added devlog posts to the website

web/.htaccess

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ExpiresActive On
 ExpiresDefault A31536000
-ExpiresByType text/html A3600
+ExpiresByType text/html A600
 ExpiresByType text/javascript A2592000
 ExpiresByType application/javascript A2592000
 

web/Gemfile

@@ -6,3 +6,4 @@ git_source(:github) { |repo_name| "https://github.com/#{repo_name}" }
 
 gem "jekyll"
 gem "webrick"
+gem "jekyll-postfiles"

web/Gemfile.lock

@@ -29,6 +29,8 @@ GEM
       rouge (~> 3.0)
       safe_yaml (~> 1.0)
       terminal-table (~> 2.0)
+    jekyll-postfiles (3.1.0)
+      jekyll (>= 3.8.6, < 5)
     jekyll-sass-converter (2.1.0)
       sassc (> 2.0.1, < 3.0)
     jekyll-watch (2.2.1)
@@ -63,6 +65,7 @@ PLATFORMS
 
 DEPENDENCIES
   jekyll
+  jekyll-postfiles
   webrick
 
 BUNDLED WITH

web/_config.yaml

@@ -1,2 +1,20 @@
+permalink: devlogs/:title/
+
+defaults:
+  - scope:
+      type: "posts"
+    values:
+      layout: "blog"
+
+plugins:
+  - jekyll-postfiles
+
+# markdown formatting
 kramdown:
   header_offset: 1
+  typographic_syms:
+    hellip: ...
+    mdash: ---
+    ndash: --
+    laquo: "<<"
+    raquo: ">>"

web/_data/devlogs.json

@@ -1,134 +0,0 @@
-[
-    {
-        "name": "Community Showcase and Future Plans (Early Access Launch Postmortem)",
-        "date": "May 19, 2023",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/532785/community-showcase-and-future-plans-early-access-launch-postmortem",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3717203461059432062"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "Tiny Technicalities: The Pronoun Update™ (and an Announcement)",
-        "date": "April 15, 2023",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/517055/tiny-technicalities-the-pronoun-update-and-an-announcement",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/5306971121503255286"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.30.0: Big Steps Towards Release",
-        "date": "March 31, 2023",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/510006/0300-big-steps-towards-release",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6492542378896226821"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "Tiny Technicalities: What's in an Action?",
-        "date": "February 10, 2023",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/488226/tiny-technicalities-whats-in-an-action",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3676662189784689005"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.29.0: Say Hi to the Demo",
-        "date": "January 16, 2023",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/477028/0290-say-hi-to-the-demo",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6132247440463996085"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.28.0: The Last Beta Update Ever",
-        "date": "December 20, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/466033/0280-the-last-beta-update-ever",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/5891302324258788947"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.27.0: Trashy Techie Library",
-        "date": "November 12, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/450800/0270-trashy-techie-library",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/5453324100721557422"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.26.0: Lights, Camera, Music",
-        "date": "October 18, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/441031/0260-lights-camera-music",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6319138589415905559"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.25.0: Water, Stuff and Skill Books",
-        "date": "September 05, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/424507/0250-water-stuff-and-skill-books",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3360269804911051302"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.24.0: Undo, Redo, Fridge Achievements",
-        "date": "July 28, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/409590/0240-undo-redo-fridge-achievements",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3370399657483457677"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.23.0: Job Choices, Aging Up and Furniture Fun",
-        "date": "July 04, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/400497/0230-job-choices-aging-up-and-furniture-fun",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3344500789303904087"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.21.0: Two Years of Tiny Life: Cafés, Gamepad Controls and More",
-        "date": "May 24, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/384666/0210-two-years-of-tiny-life-cafs-gamepad-controls-and-more",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3189123589808204255"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.20.0: The Children Update, it's finally here!",
-        "date": "March 09, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/355830/0200-the-children-update-its-finally-here",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3100171001731828571"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.19.0: Ui, Sound and Improvements Abound",
-        "date": "January 01, 2022",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/330680/0190-ui-sound-and-improvements-abound",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3109171219652255208"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.18.0: Animations, Food and Sources",
-        "date": "November 23, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/317472/0180-animations-food-and-sources",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3111419849470831533"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.17.0: Life Goals, Reward Personalities and Daily Tasks",
-        "date": "October 14, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/303915/0170-life-goals-reward-personalities-and-daily-tasks",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/4244072077610086379"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.16.0: Woodlands and Visitors",
-        "date": "August 30, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/289260/0160-woodlands-and-visitors",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2949282742498975401"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.15.0: Barbecue Trash Cleaning",
-        "date": "July 27, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/277913/0150-barbecue-trash-cleaning",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2968419780808932932"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.14.0: Lamps, Lot Movement, Speech Sounds!",
-        "date": "July 15, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/274082/0140-lamps-lot-movement-speech-sounds",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/4430963222678444595"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.13.0: Camera Rotation and a Larger Map!",
-        "date": "July 06, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/271199/0130-camera-rotation-and-a-larger-map",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2967291343236374275"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.12.0: The Fitness Set",
-        "date": "June 17, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/264773/0120-the-fitness-set",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2990934608186477339"
-    },
-    {
-        "name": "0.11.0: More Actions, More Skills, More Personalities, More Pride!",
-        "date": "June 05, 2021",
-        "itch": "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/260838/0110-more-actions-more-skills-more-personalities-more-pride",
-        "steam": "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3028088035178415265"
-    }
-]

web/_includes/blognav.html

@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+<a class="nav-item nav-link" href="../../#devlogs">🏡 Back to Main Page</a>
+{% if page.previous %}
+    <a class="nav-item nav-link" href="{{ page.previous.url }}">⏮️ Previous Post</a>
+{% endif %}
+{% if page.next %}
+    <a class="nav-item nav-link" href="{{ page.next.url }}">⏭️ Next Post</a>
+{% endif %}

web/_includes/devlogs.html

@@ -3,12 +3,15 @@
     <p>Along with every major update, we publish a devlog that features additional information as well as some screenshots. Occasionally, we also post about the game's development or other news. You can read them on itch or on Steam. You can also read <a href="https://docs.tinylifegame.com/Changelog">the full changelog</a> or subscribe to <a href="#subscribe">the mailing list</a>.</p>
 
     <div class="devlogs">
-        {%- for item in site.data.devlogs -%}
+        {% for post in site.posts %}
             <div class="devlog">
-            <h4 class="devlog-title">{{ item.name }}</h4>
+                <h4 class="devlog-title">{{ post.title }}</h4>
-            <div class="devlog-date text-muted">{{ item.date }}</div>
+                <div class="devlog-date text-muted">{{ post.date | date_to_string }}</div>
-            <div><a href="{{ item.itch }}">Read on itch</a> &ndash; <a href="{{ item.steam }}">Read on Steam</a></div>
+                <div>
+                    <a href="{{ post.url }}">Read this post</a> &ndash;
+                    <a href="{{ post.itch }}">Read on itch</a> &ndash;
+                    <a href="{{ post.steam }}">Read on Steam</a></div>
             </div>
-        {%- endfor -%}
+        {% endfor %}
     </div>
 </div>

web/_includes/navbar.html

@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@
             <div class="navbar-nav mr-auto" id="nav-items">
                 {% if page.nav %}
                     {% include {{ page.nav }} %}
+                {% elsif layout.nav %}
+                    {% include {{ layout.nav }} %}
                 {% endif %}
             </div>
         </div>

web/_layouts/blog.html

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+---
+layout: default
+nav: blognav.html
+---
+
+<div class="section blog-section">
+    <h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
+    <p>📖 You can also read this post <a href="{{ page.itch }}">on itch</a> or <a href="{{ page.steam }}">on Steam</a>, or you can subscribe to <a href="../../#subscribe">the mailing list</a>.</p>
+
+    {{ content }}
+</div>

web/_layouts/default.html

@@ -12,8 +12,8 @@
 
     <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@4.6.0/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css">
     <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato&display=swap">
-    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
+    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css">
-    <link rel="icon" href="favicon.ico">
+    <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico">
 
     <meta property="og:title" content="{{ page.title }}">
     <meta property="og:description" content="{{ page.summary }}">

web/_posts/0.23.0/2022-07-04-0.23.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,105 @@
+---
+title: "0.23.0: Job Choices, Aging Up and Furniture Fun"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/400497/0230-job-choices-aging-up-and-furniture-fun"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3344500789303904087"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! Between our [Twitter hot takes](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame/status/1540355510788055040) and a few [smaller updates](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/Changelog), it's been a while since the last devlog post. We apologize for that, but to make it up to you, here's a pretty big devlog for a pretty big update. Enjoy!
+
+# Baking The Cake
+We added baking! Not only that, but we added a ton of new baked goods along with the feature. What baked goods, you ask? These!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_0XuTQ38i2H.png)
+
+Baking can be done from the fridge, just like cooking, but it's a different skill altogether. Children can also level up in the baking skill by using the small stove and making cookies on it. Tasty!
+
+You can use cake on someone's birthday (more about that in a bit) by adding candles to one, which then allows the birthday Tiny to age up then and there, similarly to how it works in The Sims.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_aU8Bz7p2G8.png)
+
+# Choices For Jobs
+Something that a few players have been requesting in the past has finally been added to the game: While a Tiny is at work, and they're part of the currently played household, there is now a chance that an interaction menu called a choice prompt will show up, which poses the player with a problem that has two or three possible courses of action.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_2QZikScZRi.png)
+
+Each one of these actions has a chance of being successful, and they each affect your job performance in different ways. Each job also has a different set of choice prompts available, so if you're into the choice prompt lore, you can try out different jobs to see them all!
+
+# New Furniture
+Since the previous update, we've taken some time to add a bunch of new furniture items. None of these are new *types* of furniture, but they're new variations of existing items: Chairs, decorative vases, lamps, and more! Check out this screenshot which features some of them:
+
+![](22-07-04_15-40-42.png)
+
+We also added some decorative power poles that make Maple Plains city look a bit more like a place that might exist in the real world. They don't do anything, and you can only get them using cheats, but they look nice, and that's what matters!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_GWMLHdoQqm.png)
+
+# Rummaging Through... Trash?
+Yea. This is a weird one. It's kind of cool, though.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_e3yMNy0HqV.png)
+
+You can now rummage through trash cans that have previously had stuff thrown into them, which allows you to retrieve that very stuff. Of course, if it's just an empty platter or some food that's gone off, it's not necessarily the most useful thing. But a discarded painting or an unfinished woodwork? Those might be valuable to some!
+
+Every other day, however, the town's trash collector will come by and empty every trash can that has had stuff thrown into it. So you have to be quick if you want to find that hidden trashy treasure!
+
+# Politics, And What Mods Can Do
+This part isn't necessarily related to this update, but we want to talk about it here anyway, because it is very important to us. We already mentioned this in our aforementioned [tweet](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame/status/1540355510788055040), but there's some extra information we'd like to share with you all.
+
+There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that abortion is something that people in real life, as well as Tinies in Tiny Life, should be able to receive legally and easily if they need or want it. The right to control what happens inside your own body should not be questioned, or be able to be questioned, and we are appalled to see that that is exactly what is happening in the USA as we speak. Tiny Life **will**, once pregnancy is added to the game in one of the next updates, have the ability to end a pregnancy if the player desires.
+
+There will be **no** option to permanently disable this feature. This is a really important point.
+
+Tiny Life has, for a long time, had a [Modding API](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/api/TinyLife.html) that allows players to add custom content to the game, and change the content that the game offers. Additionally, the game will have various official ways of distributing these mods, including Steam Workshop support, once it is officially released. **However**, there will be a stern moderation policy in place that removes any mods, and bans any mod creators, that involve or suggest removing or hiding features from the game that promote body positivity, freedom of control, queer people, gender equality, and racial diversity. This includes mods that remove the ability to end a Tiny's pregnancy.
+
+If you play video games to "escape politics", or you're upset with our decision to feature "queer propaganda" heavily in our game, then you fundamentally misunderstood what these issues are about. They're not "politics" or "propaganda", they're representation of millions of people that *actually exist*, and whose stories deserve to be told just as much as yours does.
+
+# The Full Changelog
+Anyway, in case we distracted you enough to forget that this was originally a post about a Tiny Life update, here's the full changelog for your perusal. As we said, there's a lot of stuff this time around.
+
+Additions
+- Added choice prompts for jobs and students, which appear randomly and allow the player to influence the situation
+- Added the ability for children to age up into adults
+- Added a baking skill and several food items that can be baked
+- Added the ability to add candles to cake to celebrate someone's birthday
+- Added a bigger version of the fitness rug
+- Added a cheaper computer
+- Added two new chairs
+- Added four new flower vases
+- Added two new small lamps
+- Added a taller wooden fence
+- Added a small coffee table and a new TV stand
+- Added two new roof textures
+- Added the ability to rummage through trash to dig up thrown away items
+- Added kissing
+- Added a search bar to the hint history menu
+- Added more actions for people that have diet personalities
+- Added decorative power poles to the default map
+
+Improvements
+- Clarify that puddles on natural ground can't be mopped
+- Allow wall sinks to get dirty
+- Display some important tooltip information properly when using a gamepad
+- Disallow sleeping when stunned
+- Go back to the starting location after jogging
+- Improve the action variety screen when other people are involved by increasing the size of their portrait
+- Allow using WASD to control the camera by default
+- Made trash cans fill up with trash
+- Order action varieties by name
+- Display learned recipes and woodworking recipes when leveling up the cooking and woodworking skills
+- Display a security disclaimer when enabling mods
+- Play sounds for broken objects
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed people's shoes rendering above the picnic table when sitting
+- Fixed lights being clipped early, causing them to disappear visually
+- Fixed people sometimes putting objects down on surfaces with the wrong rotation
+- Fixed some issues on the default map, including walden household duplications and a missing chair
+- Fixed diet personalities not being incompatible with each other
+- Fixed issues with the smoke particle displaying behind objects
+- Fixed people doing the walking animation while their pathfinding is still calculating
+- Fixed people sometimes not leaving a lot when asked to
+- Fixed "got food somewhere else" notifications being displayed for every household
+- Fixed emotion stings playing if the same person is selected again
+- Fixed children being able to tinker with stuff
+- Fixed being unable to place rugs under tables that have something on them
+- Fixed lamps in storage lighting up the place they used to occupy when reloading a save

