State of the Garden Address (9/19/2024)

Hey there! I wanted to post something to make it known that I'm back in the saddle working on this. What spurred this on? It starts with somebody posting the current version of TCGDX to Gamebanana. That on its own was pretty cool- it got a lot of new eyes on the project, even if I wasn't working on it at the time. A couple of months later, I was telling somebody at my job about TCGDX and I wanted to show them footage. I wasn't up to digging through my Twitter so I did a quick check on Youtube to see if maybe someone had recorded themselves playing. I wasn't expecting much... but I stumbled on this!

So here I am, a little over 2 years after the last release- the attention has lit a fire in me. I want to keep it going! But where do we go from here? Well, I'm already hard at work... my current plans are as follows:

• Add the Chao running around to the memory game- this is already done!
• Make mouse or keyboard controls usable in any part of the game, and also add gamepad support- in progress!
• Add a "simple mode" toggle that limits the features to be as close to the original Tiny Chao Garden as possible. Why, you ask...?
• Use "simple mode" as the base for a mobile version! I'll worry about the fancier features later. For controls, I'd like to use onscreen buttons- I'm thinking of there being a GBA-like border around the game with buttons to match. I'm uncertain on how to handle importing/exporting Chao though...
• Bug fixes and parity changes!

Once all that is out of the way, I think I'll be making a leap to the current version of GameMaker. The subscription fee for GMS2 scared me away from upgrading the last time I was working on TCGDX, but now that it's free for non-commercial development, the only thing I have to worry about is stuff breaking when I go to import the project. Fingers crossed it's not too bad...

Sorry for leaving you guys in the dark for so long. Hopefully you can look forward to the next version and beyond!