Hi everyone! We can't believe it's already Friday! The weeks go by so fast. As always, we have a lot of development to show you. Many interesting things are in the works, and we are getting closer and closer to a new test build.
Changing gaits
A preemptive stab at having things done before you need them, we redid the lead change on the newer rig. Even though the lead change will probably not be implemented for a good while, we saw that it would be fast to remake and will eventually be needed. It is also one of the last movement animations that had not been remade from the last rig. With the exception of mirrored animations, which would be what you change between with the lead change.
Minor adjustments and sharp turns
While we usually show an animation that have been focused on for a major part of the week. This week there was a lot of smaller details on numerous animations that needed to be fixed and there was no singular animation that was obviously different from earlier. We did start on some new ones but none of them got far enough that we wanted to share them at that stage. There was one animation that stood out with the most visible changes though; We realized the canter turning animation needed to be more dynamic by leaning more into the direction you are moving. Mostly this was because of the speed and angle the horse turns it looked a little off.
Markings affecting mane color
Tobiano patterns and other patterns are fun to make, but lining them up to fit the other parts of the horse deemed to be a little tricky. However, we have found a way to make many variations of mane color splits between white pattern and the horse's original color. We will be testing the system out in the new horse shader, but so far it looks to be working as intended. This way we can line up white patterns with the horse's hairs which will give it a more natural look opposed to just solid hair colors.
Exactly how we thought of and created this solution is currently a trade secret, as we haven't seen this technique done before. So imagine our excitement when thinking of this solution and later finding it to be working!
Color swatches and UI elements
Since the end of last week we have been working more on the UI for the upcoming test. Different icons have been made for a few categories such as coat colors, breed, markings and more. For the coat colors we've made an icon/button for each coat that can be chosen for the horse. There will of course be restriction for each breed when more breeds are added to the game. A lot of time has gone into putting the icons and objects together in a program to see how it all goes together. Some icons will change later, but they work for now.
Animation data
When importing animations into Astride we need to define some additional data like front, side, rotation velocity and when animation events should fire. Good ol' reliable spreadsheets are useful for this purpose. We have a working import pipeline for this now and will keep extending it with extra information. Here’s a screenshot of our fantastic spreadsheet.
Competition arena
This competition arena isn’t completely done, but it is at a stage where we are comfortable to test it. There are some things we need to figure out to give you the best experience of this building in the early access. On the curved walls, you see two levels with grass. Our vision is to have some trees and bushes around, maybe even a statue! Who knows how we decide to decorate the arena. But one thing that we know for sure is that we are going to have different banners around the rails! You can read more about it in this public Patreon post.
Leg markings
We have been steadily adding more and more markings to the horse, and the leg markings finally have their first sets done. All of the leg markings can be changed separately, so in this GIf, you can see the leg markings being randomized. This means that when a player makes a custom horse, they will be able to choose the markings for each leg separately. There will of course be more variations added at a later time, but for now, these leg markings will serve its purpose.
Interiors
We are also working on some furniture and interiors. We hope they will bring more of a cosy vibe to our game. In the stable, arenas and other buildings, you will find some furniture and other decor elements. Even though the horses are our main priority now, it is good to already figure out how the furniture and other decor will look like. Some of them will have more functions rather than just being visually pleasing. But that is something we will need to come back to on another day.
Striding progress
We’re slowly approaching a testable prototype of the striding system internally. We’ve been working on some visual indicators above the jump to show how in sync you are with the requirements to make the jump. The jump has a fixed speed requirement and a point on the ground where the horse should jump from to make a perfect jump. To show this to the player I decided to add a curved line above the jump to tell you if you should speed up or slow down. A perfect straight line means you have the perfect speed.
For the striding we decided to have circles showing the frequency and offset you have from the ideal jumping position. If there is a circle on the line it means you have a perfect stride. If it’s not on the line then it’s up to the player to do some mental gymnastics to figure out how much they need to slow down and speed up again to have a perfect stride and still have a perfect speed. It’s a skill players will get to learn over time. The next challenge is having to prepare for the gates after the current one. This will be the metagame in the show jumping gamemode.
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!