web/_posts/0.24.0/2022-07-28-0.24.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+---
+title: "0.24.0: Undo, Redo, Fridge Achievements"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/409590/0240-undo-redo-fridge-achievements"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3370399657483457677"
+---
+
+At least for the ones of us who reside in Central Europe, it's been a tough couple of weeks with the constant, devastating heat. However, in our everlasting pursuit to give you new content to play with, the heat has not stopped us from working on this update.
+
+Granted, it took a lot longer than we would've liked, and it doesn't actually contain everything that we planned for it to contain, but here we are.
+
+Here's some of what we *did* do, though.
+
+# Fridges and Leftovers
+For a long time now, players have been asking us to add the ability to store leftovers in the fridge, where they'll go bad much less quickly than out in the open. You can now do exactly that.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_iApPIyRYDg.png)
+
+After storing some leftovers in the fridge, you can select the fridge to Get Leftovers, which will automatically cause your selected Tiny to grab a random food item from the fridge. You can also look at the contents of the fridge and tell a Tiny to take out a specific item, which is especially useful if the fridge starts filling up with empty platters from all the food they ate.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_egGbvhCCDY.png)
+
+Right now, fridges are bottomless, meaning you can store as much food in them as you like. You can't store anything else there, though. Sorry.
+
+# Undo and Redo
+To a non-programmer, it might sound incredibly easy to just add an undo-redo feature into a thing. You do a thing, you go back to a previous state, you do the thing again in reverse. What's the holdup?
+
+As it turns out, the holdup is quite a lot. Not only do you have to take care that stuff is undone and redone in the right order, but you also have to make sure that funds are deducted and re-added properly. That undoing and redoing doesn't lead to impossible states. That there aren't gaps in the undo-redo feature that allow stuff to slip through the gaps while other stuff gets undone. That you don't weep in a corner while infinite recursion is causing your computer to explode. That sort of thing, you know?
+
+We did it, though. But it might also be a little broken at the start. Hopefully not, though.
+
+Look at this cool GIF that shows this feature in action!
+
+![](gif.gif)
+
+# Achievements
+Tiny Life now has achievements! There's only eleven of them as we speak, but throughout development and until release, we'll be adding quite a few more.
+
+Achievements are unique per save file, meaning you can try your hand at re-completing all the achievements whenever you start a new save file. Achievement progress will always be made by the active household you're currently playing with, but if you switch between households in the same save file, achievement progress will be maintained and made with the new household you selected.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_vKxaDSLbO2.png)
+
+The achievements are also already integrated with Steam, but only with the release version of the game, so anyone who's playing the demo (which is everyone right now) won't have access to the Steam version of the achievements. Sorry!
+
+# Adoption
+Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to add pregnancy to the game for this update like we'd originally planned. Instead, we decided to settle for something a bit less spectacular that still allows you to get new children into your household without cheats or exported merges: adoption!
+
+You can click on the computer to adopt one of twelve children. We're not going to get into the lore of where these children come from, because there isn't one yet. They're randomly generated, okay?
+
+![](Tiny_Life_700l6DmhSi.png)
+
+As a side note, we also added a lot more random first and last names in this update, especially a lot of international ones. Currently, the first and last name's source nationality won't be matched, which is why some names sound a little wacky. To see it positively, these r names give us a reason to believe that Tiny Life is set in a universe where society has come far enough to allow anyone to have any name without fearing to be discriminated against. Right?
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As always, here's the full changelog for your perusal. This time around, we also tried to include a more in-depth API changelog, since the game's API is starting to be somewhat stable, so hopefully modders will find this useful for updating their mods.
+
+Additions
+- Added the ability to store leftovers in the fridge
+- Added the ability to undo and redo actions in build mode
+- Added achievements
+- Added a paper lantern furniture item
+- Added the reasoning skill
+- Added some facial hair
+- Added the ability to adopt children using the computer
+
+Improvements
+- Display a notification when first acquiring a new skill
+- Display a button in the job panel for going to work
+- Clarify when you can click on a person to head to work
+- Randomly generate new people for regular visitors and lot employments if exported ones run out
+- Allow children to be regular visitors too
+- Added a lot more random names, including various international ones
+- Improved performance of saves with a lot of people in them
+- Automatically set transitive genealogies when changing the genealogy of a relationship in the character creator
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed an exception when getting a job from a newspaper after it has already been removed
+- Fixed lot employment navigation on lots being incorrect when using a gamepad
+- Fixed new notifications not being added to the top of the notification queue
+- Fixed a rare exception when displaying interactions with multiple pages
+- Fixed death notifications not having an icon
+- Fixed keyboard camera movement not clearing the following person
+- Fixed children being able to get the capable carpenter life goal
+- Fixed ordering from lot staff not working correctly
+- Fixed being unable to click in the world when the cheats menu is open
+
+API
+- Objects in a person's hand or in the household storage will now also have their Update methods called
+- Improved auto-goal triggering system
+- Added the ability to change an action spot's main direction
+- Made time a map-based property rather than a game-based one

web/_posts/0.25.0/2022-09-05-0.25.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,118 @@
+---
+title: "0.25.0: Water, Stuff and Skill Books"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/424507/0250-water-stuff-and-skill-books"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3360269804911051302"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! It's been a little over a month since the last update, which isn't really the update schedule we try to stick to, but it is what it is. We've been doing a lot of internal changes, as well as a lot of planning related to Tiny Life's Steam Early Access release, which is currently planned for the first quarter (Q1) of 2023. Of course, we'll keep yall updated about any changes and plans related to that.
+
+Anyway, let's get to the update!
+
+# Water Fun
+There's water in the game now! Well. There was water before, but it was severely limited in terms of what you could do with it, mainly showering and drinking. But now, there's water *tiles* that you can place using the tile tool, and it allows you to create cute little lakes and rivers!
+
+Maple Plains City got updated as well and now features a bunch of watery places, including a little river that feeds into a bigger lake in the center of the map. Along with the lake, a house by [Macy](https://twitter.com/DesertStranded) with a matching household by [Vortis](https://steamcommunity.com/id/vortis95) have been added.
+
+![](22-09-05_12-36-24.png)
+
+![](22-09-05_12-37-19.png)
+
+As always, opening a save file you created before this update will cause the map to be updated and the new stuff to be added to your save file, without any of your stuff being removed.
+
+# New Objects
+We also added a bunch of new objects in this update, including some tiles, siding, bigger windows and doors, as well as the rocks and big bushes you can see scattered around the map.
+
+![](22-09-05_12-36-30.png)
+
+![](Tiny_Life_ZmEXIwP5BG.png)
+
+![](22-09-05_12-40-21.png)
+
+As you can see, the siding features some more colorful... colors, and these colors have also been added to some existing siding, wallpapers and furniture. All the sofas in the game have also gotten a small upgrade: they now feature some more colors as well!
+
+# Skill Books
+This is a feature that people have been requesting for a long time, probably heavily inspired by the fact that The Sims series also has books like this.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_doH1B2edur.png)
+
+However, it's always bugged us that, in The Sims, you can become a full-on expert in a skill by simply reading a bunch of books on the topic. If you've ever tried to learn something like programming, writing or woodworking, you know that that's not how it works; you have to actually get your hands dirty and put the skill you're learning into action!
+
+So, in Tiny Life, skill books will help you increase the progress of the *current level* that you have in the skill. Once the green skill bar is filled up fully, you'll be unable to continue reading the skill book until you make use of the skill and level up to the next level. At that point, you'll be able to go back to reading a skill book until the level progress bar fills up again.
+
+We think this strikes a good balance between skills books being too overpowered and removing any requirement for making use of a skill, and skill books being completely pointless. As always, we'd love to hear what you think about this, though!
+
+# Early Access
+A while back, we did a survey that allowed players to give feedback on the current state of the game, when they think it should be released, and what they would pay for it. Unfortunately, surveys like this generally have a high likelihood of only being filled out by people that *don't* think the game is ready for release. However, this one still gave us some insight into what people think and what features they think are missing, or required, before release.
+
+So we've decided that we'll be making use of Steam's Early Access system for Tiny Life upon release, rather than going for a "full" release straight away. As I pointed out in the introduction to this post, we'd like to make this happen in Q1 2023.
+
+Here's the Early Access description for Tiny Life, which is already available on the Steam page, which explains some details and the reasoning behind this decision.
+
+**Why Early Access?**
+Tiny Life is an open-ended sandbox game, which is a genre perfectly suited to Early Access, in our opinion. Early Access allows players to play the game during development, give feedback on existing and upcoming features, and see the game grow and develop. We want Early Access to be an opportunity for the game to grow with its community, through active involvement, custom content and modding, and frequent surveys for community feedback.
+
+**Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?**
+We hope to be able to implement enough features to comfortably deem the game ready for a full release by 2024. We don't want to rush the game's full release, and we want to grasp its readiness through the community's response to the game during Early Access.
+
+**How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?**
+The roadmap for Tiny Life can be seen on its website, and contains plenty of small and large features alike. We plan to implement all of these throughout development, but not necessarily during Early Access. Since Tiny Life is a sandbox game, there is no final feature or story element at which the game will be finished. Throughout Early Access, more objects, clothes, skills, and other gameplay features will be added continually.
+
+**What is the current state of the Early Access version?**
+Tiny Life's Early Access version already features hours of in-game content and near-infinite replayability due to its sandbox structure. Each Tiny is unique, from their looks to their personality to their skills and relationships. Each lot and house you build or get from the community can feature hundreds of items with unique interactions and abilities.
+
+**Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?**
+Throughout Early Access, as more and more features and gameplay elements are added, Tiny Life's price will probably be raised gradually. Upon leaving Early Access, we don't plan for the price to change drastically, and so it will stay in the same region as it is now.
+
+**How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?**
+Tiny Life already features plenty of ways to involve the community. This includes the ability to share custom mods, lots, households, and maps with the community, a public feedback and issue report form, and frequent surveys that involve the community in decision-making for the game's upcoming features and changes.
+
+# Full Changelog
+As always, here's the full changelog for this update. Enjoy!
+
+Additions
+- Added the ability for primary school students to study at a bookshelf
+- Added the ability to get raises after reaching level 10 of a career
+- Added some decorations, including maple fairy lights, three rocks, a shelf with three layers, big bushes
+- Added some wooden siding wallpaper
+- Added water, grassy dirt and stone ground tiles
+- Added large glass windows and a large glass door
+- Added skill books for every skill in the game
+- Added businessperson, retail worker, doctor, and scientist daily tasks
+- Added required promotion skills for primary school students
+- Added icons for jobs
+- Added the ability to disable newspaper deliveries at mailboxes
+- Added a keybind to change wall modes
+
+Improvements
+- Extended the map with a house by Macy and a household by Vortis
+- Adjusted death emotions to be less severe for acquaintances
+- Adjusted the introvert personality to get less overstimulated less quickly
+- Slightly rebalanced energy and entertainment need gain
+- Made higher job levels require higher amounts of performance to be promoted again
+- Expanded the color palette for sofas and some wallpapers
+- Made lot boundaries display with proper depth related to objects intersecting them
+- Improved rendering performance by drawing some objects in a static batch, rather than every frame
+- Order keybind menu by name
+- Display a notification when a lot can't be imported due to an error
+- Display portraits of people who are out of town as slightly transparent
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed an exception when trying to load mail from disk
+- Fixed being unable to put the homework book away
+- Fixed a rare exception when creating a painting
+- Fixed undo/redo hints not displaying in keyboard mode
+- Fixed various objects still executing an in-world action when in the household storage
+- Fixed a rare exception when a Tiny tries to pick up an object that has been removed
+- Fixed visitors not going home properly after being out of town sometimes
+- Fixed an exception when trying to make fun of people who don't have a job
+- Fixed an incomplete options file causing the game to crash on startup
+- Fixed border tiles not being added to the static sprite batch properly, causing rendering issues
+- Fixed an exception when trying to take an object from the fridge that has already been removed
+- Fixed keyboard camera movement not allowing diagonal movement
+- Fixed the feedback form not working when the log file is large and a lot of info has been input
+- Fixed the job tab displaying a dollar sign in addition to the tiny bucks sign
+- Fixed the ability to place walls without enough money
+
+API
+- Allow furniture to specify whether it should fit in an object spot or not
+- The game version that a save was saved with is now stored

web/_posts/0.26.0/2022-10-18-0.26.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,78 @@
+---
+title: "0.26.0: Lights, Camera, Music"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/441031/0260-lights-camera-music"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6319138589415905559"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! We've been busy recently working on a lot of things that won't be released for a while, so this update is a little smaller. Nevertheless, it still adds some cool features, and finally introduces music into the game, courtesy of our lovely musician [Leiss](https://leiss.bandcamp.com)!
+
+# Lights, Camera, Music
+Except for sounds and the lovely, ambient forest soundscapes, Tiny Life has been all but silent, which was especially noticeable in build mode and the character creator. Well, not anymore! Our lovely musician [Leiss](https://leiss.bandcamp.com) has been working on Tiny Life's Soundtrack for a long while now, and she's been posting updates and sneak peeks about it on [her Twitter](https://twitter.com/leissMusic/status/1581418663814795264) occasionally.
+
+Now, the music that we added into the game so far is not the full extent of the soundtrack. There are still a lot more songs to come!
+
+By default, there will be music playing in the game's main menu, the character creator, the household selection, and build mode. If you want there to be music while controlling your Tinies, too, you can tick this little box in the options menu's sounds & music section.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_RFyQB1fwLj.png)
+
+# Feeling Outdoorsy
+There's a new personality type in this update as well: The Outdoorsy personality! The in-game description reads as follows:
+
+> A Tiny who is outdoorsy just can't get enough of the outdoors. They feel better while they're outside, especially when visiting parks, and they might start feeling a little cooped up if they're inside for too long.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_nbG6UdiIco.png)
+
+Along with this, we've also been making an effort to add some more personality-based actions into the game, especially in the social category. There are now additional actions for the charisma, writing and humor skills, which allow for higher success rates and friendship or romance gains at higher skill levels.
+
+# Some UI Polish
+The household and lot import and exports menus have gotten a bit of a makeover in preparation for the game's Early Access release next year. The release will ship with Steam Workshop support, which is currently in very active development, and so we've decided to clean up the menus involved a little bit.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_OpWT731XRI.png)
+
+While you'll be getting these menu improvements in this update, please note that Steam Workshop support is not publicly released yet, and won't be publicly released until the game's official Early Access release.
+
+# Cool Clothes
+Last but not least, we added two new clothing items into the game: Headscarves!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_7tyLCGLOer.png)
+
+While the looks and feels of these headscarves are heavily inspired by hijabs, they're able (and supposed) to be worn by anyone who likes having their head and/or hair covered for any reason! You can find them in the Head Accessories category of the character creator.
+
+In the future, we plan on adding a lot more clothing items that celebrate the styles and items of various cultures, including some of the player suggestions we collected a while ago [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame/status/1559556652344426496). Please don't hesitate to [give feedback](https://tinylifegame.com/feedback) on the items we add, especially ones that you regularly wear or know more about, since it's important to us to get these items right.
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As you're probably used to by now, here's a copy of the full changelog for your perusal. You can view this changelog from the game's main menu's bottom right corner, as well.
+
+Additions
+- Added the first of many of [Leiss](https://leiss.bandcamp.com)'s songs for the Tiny Life Soundtrack
+- Added the outdoorsy personality type
+- Added two headscarves
+- Added some more skill-related socials
+
+Improvements
+- Improved custom content import menus
+- Automatically update import menu content if underlying files change
+- Change a lot's name to the imported lot's name when importing
+- Ask for a name when exporting a lot or a household
+- Children without a complete household are now added to the adoption pool instead of being exported
+- Made choice prompts also be influenced by a Tiny's skills
+- Hide small updates in the main menu's changelog panel by default
+- Made the old computer a bit more square looking
+- Cooking shows will now have a chance to yield the baking skill in addition to the cooking skill
+- Made Tinies meet and gain friendship with their coworkers while they're both at work
+- Mark visually held items (like sponges and spanners) as fake so they don't inhibit action queueing
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed diagonal keyboard camera movement being too fast
+- Fixed failed undo/redo attempts crashing the game
+- Fixed a crash when getting up out of bed after a Tiny's outfits have been edited
+- Fixed a crash when a modded personality type was removed since the last session
+- Fixed an ignored exception when exiting the character creator
+- Fixed the mouse cursor still activating the UI while it was hidden
+- Fixed Admire being called Admirar (for some reason)
+- Fixed food item effects not being applied if the eat action is not completed fully
+- Fixed a crash when multiple emotion modifiers run out at the same time
+
+API
+- Added a clothes compatibility system to allow for certain clothes to be automatically removed if others are selected
+- Added Ben.Demystifier to make stack traces more legible

