Thank you everyone for your patience! I know a lot of people are looking forward to getting early access and seeing what we have. Right now- we still have been focusing on both server side and client side code to make things work like training horses, breeding horses, generating wild/foundation horses, clubs, and events. A lot of work here has been done- and yay for John’s recent progress on Clubs. With our “no budget” A lot of this is just buttons and results for now- still very cool.
What we don’t have- is much of the “pretty” stuff done yet- and the user interface is pretty ugly in placeholder art. We also don’t have much new in the way of any visuals to show. But I think we are getting to a point where everything will soon be downhill. Especially as I learn more and more about our code base and get more acquainted with it. I love working on it- and wish I could do it full time! I am also glad that I am learning it all so I can make changes and updates to the game as we need them.
Last weekend I added in the generation of color layer data to new horses (based on breed etc..)- and guess what? We are going to have “Greying” as requested! Foals for example might be born black but turn grey- and we are going to hide that from you until they mature enough to see the new color. I will be experimenting to see if it can be a gradual change, or if one day you log on and don’t recognize that black horse you had… It’s all in data/code only right now- hopefully soon we will associate this to the 3D horses (and make a bunch of patterns/layers/colors) so I can show you cool generated horses!
A date for early access? We will certainly have something ready by July for Breyerfest. However I’m working as best as I can to get people who purchased Early Access in for a few days soon to show them our progress. I really don’t want to scare people off in its very temporary state the game is in now.
No Budget
I want to spend every penny possible we get on art. The Goal Store will be reworked soon to reflect that. We are still working on the game “as we can” and have to pay bills and keep contract work jobs. We are considering doing a smaller Kickstarter campaign in July- with the focus to grind off a finished product and to fund money to make Human Avatars for your character. I’ll be poling your opinion soon here on what features we must have done for release 🙂 We can always add in stuff after release as well. We are building the game structure to feature more animal species than just horses ye’ know 😉 Feel free to comment and leave your opinion as well if you wish.
Suitabilities
“Suitabilities” are a hidden set of data for each horse that is initially based on the horse’s breed, such as stats- and has a chance to be improved through eventing experience and breeding.
In the original Virtual Horse Ranch – events give bonuses to “Breed types” such as drafts, sport horses, warmbloods etc.. in certain event types. Our Game Master Alabama came up with a new (and neat) idea on how to handle this better so each breed, and line of horses is more dynamic. Each breed now has various “Suitabilities” they are naturally good at. For example- Quarter Horses will excel in Western Events (and have degrees of bonuses in other events), as opposed to all stock horses getting the same bonus in all Western Events. Now, the neat thing is- patient breeders can create their own line of specialty breeds. They can work (really hard) to make their own Breeding line of Thoroughbreds that are bred for Dressage- for one example.
I spent the weekend coding them in to VHR3D- and I think they are going to be pretty cool. They will not be too much of an overpowered stat- for example, a well bred American Warmblood will not win dressage events (because the breed is suited for that) out the box with out training and improving stats to meet the competition still.
As always- feel free to leave your feedback! We love hearing from you.
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April 4, 2015 at 4:17 am
Thanks for this update! I seriously can’t wait. Will we be able to use our existing account and the horses on there or will we have to start from scratch?
April 4, 2015 at 7:44 pm
Everyone will start from scratch- lot of new fundamentals in VHR3D- as well as a lot of technical considerations, so it will be a new game entirely. Thank you!
April 5, 2015 at 1:16 pm
Thank you for updating! I’m getting more and more exiting! :3
May 16, 2015 at 2:11 pm
I’m so excited for this game! I just had one question. Will you be able to walk around using the WASD keys? Because my left arrow key is broken and it would such a pity if that would mean I could not play the game. Well at leas never go left 🙂
May 16, 2015 at 5:22 pm
Yes, WASD keys control the horse as of now- and you can decide your camera (move around/zoom out) or “ride” horse. I have had some requests for arrow keys- not quite sure how comfortable that would be for right handed users, but we’ll probably make both work or let you configure which keys.
May 17, 2015 at 8:16 am
How will Racing work? c:
May 17, 2015 at 5:55 pm
At immediate launch, competitive racing (where you get prizes) will be simulated. Eventually we plan on offering a second competition type where you can ride your horse on the track to enter a time in to the competition.
Horses though, when you ride together- have their actual speed, endurance, agility etc… so you could race among friends or organize your own club races for fun or something. We’ll work hard to have multiplayer riding at launch or shortly after.
May 23, 2015 at 3:43 pm
OMG, if this really is as awesome as it sounds, with the beautiful 3D world and all the different interactions and the building and breeding and everything you talked about (and why should it not be so :P) this is the game I have always wanted!! I really cant wait to try it out!
Just one thing: if you added “paysafe card” as a means of payment (as I dont have a credit card or paypal account, though I would be old enough) I would actually buy things like pasture slots or what ever you have to support the game, cause I love supporting awesome unique games, as in a thank you to the creators.
May 23, 2015 at 5:37 pm
Thank you! We will have Rixty as we do our other games- which is a way to pay via cash (at coinstar and other locations)- does that help? I’ll look in to other options as well.
May 24, 2015 at 9:53 am
Thanks! 🙂 Yeah, I never heard of Rixty before but I googled it and somehow it is connected to MOLpoints which is somehow connected to paysafe card, so maybe it will work out, though I will figure that out when the time comes 🙂
The options are just not so abundant as in, for example,the USA , since I live in Switzerland…