Star Stable March Blog - The Year Ahead & Hanoverian

Spoiler Alert: The Year Ahead

By Stacy Place (Game Director)

At the end of 2024, we took the time to remember the great things we released over the year, and now it’s time for some updates regarding what’s to come!

This year, we are focusing on two types of projects: fixed-deadline and soft-deadline. Fixed-deadline projects have a specific release date that will (ideally) not change. This includes horses, bazaars, Trailblazer Tracks, festivals, and more. These projects form the base release schedule of the entire year that we can build on top of, helping to ensure we have content every Wednesday.

Soft-deadline projects are work we do alongside the fixed deadline projects but don’t have a set release date. This is to help our development team balance the complexities of game development - particularly our set-up of delivering something every week. Ideally, team members alternate between fixed and soft-deadline projects when possible to flex their creativity in different ways!

This means that we won’t have a huge update every week, and the team is not scrambling to release something before it is ready. More complex or unknown projects will take the time they need, and we can release them anywhere we see fit throughout the year.

Horses & Retrofitting

Most of you have seen the spoiler list! The dates weren’t correct, but the breeds sure are - Criollo, Hanoverian, Mule, Rocky Mountain, Andalusian, and Black Forest! Thanks to the survey we released last year, we were able to line up a spectacular plan for horses this year. Soon, you will receive a new survey for horses you want to see in 2026!

That brings me to retrofitting. As you may remember, we are working on a new system that will allow us to fit all tack on all Generation 3 horses faster and more efficiently. That work has been ongoing and, honestly, challenging. When this system is finished, we can update all existing Generation 3 breeds to use it, which we likely will do in batches. I hope we can do a blog post explaining this in more detail for you soon, but we are still working on this, don’t worry!

Trailblazer Track

We’re thrilled that you have enjoyed the Trailblazer Track experience so far! The resounding positive reaction led us to continue releasing more tracks, and they’ll continue throughout the year. Still, we originally built the system in a reasonably simple, fast way so we could gauge your interest in this type of content. Since it’s been successful, we now have ambitions for the feature that require us to rebuild it to work better over time and support the improvements and additions we want to make.

So this year, we’ll also work on the Trailblazer Track Refactor project, rebuilding the system so it is stable, secure, and future-proof. A refactor means we are rebuilding something on the backend, and there are typically no noticeable changes for players. This is a soft-deadline project, so there is no expected release date for the updated system, and hopefully, as players, you won’t notice a difference in your experience when it’s out. But this update will allow us to expand and iterate on Trailblazer Track going forward!

Our Digital Theme Park

When thinking about Jorvik and our in-game world, we use the concept of a digital equestrian theme park. As a huge fan of theme parks worldwide, I love geeking out over environmental storytelling, in-park experiences big and small, and how we want to invoke the same sense of wonder and exploration within our game (please talk to me about the upcoming Epic Universe park, everyone here is tired of hearing about it).

Jorvik has a variety of themed areas that contain things to see and do, similar to a place such as the Magic Kingdom in Disney World, encouraging you as players to visit each location and providing worthwhile reasons to return! Players often mention that they love areas such as Mistfall but have no regular reason to return there despite it being beautiful and fun the first time. We are concentrating on uplifting our areas and filling them with the experiences you’re searching for.

Hollow Woods was our first stab at updating an area with this mindset, followed by Silverglade Equestrian Center’s update last year. The work in these two areas is not done. Hollow Woods deserves a revisit for improvements and balancing, while Silverglade Equestrian Center should include progression and activities akin to the paths in Hollow Woods (although not exactly the same).

The work continues throughout the world, of course, with this year’s focus area being one that hasn’t been opened up to visit yet! The story and lore have been fleshed out, the theming explored, and the potential gameplay initially envisioned. The actual project will happen later this year, although, with a soft-deadline, we can’t say precisely when it will be released. Since area improvements require so much time and so many team members at once, we have to plan them more spaced out (and sometimes in multiple iterations) so each gets the time and attention they deserve.