web/_posts/0.27.0/2022-11-12-0.27.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.27.0: Trashy Techie Library"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/450800/0270-trashy-techie-library"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/5453324100721557422"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! It's that time again where we share a lovely little update that we made for you all. We're still working hard on secret release features in the background, so this is another somewhat smaller update. It's still very nice, though, so get ready for some neat stuff.
+
+# The Library
+Libraries have been one of the most requested lot-related feature so far. I guess there's just something about us nerds wanting a cozy place to hang out. So now you have one!
+
+Not only have we added the library lot type, which features a librarian staff position, but we've also added a beautiful library lot created by [Vortis](https://steamcommunity.com/id/vortis95/), who has previously created some lovely lots and households for the game.
+
+![](22-11-12_13-06-55.png)
+
+![](22-11-12_13-07-01.png)
+
+Part of the cute interior, as eagle-eyed players might have already spotted, are two new furniture items: A bookshelf that is double-sided (i.e. open on the back), allowing for it to be placed in the middle of a room, as well as a cute book cart that also doubles as a bookshelf interactable.
+
+There's also a librarian position for each library, with the default one for Maple Plains City being filled by the lovely Barbara Bookerson, who likes to go by Barb. While Barb is at work, you can ask a few questions about books to get your Tiny excited about them.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_1inmF0FJ4o.png)
+
+While you're not interacting with them, librarians will simply idle around the library and walk from bookshelf to bookshelf, inspecting the books they have stocked.
+
+# The Trash
+Listen, we could make a lot of jokes about Tiny Life and trash here. But instead, we're going to make some proclamations: Trash is gross! Trash cans are too far away! Having to go outside to throw something away is a hassle!
+
+Let's fix all that. Indoor trash cans!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_iUsHTNZ6v0.png)
+
+These trash cans will fill up similarly to the existing outdoor trash cans, with the difference being that the trash collector doesn't come and empty them for you. You have to take the trash out yourself. Doing so will cause your Tiny to deposit it in the nearest outdoor trash can, where the trash collector *will* eventually come to pick it up. Keeping this in mind, it's a good idea to keep your lot's trash can in an accessible location, and not behind any locked doors.
+
+Oh, also, you're now *required* to have a trash can on your residential lots. Once you first enter build mode after installing this update, you'll be forced to place one before you're allowed to exit again. Sorry, it's city policy!
+
+# The Techies
+This devlog already called you a nerd earlier, so we don't think it's too unreasonable to call you one again. Of course, we do this very lovingly; we're all nerds here, right?
+
+If you're a very specific kind of nerd, you can now share that truth with your Tinies by giving them the new Techie personality type.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_bTK2RIBGqF.png)
+
+This personality causes Tinies to enjoy using tech, including TVs and computers, but they'll also get quite cranky if they've been away from their computer for a while. Isn't that a mood?
+
+There's also some excellent insults that Techie Tinies can use. Not that we encourage insulting people or anything. We're just very proud of the jokes.
+
+# The Full Changelog
+That's pretty much it! As we said, it's a bit of a smaller update again this time around, but we're really gearing up for releasing the game into Steam Early Access early-ish next year, so there's a lot of stuff going on in the background that we're not sharing with you all yet.
+
+Anyway, here's this update's full changelog, as always, for your enjoyment!
+
+Additions
+- Added a double-sided bookshelf, a book cart, a small indoor trash can, an outdoor wheelie bin, a vertical planter box, and a simple nightstand
+- Added a library lot type with a librarian Tiny, as well as the Maple Plains Library by Vortis
+- Added the techie personality type
+- Added the ability to take out the trash from indoor trash cans
+- Added a lot more emote images
+- Added the ability to short-press the right mouse button to rotate objects
+
+Improvements
+- Display particles when children are playing in the sandbox
+- Display smoke particles when someone is angry
+- Display particles when using a sink
+- Display an "Are You Sure" panel when changing lot types if there's staff on the lot
+- Made roofs have a maximum size so that they don't cause issues on big lots
+- Made some food types more friendly to other diets
+- Slightly improved the espresso machine's steam wand texture
+- Children now gain skills at school based on an internal schedule
+- Force residential lots to have outdoor trash cans on them (they have to be added upon first entering build mode after this update)
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed skill books giving skill points while still walking with the book
+- Fixed an exception when a food item gets removed while someone is eating it
+- Fixed being able to attempt to kiss strangers
+- Fixed households not being removed properly when everyone dies, causing issues later on
+- Fixed some ground items (like books and gravestones) being non-walkable, causing Tinies to get stuck
+- Fixed some static objects not being drawn properly after the map is updated to a new version
+- Fixed a possible stall when a map is updated with custom lots present
+
+API
+- Added the ability to specify clothes depths based on the layer
+- Archive projects instead of fully removing them when they don't pay out anymore
+- Removed TypelessAction in favor of allowing normal actions to be typeless

web/_posts/0.28.0/2022-12-20-0.28.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,128 @@
+---
+title: "0.28.0: The Last Beta Update Ever"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/466033/0280-the-last-beta-update-ever"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/5891302324258788947"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! We just released version 0.28.0 of Tiny Life, and with it, a bunch of cool new stuff. This is a pretty big update, and we think that this devlog definitely reflects that.
+
+Be sure to stay tuned until the end, since we also have a pretty big announcement to make!
+
+# 'Tis the Season
+It's winter! Well, on some parts of the earth. It's Christmastime! Well, in some cultures.
+
+We want to celebrate this time, regardless of its cultural and religious ambiguity, because regardless of whether and what you celebrate, it can be a beautiful time to spend with your (chosen or original) family and other loved ones.
+
+To symbolize this aforementioned celebration, we added a cute new furniture piece into the game, which also serves as a light source: the Festive Tree!
+
+![](22-12-20_12-29-40.png)
+
+In addition, we've also added some other furniture items and objects that are pretty cool in our opinion. First, there's a jungle gym (slash climbing frame, whichever term you prefer) now, which is a perfect addition to the sandbox and which allows children to have some additional fun!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_fqZey7PlPr.png)
+
+Second, you can now get relaxed (or up your painting skill as a child or an adult!) using the new coloring book. Coloring books are a great tool for all ages to become relaxed and gain some additional precision staying in those lines.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_idSvyezK8q.png)
+
+Here's Joe trying one out for you.
+
+# I Feel So Many Things
+As part of this update, we added a new personality type and two new emotion types! Along with this, some existing emotion modifiers have also been changed to match the new emotions better. As always, our friend [Jamal Green](https://jamalgreenmusic.com) has created some beautiful sting sound effects for them, which you'll be able to hear in-game.
+
+The two new emotions are Goofy and Confident. The former is especially useful for children and those whose Entertainment needs are a little low. The latter can be very helpful when you're trying to rekindle a relationship (more on that later), because it really helps get those friendship and romance points up.
+
+We also added the Thrifty personality type, which is an idea we recently had that'll help to make build mode more of an active gameplay element for those who enjoy that kind of thing. Households with a thrifty Tiny in them will get random price reductions on items in build mode and the character creator each in-game day. Checking them might be a good idea if you want to save some of those Tiny Bucks.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_2pEsel4zlj.png)
+
+This is also the perfect example to see the Confident emotion in action!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_Y6gCnjsSMP.png)
+
+# A Load of Changes
+Those of you with an older or a slower computer might especially know this feeling: some games load most of their content before their window even opens, and when that takes a little while, you may start to wonder if the game even opened correctly in the first place. Well, we're sorry to admit that Tiny Life used to do this too.
+
+But not anymore! There's now a loading screen when first starting up the game, so you'll know exactly what the game is doing in those first few seconds. Yay!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_ad0LIsl0OQ.png)
+
+# A Crowded Place
+This is a smaller change, but it's one that has a big impact on gameplay: we've increased the default amount of regular visitors that will visit your town occasionally! It used to be set to 15 by default, but we increased it to 25.
+
+Keep in mind that you can always increase this number in the gameplay options to further populate your public spaces like parks, cafés, and libraries. If the game runs out of exported households, it'll start randomly generating new regular visitors instead. When changing this option, keep in mind that the more people run around your world, the more performance intensive Tiny Life will be. Feel free to play around with the option and see what works best for you!
+
+Here's Coffees and Trees Café on an average day with the regular visitor amount set to 100.
+
+![](22-12-15_22-27-59.png)
+
+# Easy Access
+Lastly, we *finally* added an accessibility menu. The game has always had a fair few accessibility-related options, but they were always scattered throughout the options tabs. In addition to adding this new, dedicated menu, we've also added some more accessibility options that should help those of you with vision or movement impairments navigate the game a little better.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_QIKpIOO31J.png)
+
+Of course, please don't hesitate to let us know if there are any more accessibility options you'd like to see in the game.
+
+# The Last Beta Update Ever
+So, this might come as a bit of a shock to some of you, but 0.28 will be the last beta update we ever release. We're not stopping development *by any means*, so please don't worry about that!
+
+Tiny Life is slowly reaching a point where we're confident that it's ready for Steam Early Access, which is a topic we've talked about, and conferred with you the community with, multiple times before. Now, it's finally happening! Tiny Life will release into Steam Early Access with the remaining pre-release [roadmap features](https://tinylifegame.com/roadmap) within the first half of 2023.
+
+Because there are quite a few features on that list left to add, namely pregnancy, babies and marriage, we want to take this remaining time before release to get those features right. Of course, if any major bugs appear before release, 0.28 will get one or more bugfix updates, but there won't be any more content updates before the Early Access release.
+
+We haven't set an exact price yet, but we expect Tiny Life's Early Access price to be somewhere between $10 and $20. Additionally, anyone who has paid for the game [on itch](https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life) will likely receive a free Steam key for the game when it releases. If you want to keep up to date with information about the game's release, you can follow on Twitter, join the Discord, or subscribe to the mailing list. You can find links to all of those places on [the website's social section](https://tinylifegame.com/social).
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As always, here's a copy of the full changelog for your perusal. There's some features in here we haven't talked about in this devlog, so definitely check this one out!
+
+Additions
+- Added jungle gym, coloring book, and festive tree objects
+- Added the thrifty personality
+- Added goofy and confident emotions
+- Added the perfect painter life goal
+- Added an accessibility menu with some new options
+- Added the ability to ask someone if they're single
+- Added the ability to cheat, admit to cheating, and possibly be broken up with as a result
+- Added more emotions for existing interactions, such as children seeing adults kiss
+- Added some more painting types to the easel and some more woodworking recipes
+- Added a gym trainer to gym lots that occasionally encourages people who are working out
+- Added some more of Leiss' songs
+- Added a proper loading screen so that the window doesn't stay closed while loading the game
+
+Improvements
+- Made romantic actions less likely to go well if the partner is already dating someone else
+- Also use pixel-based selection for roofs, allowing more intuitive roof selection and removal
+- Improved pathfinding by considering multiple locations for when driving to a goal, which should mitigate unnecessary driving
+- Improved the visuals of the Tiny Bucks logo
+- Improved some AI priorities for certain actions
+- Display a green background for items that are cheaper in build mode and the character creator
+- Tinies will now try to avoid walking over gravestones and puddles
+- Increased the default and maximum amounts of regular visitors
+- Made it less likely for randomly generated people to wear helmets for their daily outfits
+- Introduced some memory and CPU usage improvements
+- Made held items swing less wildly during the walking animation
+- Display a warning when a lot employment has to be removed due to a lot import
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed an incorrect border when drawing auto-tiles next to concrete
+- Fixed the "Toggle All Lights in Room" action being available for lights that are outside
+- Fixed people who are out of town still displaying particles
+- Fixed homework books getting stuck on the ground if the action fails early
+- Fixed some z-fighting issues with objects on desks, as well as hanging lamps
+- Fixed the game sometimes staying open in the background after being closed
+- Fixed the incorrect emotions being added when friends and family members die
+- Fixed people being able to cross double doors diagonally
+- Fixed paintings contributing to the Capable Carpenter life goal
+- Fixed chimney particles being affected by indoor light and hiddenness
+- Fixed lag when pressing the Steam cloud sync button
+- Fixed abandoned vehicles sometimes being left forever
+- Fixed a rare exception when quitting to the main menu while a notification is being displayed
+- Fixed regularly visiting children not having the student job
+- Fixed being able to store others' creations in the household storage
+- Fixed a rare exception when loading a skill book action from disk
+- Fixed a rare exception when closing the move tool while an item is on the cursor
+
+API
+- Improved the ActionBehavior pattern by merging MultiActionBehavior
+- Added the ability to add custom data to relationships
+- Added ActionPriorities cheat that prints every action priority for a person

web/_posts/0.29.0/2023-01-16-0.29.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+---
+title: "0.29.0: Say Hi to the Demo"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/477028/0290-say-hi-to-the-demo"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6132247440463996085"
+---
+
+Today is finally the day you've all been waiting for. Well, okay, it's not *that* day yet. It is, however, the day that we're releasing the official Tiny Life Demo, for free, for everyone, forever!
+
+The Tiny Life Demo will be replacing the public beta both on itch and on Steam for now, as we discussed in our [previous post](https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6132247440450013862) about our plans for the demo. You don't have to read that post if you missed it, though, because we'll be summarizing everything in as much detail as we can here.
+
+The most important thing that we want to say about the public beta is that **you won't be able to download it on itch and Steam anymore**. It also won't be receiving any more updates until the game's official Early Access release a little later this year. Since the Tiny Life Demo doesn't allow playing in Maple Plains City (more on that later in this post), we've decided to still allow players to [download the last version](https://link.tinylifegame.com/beta) of the public beta (0.28.0, specifically) for a little while, so that they can continue playing in their old saves until the Early Access release. When the Early Access version is released, you'll be able to continue playing in your old saves from the demo and the public beta as well, if you like.
+
+Anyway, let's get on with what we have for you today!
+
+# Welcome to Demoville
+Demoville is the first new world that we're adding into Tiny Life after our initial, and still very beloved, Maple Plains City. While the full version of the game will feature both maps on Early Access launch, the Demo will only come with Demoville.
+
+Demoville features some beautiful creations from some of our amazing community members, who have volunteered to work on the world with us. We want to show off the full world here, as well as the community-created lots, as we think they deserve some extra spotlight.
+
+Here's all of demoville, first and foremost.
+
+![](23-01-16_11-27-35.png)
+
+This beautiful house (that is inhabited by the Nicholson household) was created by [CringePotato](https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198086827058).
+
+![](23-01-16_11-28-00.png)
+
+This is Bluebird Café, which a lot of Tinies will frequent, maybe even including you! It was created by [8dat](https://www.tumblr.com/8dat), who also created its barista, Liam Lungo.
+
+![](23-01-16_11-28-09.png)
+
+And lastly, this is Demoville Square 2, which is a small starter home that you can move into when starting a new save if you don't feel like building your own house. It was built by [DonZekane](https://twitter.com/DonZekane).
+
+![](23-01-16_11-28-28.png)
+
+# A Demoville Native
+Along with Demoville, we're also introducing a new life goal to the game that'll **only be available in the demo**. The cool thing about that is that the reward personality, City Dweller, will persist with your Demo tinies if you decide to move into the full game with them.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_BJcVYZP0pn.png)
+
+As you can see, all of the other life goals are unavailable in the demo - more on that now.
+
+# What the Demo Has
+As you might be able to tell from the screenshot above, the life goals menu looks a little lackluster compared to what you're used to from the public beta.
+
+As discussed in our previously mentioned announcement, the demo will feature most of the game's regular content, with a few caveats that are meant to incentivize buying the full game if you're enjoying the demo enough to warrant spending money on Tiny Life. Here's a brief summary of what those differences are:
+
+- The demo only features one world, Demoville.
+- The demo does not feature any of the build mode and character creator items from the three Sets that the game has, or any future Sets that will be added to the game after the Early Access release. For those of you who aren't in the loop, Sets are groups of themed content whose art was created by a member of the community. The sets currently in the game are the Woodlands Set, the Familiar Attire Set, and the Fitness Set. The Early Access version will ship with all current and future Sets included *without any additional downloads or payments necessary*.
+- The demo only features one (demo-exlucsive) life goal, Exploring Demoville.
+- The demo does not allow importing or exporting any custom content or mods, and it does not allow editing Demoville outside of existing lots.
+
+As previously mentioned, once the game's Early Access release is out, you'll be able to **continue demo save games in the full release**, or export households and lots from your demo save games and move them into Maple Plains City or custom maps.
+
+We've taken care to explicitly state what content is missing from the demo in-game in all the places that it is missing from. While playing, look out for these little purple boxes that'll tell you what you can expect when buying the full game.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_9jjYo6VZkz.png)
+
+![](Tiny_Life_0iVTwWQ7Nj.png)
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As with every update, there are a few new features and improvements to existing features as well, but we really wanted to use this post to highlight the content that is specific to the Tiny Life Demo. If you want to know more about what changed since the last public beta version, though, here's the full changelog that contains all of the info you need!
+
+Additions
+- Added the Demoville world, including its community-made lots and households
+- Added the Exploring Demoville life goal to the demo
+- Added a default long hairstyle for children
+- Added a progress arrow display to skills, relationships, job performance and needs
+- Added the ability to clean out all of a fridge's empty or expired items
+- Added the ability to view a lot's opening hours by hovering over the café sign furniture item
+
+Improvements
+- Made TVs play sounds when they're on
+- Improved performance when first drawing a map's static objects
+- Render with anti-aliasing on low zoom levels to create a mipmap-style effect
+- Made cafés require a food display case
+- Don't draw room content that isn't visible, improving performance on maps with houses that have a lot of rooms
+- Made it much more likely for people to go home when their needs are low
+- Preload emotion sting sound effects to mitigate lag when the first one is played
+- Improved the way a skill's max level looks
+- Enable gamepad repeats to allow holding buttons to press them multiple times
+- Made food in the fridge last much longer
+- Allow children to order food from cafés
+- Hide clothes occasions that were unused
+- Added a maximum amount of money for a household to have
+- Made it a bit more likely for choice prompts to be successful
+- Display a tooltip when there's not enough money to copy an outfit
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed various crashes when loading save files with missing objects or clothes
+- Fixed the tile tool not drawing previews properly in some locations
+- Fixed a crash when importing a lot that was exported on a bigger map
+- Fixed tiles not being visible when using the lot movement tool
+- Fixed a texture region bleeding issue on chairs
+- Fixed an exception when trying to talk to someone who is at the border of the map
+- Fixed keybind names being moved into multiple lines even though they have enough space
+- Fixed lighting causing artifacts on some older graphics cards
+- Fixed color selection in the character creator not working correctly with a gamepad
+- Fixed no elements being selected after switching a person's age using a gamepad
+- Fixed cakes with candles being able to be put into the fridge
+- Fixed long life goal titles going under the abandon button
+- Fixed a crash when a duplicate object is added to a map and the map is loaded

