Star Stable August Blog Part 1: Future Update

Future Fun and Old Promises

By Jane Skullman (Executive Producer)

Last year, we did a better job of keeping you guys in the loop about upcoming updates and how things were going (whether good or bad). This post is a step to bring back transparency  and let you in on all the cool plans we have for the future, old promises we haven't kept, and which ones we're still committed to.

I'm Jane Skullman, the Executive Producer for Star Stable. My job is to make sure everyone working on the game shares the same vision and that we deliver on that vision as best as we can.

The 2024 Journey So Far

Equestrian Disciplines
Picking up from where I left off in January, here's an update on this year's promises. We did bring back lunging and dressage, and we even added a new equestrian discipline! That was the showjumping prototype with faults and penalties. We're planning to release it permanently sometime this fall or winter, more information will be shared as the time comes. 

A hot topic! Wardrobe UI revamp.
Last year, at the end of 2023 we released the backend changes needed to move forward with the visual updates and functionality for the wardrobe including creating more space. We originally planned this release to April and then postponed it to June. Just before the June release we hit an unexpected problem with how the UI (User Interface) scales for all our platforms. Platforms in this case are desktop, iOS and Android. We had to postpone again, and are working hard to try and secure the update for this year. We will continue informing you when this can be released and keep your fingers crossed that it will happen sooner than later. We know that you are frustrated about this delay, we are as well, but we decided to wait for the release in order to have the UI and other parts working as well as possible. Want to know more about our UI plans? Keep reading! We’re sharing more further below.

Unfortunately, the delay of the wardrobe UI revamp has also delayed other inventory-related updates, like adding more slots to the horse and character sheets. This means that the possibility to wear earrings and glasses at the same time or add ear bonnets and blankets to your horse will be set to later.

Straight after the first release we will continue working on the player inventory systems which includes the wardrobe but also the vanity storage for hair and make-up. This iteration aims to remove the cap for how many hairstyles and makeup items you can have and most likely an option to sell or discard the items This together with the greyed out icons in the wardrobe are things we will focus on after the upcoming release.  

So none of these features are scrapped or forgotten, just delayed, most likely until 2025.

Third time's the charm. A new Home Stable

Back in January and March, we talked about improving the Home Stable in steps. We kicked things off in the spring with new gameplay features: a chore board with daily tasks, more interactions with your horses (they now greet you randomly when you approach), and the ability to invite friends to help take care of your horses and do daily chores. Just a couple of weeks ago, we gave the stable a make over and prepared new meshes, new code and design for an upcoming customization feature that will let you change the appearance of your stable.

In the March blog, we mentioned that this is actually the third time we've tried to do this, and it seems that the third time's the charm and that we have learned from our previous attempts. So, keep your eyes peeled because this feature is coming sooner than you think. After we introduce it, we'll add even more options throughout 2024 so you can mix and match until your home stable is perfect. And if you like this feature, we’ll continue to evolve and release customisation options during 2025. So please let us know what and also how you'd like to customise your stable.

Retrofit for all Gen 3 horses.
As Lotta (Art Lead) and Christian (Technical Art Lead) shared in the March blog, our process of retrofitting horses is still going strong. In short, retrofit means adapting a new tack item to older horses. Check out our March blog if you want to learn more. We've made amazing progress with the tool mentioned in the blog that lets us magically fit all tack to new and old horses with just a click of a button.

Here's a quote from Lotta from our internal channels:
“This is the most efficient system I have ever used 🥹 Like... It one button and 90% of the job is done on a star-rig horse ❤️” 

The star-rig is the rig used for our horse models. We estimate that this tool will be part of production by late 2024, and we aim to finish retrofitting all Gen 3 horses before summer 2025. This also means that the starter horse was the last one updated using the old retrofitting method.

Future Updates and What's To Come

As we’ve already mentioned, by the end of 2024, we'll have introduced Home Stable Customization, a new tool for quickly retrofitting all existing and new Gen 3 horses, and more space for the wardrobe!

And also something a bit unexpected: we’re introducing a new way of interacting with your horse and fellow players in a revamped area set in a ye olde time. We hope you're as excited as we are for this addition — we think this journey in time will be magical!

What about everything else? 

Gen 4, Horse Customization, and Breeding

After the initial discovery, breeding is off the table for now. Instead we're focusing on taking our horses to the next level and adding customization options to them. This was mentioned in the March blog post, and while we’re making progress, we can’t show you anything yet or say when it will be released.

Taking our horses to the next level also means more interactions between horse and rider, which ties into our promise of deepening the bond between you and your horse(s). This includes more personality and maybe even some unexpected reactions from your companion while exploring Jorvik. So when will this be added to the game? There are too many unknowns to really say anything but I can say that we will share the behind the scene progress to keep you in the loop. 

Your Character, the player Avatar

Last year, we mentioned making backend changes to allow character name changes. During 2024, we shifted our backend priorities to support functionality in our launchers and secure the handling of your Star Coins Wallets instead. The name change is not forgotten, but with our current priorities, it won’t happen during 2024 or 2025.

What about body types, skin tones, and more face options? We’re working to optimize and improve our graphical (rendering) pipeline as the first step. This needs to be in place before we can add more customization options to your character, otherwise we risk an increase in crashes and other instabilities to the game.

Once the changes to our base graphical pipeline is done, we'll be able to start work on adding more customization options for both horse and character. Additional body types will be worked on during 2025 and we’re currently thinking of going with sliders in order for you to be the creator. When you get to experience them is most likely in late 2025 or even in 2026 depending what unknowns we run into. We know that is disappointing to hear, but we want to be transparent about what we can deliver and when rather than leave you worried and guessing.

Game Performance Improvements
Besides adding improvements to the engine for an enhanced graphical experience we've also been working to enhance the overall game performance. These improvements will ensure a more stable and enjoyable experience with significantly fewer crashes, applicable to both desktop and mobile platforms.

UI and game navigation
The project with the "exciting" name UI 2.0 is wrapping up, and we're starting to use this system to let our content teams handle game UI (User interface) and HUDs (Heads-up-Display) in a smarter, more cohesive way. The HUD is what you interact with during the gameplay; anything outside gameplay, like menus, falls under UI design.  

This project is now paving the way for visual improvements to the UI for both our mobile (we've seen your requests for larger buttons) and desktop players. We’re also aligning the visual aspects of the UI across generations. We've hired a UX/UI Lead and are adding more UX/UI talent to our team to focus on this. We will share more details about our UI journey in a future blog post. 

Bugs!
We promised both this year and last year to fix bugs faster and reduce the number of bugs in the game. There's been some progress with bug bashing days, adding the bug patch page and a team-wide focus on fixing bugs. We agree with you, we can still do better and we are iterating on the process to improve further. We'll keep working on finding ways to reduce the number of bugs in our live game. A new bug bashing day is planned, so let us know which bugs you want us to squash! And always report the bug that you experience to our support team, add pictures and/or video where applicable. Share what platform you are using and also what you did when you experienced the bug. This info helps us to find the root cause of the bug and can fix it faster.

Narrative and Story!
This will be for another post. We will not stop, ever, to share stories from the universe of Jorvik—there are still many untold secrets, and much more to discover in the stories we've already begun.


This is all for now, but I will soon be back with more information about what is happening behind the scenes and how we are progressing towards already mentioned features. Anything you think I have missed, please let me know and I will add them in a later blog post!