In our last devlog, we discussed the auction implementation, user interfaces, announcing and team updates.

You've Got Mail

In our last devlog, we mentioned developing the inbox system, a key feature for any management game. This turned out to be very complex, as we guessed. But at least we've begun implementing the start of the inbox system. This system will keep you informed about important events, notifications, and messages within the game world. While we're still in the early stages, we're excited about how it's shaping up. For now we have added the news articles for a race result and also, while a bit macabre, the horse death event. Our talented developer, Janne, has really built a good foundation to add more news. And we have then used AI to add differing news articles, with a different degree of "variance". There is already a massive amount of "news text data", to give you a sense of scale, when we put it into a text editor we got around 185 pages of text with a font of 11. This will probably still increase in the final game. The variance basically tells how shocking or unusual say an result was, and we want the news to reflect this. So if the race was an upset or just a normal Sunday - we want to report it in that way. We have to do this for every type of event, you can see how it quickly becomes complex. News should also be "clickable", so if a horse, race, auction, person or stable is mentioned, you should be quickly be able to jump to that entity just by clicking it. This adds complexity to the news event, but we think that it's crucial for a functional user experience.
The early implementation of the inbox system - we took inspiration from Football Manager. Still needs polish.

Horse Redesign

One of the most exciting developments is our new approach to horse design. We're moving towards a puzzle-like system that will allow for greater variety and uniqueness in each horse's appearance. This system will tie into our breeding mechanics, ensuring that offspring inherit visual traits from their parents in a realistic way. We are also dabbling in coat colors a bit, and how to make those semi-realistic. I say semi-realistic, because I think it could add some flavour to also have more rare colors for the horses - even if this is maybe not the most realistic for say the thoroughbred breed. But let's see, and we are obviously also taking input from you, the fans.
Comparing old and new designs.

Custom tables

While we had a slight hiccup in staffing, that hindered our progress on the tables we have in the past week made significant progress on our custom table system. As mentioned in our previous devlog, we believe that a game filled with data needs exceptional tables. Our new system allows for greater flexibility, enabling players to sort, filter, and customize the information displayed. This is still early, but we still wanted to show you a bit of the functionality. We also want the player to be able to build their own views. We are also thinking if we should give the player some way to say graph data, but we are still unsure on how to do it or if we are doing it now or in future iterations. Anyways, we're putting the finishing touches on the table feature and can't wait for you to try it out.
New table system

I have a monkey on my back

Are you guessing what I'm talking about? Optimisation. We have started to do more long-time simulations and noticed that some of the functions did not scale with in-game time. For example the hiring process that is ran everyday in-game, started ballooning from 200ms to 2000ms in just a couple of years of game-time. There were other functions, that we had not "finished" so no new races where being generated after 5 years etc. We have now fixed most of these, and this also means that we are closer to beta (or should I say Alpha) than ever. More on this later.
Around a month of simulation on a M1 Macbook Air

Racing Refactor

For our expo, more on that later, we wanted to make a playable version of the live racing scene. This needed much love, since the live race scene was something that I had programmed at the start of this journey. We have now refactored it completely, and next up we are going to balance it. We also built it with balancing in mind, so all the variables are exposed so that it's easy to change. At the expo, we also saw how people were playing the live race and we still have to make some changes to make it more interesting. You can see some of the new race logic UI here, we are moving to a target speed - basically how much power you are inputting. Then the stamina will be different for sprinter and long-distance horses. Where if a horse is long-distance stamina will unlock more as the race progresses. This is to make long-distance horses good at sprints vice versa. It's a balancing game, but we are going to still make the horse fight you a bit depending on it's temperament and your skill. Obviously you can just put a jockey to ride the horse - if you are more of the managerical type. We will talk more of the racing in another devlog.
Start of a race

PG Connects Expo in Helsinki

Some of you might have seen us at the expo, and we officially now have a couple of people who actually own the game. The expo was okay, and we met with a ton of developers. It was however different from what we had thought originally, we were thinking that it was more consumer focused, while it was more B2B focused. But all in all a nice experience, mainly since we found two new employees and we actually met with some team members live.
Our expo table - thanks to Finnish brands Namitupa and Mad-Croc for helping us out! Try them out if you have the possibility.