web/_posts/0.30.0/2023-03-31-0.33.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,120 @@
+---
+title: "0.30.0: Big Steps Towards Release"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/510006/0300-big-steps-towards-release"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/6492542378896226821"
+---
+
+Hi, cool people! Since the last demo update, Tiny Life has gone through Steam Next Fest, Plumbella's amazing video, and PAX East, the latter of which ended just a few days ago. This whole journey has been a blast, and if you missed any of it, you can check out the other devlogs for more information!
+
+Now, though, we'd like to introduce you to a cool new update for the demo, which also has a lot of backend changes in preparation for the Early Access release. This is the first update since 0.29.0 that actually includes these backend changes, which have been in development for quite a while now. Because of these changes, there might be more issues with existing interactions than you're used to, so please stay tuned for bug fix updates and report anything you find on the [bug report form](https://tinylifegame.com/bugreport).
+
+Now let's get into the changes!
+
+# Some new stuff to place
+We added a few new cute bits and bobs! This includes these cat tails and lily pads. The lily pads come in two variations: one with and one without the flower on top. The cat tails come in two variations as well: a dense and a sparse version. While lily pads can only be placed on water, cat tails can be placed anywhere!
+
+![](23-03-19_13-23-37.png)
+
+The lily pads also bob up and down in play mode, which is pretty cute.
+
+We also added a new flat roof type that matches the already existing sheet metal roof. We also added the ability to rotate flat roofs, so that you can have your sheet metal laid out the way you want!
+
+![](23-03-23_19-48-03.png)
+
+# Quali-tea
+You can now make tea! This might seem like a bit of a random feature, but we've had coffee in the game for a while now, so it only seemed fair to have the ability to drink tea as well!
+
+To make tea, you can buy a Tea Kit in build mode, place it down and get to work! The tea kit includes a cute little kettle, as well as some boxes of tea bags. There are plenty of teas to choose from, and the better your cooking skill is, the more you're able to make!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_tLJgYt0BxM.png)
+
+![](Tiny_Life_14zSHQWjUU.png)
+
+A feature we haven't implemented yet is the ability to order tea in cafés. This feature will be included in the near future, so don't worry about being unable to get your daily fix!
+
+# Localization updates
+Everyone has been doing a ton of work on the game's localization, including updates to the German and Spanish versions, but also the inclusion of two new languages:
+
+- French, by [YenSide](https://instagram.com/candice_mlng)
+- Polish, by [HugBeast](https://www.instagram.com/hugbeast00), Kalme and [TeaMaki](https://www.fiverr.com/ioderuntcapulus)
+
+Thanks so much to these awesome community members for helping out! If you're also interested in contributing localizations, please check out the [documentation article](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/articles/localization.html)!
+
+# Many small improvements
+We made a lot of small improvements to the game since 0.29.0, including the previously discussed backend changes. Here are some of the more notable ones that we felt important to include, many of them based on yall's feedback.
+
+We rebalanced the friendship and romance gains of almost every social action, doubling their effectiveness. This is based on some feedback that a lot of you had, pointing out that it was very difficult and time-intensive to make new friends.
+
+You can now set initial friendship and romance values in the character creator! A lot of people were requesting this feature, and we always pointed them to the [cheats](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/articles/cheats.html) that you can also do this with. You can still use cheats for more fine-grained control of initial relationship values, but you can now decide what relationship your Tinies should have in the character creator too!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_nfTXDRchwa.png)
+
+The build mode grid is now displayed on the entire lot! When introducing the grid, we were originally planning on this, but didn't end up including it because of technical limitations with the way the grid was being rendered. A ton of people requested this, though, so here it is now!
+
+![](23-03-31_12-32-15.png)
+
+You can also help kids with homework now! This is part of a new system we've been implementing for the babies we've been working on. Kids can request help with homework by selecting an adult Tiny, and adult Tinies can offer to help kids with homework by selecting them. Getting help with homework increases the speed that homework is done at and the speed that homework skills are gained with, and it also increases the relationship between the two people!
+
+# Preview versions
+Eagle-eyed players will already have noticed that we released two preview versions of the 0.30.0 update in the last few days! This is a new system we've been trying out that allows us to test upcoming versions easily, while still allowing players to revert to the original, more stable version. From 0.30.0 on, you'll be notified in the bottom-right corner of the main menu if a new preview version is available. The notification for new full versions is still available, as well, but it now also has an icon to be able to easily differentiate between the two.
+
+For more info on preview versions, you can check out [this documentation article](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/articles/preview.html) about them.
+
+![](Tiny_Life_aiUbUx6EH9.png)
+
+![](Tiny_Life_BdhIjIbpG3.png)
+
+# The full changelog
+As we said at the top, a lot changed in this update. Way more than we can cover in a devlog! So here's the full changelog, as always, for your enjoyment.
+
+Additions
+- Added a few more decorative objects, including two lamps, cattails and lily pads
+- Added a flat sheet metal roof
+- Added the ability to set initial relationship data in the character creator
+- Added a tea maker and various types of tea
+- Added the ability for children to ask for help with their homework
+- Added the ability to move to a different lot in play mode
+- Added the ability to ask people about their jobs
+- Added polish localization by [HugBeast](https://www.instagram.com/hugbeast00), Kalme and [TeaMaki](https://www.fiverr.com/ioderuntcapulus)
+- Added french localization by [YenSide](https://instagram.com/candice_mlng)
+
+Improvements
+- Cause links to be opened in the Steam overlay on Steam Deck
+- Improved social action pathfinding, causing people to stop less
+- Allow changing the cursor size in the accessibility options
+- Made people much more likely to eat the food they cooked immediately
+- Display a popup with info on how to add additional tinies when first pressing the Done button in the character creator
+- Headscarves will now hide a Tiny's hair rather than entirely removing it
+- Deflate save files to decrease their size
+- Tinies with a partner will now try to sleep in a double bed that their partner has claimed a side of
+- Replace the "Alternate Number Keys" option with keybinds for switching between Play Mode tabs (which default to Q and E)
+- Allow rotating flat roofs
+- Rebalance the amount of frienship and romance gain that actions give
+- Massively reduce the markup of custom paintings
+- Draw the build mode grid on the entire lot, rather than just in rooms
+- Allow navigating the interaction menu's pages with the shoulder buttons when using a gamepad
+- Randomly add items to trash cans at midnight occasionally to allow for special rummaging finds
+- Made food quality and saturation not influence eating speed, but hunger need restoration speed
+- Increase the friendship gain from random interactions with coworkers at work
+- Improved the look and layout of update notifications in the main menu
+- Made grilled cheese vegan-friendly
+- Updated from .NET 6 to .NET 7
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed people being able to steal held items from other people
+- Fixed big objects not being selected properly near section boundaries
+- Fixed "This is Inappropriate" action not having a properly localized string
+- Fixed maki rolls looking awful
+- Fixed forced actions sometimes being able to exceed the action queue's length limit
+- Fixed macros like keybinds not displaying properly on the loading screen's hints
+- Fixed some default couples not having had their first kisses yet
+- Fixed a rare crash when resizing the window while in a loading screen
+- Fixed techie tinies being unable to play video games when they're sad
+- Fixed the Ask if Single notification having the wrong order
+- Fixed out-of-town actions failing if there's an item on the ground near the map border
+- Fixed some actions claiming a required object is missing when the Tiny is too far away
+- Fixed being unable to close the Life Goal menu if all life goals are completed when using a controller
+- Fixed Tinies watching TV through walls
+- Fixed a crash when removing a TV that someone is currently watching
+- Fixed Tinies using the toilet and washing their hands while holding an item
+- Fixed some more issues with transitive genealogy calculations

web/_posts/2021-06-05-0.11.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+title: "0.11.0: More Actions, More Skills, More Personalities, More Pride!"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/260838/0110-more-actions-more-skills-more-personalities-more-pride"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3028088035178415265"
+---
+
+It's that time again where Ellpeck lets Tiny Life run for hours in the background to see if there are any major issues, like crashes or people being unable to take care of themselves on their own. This time around, it turned out that there were quite a few of these issues, all of which have (in theory) been fixed. Yay!
+
+This update introduces quite a few miscellaneous things that, put together, create quite the lovely content update for the game. If you just want the juicy details in short, the full changelog can be found at the bottom of this post, or in the game's main menu on the bottom right.
+
+First off, I'd like to wish each and every one of you a happy Pride! As a gay person with a pansexual boyfriend, it's important to me to get LGBTQ+ things right, which is something you might've been able to notice in the game so far. For example: There is no gender in the game, and there won't ever be gender in the game, either. Once pregnancy and children get introduced into the game, you'll naturally be able to select what reproductive abilities each person has, but it won't be bound to gender at all. More to the point of this update, though: I added some Pride flags into the game as wall decorations to celebrate the season! These flags can be hung up and admired, causing people to, occasionally, feel inspired to create some art of their own.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzYxMzI2NjIucG5n/original/svbgOL.png)
+
+Sadly, I was unable to introduce every single Pride flag into the game, for two reasons: One, there's just so many. Two, after talking to an LGBTQ+ flag expert friend I have, there are some issues with the creators of some of the more notable flags that caused controversy a while ago, and so I have decided to omit those flags from the game. However, you'll be able to admire seven different flag designs that should span the basic breadth of the community.
+
+Next up (for everyone who hasn't left yet), there are some fun new personality types in this update. I won't go over them in the greatest of detail, but I'll quickly list them off here, as  most of them are not really that screenshot-worthy, to be honest.
+
+- The Thinker personality: A thinker is someone who is obsessed with logical skills like programming and repair, and occasionally experiences sudden bursts of focus. Long amounts of time without anything to think about can make them uncomfortable.
+- The Introverted personality (which feels very close to my heart, personally): An introverted person doesn't seek out social interaction as much as everyone else. When being social for too long, introverts become uncomfortable quickly.
+- The Extroverted personality: An extroverted person loves social interaction and will seek it out more than other people. When not being social enough, extroverts can get sad.
+
+Additionally, this update features the addition of a lot of new social interactions, most of which are "gated" behind certain emotions and personality type compatibilities. Here are just a few of them:
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzYxMzI2OTYucG5n/original/764YMF.png)
+
+There are now doors in the game, along with the ability to lock said doors. Currently, they can only be locked for certain categories of people, but in the future, I plan on adding the ability to lock and unlock doors for certain, specific people as well.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzYxMzI3MDcucG5n/original/UHYqC9.png)
+
+The last notable (and screenshottable) addition is the introduction of another fairly in-depth skill: The Gaming skill! People can play singleplayer and online games, watch walkthroughs and even take part in gaming tournaments, which allows them to win a little bit of money if they're good enough.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzYxMzI3MjIucG5n/original/0oRE2p.png)
+
+As always, here's the full changelog for your enjoyment. It's a pretty long one this time around.
+
+- Added a lot more social actions in various categories
+- Added Introverted, Extroverted and Thinker personality types
+- Added a Gaming skill and associated actions
+- Added an Angry emotion
+- Added doors, and the ability to lock them
+- Added several LGBT flags as wall decorations
+- Added multiple TV stations which each have their own effects
+- Added Brazillian Portuguese localization (PinguinAnimation)
+- Added a Credits menu
+- Added the ability for people to put items on the ground
+- Made using the same social actions over and over get boring
+- Made people hold a mop when mopping floors
+- Made people display emotes when waking someone up
+- Made people's current emotions be displayed under their portrait
+- Replaced all frames on new saves with doors
+- Slightly rebalanced Writing royalties
+- Fixed people making group meals too often
+- Fixed people using objects in different rooms if they're technically closer
+- Fixed people cleaning up in-progress food automatically
+- Fixed being unable to move objects if the furniture storage contains furniture
+- Fixed people getting up from chairs for one frame inbetween actions
+- Fixed smelly particles appearing below objects
+- Fixed hair changing colors when selecting a different hairstyle
+- Fixed multiple invalid game states which could cause crashes

web/_posts/2021-06-17-0.12.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+---
+title: "0.12.0: The Fitness Set"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/264773/0120-the-fitness-set"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2990934608186477339"
+---
+
+Today marks the day that the first official set for Tiny Life is released. Now, you may be asking yourself: What is a set? How does it work? When did you become Electronic Arts? And how much money do I have to pay? And the simple answers are: A very cool thing, by downloading the update, I didn't, no money at all!
+
+To sum up what sets are going to be, and what the first set is, have this lovely screenshot that explains it very well:
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzYyOTI4MTUucG5n/original/QtKIie.png)
+
+With the first set comes a large amount of new content. Not only is there tons of new furniture and clothing items, there is also a whole new skill and gameplay element: Working out! To get a good overview of the new stuff, check out this neat trailer I made:
+
+<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e86RRKPNLv0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+
+As stated several times already now, the art for this first set was created by Tector, who is a very lovely artist that I am excited to have been able to work with. He did some awesome work creating these items, and he helped me come up with some additional mechanics for the set. The whole process was a back and forth of ideas and suggestions, really, and I am very grateful that it all turned out so lovely. If you want to see more of Tector's art, check out his [Instagram page](https://www.instagram.com/tector_pixel/).
+
+Along with the fitness set, there are some more fun changes and improvements to the game. The most notable one of these is the addition of two new properties that a person can have: Asexuality and aromance. As I discussed in the last post, being part of the LGBTQ+ community also means that it is very important to me to represent it properly, and asexuality and aromance are a very big part of that.
+
+Here's a quick rundown of what these two properties do. Since the relationship system is fairly simple in general right now, these two properties are also fairly straightforward:
+
+- Asexuality causes a person not to engage autonomously in sexual interactions (fooling around etc.), but you can still invoke them manually. They decline sexual actions more often, and everything that would usually make people Frisky makes an asexual person just happy.
+- Aromance causes a person not to have a romance meter for anyone. Romantic interactions and romantic relationships are still possible, but their chance of success and their outcome only relate to the friendship meter. A non-aromantic partner's behavior remains unchanged.
+
+If you want to add either one of these properties to an existing person, you can do so by pressing the F1 key to open up a cheat console, and then typing "EditPerson" to open the character creator with all features enabled.
+
+As always, here's a copy of the full changelog for your enjoyment:
+
+- Added the Fitness Set, with art by Tector, which includes a fitness skill and several new furniture and clothing items:
+  - Five new hairstyles
+  - One new pair of pants and shoes
+  - Three new tops
+  - 11 new furniture items, including a treadmill, a standing desk, a protein shaker and some decorative items
+- Added aromance and asexuality, both of which can be set in the character creator
+- Added two additional windows and one additional door
+- Added an outfit system that allows you to create multiple outfits for a person and switch between them anywhere
+- Made social actions less likely to be executed by the AI if they've been done recently
+- Made people mop more puddles after mopping a puddle automatically
+- Made people more likely to do the dishes, so that they actually do the dishes
+- Fixed a few memory leaks that caused more RAM to be used the more saves were loaded/exited in one session
+- Improved map rendering performance
+- Fixed some visual inconsistencies with the in-game ui
+- Fixed held items being on a lower layer, causing them to look incorrect
+- Fixed negative social actions taking away from relationships too little
+- Fixed the ability to place ground objects on other ground objects
+- Fixed the position of the coffee table being slightly off in one rotation
+- Fixed covered tiles not being included in a lot's covered area
+- Fixed people going to weird locations when visiting non-residential lots

