Hello, everyone. Happy Friday! We’ve got an action packed news post with many announcements about upcoming events and features. Because it’s quite long, we’ve summarized it here to make sure you don’t miss anything!

Contents:

• Small tweaks
• Bug fixes
• New road map
• Explore 2.0
• First campaign completed!
• Survey results
• Upcoming show changes
• BreyerFest reminder
• Job opening

⚒️ Small Tweaks

• New accounts now receive an automatic message from Reed LePage to help get them started. This is to help our Welcome Wagon be able to welcome everyone who joins and more easily allow new joins to know who they can contact in-game for help.
• The rate for finding items in the Scrap Yard has been increased to reflect the mass number of items available. Y'all really had some large item hoards, huh?
• Now, if you don’t find anything in the Scrap Yard, it’ll be more clear that there are items still there, just not in the spot you looked.

🦟 Bug Squashes

This week is a bit lighter on bugs since there has been so much work on the explore and other features. Next week will have more as we try to wrap up most of the bugs before BreyerFest.

• Bug #1061 and bug #552 - Genes should now display in the correct order, fixing searching. All horses in game have been fixed to correctly show the genes although any retired horses may still show the incorrect gene order.

🗺️ New Road Map

Now that we’ve squashed quite a few of the reported bugs in Horse Fable, we are releasing a public road map to show what we’re doing next. Please note that there are no timelines for these items, just know they’re on the radar. You can see some have already been started.

📍📍Road Map 📍📍

You can find the new roadmap linked on the News page. 

🗺️ A Look at Explore 2.0!

We always envisioned HoFa being the most modern and expansive horse sim on the market. This vision  included creating an explore feature that was interactive where you could actually explore a map and interact with the world. To our knowledge, no other horse sim game has attempted to implement such a feature in a browser based setting which means we have had very little example to go off of aside from games such as Stardew Valley. 

With the help from friends, staff, and yes you the players, we believe we have built a solid foundation for explore 2.0 and are ready to release it within the next few months. After release, we can begin to build out the world and incorporate your feedback and build an even more exciting explore system.

Both Bedouin and I have been challenged in our abilities as game devs from creating an easily expandable and bug free code base to also planning and executing art to suit our vision. Explore 2.0 has taken years of planning, failed art assets and maps, and multiple days worth of code and art creation to complete. We know based on our experience of creating  explore 2.0 that this version is definitely not the last, but we are confident it is designed in such a way that we can make changes and updates to keep the game fresh. We are also confident that we will be able to incorporate almost any idea, request, change, and adjustment needed to ensure our exploration feature is usable and enjoyable for all our players. With that said….

We have finished enough art, code, and bug testing to give a live demo! Join us on June 20th at 8pm EST/game time as we demo our first interactive exploration experience on HoFa!

Our demo will include a livestream of us moving on the explore map, details of current features such as discovering items and wild horses, and discussion of what is to come. 

🐴 First Crossbreed Campaign Completed!

As some may have seen in the forums or heard through the grapevine, the Appalachian Mountain Horse crossbreed campaign has been completed and is currently in the works for breed art! Since many have already gotten a peek at our first draft, we decided we should share an update in the news to celebrate the first complete crossbreed campaign project.

Congratulations to those who contributed horses and monetarily to achieve the first complete crossbreed campaign: DeathKnell, MotherDuck, ERA, Talitha, JustJo, Raine, StormRidge, Selkie, WillowDragon, BeastmasterRach, Kapica, Arrillaga, Astral, Astral II, SparrowHound, MarTeke, and Terra Stark!

📋 Survey Results

Our Friends & Blocked Players and Inactive Campaign polls have now closed. Based on the results we will be:

Adding in block features that can be selected by you in your settings including:

• Inability to offer on or buy your sales such as auctions, trades, and sale horses.
• Inability to send you money, horses, messages (this already happens), breeding requests, or trades.
• Inability to see your online status.
• Option to select if they have the ability to read or reply to your forum posts. If selected, text of “This player has you blocked and you cannot interact with their forum posts.”
• You will not see their forum posts. Text of “You have this player blocked.” will display with you having the option to view their reply or post. 

Adding friend features of:

• Friend only breeding requests.
• Ability to set breeding discounts for friends only.
• A breeding bonus of some sort when breeding to friends’ studs/broods.
• Added as priority in drop down lists. Friends display at the top of the list.
• Easier trading/ability to send a quick trade rather than go through the market.
• Ability to send friends gifts daily.

Adding campaign inactivity features of:

• A campaign will go inactive if the president is not active for 90 days. 
  • When this occurs, contributors to the campaign vote on a new president.
• A campaign will go inactive if no horses are submitted within 6 months.
  • When this occurs, the campaign will be set as “inactive” and others have the chance to create another breed using the breed %. If this occurs, the original campaign will be closed and archived, and the contributors will be refunded.

Campaign changes we have noted are:

• Adding positions in the campaign who can help accept/reject registrations.
• Ability to cancel a campaign if there are no horses contributed nor campaign coins.
• Ability to edit a campaign if it has not been accepted by Admin yet. This would re-send notification to Admin to reject/approve.
• Ability to withdraw campaign coins if the campaign goes inactive.
• Easier campaign search by breed %’s.

These have all been added to the roadmap and will appear in future updates.

⭐ Show Changes

After fixing the majority of our bugs, we have begun planning game adjustments based on player feedback and requests. Today, we are announcing some upcoming changes in showing:

• Halter shows will run at midnight roll over regardless of the number of entries. Payout and horse point earnings will be adjusted for smaller shows, and shows with fewer than 7 entrants will have their horse point and halter point earnings scaled to the size of the show. Fewer entrants = fewer payout rewards.
• Discipline shows will run every 6  hours at 1AM, 7AM, 1PM, and 7PM. This is to help reduce lag at our current roll over, break up shows to (ideally) have fewer entrants and increase the potential for more top placements for more horses. All player-made shows will run at the next rollover after 24 hours have passed.

All show changes will be in the next update on Friday June 23.

🐴 Preparing for BreyerFest!

We have been well underway ordering merch, making game content, and preparing for BreyerFest! This year, HoFa will be attending and tabling in-person at Kentucky Horse Park! Be sure to visit us at booth 507 outside the covered arena in the covered outdoor tents. We will have merch, limited edition BreyerFest items (both for in-person and online attendees), and more! We are excited to meet some of you in person, chat, and get to know our community a bit more.

Next Update: June 23

We’re Hiring!

We have a large backlog of art needs such as tack adjustments, grayscale coloring, image editing, marking creation, and more. We are looking to hire someone to help with this work. This is a paid contractor position.

The position will require coloring, adjusting, and saving files. Weekly, we expect to have 5 hours of work to complete at minimum. Curly is willing to train the skills needed so novice applicants with the minimum skills below are encouraged to apply.

Applicants should have at least 1+ years of experience using Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint or similar photo editing software. Knowledge should include use of greyscales, overlays, and transformation tools. Applicants should also be able to time manage and complete requests in a timely manner. 

Applications should be sent by June 23rd,  2023. To apply, please email Curly at [email protected] with a copy of your resume, a portfolio of any work, and cover letter. All questions must be directed to Curly via the support email.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly