In our last devlog, we discussed an interface for trading horses and the auction system. The auction system is now fully implemented into the game, but team updates pushed the interface for trading forward.

Auctions

In our last devlog, we mentioned developing the auction system. This system has now been fully implemented into the game. Both in in-game UI (user interface), but also as a separate scene for the auction. The CPU stable managers also now uses auctions instead of straight trades with each other. We are also happy that the game features these separate scenes, it really breaks the monotonous nature of the game, with mostly charts and tables. More about custom tables later. The levels of the auction houses are also now implemented. Polish can always be done.
Example of an expensive-level auction.
Example of an medium-level auction.
Example of an cheap-level auction. A bit of a sidenote: one thing we have been thinking of is how to make the game even more "managerical". One thing that is in the idea pool is for the player to be able to manage an auction house and/or racetrack. For the auction house, the player could choose what kind of auction event, try to get horses and bidders by advertising and then balancing making money with a high enough fee to cover costs. For racetracks, the player could make a yearly schedule, try to get sponsorships, balance upkeep cost and staff for the track etc. It would be a completely unheard (at least to our knowledge) of mechanic in a horse racing game, or other sport management games. But we won't make any promises that it will come in the first version, as said, this is still in the "idea"pool. But we think the idea is cool, what do you think?

User Interface

We have made user interface and experience improvements, where the player can now move back to the where they were and it will keep the last view as is. Currently there is no limit on depth, but it resets at logical points, like going to race etc. This means that say in the auctions, it will be very easy to jump into more details into a horse and then just go back when you want to the same screen. This makes the whole experience of navigating the game much smoother. For auction registering, we also made these small cards. We think this is something that could also be used in other places, it's a nice change to just tables. One thing that we want to also keep in mind when developing the game, is to make things clickable and glancable. Meaning that if the player presses a horse name in any context, it should move to the horse profile. Glancable information is also important, where the player will get information if something is good/bad just by icon/color, but can then read on for more details. We also introduced an "Action button", so instead of say separate "Next race" or "Next auction", the next action always picks the nearest event. We can also add other events to this button, making it in our opinion the "go-to" option for most players. You can of course still choose to sim forward a day, a week, a month or a year if you prefer.
UI & UX examples.

Announcing

The announcer is still quiet, but we would want to change this to get the real auction feel (same goes for race announcer). We are still thinking of the best way to do this, but basically we have come down to four solutions:

• Just text
• Mumbling noise
• Text to speech
• Voice actor/s
• AI (e.g. Whisper)

These all have their benefits and drawbacks. Text to speech has always sounded too robotic to us, so that is not an option. Mumbling is again not that immersive, but we might try it. One thing in the game is that there are custom content (like the player being able to set their horse names to whatever they want). This makes voice acting hard, but not impossible although expensive. We will probably try an AI model like Whisper to see if this would be feasible running locally. We don't want to get into an AI debate, but there is something "soulful" missing in this solution, this is why we are still leaning a bit more to voice acting.

Main menu and start of game

What would a good story be, without a backstory? At the start of the game we have now implemented backstories for the players, but these will also be added to all the people in the game (NPC:s). We believe this will bring more immersion, and give replayability for different playstyles.
The game starts by you selecting the backstory of your character, as-well as basic information
You gain a different amount of skill points and cash at start of game depending on the choices.
You can also customize the look of your character.
The final summary of your character. The main menu still needs some work, we need to add pre-made databases for the player to play on quickly (say 10 years of simulation as history), but we will also give the ability to generate a new database. We will also put the appropriate warnings if it will take a long time, since generating lots of data takes time.

Journal

When we have talked with people about the game, sometimes it's clear that something that we thought was obvious, is very much not obvious. We also want to accommodate people more familiar with managerial games, whom are not necessarily the biggest horse racing fans. Therefore we implemented what we call a "journal" you can think of it as a wiki page of the game. We really want to integrate it into the game, so our vision is that if you click on something in the game, say a horse breed, it would bring you to the journal where you can learn about the breed more. As said, this is still a vision and still needs a lot of work. The text now is just generated, and not tied to the game.
Sneak-peek of the journal system.