web/_posts/2021-07-06-0.13.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+---
+title: "0.13.0: Camera Rotation and a Larger Map!"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/271199/0130-camera-rotation-and-a-larger-map"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2967291343236374275"
+---
+
+A very exciting update for Tiny Life is dropping today: 0.13.0 adds camera rotation and a pretty major upgrade of the game's map! Check out the screenshots, explanations and additional features in this post!
+
+Before we start, though: I recently realized that you can rate the game on itch, which apparently helps with visibility and the like. If you've already played the game, and you enjoyed it, and you have an itch account, it would be great if you could do so! All you have to do is go to the game's [itch page](https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life) and press "Rate Game" in the top right. Thanks!
+
+# Camera rotation
+
+Now to the exciting part, and the one that a lot of yall have been waiting for: Camera rotation! You can now rotate the camera in the game using the C key to rotate clockwise and Shift + C to rotate counter-clockwise. You can also use the little rotate buttons in the top right of your screen as well. Here's a cool preview from an in-dev version that shows camera rotation in action:
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3NTEuZ2lm/original/4XvBWp.gif)
+
+Additionally, if you're interested, here are some fun in-depth pictures from when I was still working on making everything compatible with camera rotation. It turns out that, while you can just literally move and rotate the camera in a 3D game, it's a lot harder in isometric 2D because just rotating the camera would make all of the objects look skewed and absolutely terrible. So this took me quite a while to get working, but it was definitely worth it in the end!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3NTMucG5n/original/N6P%2Ftf.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3NTUucG5n/original/jEdjiv.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3NTgucG5n/original/5VQRGW.png)
+
+During development, there were also some much more cursed pictures to be taken, of broken roofs, rotated walls and backwards-walking people. But I thought I'd better spare everyone, especially future me.
+
+# The map update
+
+An exciting addition in this version is the addition of a second area on the map. This new area is supposed to look a little more commercial and/or city-like, and so it has a lot more lots that are all a lot closer together. Along with this larger map, you get two new lots: A new park and a new house, the latter of which is inhabited by the one and only Tom Tannenbaum.
+
+Enjoy these pictures! I should note, though, that the first one is an in-development screenshot that doesn't feature the park and new residential house yet. If you want to see the park, you'll just have to boot up the game yourself!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3ODMucG5n/original/1wx9B5.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3ODQucG5n/original/6YS08K.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI3ODUucG5n/original/aYSZEM.png)
+
+# The logo
+
+Oh, also, before I forget to mention this: It's pretty obvious, but the game finally has a proper logo now! This awesome logo was created by the lovely [Tector](https://www.instagram.com/tector_pixel/), who previously worked on the Fitness set with me.
+
+We debated a lot about the design of the logo, but I think this final version represents the game's fun and light-hearted aesthetic and gameplay very well.
+
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY0NDI4MDQucG5n/original/Th9Ent.png)
+
+# The full changelog
+
+As always, here's a copy of the full changelog for your enjoyment. Of course, you can also look at this changelog in the game's main menu.
+
+```
+Additions
+- Added camera rotation, which can be used using the C key or the rotation buttons in the top right
+- Added a new, more commercial-looking area to the game's map that currently features a park and a new resident
+- Added Steam cloud syncing when playing while Steam is open
+- Added some more social actions, especially ones related to emotions and skill levels
+- Added a proper logo to the game, created by Tector
+- Added getting water and washing your hands at sinks
+
+Improvements
+- Improved action navigation by adding pages to the ring menu
+- Added some more plant and wood color schemes
+- Added an "are you sure" screen for map employment changes
+- Made objects be worth less when sold after being used
+- Improved the roofing tool by displaying what's going on
+- Made people a little less fast when feeling energetic
+- Handle more action-related issues gracefully by displaying a notification about them
+- Improved the options menu by adding tabs to it
+- Made all emotion modifiers have higher values by default to allow for more nuanced emotions
+- Improved rendering performance
+- Added more info about the progress of map loading to the loading screen
+- Added food preview icons to the food creation menu
+- Made people display emotes while practicing speech or jokes
+- Order stuff in the buy menu ascending by price
+- Added some error handling for loading broken save games
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed a crash if asexual people tried to start new relationships
+- Fixed a crash when modded furniture is removed from the world
+- Fixed people being able to "go here" into walls
+- Fixed some furniture items always reverting to their default colors when loading a save
+- Fixed people being able to place wall-hanging items like paintings on the ground
+- Fixed placing computers on desks (and similar stuff) being difficult
+- Fixed some depth inconsistencies with rugs and wall-hanging objects like paintings
+```

web/_posts/2021-07-15-0.14.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.14.0: Lamps, Lot Movement, Speech Sounds!"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/274082/0140-lamps-lot-movement-speech-sounds"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/4430963222678444595"
+---
+
+It is that time again where we release an update for Tiny Life! This time around, we have some pretty cool stuff that I've been wanting to add for a long while now.
+
+This devlog shows and explains some of the new features, and, as always, you can download this update (or an older version of the game, if you really want) for free on itch or as a demo on Steam.
+
+# Lighting
+The game has had some form of lighting for a long time now: Up until now, rooms were always lit, no matter the time of day, and the outside would gradually become darker and lighter with each passing day. This was nice, of course, but there was always something missing: Lamps!
+
+Well, we have lamps now. Check them out!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY1MTk1MDYucG5n/original/v5iHFd.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY1MTk1MDgucG5n/original/ByE%2FbW.png)
+
+The way these work is pretty straightforward: If a room doesn't have any lamps in it, but *does* have a roof fully covering it, it will be a little darker than the outside world pretty much all the time. However, you can place lamps in the room to light it up permanently!
+
+Additionally, you can tell your people to turn lights on and off, and there are options to toggle an individual light and all lights in a given room. If a person is in an entirely dark room and it happens to be night time, they'll also get a little upset at constantly stubbing their toes on random objects. Fun.
+
+In the future, the game will also feature the ability to change the color of the lights that some lamps emit, but this has not been implemented thus far.
+
+# Overhauled lot movement
+In case you've ever tried to move or rotate a lot in Tiny Life so far, you'll know that it used to be a little very much of a pain. Not only were the buttons to move a lot slow and somewhat unresponsive, the rotation feature also kept deleting the ground because it was terrible.
+
+But now, introducing: The overhauled lot movement tool! Have this fun gif that shows what the new tool can do.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY1MTk1NDEuZ2lm/original/5SKVCZ.gif)
+
+# Speech sounds
+There isn't much I can show as part of a devlog in this regard, since it's literally *entirely* audio-based, and you're reading text right now, but I can explain to you how speech sounds work!
+
+Every time someone used to display an speech bubble, it was implied that they said something related to the emote displayed in it. I actually see a lot of people, both in The Sims games and in videos about Tiny Life, pretending to talk about the things that appeared in the speech bubbles, and it usually ended up turning into a very ridiculous story. Now, people in the game will do that exact thing themselves! Except that they'll do it in a little mumble-y voice of a sound pack that I bought for 9€ on a whim the other day.
+
+I think the mumbling is very fitting for the game, but I also realize that the current sounds are lacking when it comes to variety in speech patterns and voice pitch. You *can* change the pitch of a person's voice in the character creator, but to a very limited degree, and it doesn't allow you to create overly feminine or deep, masculine voices right now. There's definitely more to come in that regard!
+
+# Skill requirements for promotions
+You'll now have to actually be good at your job to get a promotion.
+
+More specifically, you'll have to be a certain level in a certain set of skills (hah) to get a promotion in each job. The skills required *match-ish* the job types they're required for, but as there aren't that many skills in the game right now, perfect matches can't be made yet. As more skills get added into the game, the skill requirements for each job type might be changed or overhauled as a result.
+
+Have this picture, though.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY1MTk1NzIucG5n/original/6shPqH.png)
+
+# Full changelog
+As always, you can check out the full changelog in the bottom right corner of the game's main menu, or right here:
+
+```
+Additions
+- Added dynamic lighting and two lamps, a ceiling and a floor one
+- Added speech sounds and a way to change a person's voice pitch in the character creator
+- Added skill requirements for job promotions
+- Added information to skill levelup notifactions that lists what actions are now unlocked
+- Added an option to increase the overall brightness of the world at night
+- Added an option to hide objects attached to walls and ceilings
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed the ring menu breaking with a single action on the second page
+- Fixed romantic actions displaying for family members if someone is too sad (yikes)
+- Fixed incorrect furniture collisions between wall- and floor-based objects
+- Fixed action prompts having close buttons when not exitable
+- Fixed some visual inconsistencies with particles that are attached to objects
+- Fixed held items being deleted when switching out of the Move tool
+- Fixed corner-based furniture being able to connect incorrectly, especially counters
+- Fixed a wall rendering inconsistency in some camera rotations
+
+Improvements
+- Overhauled the Move Lot tool, allowing for much easier lot movement and rotation
+- Made it likelier for people to pay the bills if their needs are extremely low
+- Improved performance of in-world rendering
+- Require the "Allow AI Important Actions" option to be turned on for people to repair things automatically in the active household
+- Made hints and loading screen info display the current keybind for actions, not the default one
+- Made puddles evaporate and disallowed mopping on natural ground
+- Improved the volume of in-world audio (temporarily, there are still more issues to fix)
+```

web/_posts/2021-07-27-0.15.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.15.0: Barbecue Trash Cleaning"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/277913/0150-barbecue-trash-cleaning"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2968419780808932932"
+---
+
+Hello everyone! A new update for Tiny Life was just released, which means it's time to share some screenshots and explanations with you all.
+
+This update features a **lot** of fixes for long-standing issues, including cars being spawned randomly when a map is loaded, and people looking kind of stuttery when on their way to social actions.
+
+There are some fun new features as well, though!
+
+# Grill at the new park
+I added a lovely new park to the suburban part of the map that features two new furniture pieces: Some barbecues as well as some picnic tables! People can grill various new food items at the barbecue, too.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY2MDU3MjkucG5n/original/L41m%2B2.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY2MDU3MzAucG5n/original/wmReje.png)
+
+# Clean stuff up
+Of course, there have been cleaning interactions in the game for quite a while now, namely cleaning dishes at a sink and mopping puddles. However, since I plan on expanding the cleaning system in the future, there is now a skill that helps you out!
+
+The cleaning skill can be acquired by simply cleaning stuff up as usual, and the higher the skill is, the faster you'll be cleaning stuff up. There are some other perks though:
+- The higher your skill level, the less likely it is to be disgusted by dirty dishes
+- At level 3, mopping puddles will mop a 3x3 area instead of just a single puddle, which is very useful for cleaning up spills from broken objects
+- Getting the skill to the max level allows you to use the Clean Everything interaction
+
+# Watch your language
+There have been a few improvements to Tiny Life's localization over the last few weeks thanks to some dedicated helpers. An Italian translation will be coming soon (probably in the next update, no promises though!), but this update features a Chinese translation thanks to the awesome [Rosareven](https://github.com/rosareven).
+
+Additionally, the Steam store page will now be localized for multiple languages, including German and Chinese, too! The itch page will stay English-only though, since there doesn't seem to be a feature to translate the content of the page.
+
+# More stuff
+As always, there is plenty of stuff in this update that I haven't talked about, most of which isn't necessarily all that talk-about-able. If you're interested in the full changelog, you can view it in the game's main menu or right here:
+
+Additions
+- Added a barbecue and some grillable food items
+- Added a picnic table with attached benches
+- Added a new nature-style park with picnic tables and barbecues to the map
+- Added an outdoor trash can and a Throw Away interaction
+- Added a cleaning skill and some new, related actions
+- Added chinese translation (Rosareven)
+- Added multiple new funny actions
+- Added a few personality-related emotions and actions
+- Added a trash collector global employment which will go around public lots and clean up trash that was left behind
+
+Improvements
+- Made off the grid (ALT) furniture placement pixel-based
+- Improved font smoothing, making small text and tooltips easier to read
+- Made sounds in hidden rooms a lot quieter
+- Made households on the default map know the personality types of their members
+- Don't let people that are hidden from the player starve to death
+- Rebalanced jobs, making them give you less ridiculous amounts of money
+- Made people with global lot employments have slower need decay, stopping the mail deliverer from passing out constantly
+- Made tooltips on invalid actions display instantly
+
+Fixes
+- Walls will now only be removed using the Remove tool when there is a line drawn through them, or when both sides are contained in a rectangle
+- Disallow wall hanging objects from being placed off the grid
+- Fixed paintings on easels being hidden with the Hide Hanging Objects option enabled
+- Fixed people trying to get ingredients to cook when there were no available counters to prepare the food on
+- Fixed people stuttering visually when on their way to social actions
+- Fixed cars being spawned erroneously when the map is loaded

