Hello everyone! We are back today with an update to discuss our plans on getting our ducks in a row,  open applications, fix bugs, and add a few new things. Let’s jump right in!

🐴 NEW: Game Avatars

Several months ago we saw some discussion about the limited avatar selection for basic accounts and how it is hard to easily distinguish everyone apart. We agree, there needs to be a more diverse avatar selection for non-upgraded players. For several years we have had only a handful of game avatars available so why not create new ones! Today we are releasing 4 new avatars to all of our players which can be found at Account>Settings.

🏔️ UPDATE: Wales Background

In our endeavor to update art styles we have moved into updating backgrounds as well. For today's update, we are releasing the new Wales Background! These are available year-round in the General Store for 1,000 bits. 

📚 Getting Organized

The last few months we’ve seen a few conversations about Bed and I being more present and transparent. We can understand the desire for both transparency and us being more active and are happy to fulfill that need. We are also aware of the need to more heavily tackle game-breaking bugs, address lingering concerns, and overall be a bit more organized.

Historically, Bed and I have worked as the overarching two person team and consulted mods and player feedback. With the help from our moderator Roze, we’ve begun the process of working on what better addressing and organizing HoFa duties and concerns will look like.

Currently, we will be working in three phases:

- Phase 1: Collecting lists of promised features/changes, fixing the full list of bugs, gathering/writing game info to redo the Wiki, collecting applications and bringing in helpers for a variety of need-to-delegate tasks, and getting focus group feedback on in-game features. During this phase, no new features will be added.

- Phase 2: Implementing changes based on the focus groups, optimizing the game and updating UI/UX, creating video-based guides, marketing and live streaming. During this phase only changes and features related to bugs and feedback will be added.

- Phase 3: This will be directed based on long-term planning on our end, the feature request system, and addressing any lingering needs from phase 1 and 2.

✍️ Open Applications

Since we are in phase 1, applications to help with a wide variety of tasks are open from now until December 31st at midnight EST. Those who volunteer to help receive a platinum upgrade during the duration of helping. Positions are expected to use 2-5 hours of time a week. Being 18+, using Discord, and signing an NDA are requirements for all positions.

View the Application

🌟 Preparing for 2025

As we start better planning and organizing, we will be preparing for our 2025 updates. While we work on bug fixes and new features, we will also be adding feature requests. We will be reviewing these starting January 6th and adding them into our planning. Be sure to use the feature request system to submit ideas, up or downvote, and comment on features by January 5th. Once we review on January 6th, we won't be reviewing the feature requests again until mid-2025.

💪 Training Manual II Fixes

The Training Manual II was originally intended to save each horse’s training individually. After going through and fixing that, we discovered quite a few improvements that could be done to the interface to make it not quite so headache inducing. 😅

Some improvements include:

- Color coding to show how much of the bar represents each side.

- A numerical training count for both primary and secondary/career.

- Career now ONLY shows on the right side.

- If one discipline is allowed, it will error saying the training center is not equipped for that discipline.

- If a discipline is not set for the primary/secondary, it will display as N/A instead of blank.

- Some fixes were done to prevent changing the training times if there is only one option.

- For the change for all horses function at the top, you can now choose not to override saved training times. Hopefully this helps keep everyone organized!

- The training log is now in chronological order with most recent being at the top and there are now pages for previous trainings.

As a reminder, horses will not show up in the training center if one or both disciplines are not allowed to train there. Careers currently have no training restrictions.

This fixes bugs #1372 and #1543.

🦟 Bug Fixes

- Storage room no longer forever loads due to new polos - Bug #1492 & 1532

- Sage and velvet polos show in previewer - Bug #1488

- Removed ability to use mane and tail tools from your storage room - Bug #1548

- Fixed equipper error message - Bug #1382

- Craft room backend code has been optimized to load faster - Bug #1358 & 1430

- Pedigrees should now load - Bug #1458

- Frozen tab pages now show beyond 1st page - Bug #1541

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Cheers,

Bedouin & Curly