- Clothing: added speedy shoes, kitty beret, gold construction helmet as stampcard rewards.
Settings:
- Added FPS control.
- Added Weather toggle.
- Added Debug info Overlay.
- Added Shadow toggle.
Inventory/Storage:
- Inventory - updated inventory info to show more appropriate info based on item category.
- Storage - Full ui redesign.
- Storage - Now when in your apartment, the storage will have organisation tabs depending on your furniture. Eg. if you have a wardrobe there will be a tab in your main fridge storage for clothes. Recycling bin? Now you have a trash tab. More tabs coming soon.
- Storage - Storage furniture placed outside your apartment will act like regular category specificchests (eg. fridges can hold anything right now, but recycling bins can only hold trash.
- Storage - Storage furniture outside your apartment must be empty before you can use a hammer to move it.
- Museum - Added better highlight to already donated items.
- Museum - Added better highlight to items currently donating.
- Items - Updated various areas so items can hold more useful info.
- Items - Added a bunch of new upgrade items as stampcard redeems (better watering cans, cameras, cleaning cloths etc) note that these are not currently usable/refillable, functionality will come next update.
Steam Achievements:
- Added 15 starter Steam achievements.
- Old saves: if the item was being tracked already it should tick off automatically on load.
City Council Initiative Stampcards:
- Added a bunch of new stampcards, adjusted counts on old stamp cards.
- Stamp cards are now unlocked incrementally, first one during city council move in letter, second batch when getting your ID in the Welcome cutscenes, others on completion of various cards.
- Old save files will unlock the stampcards automatically and tick them off if the appropriate tallies have already been reached (for the most part… Some non plot ones eg Big Spender might need to be redone).
- Progress on stamps will now either send a notification or a completion achievement. Some tutorial cards will send achievements when the first stamp level is ticked off.
- Stampcards now require you to stamp them yourself in your notes app then redeem the reward to archive them.
- Redeem fully stamped cards by interacting with Patrick’s desk in the Council building.
- Added various furniture, pots, clothing and items for rewards (some of these are not currently usable and don’t have their buffs enabled but you can still collect them and next update you’ll be able to use them properly)
Petal events:
- Cecile PE 1 - Updated with new gardening info and added highlight to plants as the explains things.
- Pinewood BE 1 - Fixed dialogue choice skipping lines.
- Elle PE 4D - Fixed Sophie’s reset dialogue cutting off.
- Elle PE 1 - Swapped timing to be morning/afternoon, added transition lock during event, fixed camera requirement to start.
Quests:
- Demo full: Fixed quest not checking all npcs for first petal event and updated wording.
- Demo: Fixed quests not continuing to track after upgrading to full version.
- Council ID Welcome Quest - updated to add stamp card info.
- Added move in loan for repayment and letters from Ryan about it.
- UI: renamed journal to notes app, renamed errands > jobs, projects > to do.
- UI: Refresh on each notes app tab to make things clearer, readable and easier to navigate.
Gardening:
- Full Gardening logic rework.
- New icons for watering and cuttings.
- Fixed various bugs in growth cycles.
- If you dig up a plant, the seedling item will now remember how old it is.
- Placing a pot now automatically turns to a garden object and will need a spade to move it.
- Plants placed without pots will now be regular items.
- To garden: place a pot, place a plant or seedling in it, water daily. Once fully grown, water less frequently and collect cuttings with the cutters. Remove plants from pot with the shovel.
Furniture:
- Full furniture logic rework.
- Added 34 new furniture pieces in various colours.
- Hammer tool now has option to “turn” some furniture.
- Furniture with different turn options will now face the relevant way during placing action.
- Antique store: Added new furniture items for sale, cutscene on first visit and mail to advertise.
- Adjusted a lot of chair logic.
- Full item placement logic rework to account for oddly sized items.
- Added ability to place any furniture, item or garden object on top of tables.
- Player apt: converted all furniture (except bed) to be removable.
- Player apt: Adjusted starter furniture to be created on first time entry rather than static.
Festival of Petals:
- Upgraded all triggers.
- Upgraded info booth scenes.
- Upgraded fishing mini game, added high scores with tracking.
- Upgraded swan boat logic, added random npcs to boats, added ticket items. Now you will purchase ticket items and physically give them to npcs to ride the boats. You can also give them to anyone even if they’re not at the festival.
- Fixed special day events not triggering properly if you’re reloading the save.
Save files:
- Upgrade conversion for old pot/plant items.
- Upgrade conversion for old items that don’t have attached structs.
- Auto tick off previously completed stamps and steam achievements when possible.
- Added game version of save file to load display area.
Private Detective:
- Man Hunt - updated randomised npcs.
- Gather Evidence - added 9 new quests.
- PD jobs will now pay better and base the amounts on how well you do.
- Updated beginning cutscene to explain you can come and go 24/7 after unlocking.
Rooftops:
- Full rework of rooftop control and items on rooftops.
- Fixed various issues with items having wrong depth when rooftops were involved.
- Fixed issues with shadows on rooftops (some objects will still display incorrectly but it’s on my to do list).
Optimisations:
- Updated entire game to run on delta time for adjustable fps.
- Full reorganise of texture pages to help players with integrated graphics cards.
- Full redo of weather systems to be not frame dependant.
- Added ability to call cutscenes from multiple new objects.
- Consolidated a bunch of old scripts and removed redundancies.
- Changed notifications, tally checks and achievements to only check when one is created.
- Notifications: paused notification creation during transitions.
- Notifications: added auto check to end of cutscenes.
- Updated draw outline of sprites to shader.
- Fixed a couple of errors to player palette shader.
- Shadows: total math rewrite for speed, updated some placement on tree shadows.
- Lighting: moved to be controlled by day cycle rather than object.
- Added additional deactivation to buildings, trees, lamps and decor.