New Features, Items, and Artist Update!

7/30/2024 10:01 am

Hello, everyone! We’ve got quite a lengthy update today so get comfortable, grab some coffee or tea, and get ready to hear what we’ve been working on. 

 

Table of Contents: 

  • State of HoFa

  • Remembrance of Vega 

  • Artist Update

  • Achievements

  • Mass Crafting

  • Rock Paper Scissors

  • Feature Request System

  • Road Map

  • New Ingot Items

  • Stable Filters

  • New Mass Actions

  • Art Updates

  • Small Tweaks

  • Bug Squashes

πŸ›οΈ State of HoFa

We’ve been quiet the last couple of months as Curly and I completely needed to unplug from the game to reset. As most of you know, we’ve been working on HoFa continuously since November 2018 and although updates ebb and flow, we are always doing something behind the scenes. This year, we just needed to step away to focus on what was going on in our lives. With a recharge comes new energy as you can see in this lengthy update!

 

From Curly:

Curly has been in graduate school for the last 2 years and graduated in May with her master's degree in Leadership, Education, and Communications πŸŽ‰πŸŽ‰πŸŽ‰. She’s also been in the process of leaving her full-time job, supporting her husband as they move due to his new orders, and working on her health treatment plan. Lots of transitions and lots of logistics! 

 

From Bedouin:

I’ve been working on several businesses of my own to get traction and make money outside of HoFa. Last month, Vega, my GSD who is in the game, passed away suddenly due to some illnesses she was struggling with. Vega was my best friend and it really threw me for a loop and made me unmotivated for everything. I’ve been slowly getting back into the swing of things which is reflected in this update.

 

🐢 Remembrance of Vega

I usually never talk about personal things but in honor of Vega, I wanted to tell her story especially since she’s part of HoFa. 

 

 

Vega was a kind soul in a dog’s body. She was the perfect best friend and was always glued to my side. To me, she was more like a child who was always watching me, there for me through thick and thin. In early March, she stopped being able to walk and was getting sick multiple times per day. She could no longer keep food down. I took her to her primary vet and they ran many tests and since she was progressing every day, she was sent to the UGA ER. They diagnosed her with myasthenia gravis secondary to a thymoma (a mass located in her chest), megaesophagus, and aspiration pneumonia. Thousands of dollars later, the mass was gone, she could walk again, and we had an action plan. About 3 weeks later, she regressed and eventually got aspiration pneumonia again, this time with an antibiotic resistant bacteria that she had caught while in the hospital. Her last day on this earth was April 30th. 

 

To remember Vega, everyone who has been active in the past month has been sent 3 Vegas. As a bit of background on this particular item, the HoFa staff surprised me for my birthday a couple of years ago by commissioning her to be added to the game. 

 

 

🎨 Artist Update

Now that we’re past the sad news, let’s get on to what everyone has been waiting on! AN UPDATE ON OUR ARTIST SEARCH! 😲😲😲

 

The answer is YES, we’ve found a new horse artist. We found her over a month ago but we’ve been getting a head start on our backlog of art. Our aim with working on the backlog is to have several bases in the processes of being colored and fitted for tack all at once while also optimizing this process. Previously, horse art bases were done one at a time on a rolling basis; sometimes, some took longer than others which caused delays. With several on hand and in the process, we aim to have a consistent uninterrupted release schedule.

 

We are aiming to release the first new base on August 7th with monthly new releases after. We’ll be posting sneak peeks on our social media channels so be sure to follow us there!

 

Wonder who is galloping into HoFa next?

 

πŸ† Achievements

Starting today, you can work towards achievements. You’ll find your achievements here. Each time you complete an action in game that aligns with a category, you’ll receive 1 point. Each category has 7 types of achievements containing 4 levels in each. You can track the levels within the types by how many cowboy hats are filled.

 

Achievements will be displayed for all to see on your profile. Some achievements have monetary rewards, some have item rewards, and others have permanent rewards. You’ll have to wait and see what treasures await you as you complete each one. (Yes, it’ll tell you once completed - this reward is not a mystery. 😁)

 

There are several different categories of achievements:

Foals Bred

Have more foals frolicking around your stable.

Stud Services

Help create the next generation of champions by offering your stallions for stud.

Brood Services

Welcome more foals into the world by offering your mares for brood.

Items Dyed

Show off in style by dyeing your tack!

Items Cooked

Snack on something yummy by crafting food items.

Items Embellished

Glisten for all to see by embellishing your tack with gems!

Exploration Finds

Explore the wilds and collect items!

Wild Horse Captures

Add a new equine to your herd by catching wild horses.

Mine Discoveries

Explore Dark Horse Mine and collect the minerals you find

 

In the future, achievements will make their way into the Hall of Fame so you can see where you stack up against others’ progress.

