Hi, everyone! It's that time of the month again and we are back with more work in progress to share with you. It's been an interesting couple of weeks, but we are keeping a steady pace of development for Astride.
Fast canter
During these two weeks we started on adding speed variation animations of the different gaits, as we move move more to transferring and fixing the game engine animation system. We started with the one you see here which was the most needed; the fast canter. The fast canter is as you can surmise, is a faster variant to the canter we already have and will be the fastest animation before being forced into gallop if speeding up. All this is to avoid speeding and slowing down animations to the point of looking silly before they transition to another gait.
Long jump update
Continuing from last post the long jump got an update with help from the many suggested references our discord community sent us. We felt that the old animation didn't really sell the jump enough, so the animation got basically redone from scratch since last post.
Striding
Striding is an important core feature we need for the show jumping gamemode and jumping in general. It's difficult to show the sheer amount of code that has been written but we promise it's a really cool looking code. We are still in research and development mode, so everything looks broken at the moment in the editor but a work in progress is still just a work in progress. More is to come!
Horse statue
This is one of the statues you can find in Eldheim. The statue is inspired by a few statues we have here in Norway and this fjord is also inspired by an old story from Norway which is called "Vesleblakken" which means tiny, little or small dun horse (Fjord horse). "Blakk" is the Norwegian term for the coat color "dun". The statue's story will be something to discover in the game.
Riding arena
Last week we had a little stream session where we made an arena. This will most likely not be the only arena we will have in our game, and even though there were a lot of details we loved about the one we made on the stream, there were a lot of challenges to make it look nice from every angle as well as being functional. So we have held that design for a little bit, and made a more functional one for the early access. You can read more about the riding arena in this Patreon post.
Tobiano patterns
The last couple of weeks, we've been putting work into creating the tobiano patterns and polishing them. Tobiano patterns will be able to come both with and without "mapping" (the borders around the patterns). Polishing these patterns means cleaning up the edges, adding fur for a soft transition, and most importantly - making sure that they align in a good way when adding multiple patterns on top of each other. Since the tobiano patterns for Astride are separated into three parts - the front, the back and the legs - it is important that all of these patterns can work together to create natural looking shapes that would occur in real life. In addition to work on the tobiano patterns, there has been a lot of time spent on social media and community work (you may have seen a small comeback on TikTok). We are currently trying to boost our Patreon with adding more content and rewards for our loyal supporters.
Character concept update
For a long time we have used two clothing models for some design ideas for Astride, but these drawings are old and were drawn during the idea phase of the game. And of course as time goes by the art style and art skill has changed a lot for our fantastic artist. We are now aiming towards a semi-realistic look and our artist loved to draw the characters with this art style as well. Stay tuned for some new concepts of clothes that we will show you soon.
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!
Devlog #21: Week 43 & 44
It's Friday once again and the Astride team has spent the last two weeks crunching away. There has been a lot of work behind the scenes regarding the early access and information on that, as you could probably tell from our earlier update around this. But we do of course have more exciting things to show you this time around.
Turning on the forehand
Continuing from last time We made it possible to turn the other way around while standing still. EXCITING! In the GIF you will see that the back hooves have the wrong foot forward. This has since been fixed and you can see the updated version on Instagram, as it should be posted at this very moment.
Long jump
Another new animation this time! The long jump is; as you guessed, for those obstacles that require fast speeds and long air time. This iteration was mostly made by mixing gallop and the high jump animations with some guidance from references. It is meant to be the framework for the animation it will become, as the solely mixing of those animations does not sell the movement well. We also asked our Discord community if they had or knew of good references that could help lift the animation forwards.
The start of white patterns
We have been doing more research around patterns and we just released a new Patreon post with all Mathildes thoughts and progress around horse genetics and colors. Here is the first test of different tobiano patterns where we mix multiple patterns together to create new ones! Since we don't want the standard repeating tobiano patterns that we see too many places. So far it's been working nicely. These patterns aren't polished, so the hard edges will be worked on later.
Striding system
The first feature to be properly implemented in early acess is the striding mechanics. This will function as the base on which we will have animations synchronized with the striding frequency and length, and an interesting show jumping mechanic where you have to match the speed and striding frequency the gate expects you to have in order to jump over it.
One challenge is to extract data from real world horse movement and make some sort of a rhythmic movement system independent of visual animations. Luckily we have this very detailed blog post as a reference.
Horse controller
We are not going to pretend that we are inventing a new horse controller from scratch. Rockstar set the industry standard for horse controllers and just like how Quake set the standard for first person shooter games, we are just going to declare this as the new standard for which quadrupedal movement is done in games. You can learn about how horses behave in RDR2 here.