Huge Team Update

We are growing! As some of you might have known, I have been the sole developer for the game for about 8-9 months now. I also have a day job, so I have developed the game on the evenings and weekends. This has been quite challenging to balance, but fun nontheless and have learned a ton. What I have missed is someone to brainstorm with (someone else than ChatGPT), and someone to review the sanity of my work. In my day job I'm an data-analyst, but I would not call myself a professional programmer. As stated in some devlogs, I have long-term plans for this game, and don't want it to stop with the first release. This is why I took the step to find team members, to give you a higher quality product. After some trials, we now have a team of two programmers, one pixel artist, a musician and me. While this brings more of an administrative burden to the development and has taken some time to setup, I can already say that it was very much so worth it. More of this later.

The performance rabbit is calling again (nerd stuff)

Last devlog I went into detail how I had fallen into a performance rabbit hole. I mentioned that our goal was to get under 500ms (half a second) for a day simulation. One of our new programmers, found in his first week, that we could get there quite easily by making a simple change. This made our performance much better, and we are now getting easily under 500ms times (half of that at times). Here we can see the benefit of having people on-board that know their stuff better than me. Some functions still grow in time, as more data is in the game, this is expected. But some grow too much, meaning that there is something in the functions getting messed up as time goes on. We still have to investigate this.
Simulation times for each daily task.

Discord Server

We are excited to announce our official Discord server! Some of you have already found it, with an impressive member count of over 50 already. If you have suggestions, ideas or something else you want to talk about, it's a great platform and an easy way to reach us. Join the server here!

Funding, Racecourse Contacts, Rattle Interview, Steam Profile

Funding

We're still awaiting news on our government grant application, though chances are slim. Discussions with private investors are ongoing.

Racecourse Contacts

Our initial outreach wasn't successful, but we're not giving up! We've contacted 20 more racecourses with an offer we hope they can't refuse. If anyone has contacts with a racecourse or brand interested in being featured in-game, please reach out to help@sheepmeadowroad.games.

Interview with Rattle

We had an interview with Rattle. We highly recommend checking out her YouTube channel for quality horse game content. Video about us will hopefully be published shortly.

Moving to Corporate Steam Profile

You might notice some changes in who responds on the Steam community in the future (mainly in terms of logo, etc.). We're transitioning to a corporate Steam profile to better manage our community interactions and have our game under a corporate account.

In the Pipeline

Improved horses

Improved horse look system, with multiple body parts so that each horse looks "unique". This also includes realistic coat colors, that will be integrated into the Pseudo-DNA breeding system. Here is a draft our new artist made, keep in mind this is not the final version.
Left is new model, looks way better already in our opinion, but the proportions need work.

Advanced custom tables

A game filled with tables needs to have extremely good ones. That is why we have started to build custom tables that we can use in the game easily. They should look good, but also be flexible for the player. So maybe the player wants more or less information, this should be customizable. The player should also be able to sort and filter data.

Save system

We have been working on a save system, and it's almost finished. I think it turned out good, where we have it organised per character/game, and in a game you can have multiple different saves. We wanted to make it like this, to make it more organised for people who make multiple different saves in multiple different games. But more of this in the next devlog.

Main menu music

Currently the main menu music is being composed, we have chosen as a theme a "epic/heroic" style, to set the tone for your journey. Music during the game is still something we are thinking about, what music is fitting for a game like this? But there will obviously be the option to also mute the music, I know some people like to watch shows/listen to podcasts/music while playing games like this.

Video Devlogs

Last time we asked about video devlogs. There was some interest so we started to make a video. But after around 10 hours to make 2 minutes of content we are putting it on hold for now. We have still not given up on the idea, but this will be down prioritized. Last time I said that our goal is to make this franchise the most realistic horse racing simulator in the world. This continues to be the goal.

Whats next

Our next update will likely continue to focus on the interfaces for buying and selling horses. I expect the save system to be ready as-well as custom tables. For big features the next thing is to start work on the news/inbox system, and make the race scene actually playable and balanced. Once these two systems are in-game, the game should be ready to be playtested. We will inform you more about this in the future. If you are interested in joining the beta, you can say so in our discord group (there is a dedicated channel for that). We are continuously working to enhance Horse Racing Manager, and your feedback is invaluable. Don't forget to add Horse Racing Manager to your Steam wishlist! Your support is crucial for us and greatly appreciated. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2740170/Horse_Racing_Manager/