In November, the team worked on the final push towards the bigger update that was released on December 1st. Since December is a short month of development, we decided to merge it with the November development log. The next devlog will be regarding the development in January.
Erika and River
By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist
Hi everyone, Maja here. November has been a hectic month for us. Other than the preparations for the update, I’ve designed some more NPCs.
Erika is one of the first NPC ideas we had for Astride. She is a showjumper. Back in early 2022, I made a few sketches of what she would look like, but I never finalized her design. So I made a new mood board, looked at my old sketches, and drew. I was so back and forth with her design, but I finally made what I was looking for. It was mainly the color palette that didn’t feel right for me. She comes from a wealthy and well-known family in Eldheim, with high expectations of her. Her clothes are pricey but she tends to lean more towards softer-looking designs and colors like light pink. A kind of cottage core top, a white skirt, a black belt, and brown boots. Her necklace, earrings, and belt buckle are rose gold colored. For her hair, I gave her long hair with dark roots and light ends. It is a cute hairstyle, which is a large braid in the back, and then turns into a low, wavy ponytail. Other than show jumping, Erika really likes to draw. So she will often bring her sketchbook around.
River is here and ready for action. They believe cross country is the coolest discipline in the world. It has everything they are looking for. It has a lot of speed, many challenges, and may also be a bit risky. River and their horse are up for the challenge and will not let anyone tell them otherwise. River loves heavy music like rock and metal and prefers to wear more punk rock-inspired clothing. River is someone who does whatever they want and is not afraid to express their thoughts and opinions. Also, River identifies as non-binary.
I tried many different color palettes for them. I tried out many of the most common punk colors like green and red, but I landed on purple and of course, black. I also wanted them to have a third color that would be very bright, almost neon. So yellow was a good choice since it is the complementary color to purple. For their hair, I wanted a tough-looking style. So an undercut was a very good option for them. I tried some hairstyles with both long and short hair, but in the end, the shorter style suited them the most. I also gave them some makeup that is suitable for the punk style. Blonde is their natural hair color as well. I tried to give them some colored parts, but I liked the blonde the most. I gave them a tattoo as well since I imagined them to be someone who would love a sleeve. It’s a snake surrounded by roses.
Into the engine
By Mathilde - Community Manager, 3D-artist
The month of November flew by incredibly fast. While I had some tasks to focus on, some of my time was spent inside the engine to help in any way that I could towards the update that we released.
Since the player character didn’t have any LODs, or Level of Detail, as we call it, I was given the task of making a low poly version of the mesh for the character. That way, when another character is far away, we can replace the high poly mesh with the low poly and you won’t be able to tell the difference. I tried to lower the polygon count as much as possible without losing the overall shape of the character and clothes. It proved to be a bit tricky to get right, but for now, I am happy with the result.
I was able to start looking at new pattern options for the tobiano gene in the horse creator. While creating the new patterns, I compared them to the older ones and realized that the new ones have a slightly different quality. I have decided to go over the old tobiano patterns to freshen them up as well as make them align better with each other. This is not something I will be having a big focus on, but it is a task that I can do in between bigger tasks.
When Ouroboros was finished with the three dressage courses, I stepped in to further align the curves to utilize the whole dressage arena and to make the curves go alongside the rails when needed. Doing this gave me a bit more insight into how the dressage curves work and this will help greatly when we create new dressage tests as other developers can create them instead of the programmers. Helping out inside the engine like this relieves the programmers and gives them room to work on other features instead. I’m looking forward to start implementing new dressage tests when they are needed.
As a little bonus, before we pushed the recent update, I created the Eldhest figurines. My idea with this was to hide a few horses around the map to create an incentive to explore the different areas of the new environment. They were essentially inspired by the Swedish Dalahest but with our own twist. The Eldhest takes the shape of a Norwegian Fjord horse and has different designs such as the Norwegian “rosemaling” and Fjord horse colors. More designs will come at a later time but is not a priority for now.
The Eldhest figurines were a fun, little task for me and they were something I could add to the game myself without bugging the programmers. This was also a good way of dipping back into my Unity experience when it comes to objects, textures, and creating materials. They were a great exercise.
Since the month of November suddenly turned into December, I'll add on what I accomplished this short month as well. Since the release of the newest update to Astride, I've been getting more and more engaged with work inside the engine. The rest of the Astride team who are not programmers will be more hands-on in the engine from now on. I've been interested in making more jumpable obstacles and I got the idea to introduce the start of cross country and jumpable obstacles outside of the riding arenas.