We’re making our controller behave similar to this one but with our own touch to make it play well with our striding mechanics.
Cross country jumps
The past two weeks have been mostly spent planning the next six to seven months. However we have been able to make a few 3D models for cross country. Some of you might have seen these jumps already in our Discord server or Instagram. Some of these obstacles will be integrated into the ground, and your horse should be able to jump up and down.
Jin
Meet Rini's husband, Jin! Jin is a 28 year old man and he is the saddler of Eldheim. He is a calm guy who enjoys trail rides in the forest with his horse. He cares highly about his skin routine and enjoys a healthy meal. He got his interest for saddle making at a young age through his family. He was taught by his father and grandfather back in Japan. He got an education as a saddle maker as well which he finished at the age of 20. He spent his early twenties working in Japan as a saddler and that is where he met Rini.
Rini is a show jumper and was competing on a high level. She was in need for a new saddle for her horse. The two of them fell and love and married a few years later. Jin and Rini wanted to explore the world and spent a lot of time traveling. And that is when they discovered Eldheim for the first time and fell in love with the place. They loved the nature and the people so much that they decided to move there. They built their own house with a small stable fit for their horses and a home area for their rabbits.
Holiday splash art
Since winter is almost here and the holiday season is around the corner, a new splash art is on it's way. There is nothing that screams more "julestemning" than a cold winters day with the sun shining, a fluffy fjord horse and a "julenek" (sheaf) filled with bullfinches that are enjoying a free meal.
Pangare and dun
We are currently working on the combination of the genes pangaré and dun. Since it's not as simple as adding the pangaré on top of the dun. Pangaré and dun affect each other, so we've made a whole new set of overlays based on these two genes combined. Here is a showcase of all the accepted Fjord horse colors. The Ulsblakk still needs more work and lightening, but the rest are feeling more or less complete. We haven't added the mealy/pangaré naming to the black bases or the double dilutes as they won't show either way.
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!
Astride early access date and information
Good morning, everyone. We hope you are doing well! We have some news regarding early access and Astride’s release. While we cannot give exact dates on release still, we have landed on a final countdown towards Astride’s early access (a vertical slice of the full game) release on Steam. For more information about early access, please check out #ea-information channel the Astride Discord server.
Last week we had a meeting with the head of the federal funding institution (Norwegian Film Institute) regarding the early access release. In the meeting, we put down all of our cards on the table and asked for an extension of the funding period. With NFI, fundings cover production periods, and with this round of funding, Astride was supposed to end up in early access. The last date of Astride’s funding period was November 28th, which is only a month away and not feasible at this point. But we were granted an extension which will give us up until May 28th to deliver.
What does this mean? This simply means that we get more time to work on the early access release and make it as polished as possible for us to be comfortable to charge money for. There have been raised concerns in the community quite a few times now, and we can’t do anything but agree. We would rather push the dates back than release an unstable version of Astride with lacking features. Although our final date is May 28th, we are looking at a release coming in March or April. May 28th is the last day we can deliver our documentation for the period, so we need time to get them in order and sent in.
How does this affect the funding? Expanding the funding period does not mean we get more funds for the extra months of work we will be putting in. So from November 28th, we have no further funds from NFI to lean on until early access is released and we send in documentation. After this, we can apply for another period of funds from NFI which we will be doing our absolute best to get. Thus, we are reliant on the Patreon funds to keep going the next few months. Thankfully, all of the funds we have gained from Patreon have been put into a savings account which we have kept as a safety net if something were to happen. This will help keep us going and we are eternally grateful for all of the support we have received for developing Astride.
What about a new test version? We’ve got you! There will be a new version of the Astride test coming before we leave for Christmas and New Years. This version will include the start of a brand new horse controller and a limited horse creator. The horses will no longer have the custom generated solid colors (rest in peace, skittles horses), but we will be testing out the custom horse shader and textures that are currently in the works. You will still be playing as the horse, and you will be able to ride around inside an indoor arena.
If you have any further questions about early access, the release time or anything at all, don’t hesitate to ask questions here or over in the #q-and-a channel the Astride Discord server. We will do our best to answer your questions. I would also like to extend a big thank you to our moderators who have been and are so incredibly helpful and kind.
We say it a lot, and we will say it again; Astride wouldn’t have been here without all of you. The engagement, feedback, ideas, support and the most wonderful community we have ever been a part of. Thank you for making this project a reality. We are forever grateful.
Devlog #20: Week 41 & 42
Hi everyone! It's time for our bi-weekly updates regarding the last weeks work in progress and updates on Astride. There has been a big focus around horse colors, environment and more animations of course.
