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Hullo! This was going to be a smol sneaky patch, but the powers that be decided that the 20 line code change would be a 200MB update. Compilers, how do they work? Nobody knows...

*cough*, anyway xD

• 🐛 Fix startup crash if audio fails to initialize (say, you have no sound card, or it has a borked driver)

🎉

Love,
Tom & Ana

Welp that's embarrassing, looks like we broke the loading of your Halloween builds due to an invalid asset reference... Sorry about that 😢🧡 It was a silly thing, so I'll make sure to harden our build process against this kinda mistake in the future.

It also took us way too long to spot the crash, as our file integrity checker was incorrectly claiming that it was due to messed up files in your game installation. The incorrect diagnosis was due local changes I had in our build tool that prepares file manifests for those integrity checks. My bad.

Without further ado:

• 🐛 Fix crash when loading Halloween music.

Apologies again for the crashes.

Love,
Tom (& Ana is asleep, but she'd certainly send love too)

Hello~! The new update is finally properly cooked 👨‍🍳👩‍🍳 Many thanks to everyone who helped us test it 💚 If you've seen the beta preview post from the last week, we've accumulated a few new fixes - you can see the new additions at the bottom. Hope you enjoy this update!


You can simply extend terrain higher now, making builds more epic, and ensuring that every day is leg day for the imaginary inhabitants.


You can now right-click on terrain chunks, revealing the ability to move them. This mode also shows all the other available controls, like changing height and falloff.


Circular buildings shall no longer look upon rectangular ones with jealousy. If you right-click a round building, you'll now see a curved arrow that lets you adjust rotation. Now you can get those support pillars juuust right.


We wouldn't want to break any laws of physics, so now that we've allowed higher elevation of terrain, we figured that to compensate, we could also allow buildings to go lower.

For buildings with roofs, we'd previously restricted their minimum height such that you could still have wooden gates in them, but we figured that's not a necessary restriction. You can now make them very short, almost tent-like.


We've been hearing here and there that Tiny Glade can turn graphics cards into leaf blowers 🍃 The main reason is that we render the image at full resolution, whereas most graphically-intensive games these days support upscaling via DLSS, FSR or XeSS. With those, games render at a reduced resolution (which is cheaper), and then synthesize full-res images by correlating information across frames.

We've now added TGSR - our own technique sporting competitive image quality and performance. Compared to TAA with 100% resolution scale, "TGSR Quality" can result in ~50% less GPU power use while maintaining good image quality (note that this is not 2x frame rate, as performance and power have a non-linear relationship). You can enable TGSR in Settings → Video → Image.

(Illustration only; TGSR Ultra Performance is only recommended for very weak graphics cards)

(Why not integrate DLSS, FSR or XeSS? We still might, and we've internally tested the former two. DLSS has funny licensing requirements though, the public XeSS 1.x doesn't support Vulkan yet, and we'd have to ensure our integration of all of those matches the expectations of their vendors)

If you play on the Steam Deck, you may notice a change in visuals. We've optimized the default settings to strike a better balance between performance, image clarity, and power use. The Deck now uses "TGSR Quality" by default, and an FPS limit of 30. In our tests, this allows the device to stay cool and quiet, and last around 3h on a full battery, whereas with the previous settings, it was rather loud and power-hungry.

* 🚭 Toggleable chimney smoke
* ⚙ Settings: add an option to hide the glade border (it will still appear when you're trying to build outside of it)
* ✏️ Glade border is now a dashed line instead of a solid one
* 🎶 Music system has been completely reworked, which should fix stuttering on game startup, rare hiccups and properly randomize the tracks when starting a new glade.
* 🐛 Fix trees placed on water sinking underwater when grabbed
* 🐛 Fix path-x-water erase SFX being too loud when undoing
* 🐛 Remove obvious repetition and sharp cutoff from water erase SFX
* 📎 Save backups: renamed history.json.datetime.bak into history-backup-datetime.json, to make renaming easier, since the file extension is not shown by default in Windows
* 📎 Save backups: add a 30 sec cooldown before a new backup is made
* 🐛 Reduce temporal smearing and edge artifacts on water.
* 🐛 Fix clutter refusing to sit on elevated terrain if there's a wall behind it.
* ⚙ Add graphics quality presets
* 📺️ Add brightness and gamma settings
* 🔊 Iterate on path-x-water SFX
* 🗃 Bump solid vertex color object limit to 32k (things like cloth hangers, some clutter objects)
* 🐛 Fix a bug where dawn jingle volume didn't correspond to music volume (and it would play even when the music was muted)
* 🐛 Fix a gap between terrain and water on the glade border
* 🈂 Add misc missing localizations (the display settings descriptions are coming soon!)
* 🈂 Add localization of Steam Actions (the controller layout menu)

Oh, and last but not least, we fixed large wooden brackets, so now they are properly removed to make space for windows, doors, etc. They will also disappear for buildings with lowest height (for nicer overhangs).