 

πŸ“™ The Guides: New Ingot Items!

Special thanks to Reed LePage some ancient knowledge has been preserved in the Town Hall library. Reed was able to find several copies of some guides pertaining to wild horses and crafting and a collection of interesting rocks. These items can be equipped to yourself and offer generous bonuses. The guides and rocks are available for purchase at the General Store.

 

 

Antique Tracker Guide: An item that when equipped increases wild horse encounters by 3x for 24 hours.

Lucky Rock: A rock, when used, increases the chance of finding minerals in the mine by 3x for the next 24 hours.

Cookbook: An item that when equipped doubles crafted cooked items for 24 hours.

Gemology Guide: An item that when equipped doubles crafted encrusted tack items for 24 hours.

Dye Guide: An item that when equipped doubles crafted dyed items for 24 hours.

 

You will only be able to equip one type of item at a time, and you can find all equipped items on your profile along with the time left that the item will be active.

 

βœ‚οΈ Mass Crafting

It’s time to get crafty with a much-requested feature: mass crafting! Mass crafting allows for crafting more than one item at a time, no more mundane clicking. This feature is only available to Bronze accounts and higher. After selecting ingredient items, you will see the number of each you own and can craft up to the lowest number between the two. Hopefully, this encourages those who hoard items to empty out their storage room. πŸ‘€πŸ€­

 

Crafting 3 Citrine Blue English Pads at one time in the Craft Room.

 

πŸ—»πŸ“œβœ‚οΈ Rock Paper Scissors

Many of you will probably respond to this with “It’s about time!!” because we’ve been needing a second game FOREVER. Rock Paper Scissors is now available in the Game Room. It’s a simple game where you are competing against Strata Gee. For those who have never played, rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock. You are limited to playing 20 times per day and each time you win, you get $100. Good luck!

 

 

πŸ‘ Feature Request System

Has anyone read the Player Development Ideas forum lately? It’s a bit wild and crazy over there similar to how our bugs/issues forum was way back in the day before the Bug Box was created. The Bug Box has helped us streamline issues in the game and keep things organized for the dev team and we hope to do the same thing with ideas and requests.

 

Feature Requests is similar to the Bug Box in that you can create a new request and others can comment their feedback about the feature you are proposing. Feature requests have an upvote or downvote feature for staff to view the most popular requests…and sometimes unpopular ones. We moved away from the forum format to give us more flexibility with collecting and organizing player ideas and opinion data. Want to see the most popular requests? That’s possible now!

 

We will be moving over existing Player Development Ideas into feature requests.

 

Note: You can only submit one feature request per month. This is to encourage everyone to put a lot of thought into their requests.

 

πŸ—ΊοΈ Road Map

Our old Road Map was a Trello board linked on our news page that would be updated from time to time. This has also been brought in game and combines Feature Requests and the Bug Box for a big overview of where the game is at. Our staff plans to use this as our project management tool to simultaneously keep us on track and everyone updated.

 

πŸ”Ž Stable Filters

A much-requested feature that was in earlier Eqcetera days has made its return! You can now filter your horses by tags if they’ve been cared for, if they’ve been shown, and if they’ve been trained. This lends a bit more use to tags for organization. You can find this by clicking the “View Filters” button at the top of your stable page.

πŸ“‹ New Mass Actions

With the ability to now filter by tags on your stable page, it makes sense that you’d want an easier way to manage horses with those tags, right? Apply Tag and Remove Tag are two new mass action options. 

 

You can only select 1 tag at a time to add or remove. As a reminder, mass actions are only available for bronze accounts and up. You can find them by going to Horses -> Manage -> Mass Actions. 

πŸ–ŒοΈ Art Updates

As some may have noticed we have recently updated some images across the site. Our most recent changes are to estate upgrades and horse page feed, water, and groom icons.

 

βš’οΈ Small Tweaks

  • Forums now have pages! No more mile-long forum pages.

  • The mailbox has been optimized and now has pages.

  • You can no longer use horse capture items from your inventory (this didn’t work before anyway).

  • With the introduction of player equippable items, energy items are now relabeled as Player Items. They’ve also moved in the General Store under the Player tab.

  • There is now a “Manage Subscription” button in your account settings page if you have an active subscription. Previously, this was only available in the bottom of the upgrades tab on the Ingot Store page.

🦟 Bug Squashes

  • Bug #1153 - For horses that have an offspring limit, they no longer show up in the Studs/Broods section.

  • Bug #1193 - You should no longer be able to double-click the upgrade training certification button as it now has a loading function once clicked.

  • Bug #1318 - Elections should now trigger if the president is inactive for 90 days or more.

  • Bug #1396 - The edge of the spring map should now be accessible.

