It's Friday once again and the Astride team has spent the last two weeks crunching away. There has been a lot of work behind the scenes regarding the early access and information on that, as you could probably tell from our earlier update around this. But we do of course have more exciting things to show you this time around.

Turning on the forehand

Continuing from last time We made it possible to turn the other way around while standing still. EXCITING!
In the GIF you will see that the back hooves have the wrong foot forward. This has since been fixed and you can see the updated version on Instagram, as it should be posted at this very moment.

Long jump

Another new animation this time! The long jump is; as you guessed, for those obstacles that require fast speeds and long air time. This iteration was mostly made by mixing gallop and the high jump animations with some guidance from references. It is meant to be the framework for the animation it will become, as the solely mixing of those animations does not sell the movement well. We also asked our Discord community if they had or knew of good references that could help lift the animation forwards.

The start of white patterns

We have been doing more research around patterns and we just released a new Patreon post with all Mathildes thoughts and progress around horse genetics and colors. Here is the first test of different tobiano patterns where we mix multiple patterns together to create new ones! Since we don't want the standard repeating tobiano patterns that we see too many places. So far it's been working nicely. These patterns aren't polished, so the hard edges will be worked on later.

Striding system

The first feature to be properly implemented in early acess is the striding mechanics. This will function as the base on which we will have animations synchronized with the striding frequency and length, and an interesting show jumping mechanic where you have to match the speed and striding frequency the gate expects you to have in order to jump over it.

One challenge is to extract data from real world horse movement and make some sort of a rhythmic movement system independent of visual animations. Luckily we have this very detailed blog post as a reference.

Horse controller

We are not going to pretend that we are inventing a new horse controller from scratch. Rockstar set the industry standard for horse controllers and just like how Quake set the standard for first person shooter games, we are just going to declare this as the new standard for which quadrupedal movement is done in games. You can learn about how horses behave in RDR2 here.

We’re making our controller behave similar to this one but with our own touch to make it play well with our striding mechanics.

Cross country jumps

The past two weeks have been mostly spent planning the next six to seven months. However we have been able to make a few 3D models for cross country. Some of you might have seen these jumps already in our Discord server or Instagram. Some of these obstacles will be integrated into the ground, and your horse should be able to jump up and down.

Jin

Meet Rini's husband, Jin! Jin is a 28 year old man and he is the saddler of Eldheim. He is a calm guy who enjoys trail rides in the forest with his horse. He cares highly about his skin routine and enjoys a healthy meal. He got his interest for saddle making at a young age through his family. He was taught by his father and grandfather back in Japan. He got an education as a saddle maker as well which he finished at the age of 20. He spent his early twenties working in Japan as a saddler and that is where he met Rini.

Rini is a show jumper and was competing on a high level. She was in need for a new saddle for her horse. The two of them fell and love and married a few years later. Jin and Rini wanted to explore the world and spent a lot of time traveling. And that is when they discovered Eldheim for the first time and fell in love with the place. They loved the nature and the people so much that they decided to move there. They built their own house with a small stable fit for their horses and a home area for their rabbits.

Holiday splash art

Since winter is almost here and the holiday season is around the corner, a new splash art is on it's way. There is nothing that screams more "julestemning" than a cold winters day with the sun shining, a fluffy fjord horse and a "julenek" (sheaf) filled with bullfinches that are enjoying a free meal.

Pangare and dun

We are currently working on the combination of the genes pangaré and dun. Since it's not as simple as adding the pangaré on top of the dun. Pangaré and dun affect each other, so we've made a whole new set of overlays based on these two genes combined. Here is a showcase of all the accepted Fjord horse colors. The Ulsblakk still needs more work and lightening, but the rest are feeling more or less complete. We haven't added the mealy/pangaré naming to the black bases or the double dilutes as they won't show either way.

Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!