I asked Ouroboros for some help to get started with the jumps as they are all connected with their own code. It was a bit confusing at the start, but I think I got the hang of it after a little while. I'm still a little bit away from making new jumps without needing a bit of guidance, but I've slowly become more and more confident with working inside the engine. As displayed in the GIF, we now have jumpable logs that are placed around the new forest trails in Eldheim. I also forgot to mention that I was given the privilege to change parts of the map to practice my skills in creating an environment.
Tirna created some awesome parts for signs that I imported and placed around the map. Since many players got lost on the map we wanted to do something about it. I created a few variations of the signs and placed out some of them. I will most likely make more variations later and spread them more around the map.
Environment
By Tirna - Project Manager, 3D-artist
We've had a major update in our environment, and it's been a mix of good and not-so-good changes. Let me break down what's been happening.
Given our small team and limited resources, both in terms of funds and expertise, we decided to experiment with a different asset pack. Our horses have evolved significantly since we first began Astride, so we felt it was time for an upgrade. The first iteration of our environment wasn't meant for exploration; it was simply a backdrop for the riding arena. But we always planned to improve it in a later update.
Crafting a decent environment with just a few assets was quite a hurdle, especially since I lacked formal training in environmental design. Hence, this environment was never meant to be permanent. But that doesn't mean it was a waste of time. Personally, I've gained valuable insights, and the feedback we've received has been instrumental. We'll be sure to take all of this into account as we make more and more of Eldheim. Oh, and speaking of the environment, we're in the process of adding signs!
Now, onto the new stable modules - there isn't much I can disclose just yet. What I can say is that they will significantly simplify the pipeline for creating stables within Unity for our developers.
Exciting things are in the pipeline for Astride, and we're aiming to make these updates count. Stay tuned for more as we continue to elevate and expand our world.
Animations
By Marius - Animator
It didn’t get featured in the October devlog but at the end of October I worked on updating the stirrup system in Blender. This is a system I have to save time while animating the character. To tell you an example, the only thing manually moved in the gif below is the horse's spine!
While I mainly worked with the animation system into November I did take some time to look at feedback and fix the less time-consuming problems. So I fixed the neck during the high jump and did some minor maintenance on the overall movement.
When working in Unity's animation system I noticed some missing animations that have been up to this point not been a priority to make. But now they are wanted so I made the walking half pass.
In addition to missing animations, there were some that were plain wrong. The gallop has for the most part looked good in isolation, but after testing and scrutinizing the animations while testing the system, it came to my attention that the gallop was WAY too slow. Not in the speed it gallops, but the animation loop itself. So I did a fast edit to speed it up and give a better transition between canter and gallop. It did lose some of the key poses that I had to later fix, as the reach or stretch with the forelegs vanished while speeding the animation up.
To continue to add more missing dressage moves, I animated the piaffe pirouette.
And later the canter pirouette. Though a little delayed as power outages always come when it is the most inconvenient.
After the update, we got a lot of feedback. One feedback was as I mentioned above: the gallop.
While this is not the finished gallop and has some looping issues, it reintroduces the stretch and has some other little fixes here and there.
It has been a hectic month and a half, and while we are working hard to get as much as we are able into the upcoming update; it will be nice to be able to recharge the batteries before the new year.
Everything
By Green Horse - Programmer
November was another month where I did everything, everywhere, all at once, again. I did so much, in fact, that there is not enough steam left to write a proper full-length devlog. I did many things. Here’s a quick summary.
- Human Character
- Clouds and skies
- Physical Objects
- Soccer Ball
- Broke stuff
- Fixed what I broke
- Fixed stuff that others broke
- Fixed stuff that I broke in the past
- Fixed future bugs
Third iteration of dressage
By Ouroboros - Programmer
I was able to finish the third iteration of dressage this month and started making some dressage courses in the game. A lot of the work for the third iteration was to implement bezier curves that would work for our very specific use. The initial plan was to have a point that moved along the curves that the player had to keep pace with, but this felt stressful and the point stole all the focus away from the actual dressage gameplay. After all, it wasn’t supposed to be a game of “follow the dot”. I decided to instead track the player’s progress along the curve so that they could progress at their own pace and keep the focus on the course as a whole.
Another thing I worked on this month was horse jumping. We wanted to let the player jump any jump from any direction (within reason). I implemented new visuals showing the horse’s stride, and a stride plane in front of the jump. The looks aren’t set in stone, and we might try some different ones yet. There has also been a fair amount of small bug fixes, making adjustments to values, cleaning up code, and testing. I’m really excited to work more on both dressage and jumping and try to make them the best they can be.
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.