We have another update for you, and boy is it a lengthy one! There’s a lot to cover, from improvements and shiny new features to news about the release. Maybe grab some tea or coffee or any beverage of your choice, and get comfy. No rush, we’ll wait ????
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Tiny Glade is about to become a whole lot more colorful ???????? Our trusty beige bricks have served us well, but we’ve been itching to add some customization for a while. We think you’ll like the new possibilities ✨
Quick disclaimer: you’re looking at cherry-picked images from various prototypes. We’ve been too excited not to share these, but please keep in mind that it’s all an early work in progress, and we’ll be iterating on color schemes, windows, interface, code, and so on ????
One of the things we love about Tiny Glade is the way elements play with each other: for example, how paths and walls come together to form arches, or that stairs appear when a path climbs a steep hill. The windows we’re adding will have the same kind of joyful chemistry.
Here you can see just some of the interactions between windows: they fuse, adapt, bloom with plants, and become adorned with miniature clutter.
Oh, oh, and we have *two* styles of windows: “cottage” (gif above) and gothic (gif below).
We’re also improving the existing building blocks and their robustness. We’ve recently finished a big rewrite of our procedural arch generator, which allowed us to address a few edge cases.
The arch algorithm was one of the oldest pieces of code in Tiny Glade, from back when the meadow was completely flat. Once we added terrain, the poor thing couldn’t handle elevation, and produced rather avant-garde results ????????
We still have a few minor issues to solve, but the new version is looking a lot better now ???? We’ve also implemented one of your suggestions: when the wall is raised high, the wooden lintels and posts turn into stone arches and pillars to support the additional weight.
We often get questions about what magical algorithm we’re using, and the real answer is: a lot of them! There are entire chains of bespoke procedural algorithms feeding into one another, creating the final experience that will (hopefully) feel easy to use, and look effortlessly beautiful.
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Now that the bigger pieces of the project are beginning to solidify, we could finally make a realistic attempt at planning the release of Tiny Glade.
Apart from wrapping up windows, doors, color customization, and adding some polish all around, there are still a few game features we want to prototype - continuous time of day, water, and plant brushes. There are many "invisible" things too, such as optimization, accessibility, localization, load & save & options menus, running playtests, and making it easy for you to send us bug reports.
That’s a lot of stuff, and when we arranged it on a timeline, no matter how we reshuffled the to-do stickies, the potential release ended up beyond the end of this year. We will refine the estimate as we go, but for now, we can say that Tiny Glade will ship in 2024.
We know that many of you have been eagerly awaiting the game’s release, and we’re truly humbled. Thank you for sticking with us so far, and following the development journey. Reading your messages, and seeing your posts and videos about Tiny Glade have all been tremendous motivation boosts.
Tiny Glade is a passion project for our small team, and we’re working our very hardest to make it into a lovable experience for you. We will continue sharing monthly updates, and keep you up to date.
With love ????,
Tom, Ana, Martin & Oda
PS: last month, we revealed our plans for a closed beta this Summer. Some of you have been asking how to participate. We will be sending a signup form with our newsletter closer to the first playtest. “First,” you say? Yes! We are thinking of doing multiple smaller playtests. We’re still figuring out the details! More info to come. Stay tuned! ????