web/_posts/2021-08-30-0.16.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.16.0: Woodlands and Visitors"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/289260/0160-woodlands-and-visitors"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/2949282742498975401"
+---
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM5MzUucG5n/original/k8ChdD.png)
+
+I hope yall are excited, because this is a pretty big update. Not only do we have a ton of new features, we have an entire new Set for you to play around with, with art by the amazing [faellynna](https://www.instagram.com/faellynna/)! Let's check it out in detail.
+
+# The Woodlands Set
+> Decorate your timbered cottage, put on your flannel shirt and get ready to create some wooden furniture of your own!
+
+As its description explains, the woodlands set features a ton of new cottage- and forest-themed furniture, wallpapers, clothes and other items. Additionally, it features a large map expansion with plenty of new lots and a beautiful evergreen forest.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MDYucG5n/original/98V8eH.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MDkucG5n/original/Ypro0%2B.png)
+
+Along with this new area, there are also some beautiful new lots created by [Macy](https://twitter.com/DesertStranded) and the Set's artist [faellynna](https://www.instagram.com/faellynna/).
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MTQucG5n/original/gkTurd.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MTgucG5n/original/mGd%2BQ7.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MTkucG5n/original/iWWCI0.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MjIucG5n/original/CSTP0R.png)
+
+# Woodworking
+Along with the Woodlands Set, a fun new skill has been added that allows people to earn money, as well as decorate their house with beautiful, homemade furniture. The Woodworking skill allows people to craft more and more complex furniture with a higher skill level, and any crafted furniture will give people positive or negative emotion modifiers (based on its quality) when being used.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MjcucG5n/original/1Is0pP.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4MzEuZ2lm/original/W02aKx.gif)
+
+# Regular Visitors
+Another very cool new system is being introduced in this update: The Regular Visitors system! Up until now, everyone that you came across throughout town was someone that also permanently lived in a house there. This meant that, while visiting everyone that you interacted with was possible, the amount of people that could reasonably walk around in town was limited to the amount of lots and people per household.
+
+Not anymore! With the regular visitors system, randomly selected people from the game's default data, as well as your manually exported (or downloaded) households will become regular visitors of your town. They will enter town occasionally from one of the exit roads to visit a public or residential lot, stay around for a while and then go back home at a later point by leaving town again.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzY4NzM4NjMucG5n/original/GPScdr.png)
+
+If you want a regular visitor that you've built an in-depth relationship with to stay in town forever, you can also invite them to move in with you using the new "Ask to Join Household" interaction!
+
+# Ow, It Stings
+Lastly, a fun new sound effect type has been added into the game: Emotion stings! Emotion stings are small sound effects that play whenever the currently selected person's emotion changes, and each emotion has a unique sound effect that matches it.
+
+This system is inspired by the one present in The Sims 4, and the sound effects for Tiny Life's emotion stings have been created by the lovely [Jamal Green](https://jamalgreenmusic.com), who I've previously worked with on one of my other projects. The music he creates is awesome, and the stings are no different.
+
+If, for some reason, you don't like the sting sound effects, you can always disable them in the Audio options menu.
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As always, here's a copy of the full changelog, which you'll also be able to find in the bottom right corner of the game's main menu, as always. There's a lot of improvements and bugfixes in this update, as well, so check it out and you might find some fun secrets in there!
+
+Additions
+- Added the Woodlands Set with art by [faellynna](https://www.instagram.com/faellynna/), which includes a Woodworking skill and a large variety of new build mode items:
+  - 34 new furniture items, including the woodworking table and new types of decorative items
+  - 4 flooring tiles
+  - 5 wallpapers
+  - 2 roof styles
+  - 8 character creator items
+- Added a large new forested area with dirt footpaths to the eastern part of town, along with some new houses and empty lots
+- Added emotion sting sound effects by the lovely [Jamal Green](https://jamalgreenmusic.com)
+- Added a regular visitors system that allows for people from exported households to visit and interact with the town without living there
+- Added a few households that are exported by default to populate the visitors system
+- Added the ability for furniture to get dirty and having to be cleaned
+- Added an "Invite into Household" interaction
+- Added a way to scrap other people's crafts on public lots
+- Added italian translation ([SchiavoAnto](https://twitter.com/schiavoanto))
+
+Improvements
+- Improved the chatting interaction on the computer, now allowing people to chat with specific people
+- Added more in-game hints for various build mode tools
+- Added a configurable keybind for increasing and decreasing game speed
+- Cleaned up the localization of money and always display money amounts with decimals
+- Allow easily deleting items in the move tool by pressing the Del key when hovering over them
+- Split the Import menu into custom and default content and improved the household import menu
+- Move invalidly placed objects into the furniture storage instead of selling them
+- Made people leave the room on their own if they see someone being inappropriate
+- Rebalanced bills slightly
+- Made people tell others to leave the room when they start fooling around
+- Disallow trees from being placed below roofs
+- Made trees have a minimum distance from walls
+- More gracefully handle Steam cloud sync exceptions
+- Color lots on the map based on whether people live there
+- Added the ability to clone roofing, openings, wallpapers and tiles in build mode
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed paintings being placed on easels incorrectly at fast game speeds
+- Fixed a crash when hovering over people with lot employments whose personality is known
+- Fixed 3D sounds breaking on camera rotation
+- Fixed depth calculations being incorrect for larger and oddly-shaped objects
+- Fixed the ability to hack yourself
+- Fixed roofing having incorrect display names
+- Fixed a crash when exiting the move tool with an item from storage selected
+- Fixed hidden (out of town) people still spawning particles and emotes
+- Fixed the ability to ask lot employment people to leave not working
+- Fixed furniture with parents sometimes not being imported correctly
+- Fixed people turning around visually for a single frame when starting social actions while sitting
+- Fixed roofs having incorrect depth calculations in some camera rotations
+- Fixed people not leaving occasionally when being asked to leave
+- Fixed money not being subtracted when importing new households
+- Fixed practice speech and jokes actions going on forever if done automatically

web/_posts/2021-10-14-0.17.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.17.0: Life Goals, Reward Personalities and Daily Tasks"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/303915/0170-life-goals-reward-personalities-and-daily-tasks"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/4244072077610086379"
+---
+
+Hello everyone! It's that time again where we release a Tiny Life update, and with it, a fun devlog post that features a bunch of descriptions and images of the new stuff.
+
+First though, some self-promotion.
+
+# Twitter
+You heard that right: Twitter! Tiny Life now has [a twitter account](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame) that gets hit with a bunch of cool information, sneak peeks and screenshots.
+
+If you've been following the Twitter for a while, you already know about a very exciting upcoming feature in the game: Children! They're not here yet, sadly. But they will be, soon. If you're interested in them, you can check out the information that was already posted on Twitter over the last few weeks!
+
+# Life Goals
+A lot of people struggle with setting their own goals in a sandbox game like Tiny Life. Not only that, but even people who *do* set their own goal can sometimes start to feel like they don't know what to do in the game.
+
+Well, not to worry, because Life Goals are here! Life goals are a new system in Tiny Life, which can be found in a new tab at the bottom of the screen.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzcyMDQxNjgucG5n/original/J4KEfu.png)
+
+As you can see, a person can select a life goal for themselves, and there are quite a few to choose from right now. Of course, as development goes on, more will be added, though!
+
+Each life goal features multiple stages, each stage containing one or more challenges that a person has to complete to complete the stage.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzcyMDQxNzkucG5n/original/ANHKmX.png)
+
+Once each stage of the life goal is completed, the life goal itself is also completed. Nice!
+
+## Reward Personalities
+Upon completing a life goal, each person can unlock a unique hidden personality trait for themselves. These personalities usually have to do with the life goal itself, and they're supposed to make life easier for the people that have them.
+
+Here's the one you receive when completing the Gym Rat life goal, for example.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzcyMDQxODQucG5n/original/Co9gjH.png)
+
+# Daily Tasks
+Work is terrible. We all know this. But what's even more terrible is coming home to *even more work*. We decided that this terribleness would fit perfectly into Tiny Life itself, which is why this update also includes daily tasks for some jobs (currently only teacher and firefighter, but more to come, as always).
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzcyMDQxOTcucG5n/original/4mqWWP.png)
+
+Daily tasks can be completed for a little boost in job performance over the course of the following day. If the daily task is not completed, performance gain will be a little lower, but still good enough to get that promotion you've been working towards.
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As always, here's the full changelog for this update. You can also view this in-game by clicking on the little arrow button in the bottom right corner of the main menu.
+
+Don't forget to follow [the Twitter account](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame) for updates and sneak peeks about the game, too!
+
+Additions
+- Added Life Goals
+- Added 5 new personality types that can be obtained by completing life goals
+- Added a Daily Task system to some jobs
+- Added Dutch translation ([Alexander Stekelenburg](https://twitter.com/superaxander))
+
+Improvements
+- Added an in-game hint that explains out of town actions
+- Made pivot points pixel-perfect for people to avoid visual alignment inconsistencies
+- Added Twitter button to main menu
+- Improved GPU memory usage for tiles
+- Improved the visual layout of the credits menu
+- Added a minor personality types system and moved asexuality and aromance from separate properties to minor personalities
+- Renamed Lazy personality to Laid-Back
+- Automatically fill empty lot employments and only bring up the menu if there are no available exported people
+- Made the language menu display the completion of localizations
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed newly placed tiles looking weird sometimes
+- Fixed an action exception when someone is fired while at work
+- Fixed character creator crashing when someone is bald
+- Fixed the scrap action being shown as unavailable on all objects if a person is holding an item
+- Fixed scrapping an object failing if the item is held
+- Fixed three-seater sofas not actually having three seats
+- Fixed food items missing creator information in their tooltip
+- Fixed concurrency issues when saving occasionally
+- Fixed people displaying particles when hidden

web/_posts/2021-11-23-0.18.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.18.0: Animations, Food and Sources"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/317472/0180-animations-food-and-sources"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3111419849470831533"
+---
+
+Hey everyone! It's been a hot minute since the last update, but now we're back, and we're... more updated than ever. I still don't quite know how to introduce these posts.
+
+The 0.18.0 update features a ton of smaller things, and not so many bigger things. That's fine, though, because a lot of smaller things kind of amounts to a few big things, right? Let's get started.
+
+# Ui Animations
+This is the biggest new feature in this update. We've introduced some super flashy and really fun Ui animations, both for opening and closing menus, and for opening the interaction ring menu that I'm sure you're very used to by now.
+
+Check out this somewhat low-quality gif of the new animation, which actually displays at a higher frame rate in game. I promise.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxMDkuZ2lm/original/EXy0ok.gif)
+
+If you don't like your ui to be animated, or you have an accessibility-related reason, these animations can be turned off in the options menu with a single click.
+
+As a side note, this update also stops interaction menus from opening partly off-screen when clicking something close to the edge of the screen. Yay!
+
+# Emotion Sources
+Have any of your people ever had an emotion modifier, and all you did was wonder "Where the heck did they *get that*?"
+
+Well, not anymore!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxMTEucG5n/original/Oj2dtw.png)
+
+Almost all emotions will now display the action, personality type or need that they originate from if you hover over them in the emotions tab. Very useful.
+
+# New Content
+There's a few new content items that made it into this update too. Here are some screenshots of them!
+
+Tasty breakfast foods.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxMjIucG5n/original/38a9VI.png)
+
+Tasty flowery grass. This is actually a new tile, not a new flowery furniture piece. Did you eat flowers as a child, or was that just me?
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxMjMucG5n/original/Z5TQBL.png)
+
+Tasty Tiny Life: Taylor's Version. Probably shouldn't eat scarves, though.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxMjkucG5n/original/1JyYYP.png)
+
+# Hint History
+Have you ever missed a hint? Or... read a hint and then immediately forgot what it said? Well, never fear, because this update also includes a hint history menu that you can find in the options. It even orders hints by category!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxMzgucG5n/original/wtjEhs.png)
+
+# Upcoming Content
+I don't usually do this, but here's a little outlook on some upcoming content for the game. If you're following [the twitter](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame), this won't actually be news to you.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc1MDMxNDMucG5n/original/LSVSSQ.png)
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As always, here's the full changelog for your enjoyment. You can also look at it in the main menu by pressing the button in the bottom right corner, as always.
+
+Additions
+- Added emotion sources that display when hovering over an emotion modifier
+- Added cool UI animations
+- Added a hint history menu to the options
+- Added a tab to the character creator which allows writing custom descriptions for people and households
+- Added a scientist job
+- Added keybinds for zooming in and out
+- Added a button to delete a household entirely
+- Added some more emotion modifiers that trigger in social situations
+- Added some more breakfast foods
+- Added a lovely flowery grass tile
+- Added a cute scarf
+
+Improvements
+- Made skill building activities fun if the skill level is high enough
+- Improved memory usage in various cases
+- Improved the way relationships between imported people are handled
+- Dispose raw versions of packed textures, which reduces VRAM usage
+- Limit the length of the notification history to 1024 entries
+- Added the website's scrolling background to the main menu
+- Replace all natural tiles with concrete when creating a room (not just grass)
+- Replace alpha-based particles with scale-based particles to avoid rendering issues
+- Also allow AI skill building when a person's job requires it
+- Rebalanced job payouts and bills slightly
+- Allow loading mods from a zip archive
+- Made sounds in hidden rooms quieter
+- Improved the look of the mouse cursor
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed daily job tasks not working correctly in some cases
+- Fixed introverts being happy about being at home when they're not actually at home
+- Fixed interaction menus displaying partly off-screen when opened sometimes
+- Fixed chatting with people displaying the friendship particle constantly
+- Fixed particles being lit from the outside despite being inside in some cases

web/_posts/2022-01-01-0.19.0.md

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+---
+title: "0.19.0: Ui, Sound and Improvements Abound"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/330680/0190-ui-sound-and-improvements-abound"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3109171219652255208"
+---
+
+Happy new year, everyone! Unfortunately, over the holidays, and since the main developer (me, hi) is moving soon, development on Tiny Life has been a little slower than usual. This means that the update that adds children into the game is still not finished yet. What we *do* have, though, is a fun update that spices up a lot of the existing parts of the game. Take a tour with me!
+
+# What's in a name?
+Tough question. *In this situation* at least, there's quite a lot in a name! The people in Tiny Life have always been called just that: "people". But that's a bit boring, and it becomes harder to understand when text in the game (or outside of it) is also referencing the *players*, which are, mostly, people as well.
+
+So, the people (*see?*) have decided that the official name for the inhabitants of Tiny Life should be: **Tinies**! Or **Tiny** if it's just one. Yay!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc3ODcyMzUucG5n/original/jwznGo.png)
+
+
+# UI transitions
+In the last update, we got a lot of UI animations, but there was one big thing that was still missing: Transitions between the various game states, including the main menu, the map selection screen, as well as the character creator. So now, we have some fun transitions!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc3ODcxODcuZ2lm/original/%2BPlCUI.gif)
+
+We tried a lot of styles, but settled on this fun swipe transition since it fits the fun aesthetic of the game pretty well. I hope you agree!
+
+If you want to disable these for whatever reason, you can do so in the options menu, of course.
+
+# Auto-tiling
+A lot of games have it, and for good reason: It looks a lot prettier! Up until now, the tiled nature of Tiny Life's ground was *very* apparent, which is fine for rough, smooth tiles like concrete, hardwood and roads, but looked a bit odd for more organic and natural tiles like paths, dirt and grass.
+
+Now, these tiles will automatically display a smooth transition to neighboring tiles, making the area look a lot less rigid.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc3ODcyMTUucG5n/original/wIQjQx.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc3ODcyMTYucG5n/original/YV3k3K.png)
+
+# Occasional improvements
+Up until now, the occasions that clothing items were used for were decided automatically by the game. It was a clunky system. We don't know what we were thinking, to be completely honest with you.
+
+Starting now, you can head into the character creator (using a chest of drawers, or when creating a new household) and, for each outfit that your Tinies have, select a set of occasions that you'd like them to wear it on. Once you do, they'll automatically put it on for the occasion, and switch back to the previous outfit once they're done.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc3ODcyMTkucG5n/original/q9m%2Fh%2F.png)
+
+# Small new things
+To get in the spirit of the children update (which is hopefully coming soon!), here are some new wallpapers and tiles that you can use to decorate with. Well, it's really just one each, and then there's also a simple carpet tile, since a lot of people have been asking for that.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzc3ODcyMjMucG5n/original/sTP5i4.png)
+
+# The full changelog
+As you're probably used to by now, here's the full changelog as well. You can also find this in the bottom right corner of the game's main menu, as always.
+
+Additions
+- Added carpet and puzzle piece floorings
+- Added a cloud wallpaper
+- Added UI transitions when switching between game modes
+- Added ambient sounds which play based on where the camera is
+- Added sounds for fireplaces as well as lamp, trash can and woodworking interactions
+- Added additional colors for skin, eyes, as well as pastel and modern furniture and clothes
+- Added a "Store in Household Storage" action to paintings
+- Added a splash screen at the start of the game
+
+Improvements
+- Changed all cases of "person" and "people" in the game's text to "Tiny" and "Tinies", respectively
+- Display a fade animation when a person dies
+- Allow setting desired occasions for each outfit manually
+- Made natural tiles (dirt, path, grass) connect to grass smoothly
+- Only spawn particles if they'll be visible on screen
+- A lot of performance improvements in various areas of the game
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed unfinished woodwork items escaping the action preview area
+- Fixed additional VRAM being used the more tiles are edited during a single play session
+- Fixed the high bun hairstyle not having the workout set icon
+- Fixed colors overflowing out of the character creator screen for complex clothing items
+- Fixed an exception when trying to fool around in occupied beds
+- Fixed some actions throwing an exception when their action object is removed before the action starts