Low jump
We redid the low jump using the old as a reference and fixed problems that never got addressed in the old version. But while doing that it never ended up feeling right. Our animator realized he worked himself blind on this animation, so he asked our community to see if they could put words to what was wrong with the movement while adding his suspicions.
Low jump update
Our community was to great help as we got a lot of feedback on what could be the problem, from confirming the animators suspicions to other things that could need a touch up. One of the suggestions added a reference that turned out was in a better angle than the one already used. In the end almost all parts of the animation got scrapped and redone.
While some problems still persist and will be worked on more, the overall flow of the animation jumped leaps and bounds (badum tss).
Turning on the forehand
It has been a long time since we added a new animation and not redone an old one. Turning on the forehand is a variant of the old turning of the haunches when the players turn the horse while standing still.
The movement seems easy, but it turned out to be deceptively difficult movement to animate. But after a lot of tweaking back and forth and adjusting tiny joint placements it turned out great (badum tss x2).
Points of interest concept
For the past few weeks, Maja's tasks has been to draw alot of concepts for many different objects that may appear in the game. This includes different kind of fences, gates, lamps and "points of interest", which means interesting objects the players can discover through out the world of Astride. It can be a special looking tree stump, wood carvings, runes or cairns ("varde" in Norwegian).
Duns, duns and more duns
The quest to make more horse color variations is still ongoing, and these last couple of weeks has been mainly focused on that. As the dun gene can affect all horse colors in different ways, there had to be made different shades of dun. For example, the black dun overlay is more grey, while the red dun overlay is brighter and more red in tones to match the underlying color. Dun in single and double diluted creams also needed their own shades. Cremello, perlino and smoky cream dun will be very bright, but still show sign of primal markings if you look close enough. Palomino and buckskin also needed their own shades to match and look natural.
Horse coat greying
Since all horse coat colors can grey out, we had to scrap the previous greying cycle. The old one was based just on a black horse turning grey, but we needed the greying to work on any color horse. The greying was posted and received feedback of too little pronounced dapples, so this greying will be revised and remade once again to really give the greying process the love it deserves.
The new beginning of horse face markings
While keeping on the subject of horse colors, markings play a big role in making the horses look more alive and giving them personality. There are a lot of markings that will be added to Astride, but here are 6 of the markings that were worked on during an afternoon. Three of these are Kickstarter markings and three of them are inspired by Patreon supporter horses. We are excited to expand on the horse markings library to make every single horse in Astride unique in their own way.
Maps of Eldheim
Some of you might have seen our first draft of Eldheim. We think this version had too much city and too little space to roam with your horse in the nature. Therefore, we have been testing out other maps that will open up more space to explore from horseback.
We have tested out a faster way to make different types of landscapes. The 3D picture is just a test to see if our pipeline worked out, which it did! We don’t know for sure what Eldheim will look like in the end, but we are positive that with this pipeline and testing, the end result will suit the Astride and have exciting locations to explore.
Player character riding boots
Since the player character is also a big part of the player experience, we decided to outsource an artist to help with creating it. While we have two wonderful 3D artists at Raidho, they both agreed that getting a more experienced 3D character artist to work on the player character would benefit Astride both quality and time-wise, since our two remaining artists can focus on creating more environments and polish the horses during that time instead. The quality of the rider is important, and as you can see from this high poly version of the riding boots, we want to achieve a high level of detail.
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!
Devlog #17: Week 36
Happy Friday once again! It has been yet another set of busy weeks here in the office, and as always, we've got things to show you. Have a great weekend!
Yet another new breed tease
These are some exciting few weeks. With a horse breed being revealed every week, teasers have been shared from work in progress. Here is another breed that was teased, can you tell which breed it is?
First stages of feathering
Since Astride will have a roster of different horse breeds available, this also includes the heavier types who grow feathers on their feet. Pictured is a very early test using hair cards from mane hair. The feathers will receive their own cards eventually, but it was nice to see how it could end up looking. We will be working on making a smooth transition from fur to hair, hopefully preventing clipping.
Horse rig fixes
There has been a lot of work redoing the leg animations for every horse animation. This is mostly because the rig legs are new and have no animation data, but also to fix some speed and turn consistency to avoid random drifting. This GIF explains is what it looks like in the work window (played in 50% speed). The red bones are the old animation, you can see a lot of bending knees there and some drifting in the hooves. This will be easier to avoid in the future due to the new leg rig.
Autumn splash art
The autumn splash art does of course have to be Halloween themed. Crows, pumpkins, dead trees and candles! And of course showcasing the very new breed - the Knabstrupper!
