Paintings
By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist
My biggest task this month was to create a painting for the game itself. Astride will have some wall decor where it’s suitable, so some things that resemble a painting are perfect for our concept and will also make the inside of a certain building a bit more interesting.
The idea was more of a historical painting from around the early 1900s, featuring two people riding together on each their horse in a calm landscape near a little pond. I had to do some research to find some fitting clothes for the two that were also normal in the given time area.
I’ll show you a blurred image of it. It’s not too exciting to show it before it’s in the game. I also have a few more “paintings” in the works. I am excited to see them in the game.
The Jutland
By Mathilde - Community Manager, 3D-artist
The month of May has been short for me due to national holidays and a personal week off. Nonetheless, we still have a new breed to reveal that was chosen by one of our amazing Kickstarter backers. This is the mighty Jutland horse!
While the Jutland does have great, big feathers (hair) on their legs, this is a bigger task that we haven't started just yet. So, for now, all of the horses that are supposed to have leg feathers will have bare legs. I can't wait until we figure out a good solution for the hair and how the colors will be affected. Since we have so many color variations and markings, this will definitely be a nut to crack, but I am sure we will get there at some point.
The world is changing
By Tirna - Project Manager, 3D-artist
Say goodbye to that old, crusty placeholder of a world, and say hello to this new world!
I’m unsure where to actually begin, so I’ll start with the fact that even though I did most of it, I got thorough guidance from Josef, the 3D artist who is creating our characters. He also designed the soft and cozy lighting!
We got rid of all the older environment assets and replaced them with different asset packs from Nature Manufacture. Working with these assets, and with Josef, has been nothing less than a game changer. It’s good to say that I finally feel more confident in this field.
Our goal is for you as a player to recognize where you are, which was difficult in the current environment scene on Steam. We don’t know for sure when this scene will be available to you, but we hope it will be part of a larger update in the next couple of months. In this post, I won’t be too technical, just sharing some pictures and thoughts.
Eldheim is based on Scandinavian countries, and what is Scandinavia without our mighty mountains? For us, these surroundings bring a calm and safe feeling, like nature is shielding you from the stressful daily life and wants to bring you peace and quiet.
Behind the horse market stable, you will find a nice little field, where some horses or maybe other animals will roam.
Nearby the horse market, you’ll find a house that has a fantastic view, which I hope most of us can agree is like a dream.
From another angle, you can see the fjord. Imagine having that as a background while training showjumping with Rini!
Or would you rather go for a little trail alone or among old and new friends?
I really hope that you are looking forward to saying goodbye to the old environment and welcoming this new place. It has been a joy to work on, and I’m looking forward to continuing with this. Some changes, however, might happen, but all in all, this is the general path we are on.
On a last note, we just got rid of that dreadful water! This is one of the next steps I’ll learn.
Reins & rearing
By Marius - Animator
In the devlog for April, I kept a little secret. While my main work was on tack setup and system last month, I also began looking into finally adding reins. It took some time to research and learn new tools, but over May it began to take shape into proper reins. During this time I tried to make a good backlog of GIFs and pictures of my progress and bloopers to use in a Patreon post on the making of reins and why they were delayed. While they are not finished yet, they are at a level where I feel we can test them publicly.
While a lot of time has gone to making and documenting the reins it does not mean I've been idle on other things. I’ve teased it in the Patreon post, but there is a new animation on its way! It is a rearing animation, for both horse and rider! Though, when it will be available is uncertain, as we need to fix a bug that makes animations while stationary play incorrectly and set up some other requirements before it will be in-game. This is the same bug that prevents the turning on the forehand and pirouette animations from playing correctly.
Other than that, I adjusted the tack script from last month to work on set pieces instead of individual parts like having to add the metal and leather parts of the saddle as separate objects, when they are meant to be one object.
Though I do have to split it up so that you can choose the saddle pad independently from the saddle.
Playtesting and servers
By Green Horse - Programmer
Early May was all about playtesting, getting a patch out to fix some performance issues, adding quality of life improvements and getting a prototype show jumping scoreboard in. I worked with the livestream community to record some promotional footage and I was surprised over how many people joined. I will most likely do another one of these in June.
In mid to late May I worked on improving the internal tools to speed up development. One of the improvements is that it now takes about two seconds to enter the game in Unity and that we can now automatically launch a server from launch parameters enabling people to host 24/7 servers.
Tack & course selection
By Ouroboros - Programmer
I started the month by making a system to change the horse’s tack from the player’s inventory. It uses the code Marius worked on last month to assign tack to the horse. Once the player has some tack in their inventory, all they need to do is to double-click it to equip it to the horse. If the horse already has a tack of the same type equipped (like a saddle), then the old tack will be returned to the player’s inventory. A horse’s equipped tack is saved between sessions, so the player won’t have to put it on every time they start the game. There currently isn’t an option to remove the tack, but it is possible to hide the saddle and boots. Tack change from the inventory can be seen in action below, complete with placeholder images and text.
Another feature I have worked on is course selection. Players currently have to interact with a board to start a dressage course or show jumping course. There is one board for each course. This is going to become inconvenient when we add more courses, so I have made some changes so that one board can have several courses. Interacting with a board will bring up a UI where the player can see all the courses the board has, and select the one they want.
Since show jumping courses need jumps that should be visible to all players, they work a bit differently than dressage courses. A show jumping course must be activated before it can be used. One board can only have one course active at a time, and the active course can only be changed if no one is using it. Dressage courses have no restrictions like this.
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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.