Saddle Pads & Horse Creator UI
By Maja - CEO, Concept Artist
Hiya, Maja here! As usual, I have been creating things for the game and doing admin work, which is also a huge part of the process. The game development and concept art is the most enjoyable in my opinion.
This month has gone to a bit of concept art. I made many different designs for saddle pads and I have even more in mind. All of these have had mostly black as their main color or as the secondary color. I’ve made 5 different patterns for them to give them some more variation than the color only. As an equestrian, I know how easy it is to start collecting saddle pads, so it’s important to create a variety of designs for the players to choose from.
I’ve also started on an update on Einar’s concept art. The poor guy’s art is over 2 years old, and was created when I had two jobs, so I did not spend as much time on it as I initially wanted to. He also needs to fit the current art style for the characters. In addition to this, I started sketching out some ideas for the aunt-character.
I’ve also started on a few drawings that will be visible in the game as paintings on walls and such, though these take a bit more time than the saddle pads do.
Like last month I’ve been working on the horse creator UI. I’ve made the layout for coat colors, markings, and so on. I’ve created icons for the markings and I am really excited to test it together with the community when it’s ready! I showed the community a sneak peek on this in the work-in-progress channel in our Discord server and on Instagram.
Tack fitting, manure, and a new breed reveal
By Mathilde - Community Manager, 3D-artist
I started this month preparing tack for the inventory update we are working on. I and Tirna have been collaborating on the tack pieces for the horses, although I definitely give her all of the credit for the beautiful tack pieces. My task was to first go over the individual pieces and make sure that they can be worked on with symmetry and making final adjustments to the mesh as a polish. After this, I sent the pieces back to Tirna for her to create the UV-maps (where the textures go) and the textures. Once I got the tack pieces back, it was time for fitting! I fitted all of the different pieces of tack to all of the current breeds I have in the project. At this point, it was the Norwegian Warmblood, Norwegian Fjord, Icelandic, Arabian, both Percheron types, and the Norwegian Dole horse.
The show jumping tack set fitted on the Norwegian Warmblood, Arabian, and French-type Percheron.
The dressage tack set fitted on the same breeds as above.
These two tack sets are what we will be introducing in the update that includes the first iteration of our inventory system. I am very excited to not only get the bridles into the game, but also the addition of changing tack and removing it.
Next up is something we all know we need in a horse game, but never thought about. Horse manure! And yes, this month, I have been creating modular poop. And by modular, I mean that I’ve modeled the single pieces of manure that can be used as building blocks to create different mounds of horse droppings. Cool, right? At least, it was a fun task and there were some giggles during the development.
Let me just go ahead and add a spoiler for this image. You know, just in case. Just hover the black bar to reveal the photo. On the left are the modular parts and the three piles to the right are all composed by using all of these modular pieces.
Moving on to bigger tasks, the Alter Real got most of my attention this month. I have been looking forward to making this breed for quite some time, and I was happy to finally have this breed on my plan. I already teased this breed on our Patreon page, but now is time for the final reveal of the Alter Real.
This is how the Alter Real turned out. Previously, when we announced the Alter Real breed chosen by one of our amazing Kickstarter supporters, there were some concerns regarding if the Alter Real is a separate breed or not. While it is a breed derived from a Lusitano line, it is still considered a separate breed by many. But we hear you and we have a surprise for you. Not only will the Alter Real be introduced to Astride, but so will the Lusitano! The Lusitano (PSL) will be using the same detail maps and a similar model as the Alter Real, but will have different color genetics, a slightly different build, and they will be considered two separate breeds in the game.
Eldheim Environment
By Tirna - Project Manager, 3D-artist
Well, April has been a bit slow for me as I fell ill. My main focus at the beginning of April has been on company-related work, so not so much on the development side of things.
After that, I went over every part of the new stable modules, preparing them for texturing. I really hope that they will be ready and in the project (in Unity) at least before we go for summer holiday in July. When the stable will be available for you depends on whether the textures and shaders work as we plan or not.