Aaaand, that's all :3 Have a lovely weekend 💗

Love
Ana & Tom

PS: if you helped us test the beta and would like to transfer your beta saves into the main game, see "testing this beta patch" notes in the beta preview post.

Hullo-hullo! We have a bag of goodies for you today! 🥕🍬 As we hide away in our coding cave, a sound of intense keyboard tapping echoes in the background, whispering faint secrets of our stair tool prototypes. And while that will take some time to emerge, we've also accumulated a variety of smaller improvements, and figured we could package them up into their own update :3

👉️ Please see the bottom of this post for info about testing this patch preview.


You can simply extend terrain higher now, making builds more epic, and ensuring that every day is leg day for the imaginary inhabitants.


You can now right-click on terrain chunks, revealing the ability to move them. This mode also shows all the other available controls, like changing height and falloff.


Circular buildings shall no longer look upon rectangular ones with jealousy. If you right-click a round building, you'll now see a curved arrow that lets you adjust rotation. Now you can get those support pillars juuust right.


We wouldn't want to break any laws of physics, so now that we've allowed higher elevation of terrain, we figured that to compensate, we could also allow buildings to go lower.

For buildings with roofs, we'd previously restricted their minimum height such that you could still have wooden gates in them, but we figured that's not a necessary restriction. You can now make them very short, almost tent-like.


We've been hearing here and there that Tiny Glade can turn graphics cards into leaf blowers 🍃 The main reason is that we'd render the image at full resolution, whereas most graphically-intensive games these days use upscaling via DLSS, FSR or XeSS. Those let games render at a reduced resolution (which is cheaper), and then synthesize full-res images by correlating information across frames.

We've now added TGSR - our own technique sporting competitive image quality and performance. It is now enabled by default, replacing our temporal anti-aliasing (TAA, which is still available). Compared to TAA, "TGSR Quality" can result in ~50% less GPU power use overall, while maintaining good image quality. You'll find options in a new menu under Settings → Video → Image.

(Why not integrate DLSS, FSR or XeSS? We still might, and we've internally tested the former two. DLSS has funny licensing requirements though, the public XeSS 1.x doesn't support Vulkan yet, and we'd have to ensure our integration of all of those matches the expectations of their vendors)

* 🚭 Toggleable chimney smoke
* ⚙✍ Settings: add an option to hide the glade border (it will still appear when you're trying to build outside of it)
* ✏️ Glade border is now a dashed line instead of a solid one
* 🎶 Music system has been completely reworked, which should fix stuttering on game startup, rare hiccups and properly randomize the tracks when starting a new glade.
* 🐛 Fix trees placed on water sinking underwater when grabbed
* 🐛 Fix path-x-water erase SFX being too loud when undoing
* 🐛 Remove obvious repetition and sharp cutoff from water erase SFX
* 📎 Save backups: renamed history.json.datetime.bak into history-backup-datetime.json, to make renaming easier, since the file extension is not shown by default in Windows
* 📎 Save backups: add a 30 sec cooldown before a new backup is made
* 🐛 Reduce temporal smearing and edge artifacts on water.
* 🐛 Fix clutter refusing to sit on elevated terrain if there's a wall behind it.

If you'd like to help out and opt into the beta, go to Tiny Glade in your Steam Library, then Properties → Betas → Beta participation → Select "beta-1_13_0".

The save files of this beta are separate from the main version of the game, and this is a beta rather than a regular patch. What does that all mean?

• When using the beta, you won't see the glades you've built in the default branch.
  
• We made beta saves separate from the regular saves because the beta branch contains new code unavailable in the default branch. Thus, the save files created in beta won't work in the default branch until we merge the beta into the default branch.
  
• You can however copy your previous saves manually into the beta if you like.
  
• Saves for the beta are in the "beta-saves" folder alongside "saves" in "C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Saved Games\Tiny Glade\Steam\YOUR_STEAM_ID" ("~/.local/share/Tiny Glade/Steam/YOUR_STEAM_ID" on Linux)
  
• The beta saves are not synchronized to Steam Cloud.
  