web/_posts/2022-03-09-0.20.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,117 @@
+---
+title: "0.20.0: The Children Update, it's finally here!"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/355830/0200-the-children-update-its-finally-here"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3100171001731828571"
+---
+
+Hello everyone! It's finally time for another devlog again. It's been a hot minute since the last one, but there's a good reason for that: We've been hard at work getting The Children Update™ finished for all of you!
+
+Let's walk you through what exactly that means, including some new promotional art, a new trailer, some new screenshots, and a whole heap of new content.
+
+# Children
+Children are a new age group, which can be selected when creating a new person (or when using the `EditPerson` [cheat](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/articles/cheats.html)).
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NDQucG5n/original/CT5XTJ.png)
+
+They are controlled the same, but behave slightly differently from the adults you know and love. Here's a basic rundown of what they can and can't do:
+- They can't make their own food, but they can ask an adult to make food for them.
+- They are (locked to being) primary school students, and have to do homework regularly to do well in school.
+- They are smaller in appearance, and very cute. This also means that they have their own clothing, hair and accessories.
+- They can't do some stuff that adults can, like repairing, cleaning, mopping the floor, and they cannot die.
+- They can do some stuff that adults *cannot* do, like playing with toys and using a sandbox.
+- They gain relationships with other people much more easily, but they also get objects dirty much more easily.
+  This isn't nearly all the stuff that makes children different from adults, but you'll be sure to find out more about them while playing with the update for yourself.
+
+# New Stuff
+Along with the children, there are also a ton of new objects, lots and households that you'll get to check out. The lots and households were created by the community member [Vortis](https://steamcommunity.com/id/vortis95/), who did an *amazing* job on them. One of them is also an empty starter home, so that is the perfect place to start a new save or a new household if you're not a huge fan of building your own houses.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NDcucG5n/original/9k5VNe.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NTIucG5n/original/tYwLJ1.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NTMucG5n/original/K0QyuE.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NTYucG5n/original/6Zd4%2FN.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NTgucG5n/original/glWQk%2B.png)
+
+## Familiar Attire
+There is also a new set that is being introduced into the game: **Familiar Attire** by the lovely, and by this point very well-known, [Tector](https://www.instagram.com/tector_pixel/), who previously created the art for the Fitness Set, as well as the game's logo.
+
+Familiar Attire features a ton of new clothes for both adults and children, and it also comes with a lot of new hairstyles and accessories (some of which are in categories that didn't even *exist* before!)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NjEucG5n/original/HZk5OD.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NjMucG5n/original/Qjd0q8.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NjYucG5n/original/CWX8Td.png)
+
+# New Voices
+For a long time now, Tiny Life has had the lovely, indecipherable mumbling that people use when communicating with each other. Eagle-eyed players will have noticed, however, that there was only one voice available so far. Today, this is finally changing!
+
+There is now a new, more feminine speech style (that is actually called "sweet" in the game as to avoid the unnecessary gendering), spoken by the lovely [SyrinixSoul](https://https://www.twitch.tv/syrinixsoul) of Twitch and "having a lovely high voice" fame.
+
+In addition, there is also a new voice style for children, spoken by the friend-of-a-friend (actually, son of a friend) of ours, who did an amazing job creating a gender-ambiguous, adorable (you probably don't want to hear that it's adorable, I'm sorry), voice. The person in question is [Tyler V](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHyeGSQpeXmukFzMWGYKDpQ), who also has a YouTube channel where he uploads gameplay videos.
+
+You can hear the new voices in the game, as I don't think itch and Steam allow me to upload videos directly. Soz. If you want to change the voice of the Tinies you already have, you can always use the `EditPerson` [cheat](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/articles/cheats.html), as previously mentioned.
+
+# New Promo Art
+Along with this update, it felt fitting to finally create some new promotional art for the game, as the screenshots that we were previously using were getting pretty old and outdated. So feast your eyes on some of the new screenshots we took, featuring new stuff from this update!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NjcuanBn/original/xtZoOX.jpg)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NjguanBn/original/kofx88.jpg)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzgzNjU1NjkuanBn/original/xc3Fi8.jpg)
+
+There's also a new trailer, which you should definitely check out.
+
+<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iw-D7queVUI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+
+# The Full Changelog
+And, last but certainly not least, here is the full changelog in all of its glory. As always, you can also check it out in-game by clicking the little button in the bottom-right corner of the main menu. It's a lot this time.
+
+It's also worth mentioning that you can always tweet [@TinyLifeGame](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame) on Twitter when you upload any videos or stream any content from the game, as that means that we'll not only be able to check it out, but also be able to shout you out. We love seeing content about the game, so don't be shy! ❤
+
+Additions
+- Added the Children age group, which includes several new gameplay features, including new interactable furniture items, school, homework and the start of parenting interactions
+- Added the Familiar Attire set with art by [Tector](https://www.instagram.com/tector_pixel/), which includes several new clothing items and accessories for children and adults
+- Added multiple new furniture items, including three plants, two decorative objects, a smaller picnic table, a sandbox, a jigsaw puzzle, a stove for kids, and a toy box
+- Added a top hat clothing item
+- Added two new personality types: Family-Focused and Hates Children
+- Added a speech type system which includes a more feminine voice style spoken by [SyrinixSoul](https://https://www.twitch.tv/syrinixsoul)
+- Added an option to allow complex social relationships between AI Tinies
+- Added a grid to build mode (which can be toggled using the G key)
+- Added keybinds to move the camera (arrow keys by default, but can be changed to WASD in the controls menu)
+- Added a crash detection system which displays a notification when the game starts up the next time
+- Added a world selection to the "New Game" menu
+
+Improvements
+- Added the "failed joke" emotion modifier to all jokes
+- Organized the gameplay options menu better
+- Increased the default brightness increase to 25%
+- Moved the notification history button to where options and build mode are
+- Display a warning when a save is loaded with missing mods
+- Bundle all errors into one notification when loading or saving
+- Display the reason that actions in a subcategory are unavailable straight away if they are all the same
+- Made accessories less likely to be randomly generated on newly created people
+- Some memory usage improvements
+- Ordered the furniture tool's "All" tab by the category that furniture items are in
+- Added notifications for when cheats are turned on or off
+- Allow Tinies to get jobs automatically if important actions are enabled
+- Display which color scheme is currently selected
+- Allow using ALT for objects that are attached to walls
+- Display the loading progress in the loading screen
+- Allow stoves to get dirty
+- Allow editing and changing outfits at mirrors
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed a rare exception when people grabbed a serving of food
+- Fixed camera rotation buttons not having a highlight color
+- Fixed a crash when trying to talk to a person who just died
+- Fixed an exception that occurred when there was no mailbox on a residential lot
+- Fixed lot imports breaking if the import button is pressed too many times in a row
+- Fixed the household preview being too wide for large households
+
+API
+- Added Harmony, allowing for mods to inject custom code into the game

web/_posts/2022-05-24-0.21.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,102 @@
+---
+title: "0.21.0: Two Years of Tiny Life: Cafés, Gamepad Controls and More"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/384666/0210-two-years-of-tiny-life-cafs-gamepad-controls-and-more"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3189123589808204255"
+---
+
+To celebrate two years of Tiny Life's development, and to *finally* relieve the tension that all of you have been feeling after over two months of new update, here's 0.21.0, which marks Tiny Life's move from alpha to beta, and comes with a ton of awesome new features. This devlog contains all the information you need, as well as a full changelog for this update.
+
+# Gamepad Controls
+With the Steam deck having arrived a while ago, and `REDACTED` on the horizon, we thought it is the perfect time to add the ability to control the entire game with a gamepad. All you have to do is pick up and connect a controller of any kind to your computer, launch Tiny Life, and use it to control the game!
+
+Since there are a lot of available interactions in the game at any given point, we've opted to use the left and right triggers (or bottom shoulder buttons) as modifier buttons of sorts. This means that, to access some actions, you have to hold down one of the triggers and then press a button that normally has a different action. Neat!
+
+In case you forget any of the controls, there's also a neat new hint area in the bottom-right corner of the screen that displays some useful controls. If you're too cool for school, you can disable this in the game's options, too.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxODYucG5n/original/UGk8nG.png)
+
+Additionally, for all users of wacky controllers out there, there are some options to improve the handling of the game's controls when using a gamepad.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxODgucG5n/original/NWd36E.png)
+
+# Cafés
+Everyone loves public lots, right? Social gatherings that happen on accident, people falling asleep on the side of the road, some rude person called Joe walking up to you and insulting you. That's the stuff. You can now do all of that stuff at the new café lot type, and associated "Coffees and Trees Café" in Maple Plains City!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxODkucG5n/original/1d7Drg.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTAucG5n/original/1ywy1S.png)
+
+At these places, a new barista employee will greet you and assist you with coffee and delicious food. To do this, all you have to do is click on the barista employee and select "Order Food" or "Order Coffee". The barista employee will then go ahead and prepare it for you, and call you out of the café crowd when it's done. Mmm, tasty.
+
+# New Items
+This update also features a bunch of new items, including furniture, outdoor decorations, and a new door. Here are some screenshots of that stuff. Enjoy!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTEucG5n/original/596hIp.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTIucG5n/original/%2FCdR2L.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTMucG5n/original/d%2BU28D.png)
+
+Along with the coffee machine (which you can also use at home, if you don't like heading out to cafés), there's also a useful new item that players have been *begging* for: a newspaper! The newspaper will be delivered every other day by the local mail deliverer, and it can be used to get a job, read the news, or read some very funny jokes.
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTQucG5n/original/l%2FxjbB.png)
+
+# Misc. Stuff
+There are also some new actions coming at you, mainly related to a new personality type: the Foodie personality! As a foodie, you can talk about food, discuss the pros and cons of putting fruit on your pizza, and you'll be first in line for using a new action that comes with level 8 of the cooking skill: "Adding a Little Something" to food, which increases its quality!
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTUucG5n/original/0oPoKP.png)
+
+![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzkwMTAxOTcucG5n/original/kpWWmb.png)
+
+As a side note, this update also marks the transition from Tiny Life's alpha into the beta. This really doesn't mean much, other than that the game sounds closer to being done than it did before. Which it is. Yay?
+
+# The Full Changelog
+As always, here's a full version of the changelog for your perusal. Of course, you can also look at this in the bottom-right corner of the game's main menu.
+
+Additions
+- Added the ability to control the entire game using a gamepad
+- Added newspapers, and the ability to get jobs from them
+- Added two street lamps, a stone wall fence, a coffee machine, a food display case, a staff-only door, a café sign, big and small glass dinner tables, a small wooden dinner table, a modern chair, a coat rack, a wall-attached shower
+- Added a café lot type, a playground lot type, and a barista lot employment
+- Added the Coffees and Trees Café to Maple Plains City
+- Added some additional sweet speech sounds
+- Added controls hints, which display useful controls in the bottom right corner (and can be disabled in the hints options)
+- Added the ability to tinker with objects to increase repair skill
+- Added the foodie personality
+- Added the ability to "add a little something" to food with cooking level 8 or higher
+- Added the ability to create and share custom maps with the community (this is not documented yet, however)
+- Added the ability for children to run around for fun
+- Added the ability to add a second binding for each keybind
+- Added the ability to clear the notification history
+
+Improvements
+- Hide the mouse cursor after five seconds of movement inactivity
+- Reduced the tooltip delay from half a second to a quarter of a second
+- Made grass tiles have visual variations
+- Moved portraits down to avoid them being hidden by the emotion name
+- Improved the way wall-hanging objects are rendered, causing them to look wrong less often
+- Show the amount of items in the household storage on the icon
+- Added particles for grilling, being stinky, chimneys, and breaking things in build mode
+- Added an option to allow or disallow loading mods (which is disabled by default)
+- Added a tooltip displaying who claimed a bed
+- Made stunned emotion go away when showering rather than sleeping
+- Added a deselect button to the move tool
+- Display a link to the game's roadmap in the main menu
+- Added a protective wear clothes intention that gets used when driving on an e-scooter for kids
+
+Fixes
+- Fixed a crash with regular visitors if there are broken exported households
+- Fixed debug food items crashing the game
+- Fixed children being able to do lot employments
+- Fixed the game crashing when the OS doesn't allow opening folders in the explorer
+- Fixed large benches occluding walls
+- Fixed a crash that sometimes occured when deleting the last tiny in the character creator
+- Fixed people trying to sleep in beds that other people had claimed
+- Fixed some issues with Vortis' households and lots
+- Fixed people holding paint brushes wrong in some rotations
+- Fixed a rare crash when grabbing a serving from a nonexistent platter
+- Fixed notifications forgetting their icons when quitting and reloading a save
+
+API
+- Converted a lot of enumerations to other types, allowing for custom values to be added
+- Allow openings to have multiple layers

web/_posts/launch_postmortem/2023-05-19-launch_postmortem.md

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+title: "Community Showcase and Future Plans (Early Access Launch Postmortem)"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/532785/community-showcase-and-future-plans-early-access-launch-postmortem"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3717203461059432062"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! The Tiny Life Early Access launch, which was a few weeks ago at this point, was an unprecedentedly big success. Not only did we see a huge amount of sales, we also saw rave reviews and a ton of excited people and amazing-looking custom content in the Steam workshop and the Discord server.
+
+We'd like to take this post to thank everyone for their overwhelming support, and also show off some cool community creations that we've seen, and talk about the immediate plans for upcoming features.
+
+# Some Beautiful Community Creations
+
+Honestly, we've been absolutely overwhelmed with the stuff that yall have created. There are already mods with clothes and furniture, custom maps with beautiful scenery, and gorgeous-looking lots and households. We'll be showing off some of the ones here that we found most impressive, but of course, you can check out the [Steam workshop](https://link.tinylifegame.com/workshop) and the [Discord server](https://link.tinylifegame.com/discord) for yourself to see all of it.
+
+This is an incredible custom map called [Foolshope](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2976923398&searchtext=) by user v_dcc. Just *look at the detail*! It's so cute.
+
+![](2976923398_preview_23-05-17_23-47-32.png)
+
+Workshop user AngelofAcid has been publishing a *ton* of beautiful builds, including residential lots and public ones. Here's a gorgeous residential home called [The Blue Lagoon](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2972740783&searchtext=) as an example.
+
+![](2972740783_preview_23-05-07_09-15-45.png)
+
+Our lovely community moderator Ari, whose Steam username is Superwholockwarrior, has been creating an adorable mod called [Tinies in the Nineties](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973959166&searchtext=) that contains a ton of fun nineties-themed clothing items for your Tinies. Here are some of them!
+
+![](2973959166_preview_90s.png)
+
+The user shroomy-p has also been creating a huge amount of custom clothing for their mod [A Bit Of Interest](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2971443419&searchtext=), which features a ton of incredibly wacky, but equally gorgeous, clothing items. Just *look at these!!*
+
+![](Untitled.jpg)
+
+And lastly, check out this cute furniture mod called [Neb's Additional Furnitures](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2974403719&searchtext=) by NebSpacefarer, which features a mix of additional furniture like chairs, TVs, and this adorable clothing rack!
+
+![](2974403719_preview_Screenshot_20230511_140830.png)
+
+Definitely keep all the custom content coming, we love seeing you share it on the Steam workshop and the Discord server. Yall are incredibly talented, and we're so excited that Tiny Life can be a way to express that creativity for you!! ❤️
+
+# Our Immediate Plans
+
+In case you haven't found it yet, the game has an official roadmap [on the website](https://tinylifegame.com/roadmap) that has a lot of information about planned features. As it says at the top, that list is not exhaustive by any means, and stuff may be added and moved around here and there, but it gives a pretty good overview of our long-term plans for Tiny Life's development.
+
+What do we have planned for updates that are coming very soon, though? Well, let me tell you.
+
+First up, we recently implemented a feature that a *lot* of you - and I mean a **lot** - have been requesting: the ability to invite visiting Tinies in, rather than them just breaking into your home!
+
+![](Tiny_Life_mxRuDpAcG2.png)
+
+For features that we'd like to add very soon, the major ones of note are
+- the ability to take a break from work through vacation days,
+- the ability to take family leave when having or adopting a child,
+- additional baby skills, including thinking and self-care,
+- additional life goals, including ones for writing and reasoning or reading,
+- a retro-themed furniture set, with additional furniture and clothing sets already planned.
+
+Of course, while doing all of that, we've steadily been releasing bug fix updates that also feature small improvements and features. Since the Early Access release, we've released four of them, and you can always find their full changelogs in the bottom-right corner of the main menu, or on the [documentation website](https://docs.tinylifegame.com/Changelog.html). So far, notable improvements that are already released include an easier way to see lots while zoomed out, the ability to highlight Tinies in the world, a better Steam workshop workflow, and more!
+
+We hope you enjoyed this little update on Tiny Life's development, and we hope everyone is as excited as we are about the future of Tiny Life and its community. Please keep the feedback, bug reports, and amazing custom content creations coming!!
+
+❤️ Ell