Last month, I made a test environment, but now we are focusing more on Eldheim! As for now, there isn’t much to show yet, but we can share with you the mood board for one part of the map. Something exciting I can share is that I’m getting help and guidance from a very talented 3D artist, who also created our characters; Josef Najjar.
Breeds & Tack
By Marius - Animator
Earlier this month, I wanted to have a look at a possible future breed system as we want to start implementing other horse breeds soon. To start off, I decided to keep it simple and just see if I could make a prototype of a selection between breeds. I did have access to the Norwegian fjord horse model and began to see if I could find a good way to change between them, that could in theory also be further worked upon to allow breed mixing, but we cannot say if this is a possibility or not just yet.
In the end. I got a prototype working (after some disagreements with hierarchy list order navigation). Although the prototype does not work in-game outside of Unity as I did not have access to the UI Ouroboros and Maja have been working on. It only changes the body shape and some of the tack so far.
As Ouroboros have been working on an inventory system, I decided that it was time to look at scripting a code that applies tack correctly, as I am the most familiar with the rig setup and requirements. This turned out to be a little tricky and I am glad I found a video that talked a little in depth about game object attachment scripting, because we use SkinnedMeshRenderer, which in short means that the game objects follow the skinning weights on the rig and not just attached to a bone. This comes with a few problems that I personally would not have figured out without being told. The main issue is a reference field that needs to be set up that is not visible in any available menu, so you would need to know or find out as you can’t infer what the problem is from what you see in Unity.
After some back and forth, I managed to make the script work as intended, although it is a very manual approach so far. The only job this script has is to apply the game object correctly, because if not: the game object will be invisible.
Camera & Scoreboards
By Green Horse - Programmer
I’ve added a camera follow mode to the game by pressing C on the keyboard or Right Stick Down on a gamepad. It makes the camera follow the horse at a fixed angle instead of free movement. I’ve also looked at other games for inspiration on how to make the camera look towards where you are turning but that will be implemented at a later time.
We don’t have any in-game scoring yet, but that didn’t stop us from having our very first impromptu show jumping competition and a few more throughout the month. Using a totally accurate stopwatch on my phone, I timed each contestant and handed out some shiny gold medals. The competitions highlighted some issues with the striding planes, so I rewrote the code a little bit and made some improvements on how the striding planes become visible, making it easier to jump. The average time for everyone improved after that.
I had no idea what drill teams were before someone showed me. I appreciate these moments on the livestream because it makes me think about how we can implement these as fully functioning game modes. It’s also fun to see that people are organizing these through Discord.
I want to give a special shout out to the Patreon testers and the livestream viewers. Thank you for giving constant feedback, testing out new features and finding bugs in the game. Also I would like to thank you for making my life as a developer better and giving me something to look forward to every week. Having said that, I would really appreciate it if you stopped pushing my horse into the water whenever I’m distracted.
With much love,
Green Horse
Inventory, Quests, and Saving
By Ouroboros - Programmer
I started this month by implementing a basic version of the quest system. This also resulted in some improvements to the dialogue system to make it more versatile. I then created an event system that is responsible for communications between the quest system and the rest of the game. The last part was to make a reward system (so many systems) that gives the player rewards for completing a quest. I have been a bit stressed about quests since it is such a complicated system, so it feels good to have the base ready and working.
The second thing I’ve worked on this month is a save system. We haven’t really had a standard for the structure of saved data and where in the code it should happen, which hasn’t been a problem since not much has needed to be saved so far. That is changing with the implementation of inventory and quests, and we’ve gotten to a point where a proper save system is necessary. I had already implemented saving and loading of the inventory, so I used that as a starting point. The result is one system that is responsible for saving all the data, and one that is responsible for loading the data.
I have spent the last few days of April on the inventory. It has seen some changes as I’ve worked on the quest- and save system, and now it’s time to do the finishing touches before the first version of the inventory is ready for release.
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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.