#sso game blog

[horsegamergirl]

Star Stable Extra May Blog - The New Tack System

Highlights:

- The goal of fully finishing this before summer 2025, which was promised to us at the end of last year, is no longer achievable - The system works, but they only fully tested it on three different breeds (for which the new system is going to be available as soon as they can) - There is no expected timeline in which they'll be able to move all the Gen 3 horses to the new system. - "We are also building for the future with this system, as anything new we want to do with the horse tack really benefits from this system. We would love to add highly requested tack items like blankets, multiple saddle bags, additional horse decorations, bareback pads, and more! There is more than just the tack system holding us back from releasing new tack slots, but it is one of the most important upgrades we need to do." (look under the cut for a picture of an experimental horse blanket👀) - "Some of the old horses already have visual issues and bugs. These will mostly remain as is unless they are related to the tack system. Continue to make us aware of the most annoying ones, and we will try to fix them as we go. But remember, we are only supporting Gen 3 and newer. " 🤔... wait, newer? (hint at new gen in the future? or maybe they mean the newer versions of older gen 3 horses) - They are planning on creating completely new meshes for saddles and other existing tacks. When? No one knows, but they have to coordinate with the artist for the testing time. They will only test some horse breeds, as this new system should make the tack fit all the gen 3 horses. This also means that with some horses, there may be some clipping issues that they miss. If that happens, they encourage players to let them know about the issues, and depending on the severity, how much time it needs and how fixable the problem itself is, they will fix it as soon as they can.

The whole game blog ↓

The New Tack System

By Björn Jankes (Art Director)

Last year we started a project that we, at the time, called the "no (more) retrofit project." Retrofitting is the process we use to make sure our different horse breeds can use the new tack items we create for them. And by tack we actually mean new tack meshes (the 3D art term for the shape of the piece), as we can already provide color and material variations on the tack fitted to each horse. We wanted to make this process less time-consuming and allow us to more easily make entirely new pieces of tack available to most of our horses at once. The current system is very time-consuming, requiring us to manually fit each piece to each horse and test them for any issues. 

There are many reasons why we ended up in a situation where we cannot simply "copy and paste" the fitting of the tack between horses, but mainly, it is due to the fact that we have over and over again sought to upgrade how we create our horses over the years. We are always striving for better looking, moving, and sounding horses.

The solution

To not be stuck with only the tack pieces we already have and have an infinitely-long list of horses to retrofit at any point in time, we decided to create a technical solution to help us. Lotta S, our lead character artist, led the charge together with Petar from the engine team. We have been working on this new system for quite some time now, making progress towards a release. In the fall of last year, it looked like we would be able to get the system done before the end of the year and start getting horses out soon afterward. This was communicated in a blog post, saying we would retrofit "all Gen 3 horses by summer 2025". But, as many of you know, game development is not always a straight road and that date is no longer realistic for completing all the work.

We are at a point now when the system works, and we have worked on three horses as test cases and aim to ship them to you as soon as possible. However, we will not even try to make promises on how quickly we can do the remaining horses. We will bring them in small batches, and since the system is now in place, we will start seeing things go faster for each horse we do. The new system is now simply called the "new tack system," and we call the process of moving horses over to it "porting" them to the new tack system. We are super excited about this new system and eager to bring the fruits of our labor to you players!

So what is taking so long? 

We did not fully understand the number of placement issues we would have, just how much testing it would require, and one more thing: living up to our own quality standards. The amount of fine-tuning we put into placing tack on our current horses is quite a lot, trying to minimize clipping, stretching, wrongly placed straps etc. The previous process required us to do this in a custom way on each breed, allowing our inner perfectionists unlimited ways to fix minor issues. The new system is based on having as few custom tweaks per horse as possible, allowing us in the art craft to quickly set up new pieces of tack or adjust placement on older pieces. This means changing placement is done per horse but will affect all of that type of tack on that horse, and some tweaks (to the meshes for example) will affect all horses.

