As we close our first year of development, we want to thank everyone who has supported the project and participated in our early testing phases through Discord. Let's review the significant progress we've made.

More cohesive environment

We've implemented a new racing venue inspired by the iconic Churchill Downs. Our artists have done exceptional work capturing the essence of this world-class facility. We are planning to add more iconic tracks in the future. We've also enhanced the environment with new grounds, sounds (more about that later) and even some ambient wildlife. We will add to this, with better clouds and more variety in the environment and crowd. As a minor preview of upcoming features, we're also working on implementing weather systems, including snow conditions, which will affect racing conditions and strategy.
Race track inspired by Churchill Downs

New coats

For some devlogs we have talked about the new horse model system, and we have some updates to it. We have started with variance in coat colors, and we are looking forward to integrating them to our Pseudo-DNA feature (you can read more about it in our previous devlog). We are now working on different body parts for the horses, such as legs, ears, mane and tail. We are also working on a new animation system for the horses, which will allow for more natural movement and behavior - not only running, but also trotting and walking. This will also future proof the game, once we implement harness racing and Mont racing.
Updated horse designs and coat patterns

Tables

We have finished the work on tables for now, we think they are feature rich enough for the early access. We will continue to work a bit on the UI of them, but we are happy with the functionality. At the moment you can select what columns you want visible, select how the data is presented in some cells (like progress bars, raw numbers, stars, etc).
Preview of table functionality

Let there be sound!

We finally have live racing sounds implemented, and it's a step towards immersion. The integration of FMOD has allowed us to create dynamic and contextual sound design. This includes adaptive crowd reactions, ambient sounds, and situation-appropriate music. We are now working on a race announcer system, that will have with over 300 lines of dialogue. We are planning to do it with AI first to see if our way would work, and then replacing the AI with real voices. For the upcoming demo, we've selected a curated set of these recordings to demonstrate the feature's potential. These announcements will provide real-time commentary during races, enhancing immersion. We also think it's necessary - a race without a commentator is just not the same. On top of this, we are also still thinking of having somekind of pre-race news, and we actually already have someone interested in voice acting for that part. But we are now prioritizing the announcer and auctioneer first.

Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine

We've begun development on a comprehensive medical system for stable management. This system will require players to manage veterinary staff, make quarantine decisions, and maintain stable hygiene to prevent illness spread. While still in early development, the system will have direct impact on stable performance and horse welfare. The idea is that depending on your medical staff ability and amount of staff, you will have a certain amount of healing point for your horses. Then different diseases and injuries will take a certain amount of healing points to allocate. You can then choose what horses to prioritize for treatment. It's not 100% realistic, but we think it's a nice "managerial" feature that fits the game. We now have around 20 different diseases and injuries implemented, some contagious, some not.
Early preview of medical system interface

..and the monkey is back

We updated the SQLite package that we were using, and it opened up possibilities to further optimize the database operations by doing them in memory. The lead dev found a way to do this, and we have done some experiments with it. This should improve the performance of the game and also help with world generation. This was a big find, and will for some machines make the game 90-95% faster to simulate. It will also help computers with older hardware. But we are still testing it just to be sure that it's working as expected.

UI/UX Development

Following the addition of our UI/UX specialist mentioned in the previous devlog, we've made steady progress on interface improvements. We are still in the early phases of the UI/UX project, and we are trying to draft how we want the game to look and feel.

Demo Release

Early versions of our demo are currently being tested by our Discord community. If you are interested in testing the demo, please join our Discord and we will get you access. We're targeting a mid-January public release, which will showcase core gameplay features like breeding and the live racing scene. Currently we are having some driver issues, and also issues with librarys so we don't have a Mac or Linux version yet. We are working on it, and we will have it soon. The demo has been our primary development focus, but what we have developed there will be moved to the full game. Some major issues now in-game are the game balance regarding purses and the CPU skill. There also seems to be a difference in spectating a simulating races, even if there should be none.

Alpha Testing

Once our full game is in a more mature state, we will start alpha testing. We will then invite a select group of players to test the game and give us feedback from the discord group. We will do the playtesting via Steam.

Discord Server

We have member count of over 160 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!

Whats next

We are continuing work on various parts of the game, and we will keep you updated on our progress. We are going to participate in Steam Next Fest 2025, and you will be able to play the demo there. After the Next fest we have thought about doing an early access release given that the game is in a state where it's playable. Some side features might still be missing, but we want to have the core features there and somewhat of a balanced game. 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/

[ 2025-01-09 08:15:46 CET ] [ Original post ]