Breeding UI, Bitless Bridles & Tack Concept
By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist
My first task of the year has been to prepare UI for breeding, which we will work on this year. I have made a few sketches to see what the team likes and don’t like. After a few runs we finally decided on what layout we want to use. So the next step is to bring it into the Unity UI toolkit for the game. We need to test it and see if we need to make any changes later.
I focused on showing what stats and information should be shown for each horse when choosing either the mare or stallion, and what can be shown for possible outcomes for the future foal. I also added a pedigree based on how it's shown in proper documents and passports for horses.
I want the player to be able to view the chosen mare and stallion and that they kind of are standing together. So I made a fast “background” in photoshop to show what I’m thinking, since this will be a scene in the game.
I’ve created concept art for different variations for a sidepull, a bitless bridle. I personally switch between using a bit and bitless on my horse often, so I believe that the player should be able to choose what they want to use.
In the two concepts shown below you can see different sidepull possibilities.
I’m having a lot of fun creating concepts for different tack and clothing. I made a layout with different clothing pieces to make it easier and faster to draw. I want the game to have many different styles that the player and horse can wear, with different color options. I’ve created designs like academy, vintage and sporty ect. Though, I do not design a brand new saddle or bridle for each design. I just showcase what the ideal color for those tack pieces are if I am not making a brand new saddle. Same with boots.
Trailers, Genetics & Baby Horses
By Mathilde - Community Manager, 3D-artist
For the month of January, I have mostly been working on things that needed to be in place before the launch of our most recent patch update where we included the new Horse Creator UI, new breeds, and more genetics. As for the new breeds, the Horse Creator UI, and the added genetics, I've been working on creating different UI icons for forelock, mane and tail, and the splash patterns for the head and body.
Here is what the icons look like with the new UI. Of course, more splash patterns will come at a later time, but for now, I think we have a good start.
Moving on to another task I have been looking forward to - the foal model. Since we will be implementing breeding in the future, a foal model is of course a must-have. Baby horses are so adorable with their way-too-long legs. short backs, tiny hooves, and big joints. Of course, this model is a very early work in progress still, and has a long way to go until it is finalized. But here are some sneak peeks of the model as it stands now.
Of course, the final result will not be as scrawny and bony-looking at this model is right now, it looks like this at the moment to make it easier to place the muscles and bones properly before going over and smoothing/polishing the model later.
New Year, New Tack
By Tirna - Project Manager, 3D-artist
As usual, January has been a lot of planning and other paperwork, the boring stuff that we can’t always say that much about.
However! Some new tack has been made; One new model, and a bundle of new textures.
The new model is a bitless bridle, a sidepull. We want you to be able to choose from the beginning to ride with or without a bit. Previously, we have made a hackamore. But it is on hold for a moment, until we can figure out the placement of the reins. The sidepull is closer to the regular bridle with bit rein position, so it will likely have the best outcome during development.
The sidepull will come in several colours, with more to come later. We wanted this bridle to look soft and with high quality.
I kind of fell a bit in love with the black and brown options, and I wanted to make a complete tack-bundle with this. As I wrote this devlog, I thought; Why not make an inverted version of this tack as well, just like the accessories?
Speaking of bundles! I have also created a new texture tackset, inspired by the Eldhests. This bundle is also complete with both the jumping and dressage saddle, bridle with or and bit, and other accessories. This bundle also comes in many other colours, and possibly more to come in more neutral colours. The tack we have now is inspired by both traditional Norwegian decorative (ornamental) paintings, and our traditional costume - the Bunads.
And here are some Eldhest sidepull colours!
And some Eldhest dressage set colors.
Eldhest jumping tack colours.
Maja has also made concepts for a lot of new tack and clothes. I can’t wait to create them all!
Character Animation & IKs
By Marius - Animator
For me, January is a weird month as I have to shift my focus to finishing the accounting from last year and preparing for the year to come.
IK - Fixing stretching arms
Last devlog I showed the IK system, but there was one glaring issue. The arms seemed stiff and overstretched at times. This was especially noticed during jumps. While it still might happen on larger horses, the main issue was that the IK system turned off the animations for hip rotation. This led to the arms trying to reach original points for the animation while the hip and back of the rider kept the upright position. So I had to find a way to make the hips follow the correct rotation as well as position.
