News

Hello again everyone and welcome to today's update! We spent this weekend doing some routine maintenance and adding in a few new things!

 

🛠️ Code Updates

Bedouin and I have finally had enough free time to sit down and work on a much larger project this weekend. We are back online with some backend updates complete! The backend work has taken about two days plus the downtime to get finished, ported over, and check to make sure things are running as expected. This took quite a while but is long overdue and helps keep HoFa secure and on the newest technology. It was mentioned a few weeks ago that we installed a new software to monitor lag but it didn’t give us as much insight as we needed. We decided to use a corporate software that many businesses use to monitor website usage. We’re also making some changes to the database in order to better track where the lag is coming from. 

 

We plan to post a bug/changes update this coming weekend. For now, having everyone on and doing the usual day-to-day will help us know if our maintenance was successful so, go wild! Eh well, not too wild, maybe just do your usual. 😛

 

🔎 Wiki Changes

The past few weeks we have gone through most of the wiki pages and updated/condensed them. The top navigation has been changed with information being in easier to find areas. This will continue to occur for the next few weeks as we try to figure out how best to make pages easily accessible. 

 

 🌄Background Update: Stable!

Mason decided everyone's stables needed a facelift and a more modern feel. Something about a suggestion from the capital or one of those fancy woodworking magazines inspired him to make a few changes. He has successfully updated all of the Stable Backgrounds with a fresh clean look. Background can be bought year-round at the General Store for 1,000 bits each.

 

🌹 New Explore Items

While wandering around the grassy plains, a few of you ran into something new! It seems the rose bushes in the west have bloomed and tossed several colorful roses toward town. These have piqued the locals’ interest and it’s been discovered roses and clover make for a nice touch of mane decor. Flowers can be added to any horse, including foals! These flowers currently don’t offer any benefit but they match quite nicely to dyed blankets, halters, and polos! Say, it’d be nice to match saddle pads to these, wouldn’t it? 😉

NOTE: Flowers have decided to blow around a bit and are floating about your horses. These will be fixed shortly!

🐴 Grade & Crossbreed Images

Another batch of Grade images is complete! Along with these grade images, we have finished adding in skewed roan and skewed dun for crossbreeds that had those layers missing. Grade images are quick to come in which means we often have a backlog of them. As of now, it is taking about 1 month to get bases done and several weeks to get white markings done. We expect to keep roughly around this schedule so grade image updates will typically occur every 2 to 4 weeks. 

 

🦟 Bug Squashes & Changes

• Horses will now stay in club campaigns even after they retire.

• Fixed missing crossbreed layers.
• Fixed old mustang art showing for some markings.
• Fixed a few assorted tack images.
• Fixed a few broken horse images we found around the site.

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Tomorrow from 10 AM to 1 PM EST/game time expect HoFa to be offline for an update. Our expected downtime will last roughly 2 - 3 hours but may require additional time.

Hello all and welcome to today's news post! Bedouin and I have had quite a bit of real-life catch-up with us lately and decided to wait a bit to release everything today. We hope you enjoy everything!

 

🐎 Mustangs & a Visitor!

Galloping toward us from the western plains comes the newly updated Mustangs! These wild horses were one of our first breeds ever introduced to the lands and thus needed a facelift. Based on our previous vote, Mustangs won out over Thoroughbred, Irish Draughts, and American Paints. All Mustang art has been updated and may require clearing your cache to view.

 

Alongside the Mustangs, a pack of wild animals has managed to migrate toward the east. From the shadows of a distant undiscovered land, the Grey Wolf has sauntered into town. These wolves tend to be friendly and offer a slight breeding benefit to your horses. Some from the pack have taken up residence at Will’s General Store until the end of the month while others have opted to relax in the shadows of nearby forests. Wolves in the wild occasionally roam away from the shadows in the wilds and may appear to you as a potential companion while out exploring.

 

📝 Next Breed Update Vote

In the years HoFa has been in development our artist, Solo, has grown with us which means there have been changes in her art style. There are some older breeds that are needing an update! It is time once again for everyone to vote on the next breed for us to update. This voting round includes Thoroughbreds, American Paints, Irish Draughts, and Iberian Warmbloods. Voting for the next breed to update will end on August 8th at 5:00 PM EST/game time.

Vote on the Breed Update Here!

 

🌟 New Tack: Black and Brown Harnesses!

Our first harnesses were limited edition Fairytale and German harnesses that currently will never return for sale. However, we mentioned a few weeks ago that we will be adding more harness colors that are available year-round. Today the Brown and Gold, Black and Gold, Brown and Silver, and Black and Silver harnesses are available in the General Store for 1,000 bits each. Harnesses cannot be equipped with saddles, bridles, or saddle pads but do offer the full benefit of these 3 tack pieces combined. Encrusted harnesses also offer the same gem bonus as a saddle, bridle, and saddle pad; thus it costs 6 ingots to encrust and receive this benefit.

 

📝 Next Tack Vote

We have quite a bit planned for our next tack updates and decided to let this be voted on to help us know what we should add and what should be added first.