web/_posts/tt_actions/2023-02-10-tt_actions.md

@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+---
+title: "Tiny Technicalities: What's in an Action?"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/488226/tiny-technicalities-whats-in-an-action"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/3676662189784689005"
+---
+
+Hi everyone! I'm Ell, the creator and lead developer of Tiny Life, and this is a new sort of series of devlogs that we're starting. We're calling it **Tiny Technicalities**, because it's meant to give you a little look behind the scenes of Tiny Life development, including explanations about the graphics, music, the AI, build mode, play mode and so on.
+
+If you think you'd be up for more Tiny Technicalities after reading this first edition, please let us know by liking this post, leaving a comment, or letting us know on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame) or [the Discord server](https://ellpeck.de/discord).
+
+# What's in an Action?
+Have you ever wondered, while playing, what Tinies get up to under the hood of their lovely "Read book" or "Eat food" actions? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot goes on there, because the AI is pretty complex, and the ways that an action can play out are much more plentiful than you might think.
+
+Now, we'll be the first to admit that the design approach we've chosen for Tiny Life's action may not be the be-all-end-all of software design, but they do the trick fairly well and they've managed to stick with us and evolve throughout the last three years of development.
+
+Let's take a look at two main components of an action that determine what happens, how it happens, and what its outcome is: **conditions** and **execution**. I've created three example scenarios, all of which are a setup for the "Read" action.
+
+## Reading a Book
+![](Tiny_Life_YX4PB6XOZJ.png)
+
+This first scenario is probably the simplest, and the one that you're mostly expecting: Our Tiny (in this case, Tom Tannenbaum), is about to enqueue the "Read Book" action, which means they'll head to the bookshelf, pick up a book, and then attempt to read it in a comfortable chair or standing up.
+
+Let's go through our two criteria here:
+- **Conditions**:
+  - Is there a free spot around the bookshelf that we can interact with?
+  - Are our hands free so that we can pick up a book?
+  - Is there an available seat in the area?
+- **Execution**:
+  - Head to the bookshelf
+  - Pick up a book from the bookshelf
+  - Try to find a seat
+    - If a seat is found, head towards the seat, sit down on it, and then start reading the book
+    - If no seat is found, simply stay where you are and read the book
+
+Hm, that actually sounds pretty simple, right? Well. Let's run through some other possibilities! Because there's a lot more to consider when reading a book, like...
+
+The book being on a table,
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210125837.png)
+
+The book being on the ground,
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210125854.png)
+
+and, of course, the book already being in our Tiny's hands.
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210125909.png)
+
+Now, all of these actions have very similar steps we have to execute, including picking up the book (except for when we're holding it), and finding a seat, and so on. But nevertheless, we have to consider whether the book can be made to be in our Tiny's hands somehow, which is a different set of conditions for each of these scenarios.
+
+Let's take a look at a more complicated example: Eating food.
+
+## Eating Food
+When eating food, we also have to consider that we'd like for there to be a table that we can put the food down on while eating. For a lot of actions like this, this could be a table with a chair attached, but it could also be a standing desk (though in the case of the food, we'd rather not eat at a standing desk, so that simplifies things a little).
+
+Let's run through the full set of possibilities for this situation. The food we're trying to eat is...
+
+on a surface, but the incorrect one (so we have to pick it up and move it elsewhere),
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210130406.png)
+
+on the ground,
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210130422.png)
+
+in our Tiny's hands,
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210130438.png)
+
+on a table with a chair attached (so we just have to sit down and eat),
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210130508.png)
+
+on a table without a chair attached (which is pretty similar to the first, "wrong surface" condition).
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230210130540.png)
+
+Of course, this is all while ignoring conditions we always have to check for, like:
+- Is the food item still fresh and not spoiled?
+- Can our Tiny reach the location that the food is in?
+- Is there a chair and table that we can eat the food at?
+
+# Conclusion
+As you can see, actions are much more complicated and require much more thought than you might initially think. We wish it was just "eat the food, done", but that's not how programming works. Throughout Tiny Technicalities, we'll be thinking about this meme a lot while talking about other topics that seem simple on the surface, but are much more complex when you actually dig into them.
+
+![](programmerhumor-io-programming-memes-debugging-memes-1ad7a6061f91b39.png)
+
+As we said at the top, please let us know whether you'd like to see more Tiny Technicalities! In the future, we'd also like to include actual code snippets and dig deeper into how certain systems are designed. If you have requests for what sort of stuff you're curious about, feel free to let us know on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame) or [the Discord server](https://ellpeck.de/discord).
+
+Thanks so much for reading, and have a lovely day!

web/_posts/tt_pronouns/2023-04-15-tt_pronouns.md

@@ -0,0 +1,105 @@
+---
+title: "Tiny Technicalities: The Pronoun Update™ (and an Announcement)"
+itch: "https://ellpeck.itch.io/tiny-life/devlog/517055/tiny-technicalities-the-pronoun-update-and-an-announcement"
+steam: "https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1651490/view/5306971121503255286"
+---
+
+*Before we get started: A super cool announcement is happening next week, so if you don't want to miss out, be sure to subscribe to the [mailing list](https://tinylifegame.com/subscribe), follow us on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame), or join the [Discord server](https://link.tinylifegame.com/discord)!*
+
+Yesterday, we released what we lovingly called *The Pronoun Update™*, which contains plenty of improvements and bug fixes and one important new feature: the ability to set custom pronouns for each Tiny you create.
+
+![](0.31.0.png)
+
+A few days before that, we published a little [twitter Thread](https://twitter.com/TinyLifeGame/status/1643587758135418880) about our intentions with this update, as well as our future plans in relation to this feature. Now, I'd like to take some time to expand on this a bit, and explain why this feature is only releasing now, and why it's so... lackluster in its current implementation.
+
+## Pronouns and Politics
+
+*Edit: I overhauled this section to sound less aggressive, which the old phrasing did despite my intentions. You can read the previous phrasing [here](https://gist.github.com/Ellpeck/7a2c18dc4f6051079413e920441b6ddc).*
+
+The politics of gender and pronouns are very complicated, and I'll be trying not to get into them in this post. In my opinion, this debate should have a very simple conclusion: people should get to be who they want to be. That includes their gender identity, the appearance of their body, the pronouns they wish to be addressed with, the name they wish to have, and the way they wish to dress and otherwise express themselves. When developing Tiny Life, I take the steps that I hope accomplish this goal the best for everyone, regardless of whether they're cis or genderqueer.
+
+Now, let's talk about this update and why it's both very cool and kind of a bummer, in my opinion. *Edit: I called this update "kind of a bummer" in reference to the "Is That Good Enough?" chapter of this post, in which I discuss feeling like this feature is not as good as it could be. Some people perceived this sentence as me implying that I'm unhappy with having added pronoun selection into the game. That is not the case!*
+
+## The Pronoun Update™
+
+Tiny Life now stores a Tiny's pronouns along with their first and last name, and displays them in situations where it might be helpful to a person talking about or referring to them. For example, in the relationship panel, Tinies will now be listed along with their pronouns.
+
+This system makes it a lot easier for content creators, as well as players talking to their friends, to refer to Tinies without having to keep saying their names or use gender-neutral pronouns. It's also a great opportunity for queer people (or just players who want to create queer Tinies in general) to express their Tinies' identity in a more immediately obvious and easy-to-understand way. Of course, a cis Tiny just displays their pronouns the same way, just like we're starting to see more and more on websites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as on places like the [Ellpeck Games Discord server](https://link.tinylifegame.com/discord).
+
+## What It's Not
+
+*However*, eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed the part of the screenshot where it says
+
+> Currently, gender-neutral language will still be used for in-game text that refers to this Tiny.
+
+Now, that may seem kind of weird to some people. Why would we include a cool new feature that celebrates the ability to set custom pronouns, and then not actually use them in text that refers to Tinies?
+
+Well, the explanation to this is also the reason that it took us so long to get around to implementing this feature: *linguistic complexity* and *the fear of not being good enough*.
+
+## Linguistic Complexity
+
+If you speak any languages other than English, you may already know where this is going. But first, let's discuss English pronouns, and how other games get around the "specifying custom pronouns" issue.
+
+Pronouns in English are a somewhat tricky thing. We're going to simplify a lot here, and this isn't a genuine linguistic discussion, but it's meant to be a bit of an insight into the complexity of designing a system like this.
+
+For any given set of pronouns, English generally has five variations:
+
+- **subjective**: "*He* visited Bluebird Café."
+- **objective**: "Ell told *them* about the pronoun update."
+- **posessive independent**: "That painting is *hers*."
+- **posessive dependent**: "That is *her* painting."
+- **reflexive**: "They bought it *themselves*." (or, alternatively, "They bought it *themself*.")
+
+With just these five variations, it's reasonable enough to allow players to input a custom pronoun for each variation. That's exactly what The Sims 4 did in their semi-recent update that added exactly this feature.
+
+![](Pasted%20image%2020230415134537.png)
+
+## Is That Good Enough?
+
+So far, they've only included this feature in the English version of The Sims 4, and that's where the trouble begins: that honestly just never felt... good enough for us. We want Tiny Life the best game it can be, a standard that, mind you, we know is unrealistic and ridiculous to achieve. I talked to a friend about this recently, shortly after announcing the pronouns feature, and I'm just going to quote what I said because I still deeply relate to it:
+
+> i think the new system is a nice inbetween step until i get around to a nice system for custom pronouns  
+> actually i think the new system is terrible and reduces the issue to something that feels like a parody, but everyone i asked about this idea thought it was great so  
+> that's why i made it
+>
+> i just think it's important to do this kind of stuff right, and this implementation feels incredibly lazy to me
+
+Now, I want to use this moment to clarify that I don't want this to be a pity party or a reason for a pat on the back at all. Instead, I'm quoting this stuff to highlight a part of Tiny Life development that has always been extraordinarily difficult for me: the fear of not representing things, especially queer & racially diverse things, well enough. Before releasing new features, and before releasing posts like this, I reach out to a lot of my friends to ask them if what I made or what I wrote is sensible, non-offensive and positive, and thankfully, the reponse is usually pretty positive. Nevertheless, there's still a voice somewhere that won't go away saying "you need to put in more effort, this is not good enough, you can't ship it like this".
+
+That's why it took so long for Tiny Life to get this feature: we didn't want it to feel like a parody, and we didn't want it to be "not good enough" for us, for our players, or for anyone. But we realized that not having a feature like this at all, a feature for something that is close to our hearts and the hearts of our players, is maybe worse than having a version that, to some people, might feel a bit like a reduction or a parody. Because we know that our intentions are good, and we also know that most of you know that our intentions are good.
+
+## Linguistic Overcomplexity
+
+But... why not just include the "specify all variations of your pronouns" feature in every language that the game has? Well, let's take a language as an example that I know very well, despite the fact that I still struggle describing its grammar to non-Germans a lot when explaining this issue: German, and its grammatical case system.
+
+A lot of languages have a grammatical case system, but English isn't (really) one of them. It does have something similar, of course, but it's not nearly as complex. And the trouble is: German isn't even the worst offender here! There are language with *more than four* cases, and there are languages that have a lot more complicated things, like gendered verbs, gendered adjectives and pronouns that literally become *part of* the nouns they describe.
+
+Anyway, let's talk about German for a second. Let's imagine we wanted to add our pronouns in the same way that we do in The Sims 4. How many boxes would we need? Well, we have to factor in three key things: the grammatical case, the gender of the person or object that is the *object* of the sentence, and the gender of the person or object that is the *subject* of the sentence.
+
+![](Possessivpronomen-im-Deutschen-Übungen-und-Beispiele.png)
+
+Anyway, here's a handy table (courtesy of [this website](https://www.sprachschule-aktiv-wien.at/die-possessivpronomen-im-deutschen/)) to show some of these variations. Each column is one set of pronouns, and the third column, for example, is *er* (*he*) and its variations. As you can see, it's... quite a lot.
+
+From a quick glance, you may be able to spot that for some of these rows, the pronouns follow a very strict pattern that we might be able to exploit: for example, in the Akkusativ/maskulin row (third from the bottom), all the pronouns are just their basic form with an *-en* suffix added to them. There's also a fair bit of overlap (some columns have the same variation in multiple rows) but the overlap depends on the pronoun. But the overlap, and the consistent suffix, are also not *necessary* - that is, if you wanted to allow *truly* and *totally* customizable pronouns, you'd have to allow the ability to specify different pronouns for each situation that usually has overlap... right?
+
+If you don't speak German, you might just say "oh but these variations are so slight, *surely* they're not actually necessary in everyday speech." But just like suddenly starting to always say "that is she painting" and "that painting is she", this would have a noticeable effect on a sentence's sound and parsability.
+
+## A workaround?
+
+Now, a lot of people that I talked to have suggested a sort of workaround, inbetween step: What if we *do* allow specifying all of these variations, but don't actually expose that to players. Instead, we expose it to localizers and mod creators, who can, for their own language, create a predefined set of pronouns and neopronouns that players can choose from.
+
+We think this would be a lovely compromise, but we're also not super fond of the idea of having to select from a huge dropdown menu a pronoun set that you might not even end up finding in there because it doesn't exist. And then, as a player, you'd have to go through the trouble of creating a mod to add it yourself, or submitting it as feedback and then waiting for the pronoun to be implemented into your language officially.
+
+And oh, on the topic of languages, what do we even do when a player switches their display language, or shares a household that has pronouns in a different language? If we had a predefined set, that would be reasonably easy, but only if the neopronouns existed in every language. And if we *didn't* have a predefined set, well, frankly, we wouldn't *know* what to do.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+So why even go through all of this trouble? Why not just have no pronoun selection at all? In fact, why not just have a simple "gender: male or female" selection and be done with it?
+
+Well... the bottom line is this: gender is not a simple yes-or-no answer. In fact, sex is not a simple yes-or-no answer. Nothing is a simple yes-or-no answer when it comes to humans, their identity, and their body, and if you think that it is, you're one of the lucky few who hasn't had to agonize over who they really are, if it's okay to be who they really are, and how to truly become who they really are.
+
+All of that being said, I hope you enjoyed this post as a little peek behind the curtain of what we've been thinking about for the last few weeks and months. We hope you enjoy *The Pronoun Update™*, and we hope you look forward to the game's release, its future features, and the future of the pronouns and their customizability.
+
+Also, as we said at the top, be sure to keep an eye out for an exciting announcement next week!
+
+Ell ❤️