Star Stable March Blog: Retrofit & MyStable

An Update On Retrofitting

By Lotta Sörensen (Art Lead) & Christian Kähkönen (Technical Art Lead)

Hello hello! 

Today me (Lotta) and Christian will be writing together. My title is, as you might know, Character/Creature Lead Artist and Christian is out Tech Lead Artist. 

I bet you all have two questions for us, how is it going with the retrofits (fitting new tack to older gen 3  horses)? And where are we with the development of the next generation of horses? Today, we will try to answer those two questions in one. 

We appreciate your patience while we do this work, we know it will be a huge improvement both for players and for the team. The next generation of horses is not a style update. It's a system overhaul. We are very happy with how the newer horses look, but we're not happy with the underlying system and how limited it is. 

We are aiming to go from a very manual and repetitive system to a modular workflow which opens up for a great deal of features and possibilities. We have a lot we want to do, and we have a lot of systems we want to update. We have a big vision which we have broken down into smaller chewable pieces which we can only take one bite at a time. Therefore, you might notice small horse improvements rolling out one by one. When we have the right systems in place we can make the jump to the next generation. 

The first big piece we are tackling is how we handle tack. This means that we are trying to kill the entire time-consuming retrofit process. This system will be updated for all Gen 3 horses as well as preparing for the future generation.

Right now, we have a system where every piece of tack is a part of the horse model. So if we want to make a horse use a new saddle we need to update the entire horse model to include the saddle. And we need to do this for every horse! Three horse breeds take three people about three weeks to update. Just finding clipping bugs is a huge process which takes the majority of our time.

This takes too much time, and it hinders us from adding the new tack pieces we want!

When we remade the player character, we also ran into the issue of the player clipping through many saddles. We had to invent a temporary duct tape solution, a shader that scales the saddles on the gen 3 horses which was made before the new player was made. This was also tedious to set up. I spent two months just tweaking numbers, and it was still deeply flawed, and only the newer tack uses it. 

As you can imagine, Christian and I are not very happy about this entire situation. So we decided to rebuild the entire system so we can add tack to all Gen 3 horses on one go!

Our big ally in this is Petar, our amazingly skilled programmer who is helping us bring our vision to life. So instead of adding every saddle to every model we are working on separating the tack from the horses so all horses use the same saddle model instead of using a copy. We want to add the tack to the horses in the engine instead of the 3D software. 

Instead of having 80 copies of one saddle that fit 80 horses, we will have one single saddle that fits all 80 horses.

Last summer, I started to collect everyone's ideas for the next generation of horses, and  Christian cracked the idea of splitting up the models. Then I let the genius tech people discuss the options, and when they had something they thought was feasible, I summarised it for them with easy-to-understand images. I did this for two reasons: one I needed to understand what they were talking about, and two, I needed to be able to explain it easily to producers and directors. 

This winter, we started with the new tack system and performed a number of tests and prototypes in our 3D software to build an idea of how we want the new system to work. Now, we are building the tools in the engine. What you see here is the Dutch and the Ardennes using the same saddle and blanket model.

When we have the entire system in place, we will be able to update all Gen 3 horses to use all the tack. Then we will be able to make new tack again and all new tack will be usable for all gen 3 horses right away!

We would like you all to have patience with us. Unfortunately big system updates take a long time to develop and in the meantime we will keep retrofitting horses so you can use all tack for more of your horses. Next up in line to get retrofitted is the starter horse! 

MyStable

By Stacy Place (Game Director), Jane Skullman (Executive Producer) & Oscar Carlsson (Art Lead)

A Stable Worth Calling ‘Home’ (Stacy, Game Director)

We often think about Jorvik as a digital theme park - a self-contained world full of sights and experiences spread across several varying lands. While each area of Jorvik should have unique and compelling things to do, every player needs their home base - their home away from home that is exclusively their own, where they can return to gather their thoughts (and their stuff) amidst their other adventures!

Currently, there is limited interaction with anything in your home stable and no customization options at all. Is it really your home stable if it’s exactly like everyone else’s home stable? We didn’t think so, especially since, on average, players spend almost a quarter of their playtime within their home stable. It’s an important area of the game in much need of some love!

With different ongoing initiatives, such as the wardrobe UI revamp and home stable customization, we can highlight the home stable in ways that players have long requested, making the time spent there worthwhile.

The road to your own home stable (Jane, Executive Producer)

I can share without lying: Being able to customize your home stable is on top of all the things we want to make for the game. But the road to creating this feature has not been easy or straightforward. For players who have been with us for some time, you know that this is not the first time we have tried. And hopefully, the third time's the charm. 

This time, we're approaching it differently. We're proceeding cautiously, gradually introducing customization options to ensure we reach our goal effectively. One recent development is the implementation of a new backend system for storing items in your wardrobe. This update not only lays the groundwork for saving your home stable customization choices, it will also allow us to improve the wardrobe UI and allow for more space, which we also know is top of your wishlist.

Before this release, everything was stored in the same backend system, which made it very limiting and was part of the reason it became so complex in past attempts, and we failed to release.

We are currently investigating how to move forward with the customization game play mechanics and also the tools needed for our artists to be able to provide you with several visual options in order to call the stable, my home stable. And here Oscar will take over to share our approach for the art and visuals. 

Paint it Realistic (Oscar, Lead Environment Artist)

As mentioned earlier, we have tried to get customization into MyStable before. At that time, we had a very ambitious scope for the project, and we wanted it to include all the ideas we could come to think of right away. This proved to make the project complicated, and we were not able to deliver the level of quality we were striving for.

So, what did we learn from our previous mistakes?
We want to have a vision for MyStable that contains all the ideas and features we would like to offer. Then, we can break that vision down into prioritized stepping stones to create the development path that will eventually lead us to the end goal.

So, what does this mean for the visuals of MyStable?
We are aiming to work with themes to start with so players can easily change the overall look and feel of their stables. The current stable style is what we’re calling the default theme, which will also get a visual update. Wouldn’t it be great to have a lovely brick theme? Something spooky, maybe? We have lots of ideas and can’t wait to hear yours!

A Stable Future (Stacy, Game Director)

We’re beyond excited to finally offer stable customization and do it in a way that delivers an excellent experience for players while also being considerate of our team and their capacity. Spreading out our vision over a more extended period of time means we can focus on the foundation of the experience and offer even more capabilities and options down the road. Because, of course, customization doesn’t just end with themes or even the visuals of the stable, now does it?