Dole horse in progress
Next up on the new breeds list is the Norwegian Dole horse, and this is what the high poly model looks like at this moment. There is a lot of work in making the muscles work with this heavy breed.
Stables
The stable modules are being constructed and textured! More and more details are being added and we look forward to starting testing all of these builds.
Terrain collision
Collisions with terrain is in the works, and here you can see a snippet of how the terrain isn't supposed to work. There is a lot of work being done behind the curtains to optimize the game from the very start to avoid lag, buffering, rubber banding and so on as well. Having these issues fixed from the start will make for smooth sailing later on.
Ambience track
Our composer also shared some work in progress this time, and here is a taste of the ambience track take pairs with "The Old Town" track that was released this week. You can listen to "The Old Town" here!
Updated canter animations
Seeing as the horse rig has been reworked, the animations need to be revisited again. Here is the counter canter turn animation. The shadow is flickering as the horse is actually moving in this clip, the camera is following the horse, and that's why it might feel like it is jittering. This turn is on a 4m radius circle, and will be the tightest canter turn for now. The previous canter turn animation had a 16m diameter, so it's definitely a step up!
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!
Devlog #16: Week 34
Hello everyone! The Raidho Games team is finally back from their vacation and with that comes more work in progress!
A new breed in the making
As we have finally received all of the breed wishes from the respectful Kickstarter backers, we've started working on the concept art for the breeds. Can you guess which breed of horse this is?
Stable and stall textures
As the first riding arena is ready for Eldheim, the stable and stalls are in focus now. For the early access release we want the players to have a good stable on their property in order to test different features while we develop the game.
Turn at walk
Making a horse turn doesn't just require one single animation, but multiple. Turning at a standstill, at a walk, in trot, in canter. It also requires different animations for how sharp the turn initially is. We want to add this amount of detail to the animation to make the horses feel more realistic, as the horses are the main focus of the game.
Map compiler
This is the making of a map compiler for our development workflow. The server and client have two different sets of map data. The server has collision. The client has both collision and visuals. A custom compiler is required to split these two into different set of scenes.
Fixing the horse rig
The rig has considered being changed for quite a while now, and we finally began the overhaul. It is not finished yet and still has some bugs here and there, but the end goal is to make it easier to work with and avoiding having to tweak the legs for every change made. This will make future animation processes a lot faster. And the best is that the legs no longer defaults to bend at the knee, but uses the pasterns and fetlocks instead - just like real horses do.
Another horse breed
Yet another horse breed is in the making. This one is definitely heavier! Can you guess the breed?
Kickstarter saddle
The Kickstarter tack which will be a part of the Kickstarter tack set reward is also in the works. We love some black leather and rose gold metals! And don't forget that feedback on the tack set as we work on it is wonderful so that we can cooperate on making everyone pleased with the result!
New assets
Lastly, a few new assets that will be brought into Astride. Some training cones, a flower pot/vase and a Viking sword cross country jump!
Horses
We are also working on perfecting the horse models for some changes we are making to the rig to make everything work optimal, which will result in a better workflow. All of the horses are getting some polishing done to their meshes and final touches on their proportions, limbs and faces. There is still a long way to go on all of them, but they're getting better and better!
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!
Devlog #15: Week 29
Hi everyone! We've got another update for you before the team goes on a three week summer break. We will be back and recharged on August 15th! The bi-weekly updates will start after we are back from summer vacation, so expect an update again latest on Friday, August 26th!
Riding arena
Here you can see concept art for a potential riding arena/competition hall. It is of course based around Vikings, so an upside-down Viking ship seemed fitting! Can you imagine bringing your horses here to compete?
More Viking ships
The Viking ship jump finally got its colors and is soon ready to be placed in the cross country fields.
Woolen rugs
The rugs are coming together more and more! Details such as buckles, leather and more colors have been made, and we are excited that so many appreciated the natural palette of colors.
New NPCs
New NPCs are also being worked on, and here is a sneak peek of one of them!
Canter lead changes
The lead changes are still being worked on. Here is an in-engine test of lead changes. The changes are only made when the stride is right, so timing is important for those tempi-changes!
Mane colors
Lastly, there are more updates to the horse hair. We have found a way to make multi-colored manes without the need multiple textures and meshes. This way it will be easier to match up the mane colors with the coat colors for markings such as tobiano and tovero.
Please note that everything shown in these devlogs is mostly just work in progress and is not finished. Changes may happen and the things showcased here will have further work put into them! To see work in progress daily, join our Discord server community here!