Vote on Tack here!

 

🐴 New Discipline!

Ugo has spent some of his time learning about a new discipline and now is able to offer it to everyone in the lands of HoFa! Today we officially can welcome the vaulting discipline. This discipline uses flexibility, endurance, and agility. To train in vaulting, you must have an indoor arena. Vaulting can trace its history back to circus performances and is most often described as gymnastics on horseback. It is one of ten disciplines recognized by the FEI and is mostly found in Europe. Vaulting is rising in popularity and is making its way to America, specifically the west coast, and is open to both team and individual competition.

Note: New shows will generate for this discipline tonight at rollover.

 

✨ Grade Image Updates

We had a large backlog of Grade image requests which most are now officially complete. Today we are releasing most of the white markings and a few of the requested bases. We expect another grade image update in the next week. 

 

🦟 Bug Fixes

We have been doing our best to squash bugs and managed to get quite a few done!

• Rescue horses now no longer stay for private sale while in rescue.
• Wild horse’s greys should now display properly.
• Fixed missing some horses in search based on gene variation.
• Fixed age filter working beyond page 1 in search.
• Gene search no longer shows foals with G genes as “Grey” in color name.
• Enter all 1 should no longer act funky with energy when entering halter shows.
• Fixed forever load on some horses show tab.
• Foal training now shows personality traits properly.
• Fixed unable to bid on auctions with no set starting bid. Error is now thrown when making the auction.
• Ingot sale horses in search display as for sale with ingots, not bits.
• Molasses now shows as a food item in your storage room.
• Brumby search now shows only Brumbies, not brumby crosses.
• Encrusting tack now uses newest tack first, not used tack.
• Fixed issue with horses in limbo if club registration changes to private.
• Fixed demolishing buildings to actually demolish them and their perks.
• Removed foals from vet personality test.
• Fixed career tier calculation for horses that are at top of the tier rounding up to the next tier.
• Fixed some players inability to create a training center.
• Fixed forever loading auctions with horses in them.
• Removed ability to breed horses in frozen tabs.
• Fixed various tack image issues and missing horse markings.
• For clubs that set their club to public horse registration while there are applications pending, the applications will be automatically accepted.
• Club horse registration now goes to the next horse, like registry horse registration.
• Registries now list their shows.

 

🔮 Upcoming

Bedouin and I have taken a few days to sit down and plan for the remainder of the year, specifically art updates. As we have talked about before, the ability to release art greatly depends on ingot sales and subscriptions. We have seen an uptick in game revenue and we want to ensure as the game grows, so do our number of art updates, tack offerings, and assets. 100% of game sales are returned to the game to ensure we keep an art update schedule we believe reflects player investment. We want to say a huge thank you to those who have made purchases that help fund art because it means we have a jam-packed list of tack, new things, breeds, and more coming by the end of 2022. Today we are announcing only a few coming art updates. After all, we have to keep some things a secret. ;)

 

By the end of 2022 we aim to:

• Expand in-game dye colors which includes dyeing more items.
• Expand the encrusting options from the mine.
• Expand the possible equipped items to include accessories.
• Re-do old backgrounds and add new ones.
• Re-do 1 more breed and add a few new ones.
• Markings? Companions? Secret things? Yes, we hope to do those too.

 

Everything above is based on art updates but that doesn't mean we won't have development updates. Bed and I have been busy planning, coding, and testing quite a few new features. That pesky crow, Crowley, sometimes manages to get a hold of some documentation and shared it on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! 

We hope everyone has a wonderful rest of the week!

 

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Hello everyone! As we wind down and recover from our previous updates we hope you all are having fun with all the new features. We are working on bug squashing and will have an update with bug squishes for you soon!

 

🥇 Event Winners

Our 2022 summer forum event has ended, submissions reviewed, and winners ready to be announced! Thanks to everyone who participated this year and congrats to our winners! 

 

[Photo] Story through Photo

1st: Selkie inspired by Little Red Ridinghood.

 

[Daily] Riddle Me This

Grand prize winner: Rheanimation!

All daily prizes have been sent out to those who qualify.

 

[Daily] Breed a Foal

Grand prize winner: Katona!

All daily prizes have been sent to those who qualify.

 

[Design] New Mutation

Winner: Acoustic with the snowdrift mutation on the free base by Felmya via DeviantArt!

 

[Design] New Tack Set

Winner: Wild_Brumby with Stained Glass. 

 

[Coloring] German Fables

1st: WirelessMouse with Little Red Riding Hood- The Black Forest

2nd: Equetea with Cinderella

3rd: Ray with Cinderella

 

[Writing] Inspired by Aren’s Poem

Witch with Beyond the Darkness.

 

[Writing] Inspired by a German Fable

HowlingHooves with Luck Through the Porcelain. 

Congratulations to all our winners!

 

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

Happy Saturday!

Today is the day! Hanoverian is now available to everyone via the foundation store! Be sure to run on over and buy yourself a few (or a lot)!

Cheers,
Curly