As you can probably imagine, such a huge change creates some… interesting looking issues. However, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! We chose three very different looking breeds so we could test the system to its limits, and we really do think that will pay off when working on porting the rest of the horses.

What will this give the players?

One thing this will give the players is, of course, the ability to use new tack meshes we have created since the last retrofit of that horse. This is very welcome for many players. The long list of exceptions in the shop will ideally be a thing of the past (but still applicable to older breeds, sorry Gen 1 & 2). We are also building for the future with this system, as anything new we want to do with the horse tack really benefits from this system. We would love to add highly requested tack items like blankets, multiple saddle bags, additional horse decorations, bareback pads, and more! There is more than just the tack system holding us back from releasing new tack slots, but it is one of the most important upgrades we need to do.

Visual bugs & changes to existing horses

When we port old horses to the new system, we will do our very best to ensure the quality stays high like it is now. However, we will not mix between the old and new systems on the same horse, so there will be slight changes when moving over:

- Placement and size of tack can change slightly (sometimes this will look even better)

- We need to make some adjustments to the thickness of pads and other meshes to minimize clipping (parts of the tack going through other parts or the horse)

- Some minor visual bugs will slip through the net but CAN be fixed if we get reports of them

Some of the old horses already have visual issues and bugs. These will mostly remain as is unless they are related to the tack system. Continue to make us aware of the most annoying ones, and we will try to fix them as we go. But remember, we are only supporting Gen 3 and newer. 

New tack pieces?

As I mentioned, we have a lot of plans to bring you players new tack pieces, and first will be something we already have a tack slot for, which are new models of saddles! And thanks to the new system, the ported horses are able to make use of these new models immediately when released. The trick is to coordinate artist time with testing time so we can deliver some sweet-looking tack pieces that fit well. No promises on when the new meshes are coming, but it is happening. 

When we release new tack pieces, we will have a selection of breeds that we will test, but we will not be able to test all of them fully on the same detail level as we have done in the past. The system is built in such a way that we should not be seeing major issues, but please let us know if you do find things we don’t catch. We will then continuously decide on what we do based on the severity of the issue, the time to fix it, and if fixing it could cause worse problems. 

I also want to personally thank the team working on the system, the implementation, the porting and the testing. Thank you Amanda, Christian, Francis, Lotta S, Lotta A, Natalia, Oliver, Petar, and everyone else contributing to making this happen!

We hope you are as excited as we are about finally seeing new tack on old and new horses alike and about having more fun things brought to SSO through the new tack system in the future!

[synamins-sso]

i quickly skimmed thru this month's game blog, and boy is there some exciting stuff at the very end of it! i really can't decide which thing i'd like most, but i'm interested to see what everyone else thinks

i have no clue as to exactly what SSE means by "enhanced backpack experience," but i'm assuming it's referring to different organization and perhaps no more JS limit??

[dorianwolfforest]

HOLY SHIT

[jorvikzelda]

MIX’N’MATCH FACIAL FEATURES,… MY DREAM MY BELOVED

[ihavenousernameideas]

I just made an (appropriate) rrp blog :)

ihavenoudernameideasformyaltblog

[vilda-ravenhill]

Hiiii hej hejsan halloj idk how to do this post but this is mainly Vilda's blog. You can read about them and their friends here. Hunter is just an accidental time traveller along for the ride who might turn up (sometimes.)

Player TJ (they/it) follows all sso blogs that aren't too whiney abt the game in general, esp artists 🫶 Aideen be with you + love is real <3

[syntiment]

The fact that the next breed we're getting in SSO is the Rocky Mountain horse (Renamed to Jorvik Mountain horse) is extremely catered to me because I've loved that breed of horse for like, ever. It's why I'm obsessed with silver bay horses, and made my character's first horse a silver bay Rocky Mountain horse in my mind.

Absolutely going to be buying an "upgraded" version of Phantom Bullet. I am very excited to see what coat colors they'll add for them

[violetgloom-dev]

For what kind of features are you looking in a “horse game”?