  • Bug #1406 - When transferring money to another player, there is now a confirmation popup.

  • Bug #1390 - The spacing of bubble gum has been fixed in some item names.

  • Bug #1364 - Mailbox should now load for some players with a lot of messages.

  • When you go to an item and it’s equipped, it should now tell you if it’s equipped to a horse on the page.

 

Whew, I think that does it for today’s update! We’ll see you in the next update on August 7th then in another dev update later in the month focusing on bug fixes. We’re aware there are quite a few waiting to be fixed!

 

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly

 


reddRookk

Post Count: 449

7/30/2024 10:30 am

Thank you for the update. Congrats to Curly and heartfelt condolences to Bed as you traverse this new chapter without Vega. Losing a pet is always so horrible, I am so sorry for your loss.

 

All these updates are awesome, although I am disappointed that the Thoroughbred art promised in May isn't included. Does this also mean that the new artist will begin working with the campaigns now? 



Damar

Post Count: 38

7/30/2024 10:32 am

🀩



Bedouin Admin

Post Count: 50

7/30/2024 10:48 am

@reddRook I know I responded on Discord, but I'll post here as well. The TBs have quite a bit of work (and you'll understand why when they're released) so we're running slightly behind. They will be included in the update next week on Aug 7th along with more information about the new artist. And yes! Campaigns are in the plans for the near future.




Maki

Post Count: 825

7/30/2024 11:00 am

Awww RIP Vega. I know how losing a dog like that is. I lost my Rottie back in 2021 and it still hurts so bad. 

 

Thats so the new TB art and I so cannot wait! 

 

The achievements are awesome! Shouldnt take too long to fill that up for some of us haha but I cant wait to see what we get. 

 

The new items are so neat! Thank you so much! I am excited to try them! 

 

Its definitely nice to be able to craft multiples at once, thank you

 

Yay another game! And yes, its about time but we also understand haha not the biggest priority

 

The feature request is awesome. Its a great way for everyone to easily see what is most wanted in the game! Thank you for adding it. 

 

Ugh the filters is so awesome as well! Thank you so so much! Time to mass action some tags haha 

 

When did the feed water and groom icons update? Mine havent previously but I noticed other image updates. They have now though! 

 

Its nice for mailbox pages, but can I please please select all to delete? After being Welcome Wagon I have hundreds and hundreds of emails I dont wanna delete one by one. My mailbox is also sorted wrong. My oldest are on page one with my newest on page 23. 

 

Finally no limited studs showing up anymore past their limit! Now how about ones not yet level 25? 

 

Do we ever get to know who the artist is? They have been doing a lot of art and we dont even know who they are yet. I agree with reddRookk too, I knoe a lot of art in game needs redone but I have kept some breeds frozen until they get their art, because I want to see them with it before they retire. 

 

All in all, I am super excited about this huge update. Its understandable you need a break sometimes. Thank you for all you do and I look forward to the next one. 



reddRookk

Post Count: 449

7/30/2024 11:17 am

@Bed - ty for responding! I am beyond excited to see the new art and meet the new artist. Thank you πŸ’œ 



Bedouin Admin

Post Count: 50

7/30/2024 11:42 am

@Maki The artist who does a lot of this has been around for a long time and is in the credits. It's Elz. 😊 If you're talking about the horse artist, she'll be introduced next week.

All of these are great suggestions and would be perfect for the feature requests. Just make sure they're all separate since each is a different idea. We're going to be using this to help us prioritize ideas and when they've moved into the planned stage, they'll appear on the road map. Thanks!




Maki

Post Count: 825

7/30/2024 11:54 am

There is two different artists? Today I learned haha 



Elemyriana

Post Count: 33

7/30/2024 12:23 pm

About the Election triggering, will this trigger at rollover for clubs that have been inactive already for more than 90 days or will it not trigger until 90 days from the update have passed?



KayTea

Post Count: 783

7/30/2024 1:17 pm

Curly- Congrats! πŸŽ‰

Bed- I'm so sorry about Vega. Its so hard to lose a pet. Every time. πŸ’”

Thank you so much for everything!

Are the current TBs going to change too?

I'll be honest, I don't want them to! πŸ˜₯ But I am interested.

And I know this is new TB art, but are we adding new breeds with having the new artist?πŸ€”

Like Miniature Horses and Icelandic Horses? πŸ™ƒ

Edited 4 times

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Looking for sage dyes, please message me!

 

 



Matcha

Post Count: 175

7/30/2024 2:09 pm

Congrats Curly! Bedouin, I am so sorry about Vega's loss. It's never easy losing a beloved pet. She is my favorite companion in game as I'm also a GSD lover/owner. πŸ–€

Thank you for the huge update and the QOL features! I am so excited to see the new TBs and learn more about the new artist next week. 

 

 


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