Main Story Quests

We aimed to release the next part of the main story at the end of last year, but the project proved larger than expected, and it needed more time. So, we did an investigation earlier this year on what else is required to elevate this experience, and it’s currently in production as I write this. This particular release won’t end the current story arc, but we aim to get there soon and finally begin the next chapter with the Soul Riders and Dark Riders.

As another soft-deadline project, we don’t have a set release date for the quest, but as I mentioned, it’s in production right now. The project team needs the space to focus on a quality experience without a looming deadline hovering overhead. The main story is important to you, and we must do it justice.

Festivals

Ah, festivals. They mark key points throughout the year and have undergone many changes - adding new, removing old, iterating, and evolving. In many ways, we have built the festivals over the years in technical ways that are challenging to work with, often leading to complex processes for the team and content that gets left on the cutting room floor - content that, ultimately, we’d really like to bring back in some way! We have realized we need to put more effort into doing things the right way with festivals, allowing us to build on the things you love in a sustainable way.

This year, we will focus on Equestrian, Summer Daze, Western, Halloween, and Winter. Extra time will be allotted to ensure the project teams can evaluate what exists in each festival, particularly what needs to be improved. Some content doesn’t meet our standards for quality, best practices for development, stability, or ease of reactivation.

In addition to this research, we, in parallel, are tackling the “Gameplay Activity Refactor” project (or projects, as they start to become each their own effort) that looks into gameplay you have enjoyed in the past that got left by the wayside because the project teams never had time to work on them during festival productions. This includes activities such as the Rainbow Chase, Easter Egg Hunt (or some form of “treasure hunt”), Wreath Crafting, etc. What do we need to do to fix or improve this content so we can bring it back for you to enjoy? Well, we aim to find out. We can’t promise that things will return in exactly the same way or that we can bring back every activity we investigate, but we’re looking into it. (This also goes for looking into activities still in the game that may need updating.)

Equipment Refactoring

What is this?? Well, the name might not mean much to you, but the outcomes of this project certainly will. This soft-deadline project has been ongoing and will continue to deliver specific milestones over time. This large backend project is changing how the game handles items - with the end goal being possibilities such as new types of tack for your horses, the ability to wear multiple accessories on your character, and more.

Existing Feature Iterations

We released many incredible features last year, including the updated wardrobe and home stable customization! But the work is not done; with every release, we evaluate what’s working and what isn’t. So, this year, time will be set aside to work on improvements and iterations of those features. I can’t go into specifics regarding what will be done just yet, but know your participation in our surveys will always help define our vision!

Behind-the-Scenes

The things listed here are not all that goes on, not by a long shot. We are also constantly working on projects to keep our engine, tools, and the game in general up to par. These projects don’t often affect you as players directly, but they can help development, improve game performance, or rehab our foundation so we can build new stuff in the future. We also have several of those types of projects going on this year!

I should also mention bugs! Bug fixing is always ongoing, from fixes that affect every player to those that affect only one. Bug fixes go out almost every week, even if not communicated on a wide scale. It’s a balancing act of having team members focus on regular projects vs. fixing bugs, and it’s important to keep reporting bugs you find in the game with as much detail as you can provide (steps on how to reproduce a bug are crucial)!

Wrapping Up

Phew. I hope this incredibly long blog post has shown you some of what we’re working on this year, and I hope it provided some insight into how we’re thinking about the health of the game and the health of our development team! Things are further on the horizon, like how we’re all anxious to work on an updated map and quest log, but we don’t want to do too much too soon! Prioritization is vital to stop us from overwhelming any area of our development funnel (maybe game designers have time to start, but what about the UI/UX designers? Does our QA team have capacity right now? Are our Producers managing too many projects currently?). Remember, plans can always change, challenges are often encountered, and new ideas spring forth as we go.

Thank you for spending some time with me! Please let us know what else you’d like to read about!

The Hanoverian

By Kyly Sheldon (Senior 3D Artist)

The Hanoverian. Beautiful, athletic, intelligent, graceful, top of the class. A bit like that person in your school who did everything well, but a lot less annoying since it’s a horse!