Injuries & Illnesses

For horse injuries and illnesses we started work, and the internals are now done as a first draft. We have not yet tested and balanced it. But there are features like contagion and we then want to add quarantines to the game also. Currently it works in a way where based on the medical staffs capabilities a "daily healing rate" is calculated. Every injury and illness has "points". Once those points reach zero, the horse is healthy again. This means, that if the player wants to have a higher healing rate (horses healing faster), they need to hire the best veterinary's and nurses for their stable. They will require a higher salary, so the player has to decide what they prefer. We like this method, and it's pretty simple to understand. It's maybe not the "most" realistic, but as a game-mechanic I think it works pretty well. We also implemented game-ending injuries and illnesses. They are rare but can happen, and the risk is higher if the horse has a high-level of injury/illness risk. This risk increases if you race the horse too much. We had some feedback to make these optional, and I think that's true since everyone might not want to play on "hardcore" mode. Everything is starting to "tie-together" more, and brings naturally more complexity and depth to the game.
Code of some of the illness and injuries, we are still thinking if these are going to be the ones in the end.

Team Update

We had a couple of people leave and a couple of people join. I think we now have a more stable team. Additionally, we are also all located geographically in the same country (Finland), so it's easier with timezones. An UI/UX designer is also joining us after a around a month, our game is heavily focused on that so I think it will be great. We like some web frameworks, they look very clean. For example a style similar to shadcn, is something that we think would look very nice.

Alpha

We are still thinking on when to do the alpha, as said before, it's pointless if we just run into bugs when playing the game ourself casually. So we still need to do some polish before that and also add some additional news. The race scene and game world still also still needs balancing. The alpha version won't be perfect, but we at least want to strive for "playable". My brother actually asked me if I'm nervous for the alpha - yes, I am. It's a big moment when people actually start playing your game after a year of development and decisions, I'm most afraid of the game not meeting the standards the fans are envisioning. I have recently been playing when I have some free-time in the evenings FIFA, or FC as it's called now, and it's quite an shallow shell with lot's of bugs. I can feel as a player, that they don't respect the game modes that I'm playing (mostly manager), when I read online that a bug has been precent for years. I do not want my game to ever be this or become this - and I hope that people don't experience the same sensation when playing my game, ever. If you ever see the game going in that direction, please email us at help@sheepmeadowroad.games and remind us of this devlog. Players expectations are high, and we want to deliver as a very small team. If you are interested in alpha testing, join our Discord! More info below, we will inform there when we test it.

Discord Server

Some of you have already found it, with an impressive member count of over 120 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

Funding

We have made steps in some funding, we are applying for a government grant to be able to pay our developers before launch but also to make the game even better. We have high hopes for this.

Racecourse Contacts

Our second outreach was not succesful either, we got some contacts, but they never really went anywhere. I think they first want us to see that we can make a quality product, so let's deliver that, before wasting more time on this.

In the Pipeline

Upgrade from Godot 4.1.1 to 4.3

Some of you might know we use Godot, and if you are ever feeling like you want to try game development, give it a go! It's an easy to use and open source engine, meaning that it does not have any licenses or costs. We are upgrading our game engine, because we found out that FMOD does not work with our current version. We want to use FMOD for the music in game, but also to make race scene and auction scene sounds more dynamic. We expect the upgrade to be pretty simple, fingers crossed.

Finishing custom tables

We are finalising the custom tables, and then implementing them around game. We also want them to have some additional functionality still, like selecting what columns are visible and then improved data presentation. Like in-table graphs, progress bars, text coloration and more.

Finishing news system

We knew when we started the news system that it would take time, it's the most complex system in the game. We are trying to finish it in the next devlog, but it might also be a feature that is constantly developed as the game progresses.

Finishing UI for medical UI

We also want to implement the UI for the medical area, where you can see statistics of health points and more. You should be able to quarantine horses, maybe give preventive medicine, research new methods/drugs or other things. We are still thinking of how to make it more interesting that just "sick horses".

Maybe, just maybe, alpha?

We might start alpha testing at the end of the devlog, or atleast more extensively testing it internally, but as said we still want it to be a somewhat playable experience. But more of this in Discord.

Implement actual game logic

Now development has mostly been done from the perspective of a stable owner/manager. So there are a lot of bugs/crashes if you are not a stable owner, or if you don't own any staff or if you don't own any horses. So we have to make the game safe to play also when you are not an owner. This is not that hard, more of a chore to go to every single page and making it crash-safe.

Cleanup of code, reorganising and static typing

During this month we have also started to cleanup the code, while doing this we have actually fixed a lot of bugs that we never knew where there. Static typing will also help with this, and make the game a bit faster since the computer does not have to guess data types. Again, this is not hard to do, more of just taking time.

Whats next

Next is finishing the features we have started in this devlog, and the as said possibly an alpha. At some point, we are also starting work on the stable facilities, and we might already in the next devlog talk about them more. We are continuously working to enhance Horse Racing Manager, and your feedback is invaluable. Our goal is to make this franchise the most realistic horse racing simulator in the world. 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/