Over the weekend i have sent an email to the SSO team asking if it would be possible for me to recreate their old game Star Stable: Autumn Riders for free (for other players to play) but im still waiting for their response. I’m also 100% prepared for them to either not approve this idea or to never respond. So im preparing to create my own game in the meanwhile (just in case).

What are the features that u would like to find in a game like this? Game mechanics, design and storyline wise! What time period are you interested, more realism or more fantasy themes (or even something in the middle!), darker in themes or more light and cosy etc. I want to hear out what the community would enjoy :] Later i might create some polls on the most common ideas ya’ll share.

I’m already working on a draft of the story and have a bunch of mood boards and a couple assets prepared (and more in the making! Eg. im modeling the mc right now), but i feel like it all needs the inspiring soul of the true horse game fans too!

[horsegamergirl]

A new game blog just came out with many interesting things, here's a link if you want to read it whole, I'm gonna write down what I think is the most important/interesting:

They plan to release the showjumping with faults and penalties permanently sometime this fall or winter

They planned to release the wardrobe update in April, but they had to postpone to June. They ran into a problem with UI scaling, so it's again postponed, but they want to release it this year.

This delay also affected their plans to put more slots on the character and horse sheet. This mean that the ability to wear earrings and glasses at the same time, or the release of ear bonnets and horse blankets will be set to later. (Expected realease 2025 and later)

The customizable stables are coming (they said September on instagram under one post). Throughout the rest of this year, they'll release more options, so we can "mix and match". If people like it, they will continue to evolve and release new ones during 2025.

The new system for retrofitting older horses is nearly finished. They plan to finish it late 2024 and have all G3 horses retrofitted before summer 2025.

I'm gonna just copy this one: "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!"

wait, wait, wait... a REVAMPED AREA?!?!

For now, breeding horses is off the table. Instead, they're focusing on more customization for horses and more interactions between the horse and the rider - this includes personality and reactions from your horses! (this will be G4 I think)

They started to work on the name changes, but changed the focus on functionality of the launcher and the handling of Star Coins Wallets. The name change is not forgotten, but it won't come in 2024 or 2025.

More body types, more face options and more skin colours are planned, but they have to optimize and improve graphical pipeline first, otherwise it could lead to game crashes and game instabilities. These optimizations and improvements will be done by January 2025. Additional body types will be worked on during 2025. They're also thinking of making it as a slider, so people can create themselves. Whatever they choose, it won't come earlier than late 2025 or even 2026, depending on what gets in the way.

Copying: "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." That sounds ominous lol, but does that mean they plan to finish the unfinished storylines?

There will be part 2 of this game blog, when it drops, I'll let y'all know.

[starbornsoulrider]

Intro Post (finally)

hiya! I'm Wren. he/they, nonbinary, pansexual star stable player who got sucked into this silly horse game by accident. I am the self proclaimed no. 1 Darko hater (/silly) and also huge lover of the Soul Riders they're one of the big reasons I stuck w/ the game (and as of late I've been hyperfixating on the Dark Riders just as much tbh)

my main server (as of rn) is Watermelon Beach but I'll hop from time to time. I'm a pretty socially anxious person so if u meet me in game don't expect me to talk very much pls, i'll say hi to you tho

in game my name rn is Blake Crazyfrog but when and if the name change update drops i'll probably be changing that to Haley Starborn. speaking of which, lemme introduce you to my main SSO OC: Halo! quick summary of their backstory: one day, they washed up on the shores of Moorland with little to no memory of who they were, just an inner longing to return to the stars and a mysterious connection to one of the horses at the nearby stables. thus begins their journey to adapting to life on earth, navigating their way around Jorvik's mysteries, and growing into the role as the fifth Soul Rider.