For the Hanoverian we were faced with the challenge of making a new warmblood that didn’t look like our previous warmbloods – the Belgian, Dutch, and Selle Français. Warmbloods are so similar as they often get bred together since the breeders all have the same common goal of producing sport horses which excel at various equestrian sports. So, structurally, you often can’t tell the difference between two warmbloods. You would need official papers and genetics to know exactly which breed you are looking at if all you had to go on was a picture (or a horse in front of you). The Hano is known for being a big horse, so it is our tallest warmblood. It might be a bit of a fancy pants, but has a fun cheeky side too, as illustrated in its bucking special trick. After all, every perfect student needs to let down their hair every now and then :P

The next challenge was making “boring” coats not boring. Most warmbloods are bay or chestnut, with some black coats scattered here and there, with generally minimal white markings. It was interesting to work mainly with different tones and hue combinations to give these solid coats some depth of colour to make something simple, yet not plain.  

Our previous gen 2 Hanoverian had a chestnut variation modelled on one of our “in-house” horses, a Hanoverian mare called “Myran” (yes, “The Ant”, an ironic name for a nice big horse XP). We couldn’t update the Hanoverian and not include Myran, so she is featured once more. We have two other coats based on in-house horses, namely “Princess”, the dark bay, and “Thea”, the fleabitten dapple grey. Having three “personal” coats in the release made it extra special and it was a privilege to paint the coats of friends’ babies. And as an extra bonus, since we know what Thea looked like as a foal, I could make an accurate representation of her for the Horses app <3

As usual, there were some funny bugs during production. The best of which was when the Hano had an alarming dental issue. Good thing it blossomed into the “swan” we see today! (This was at the start of the production, so the Hano had no “clothes” yet and was wearing the Selle greyscale as a placeholder) texture).

There was also that time I had feedback to make the nostrils “juicy”, and to adjust the “butt height”. As you can see, we’re a very technical bunch who stick to purely professional terminology XP.

The player character, at some point, was letting off a lot of steam. From her ears. And neck. We are not sure what got her so hot under the collar, but we are very glad that she resolved her internal issues. Maybe she had a good chat with sweet old Mrs Holdsworth.

All in all, this was a pretty smooth ride, and a beautiful horse breed to learn about and create <3

Animating the Hanoverian

By Linnea Forslund (Senior Animator)

When we started looking at the breed, we knew for sure it was going to be a showjumper. Even though they are really good at dressage and a bunch of other things as well, it really shines as a master of show jumping, and I could look at our video references over and over because they are just so gracefully beautiful. Finding out that is what the players also expected, we for sure knew we were on the right track, super exciting! 

There was a pretty big challenge there however: the technical constraints we have for our jumps. A lot of things happen when the jump animations play in-game that change how they look compared to how we actually animate them, with the biggest change happening in the landing. Knowing how much the Hanoverian means to many of our players, we wanted to work hard to do it justice as a really nice show jumper. What we did was to set up a task force within the animation team to see what we can do with the jumps, and one of the animators, Ludvig, took a closer look at what actually happens “under the hood” and then used the learnings to make the best jumps possible.

We wanted to make sure all the gaits fit with our excellent showjumper, so we made the walk and the trot more relaxed, as they are used in warm-up mostly, and we made the trot a little extra bouncy for the characteristic springy legs. 

The canter and gallops are more tailored to the actual show jumping, with a slightly higher neck to anticipate the jumps.

We had a lot of fun with the personality of the “Hano”, that we started to call it during production. It’s a professional athlete, sure, but it’s one of those work hard, play hard kind of horses who know how to be properly goofy as well. We were so happy to be able to have it buck, and our animators Oriana and Pauline made sure to add a bit of silliness in its idle animations, as well as being expressive and kind with nerves of steel.

Working on the Hanoverian has been a special experience. Personally, for me, it was the first time in a long time that I’ve been driving the animation side of a horse project and I am super proud of the work that we have done. It feels really good to release it into the wild world of Jorvik and let it be goofy and highly professional in the hands of our players.