Hi, I’m back with another Dev-Update. I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and got into the new year well. For EQUIRE, it was 2 divided months. I took a break from development over Christmas and New Year's and then got right back into the depth of the building system. I worked on options that might not look spectacular and were a lot of work programming but will be crucial for a smooth building process. Walls can now have set start and end structures, which is great for fence posts. Door and window frames can have different sizes, allowing for bigger wall elements and more precise placing options for doors and windows. Besides, I added a grid placement option for the top-down building mode that can be toggled at will. In the past month, you had the chance to vote for a new building preview style, and I expanded the building options by adding a menu that lets you customize objects to your liking.
This menu can be accessed in Building (First-Person) and Architecture Mode (Top-Down) and lets you switch between different variants of a given object and its materials. For example, if you are building a new box in your stable, you can open this menu to change the material of your box walls. Maybe the lower part should be made of a nice bright wood while the metal bars are green. You can switch between different combinations with the thumbnails changing to preview all possible combinations. After you pick a material combination and build your box wall, you now want to place a gate into the wall of your box. However, you don’t like how the big door limits your horse's view, so you open the menu again and select a smaller door with a bend bar structure, enabling you to greet your horse before entering.
This new menu allows me to add lots of objects and options without flooding you with stuff and makes objects easy to find. As you progress through the game and increase your reputation, you will unlock new object variants and materials. If you ever want to change the materials or variant of a placed object, for example, to apply something newly unlocked, I have also added a tool that lets you reopen the menu for a placed object and change any option you like. All of this might be a little hard to imagine just by reading my chaotic thoughts, which is why I am creating some objects to build a nice stable and plan to release a video showing how building is done in EQUIRE soon. So, stay tuned!
Because programming all this building stuff can become tedious, I toyed with some horse stuff from time to time. Petting, leading, and mounting are now in the game but need some polishing. I also added options for the customizable jumps to include little walls or hedges underneath the bar. Furthermore, after a lot of tweaking with animation and physics simulation, I'm now a little happier with the behavior of the reins, and the rider moves them from side to side when you are (trying to give/giving) the appropriate signal. If your horse listens and you begin riding turns in canter, the horse now changes leads based on the turning direction to avoid counter canters. Lastly, the menu that pops up when you are switching between different gameplay modes recieved a visual overhaul. When you finally get your hands on the game, you will see this quite often.
Next up on my list are further building features, more riding improvements, and excitingly, horse coats!