^ one of my bingles of all time ft. their starter and soul horse, Babyboy, who is also typically my main horse in game. don't ask me how many horses I have I lost count a long time ago but its at least over 100 by now. not all of them are canonically owned by Halo but I haven't fully decided which ones are yet.

typical dni rules, just don't a bigot or asshole and we're cool. also if you're like. an avid hater of the soul riders or something please like. avoid this blog that's partly for my own comfort and also you probably wouldn't enjoy it here anyway.

i mostly post screenshots but i also post art! sometimes. when I feel like struggling through the pain of drawing horses. art posts will b tagged with #my art

you can find more info about Halo here!

home stable: Valedale

lvl: 24

[jorwik]

hi there :3

introduction post? you already know it

first things first:

⤷ i started playing star stable online in november 2014, however i played a lot horse games before (mainly star stable the summer riders)

⤷ i am from Poland, which means that english is my second language

⤷ this blog is mainly dedicated to sso and all games related, but be aware that sometimes i might get nostalgic for some other games :P

⤷ this is a side blog - my main one is @emolipgloss

okay, now let's get into why i am here:

around the end of august I realised that i really miss being a star stable blogger. i have never had a sso tumblr blog, but i had a blogger dot com since that was quite popular in the early 2010s among the polish community. i miss the creativity i had back then, the feelings for the game and horses and blogging... that actually made me fall in love with writing a diary and i still do it to this day, everyday :) discovering the ssoblr community made me want to try this whole blogging thing again and made me really excited and happy that there are people who are still as interested in these games as i am. see you around!

[stefanie-cutekeep]

Intro post :)

I've been playing SSO since July 2018 and I go by Stefanie Cutekeep in game, which is why you don't let a seven year old who doesn't know English name their character.

I'm on the Swedish server Air Star and plan to stay there.

I've been a huge fan of SSO and the other Jorvik games since I was younger and this blog will basically be used to info dump about random stuff and maybe some updates about SSO.

Thank you for reading ⭐

[haleyslibrary]

Hi there! I've had a lot of new followers recently so I figured I should do a formal introduction!

My name is Haley, I'm on the cusp of 27 years old, and I love to read! I used to read a lot when I was younger but lost interest/capacity for it after high school. In 2023, I read 4 books. Then at the start of 2024, I re-discovered my passion for it in full force and read 45 books last year! :)

My favorite genres are fantasy, sci-fi, or dystopian. I've also made it a goal this year to read more classics. Some of my favorite series are Throne of Glass, ACOTAR, The Folk of the Air, and The Hunger Games. My reading goal for 2025 is 50 books.

I also love music, and my favorite artist is Taylor Swift (I'm a big swiftie). Some of my other favorite artists are Noah Kahan, Sabrina Carpenter, Lorde, Hozier, Renee Rapp, Gracie Abrams, Halsey, 5sos, The Lumineers, Mt. Joy, & Wilderado.

I also like to play video games, mostly RDO and SSO , and my brother bought me Witcher 3 for Christmas, so I plan on starting that once I have more free time.

I love cats, and I have 3 of my own: Ivy, Beans, and Daisy May. I also love horses, and I volunteer at a Veteran Equine Therapy barn on Saturday mornings doing animal care!

I love art and recently I've been getting back into creating it for fun. I started a junk journal that I use occasionally. I got an iPad for Christmas, so I bought Procreate and have been playing around with that when I feel inspired. I used to draw/paint a lot when I was in school, but I wouldn't say I'm very good. Too much of a perfectionist, I think, which makes it hard to do it for fun. It's been a welcome challenge to overcome that and make it fun again.

I currently work as a content creator for a car dealership, but I don't really love it. It pays the bills. I'm in a period of my life where I'd love a new job, but I don't know what I'd want to do. Nothing has really piqued my interest that also pays enough. :(

I'm also a sports photographer on the side. I was pursuing it as a full-time career up until a few years ago, but I've lost the passion for it, unfortunately. This is a big reason for my uncertainty in the job market. Outside of that I love taking photos for fun, whether it's with my phone, my point-and-shoot, or my DSLR.