With the new year we also welcomed our intern who needed to be introduced to our character model and pipeline. Some of the work both I and the intern are going to work on needed some preparing research, to fix a problem that has been put on ice for a long time in favor of more pressing matters:
Character animation export/Import
For a long time I have been struggling with an issue with the character animations. Not that there hasn't been a fix for the problem, but I haven’t been able to find a satisfying solution to it. The issue has been with blend shapes and how there are two types of blend shapes that we use: Animation driven blend shapes and blend shapes controlled by code. The problem is that Blender exports blend shapes with blanket settings for blend shape types. By that I mean that when exporting I can either choose that they are relative (meaning they are controlled by the animations of the rig) or have them be absolute (having them being absolute makes it easy to control through code). So far we have used absolute blend shapes. But now we are at a point where we will need both, and while we could always overwrite the animation information each frame, that is far from an optimised way to do it. After a lot of back and forth I found something that worked, though it is a little more steps to do each time we export than I have used previously.
The solution turned out to be using two rigs for the character: one with no animations and blend shapes absolute, and one with animations, blend shapes relative and the animations for code deleted. That way we can use the rig without animations as a base and use the animations from the other in the animation setup; making it so that no animation information overrides what should be controlled through scripts.
Updates & Camera
By Ouroboros - Programmer
As soon as work started again after the holidays, we started getting the last bits ready for the update. For me, this mainly consisted of fixing bugs that had been found in tests, and making some minor adjustments and improvements. There were some sneaky bugs that only showed up in the build of the game and not in the Unity editor, which made them time consuming to debug. For every change I made, I had to make a build to be able to test if it fixed the bug. While it only takes about 20 minutes to make a build, it quickly adds up.
Once the update was out, we did of course discover some new bugs so I spent the next few days working on fixes for those. I know more people have been experiencing that the game stutters when turning while on the horse after this update, and this is something I’m working on a solution for. The horse controller has been in need of an upgrade for a while now, and it’s finally time to do something about it. I have split the task into four parts that are to some degree dependent on each other: camera, interaction, animation and controller. I started work on the camera part in the last week of January, where the main goal is to make it possible to change between first-person and third-person cameras.
Between the update and the work on the camera, I upgraded Astride to use Unity 6. Upgrading software versions like this always comes with a risk, but this was an instance where the benefits would be worth it. The upgrade did end up breaking some textures and, while I did try my best to fix it, observant players will most likely notice a difference.
Welcome Mathie!
By Mathie - Intern
Hello, Astride Community! Allow me to introduce myself! My name is Mathie, and I’m an artist and animator from Norway. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember, and I love bringing life into whatever I draw and animate! I am currently studying Digital art and Animation, and I am in my final year of my bachelor’s degree. For my thesis I aimed to do an internship as this would help me gain some insightful experience working in the games industry. Last semester I reached out to Raidho Games, and I was super excited when they said yes to letting me join development on their project.
I officially started this internship mid-December and it has been an exciting time.
The Astride team has been lovely to work with, always willing to lend a helping hand when needed. I will continue working with this team until April, and I hope to deliver work to the best of my abilities.
Whenever I’m not busy with assignments, my internship, or art, I love brewing myself a nice cup of coffee, taking walks outside and hanging out with my friends. I also consider myself an avid fan of animated movies and all animals. <3
My tasks have been as follows: I am assisting in the design of environmental assets for the town of Eldheim. From houses to doors, windows, signs and door handles I am aiming to contribute to the Scandinavian feel of Astride! The team gave me clear instructions on their main inspirations, and I did research on some of the history and architectural styles found in the older towns of Norway.
A fun aspect of assignments like these is how it opens your eyes to the details of your surroundings, nowadays I’ll find myself stopping by houses to really take a moment to admire them and constantly on the lookout for new inspiration. For future assignments I will also be providing some animations for the player character and I am as excited as ever!
That’s it for now, I hope you have a wonderful day!
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Please be aware that the content featured in these devlogs represents an ongoing work in progress and may be subject to further changes. We are committed to continuously developing and refining our game. To stay informed about the latest updates and connect with the rest of the Astride community, we invite you to join our dedicated Discord server community here! For additional information about Astride, please visit our official website.