Thank you everyone who has been able to come and test the game with us. I am enjoying talking and getting feedback, ideas, and making a list of things to fix. You are finding things that have gone unnoticed, that is why it is always good to have other eyes on things! Also, some wonderful ideas have been suggested.

I hope to keep up this version until tomorrow, and then we will need to make some fixes and give everyone an updated client (copy of game).

Some issues I am able to fix with out disruption- like the Fjord manes not coming through – which have for some odd reason been the bane of our asset bundles.

Also- I am trying to track down someone who purchased a package yesterday from Singapore- their email has been bouncing back. Please email me at [email protected] so we can get you started- thank you!!

Greetings!

We are embarking on a test today, hurrah! Fans who have purchased items or early access on our goal store should receive an email with instructions on how to get started. This test will be for Windows PC only. We currently do not have a launcher built yet, so you will have to download a client for this test that should be deleted once it is outdated. Please keep in mind that this game is a bit rough around the edges right now as we are in middle of building it-  and we are working as hard as we can on it.

Initial Test Notes

• You can generate horses (Click Ranch- then click “Catch horse”), breed, train, take turns, and we hope that some events get created and filled so we can begin testing event code.
• When signing up – please be very careful when entering your password and save it somewhere safe! We do not have a way to reset lost passwords at the moment.
• The 3D world (“Go Riding” Button) is not close to any kind of completion. All you can do in it now is explore the world and see your horses in each map- in slow motion trot.
• Stash all horses you do not want in your pasture- they will not be loaded in the 3D world and can help manage performance when in the 3D world. We do not have a way to retire the horses yet, so that’s the best way to manage your ranch if you have a lot of horses.
• I will be in the in-game chat as much as possible to get feedback & answer questions. My Chat nick is Nefertete, click the name on the chat element if you wish to ask me something private.
• Sound & music is currently in development.
• If you are not in the 3D world, I apologize for the white background- background done and almost in, one of the first things I will do.
• Data, like your horses and your accounts should not be reset, but there is a slim possibility that it might have to be done.

Further Instructions will be emailed to you on the email you purchased an item from the goal store with. If you can not receive this email – please send an email to [email protected] with your old email or name, and let me know what your new email is- thank you!

If you missed it- you can catch the majority of it here http://www.twitch.tv/orbisgames/v/30840177

(Thanks to feedback- the clicking sound goes away soon)

We will definitely do that again soon and throughout the stages of development. Thank you everyone for attending and all of your good questions. Loved the community and support!

Hello all!
This Saturday evening we are going to show the game live on Twitch.tv (http://www.twitch.tv/orbisgames) and chat with you about our development and features. I will be talking and answering your questions live while showing you the game’s progress. The time for the stream will be 5pm PST/8pm EST on  Satuday, 12/19 . Be sure to sign up on Twitch.tv  if you want to chat and ask questions yourself- follow us too!

Join me this Saturday on Twitch.tv to check out the game live!

Our graphical user interface (GUI) is underway- Here’s a screenshot of it and a randomly generated mule and a sample of what you will see on Saturday
.

We need your help! Code is coming along nicely and we want to have Early Access/Alpha testing underway in a month. We need your help to do this- so please be sure to visit our Goal Store  and see if anything interests you. Our goal is to raise $5,000 in the next four weeks. This would enable us to work full time on it and acquire our much needed User Interface (“UI” buttons, backgrounds, etc..) artwork.

Below are some screenshots and brief updates.

Many of the minimum functionalities are complete! All of the user interface art is temporary place holders (stats will look better, and color descriptions are for debugging purposes)

Minimal game features are much like the original Virtual Horse Ranch features.  The basic game-play part will work on tablets and possibly phones as well. Unfortunately, Unity 5 (our game engine) is not handling the 3D world well on tablets- and we went all out on improving the generated world, so riding horses around the 3D world will not be available at launch for handheld devices.

Simulated Events are underway as well. Again, the artwork is placeholder art.

We are scratching real-time based aging and updating horses in your stable. Now we are doing it as we do it in the web game- Turns! This allows users to control time at their own pace.

The world is expansive, and also coming together well. Progress on multi-player here is going good too. Unfortunately, this feature will not be available for tablets right away.

So much code! A lot of code is complete for both server side and client side. We still have a lot more gaps to fill in.

So much code! This game requires both delicate client side code and server side code.

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.

We are going to Breyerfest in July! In April, we will have confirmation that we will have a booth there as well. I’m particularly excited about having the French theme- having spent some time growing up in France as a kid.

We should have some very cool stuff there- more details will be mentioned as time progresses.

I just got all my old Breyer horses shipped to me. Nostalgia! I was surprised that a few still don’t have broken legs. I played with these horses up until a healthy age 🙂

I hear there will be a mechanical bull at Breyerfest.  All activities concerning this said bull, and our community manager volunteers, will be video taped. In fact- maybe even a livecam?

Who else is planning on going?

We are working as hard as we can on code at the moment- which isn’t as hard as we would like to. Given real world responsibilities, like silly bills and rent, John and I are only able to spend 1-2 days a week on code. Fortunately we have a strong code base that John has been developing over the years, so things are going faster than if we were developing this from scratch.

We are debating whether to try another Kickstarter campaign for less or promoting and refocusing our goal store- so we can acquire more art and have a human avatar riding the horse as we would like. We think it’s necessary too! At some point we will have it, we just want to have it by official launch.

I have figured out how to add “layers” to horses- which is totally awesome. That means new horses are going to have unexpected markings like socks, blazes and such. Or perhaps a totally different Appy coat than it’s parent, yet the same color. Cycled through some random tail+mane and ended up with the below picture of the Andalusian Horse in progress. Still working on that pure “Show” horse model, will be thinning down those legs 🙂

We have been working on code for VHR3D and getting a lot done, but we don’t have much appropriate to show you at the moment with our placeholder graphics. We hope to have some sort of early access up sometime in March- hopefully sooner! Depends on what all we can get done with our most limited resource- Time.

All this week we are going to be looking for feedback- what interests you and what you want to see in a horse game. After all, this game is being aided by your support. Please answer our first set of poll questions, and comment with anything additional you would like to say- thank you!

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Just a note for question below- breeds like “Arappaloosa” will be from combining two Arappaloosas or an Appaloosa and an Arabian.

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