That said, a lot of my blog is photos I've taken of my books! It also will consist of things related to the interests I've said here in this post, but mostly book things. Sometimes I'll post reviews or book-related thoughts. Mostly I'm just running on vibes though, and it's subject to change as I see fit lol

If we share interests or book favorites, feel free to interact or dm me! I'd love to meet more bookish friends!

Edit: I can't believe I forgot to add TV shows and movies!

Favorite movies (top 5, not in any particular order): Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Dune: Part Two, The Dark Knight, The Hunger Games Trilogy, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy!

I can't pick a favorite show, but here's some of the ones that I enjoy: New Girl, Schitt's Creek, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, One Tree Hill, Bridgerton, Yellowjackets, Sex Lives of College Girls, Peaky Blinders, Stranger Things, Outerbanks, Normal People, One Day, The Bear, The Good Place, The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, Ted Lasso, Gossip Girl, Heartland, The Boys, Daisy Jones and the Six, Criminal Minds, Spinning Out (rip), The 100, and more probably lol

[piosplayhouse]

Niche fandom happenings to take your mind after whatever stuffs happening in your fandom:

So as you can probably deduce, the model horse collecting hobby is made up mostly of older people. The hobby has been well established since the dawn of the Internet and I've talked a few times about how it's difficult to find some older resources about it/its history because of how every other link you click on which used to lead to a hobbyist artist's angelfire blog now is just a dead link or worse, bought out by some ad company sitting on the URL. Up until recently, a huge portion of hobby talk still relied on now-defunct Yahoo groups; now most have moved to either forums like Model Horse Blab or private Facebook groups. Individually most of these are pretty decentralized, but since model collecting by nature is a hobby that requires a significant amount of financial interaction (buying, trading, selling, commissioning, etc.), there has to be some kind of centralized marketplace for people to pitch their goods to as many corners of the hobby as possible.

Enter Model Horse Sales Pages (MH$P), a, well, site where people can post sales pages for model horses and accessories. It's an old fashioned sales pages site from the 2000s with a somewhat shitty layout but unparalleled detailed search functions-- to order things from a seller, you'd have to personally email them to negotiate for their listing. Though this seems somewhat inconvenient to our modern senses used to one click payments and speedy delivery, MH$P is undoubtedly a pillar of the model horse community.

... So that's why people are scrambling as it's allegedly been hacked and taken down for the foreseeable future. Worrying about personal information aside, now fans are left to wonder: what's the alternative? Well, the first one is of course eBay, which many hobbyists already use. However, eBay is obviously less catered to model horse hobbyists and is therefore a bit harder to search if you're deep in the hobby and can't be assed to look through 4000 "plastic horse" titled listings to find the 2008 SR glossy xX Devilish Girlfriend++ Thoroughbred you want. MH$P occupied a specific niche for long time fans looking for grails.

So what are our alternatives for people in the hobby looking to buy from others in the hobby? Well, there's a few decentralized official dealers like Chelsea's Model Horses or Triple Mountain who you can consign older models to, but going through a middleman takes time and you have much less freedom in your personal listings. Alternatively, you could go grassroots and post listings in Facebook groups and on forums, but those have reaches limited to the members of those specific, often small, groups, and it can be hard to move stock that way. So now people are looking for a backup marketplace platform, both for the current situation and longtime health of the hobby. But imagine my surprise when I went on Model Horse Blab and saw people suggesting an alternative site kickstarted by

STAR STABLE ONLINE YOUTUBER DENIS/DENISE WISESTORM. Denis has been a controversial figure in the SSO fandom (though there's pretty much no uncontroversial ssotubers especially on ssoblr because clickbaiting and weird reactionary takes are like the bread and butter of that side of the fandom) who's been called out for having some alt-right homophobic views in the past, as well as for his abject and unproductive negativity towards improvements made on the game. He's a lps customizer and pretty prolific breyer collector, though, so his drive to create a model trading and selling platform makes sense at least. But still! Why him!!!!!!