• Some stuff might misbehave, and we might need to make changes if necessary. Beware that your beta builds might change
  
• After the beta is closed, you'll be able to just (manually) copy over your beta saves into the regular saves folder.
  
• Please see our troubleshooting guide[pouncelight.games] for more information about saves.

If you encounter something broken, or would like to send any feedback about this preview, we'd appreciate an in-game report using the F6 key 📝 If the matter would benefit from a discussion, you're also welcome to write a comment to this post (but we might take a few days to respond cause we're a bit busy with dev and life things right now).

Thank you! 💗

Love
Tom & Ana

Hulloooo, just a couple of small fixes here:

• 🐛 Fixed the right trigger not working in external controllers hooked up to a Steam Deck.
  
• 🐛 Fixed mouse button remapping affecting controller bindings.

Love,
Tom & Ana

Hellowdy there, how are thee? I hope the frosty season is treating you well 💙 Here in the land of fika, the sun is slowly awakening from its nap, and the cold will only last three more months 🤭

While not great for vitamin D, the darkness does align with productive game development. We've finished conjuring the ancient incantations of Steam Input, infused the magicks of VDFs and action glyphs into Tiny Glade, and the tickbox of "Controller Support" is now officially ticked! Thanks to everyone who helped us test the beta :3

Steam sometimes caches old controller layouts, and you may need to restart it and/or reapply the official layout. Otherwise it might end up being an odd crossbreed of our new one and something from the before times.

If you'd like to see the control hints/tutorial again, make sure to click Settings -> Game -> Control Hints -> Reset.

• All the menus and UIs can now be navigated using controllers: DPad/Left Joystick, A/B, L1/R1.
  
• The same is also true for the keyboard: Arrow keys, Enter/Esc, PgDown/PgUp.
  
• There's now two action sets in Steam Input: one for gameplay, and one for the menu.
  
• Action sets expose a whole bunch of extra controls useful for custom layouts.
  
• Tutorials/input hints in the game show controller glyphs.
  
• The game will dynamically detect any connected controllers, and seamlessly read input from all of them and/or keyboard + mouse.
  
• On Steam Deck, the folder icon in photo mode now shows an info screen for where to find screenshots in SteamOS's menus.
  
• There's now a "Controller Bindings" button in the Controls menu (only shows if you have a controller connected).
  
• Ditto for key bindings; they have been moved to their own sub-screen.
  
• You can now draw walls & fences by clicking and moving the camera instead of the cursor.

There's a few things that we'll address in future patches:

• There's a bunch of new strings that we haven't yet localized to other languages.
  
• If you change the toolbar alignment in settings, you'll need to restart the game, or controller mapping will be all borked.
  
• Our graphics driver warning/information screen doesn't support controllers yet.

Our next step in controller land is to fix a few small things, and then ask Valve to have another look at our Steam Deck support. Then we can hopefully get "Deck Verified" soon :3

Beyond that, we have a few updates cooking, ranging from optimizations to gameplay features, but more on that soon, so make sure to keep those radio receivers well tuned 📻🧓

Stay awesome!

Love,
Tom & Ana

Hey y'all! 👋 You may remember that we've been working on proper Steam Deck support. As a side effect of that, we're adding general controller support too 🤗🎮️

Before we make it official, we'd love to hear from you. While we do have hands, and we did our best to roll, boop, and pat them all over PS4, Xbox and Steam Deck controllers, we trust that you'll do that more expertly.

Let us know what you think about the default controller mapping, and please poke us if you encounter any usability issues 📝

A likely thing that might throw some folks off is that we've put the primary interaction ("left mouse click") on the left trigger, while it might be expected on the right. We found it physically tricky to use the right joystick for precise manipulation in the game while also holding the right trigger at the same time, so we put them on separate hands. If you find that a different configuration works better for you, let us know!

If you'd like to help out and opt into the beta, go to Tiny Glade in your Steam Library, then Properties → Betas → Beta participation → Select "beta-1_12_0".

Unlike some of the other betas, no shenanigans are needed with save files.

Please note that if you've previously played using the controller, you may need to switch to the new official layout.

• All the menus and UIs can now be navigated using controllers: DPad, A/B, L1/R1.
  
• The same is also true for the keyboard: Arrow keys, Enter/Esc, PgDown/PgUp.
  
• There's now two action sets in Steam Input, one for gameplay, and one for the menu.
  
• The action sets expose a whole bunch of extra controls.
  
• The default controller layout uses those actions instead of emulating mouse/keyboard interactions.

There's a few things that we'll address in future patches:

• Tutorials still only show keyboard/mouse controls. We still need to extend our code to add support for acquiring the correct icons from Steam. Meanwhile, you can check the bindings in Steam's own controller mapping menus.
  
• There's a bunch of new strings that we haven't yet localized to other languages.
  
• If you change the toolbar alignment in settings, you'll need to restart the game, or controller mapping will be all borked.
  
• Hot-plugging of controllers doesn't work, and if you have multiple controllers attached, only one is recognized.

You're welcome to share it in this post's thread 💛 Thanks a lot :3

Love,
Tom & Ana

Hi everyone! Here comes the first patch of 2025 :3 As you might have read in our latest dev diary, we're currently working on improving the Steam Deck experience, and this is the first patch towards that goal!



Rotation around the cursor (PC Default)
Currently, when holding RMB, the camera rotates around the point under the cursor. Conceptually, you can think of the cursor "grabbing" the point. For example, in the gif below, because the cursor is over the pumpkins, the camera rotates around them.
Rotation around the center (New option, Steam Deck default)
The new option allows to rotate around the center of the screen instead. Thus, in the example below, even though our cursor is over the pumpkins, the camera will rotate around the house.
This mode should improve the Steam Deck experience, and if you’re on PC, and you’ve been struggling with the camera suddenly yeeting itself as you try to rotate, we recommend checking it out too! You can switch the mode in Settings ➡ Controls ➡ Camera (2/7) ➡ Camera Rotation Pivot ➡ Center Region.

There's two variants of this: "Center point" and "Center region". The former rotates around the point that is directly in the center of the screen. While precise and easy to understand, it is often surprising, especially with tall builds -- you might want to rotate around a tower, but the screen center is just to the side of it, causing the rotation to be anchored on the background. The "Center region" variant aims to address that by considering points in a square around the screen center, and finding the most promising rotation pivot within it.

Tiny Glade on Steam Deck will now use the "Center region" variant by default. If you'd like to switch back to the old default, select "Cursor point" in the settings menu.


Zoom towards the cursor (PC Default)
Same applies to the zoom. By default, the camera will zoom in/out the point under the cursor.
Zoom towards the center (New option, Steam Deck default)
The new option allows to remap the camera to zoom in/out the center of the screen instead.
You can switch the mode in Settings ➡ Controls ➡ Camera (2/7) ➡ Camera Zoom Pivot ➡ Center Region.

Tiny Glade on Steam Deck will now use the "Center region" variant by default. If you'd like to switch back to the old default, select "Cursor point" in the settings menu.

Aaaand we also did a few miscellaneous fixes, here is the full list:

• ✍ Toolbar will no longer exceed the bounds of the game window
  
• ✍ Toolbar's subcategories are now correctly sorted when cycling through them by repeatedly clicking the main category buttons
  
• ⚙️ Default resolution scale to 0.7 on the Steam Deck (the game might look blurrier on Steam Deck, but will run considerably faster)
  
• 🔊 Iteration and small fixes for clutter SFX
  
• 🐛 Fix a potential synchronization bug in presenting rendered images to the screen (another wild guess that might help with NVIDIA crashes)
  
• 🐛 Fix resolution scale shrinking and staying low upon alt-tabbing in memory-constrained conditions (the game will attempt to restore the desired resolution scale once VRAM is available again, and will no longer save the automatically-reduced scale to settings)
  
• 🔬 Add more graphics troubleshooting options to "Vulkan extension settings"

That's all for now. Thank you for reading, and stay awesome!

Love,
Tom & Ana

Hello-hello! We hope you had a lovely winter break, and the new year had started with a good dose of fun hobbies, warm beverages and baked goods 🥧

We’re baking something too, and though not edible, it will be a good contribution to the cozy evenings. We’re working on controller support & improving the experience on Steam Deck 🎮

A good chunk of this work will be general QoL improvements and fixes, so we’ve decided to break the work up into multiple smaller patches, and make them live as soon as they’re ready in the coming weeks. One such update is already available, where we’ve added an alternative mode for camera rotation and zoom. This mode should improve the Steam Deck experience, and if you’re on PC, and you’ve been struggling with the camera suddenly yeeting itself as you try to rotate, we recommend checking it out too! See here for the full patch notes.

We expect that these patches will take our time until early February(ish). Afterwards we plan to switch to improving more gameplay stuff.

Aaaand that’s all for this short dev diary. Thank you for reading and hope you have a good day 🧡

Love,
Ana & Tom

P.S. we’re also preparing a batch of 30 new daily themes, and they will start on January 22 📅