[violetgloom-dev]

The Gloamsteed Project

A letter arrives at your doorstep of your tiny dorm room in the vast city.

The day after you graduate high school, a letter arrives—your grandmother’s last testament. She has left you an old ranch on a remote island, a place she once called home but never spoke of. With no clear path ahead, you board a ferry and set off to claim your unexpected inheritance.

You were expecting there to be a lot of work to do on the ranch but that you weren’t prepared for it to be in (almost) complete shambles. The locals avoid speaking about your ranch’s past, but the land itself seems to remember. At dusk, hoofbeats echo where no horse runs. Shadows shift just beyond sight.

With the help of a rugged cowboy returning to his roots and a mysterious witch who speaks with archaic prose and riddles, and your beloved friends, you begin to uncover the truth: the last owner of your ranch disappeared under mysterious circumstances when only their horse returned home alone.

As you rebuild the ranch and bond with your horse, you must decide how deep you’re willing to dig into the island’s secrets. Some mysteries are meant to stay buried as the cowboy said. But if you decide to pull on the reins of fate… what might pull you back?

———

The Gloamsteed Project is a two people project (as of now but im looking for volunteers!), with a goal to create a simple horse-adventure game, creating a lovely blend between: Star Stable’s old story line and sense of adventure and it’s general game mechanics, Zelda’s Breath of The Wild’s horse bonding, ai and personality system with ability, horse care and some artistic choices from Alicia Online.

Watch the dusk~

- Violet Gloom

[amelias-hart]

WIP Tag Game

When you're tagged, share the names of each wip doc you have no matter how ridiculous! Tag as many people as you have WIPS, if you can. Open asks to talk about these WIPS!

Thank you for the tag @nocturne-side-blog! Since it's on main, I'm gonna do this for both fic and original writing as best I can. Very much doubt I'll be able to tag as many people as I have WIPs.

Original Writing

Word Walkers (Epic fantasy series, Book 1 - Stolen Secrets is published)

Book 2 - Harts On High

Book 3 - Death_s Doctor

Book 4 - What Silver_s Worth

Book 5 - In Heart & Caer

Book 6 - Secondhand Divines

Book 7 - A Golden Gift

Book 8 - The Frozen War

Book 9 - Blue Boughs

Book 10 - Foreign Fields

Book 11 - By Tide & Troupe

Book 12 - Spies On the Summit

Book 13 - Gilded Guidance

Book 14 - Child of the Call

Book 15 - Dragon Hunted

Book 16 - Stone & Iron

The Garden & The Graveyard (Worldhopping TTRPG project)

Alana Silverwood & the Starlight Rider (In canon YA fantasy series/Arthurian kind of historical figure retelling for the Faewere setting)

Cowboy Wizard (Arcanepunk western romance adventure? About two characters in the Shattered Plains setting)

Loveless Crew (Weird maybe abandoned fae-Peter Pan thing?)

At Night I'm Surrounded By Magical Maids (Jokey light novel series for my partner)

Is This Clear Enough? (Short story anthology)

Everlight (Attempt to un-Mary Sue an RP oc I had growing up)

Fic Writing

Goddess of Secrecy

Demise's Rise

Goddess of Secrecy_Prelude To War

Legend of Zelda_Goddess of Secrecy (main doc)

Returning To Lorule

The Woman With No Name

Legend of Zelda_Mark of a Hero (omnibus)

Legend of Zelda_Restoration Age

Legend of Zelda_Cinders of Life

Legend of Zelda_Day After Destiny

The B Team Druids (SSO)

Ageless (Myst)

And I think that's most of the ones that I would still consider possible WIPs and not fully abandoned. So tagging! Trying to remember all my writing mutual who I haven't seen tagged already.

@centeris2 @karama9 @doomed-era @drsteggy @mistresslrigtar @abbyzwrites @jorvikzelda @spicymcbean @stevenpartridgequill

And anyone else who'd like to participate.