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Ammit · Jul 26, 2023 12:15 PM

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It has been a project that has taken us 8 months of work but we finally have Breed Characteristics ready to share with you!

What are Breed Characteristics?
You can now take the characteristics of real-life breeds, but not the rules of breed associations, and apply them to your horses. We don't have the Arabian breed, or the Friesian breed in game, because adding those would mean adding the rules those breeds have to follow and that goes against the spirit of this game. With breed characteristics, you can have the look of different real-life breeds without the restrictions.

How do they work?
First, you must own your own breed in the game. That means you must have at minimum a basic upgrade. Once upgraded go to "Manage My Breeds." Each breed will have tabs with options. The "Breed Characteristics" tab allows you to set what art your breed uses. Updating the art your breed uses will update the appearance of all horses you own in the game of that breed. You do NOT need to create new horses or lines to use these. Every horse in the game can have a BC applied to it.

Please note that horses will change images slowly in the background, the same way horses age up. You can always check the progress of this on the queue information on the "Who is Online" link

Mix and Match
Every breed allows you to control the appearance of stallions, mares, and foals of that breed. You can have National looking mares, with Saddlebred-looking stallions and foals. Please keep in mind that Breed Characteristics are bone weight specific. You can't make your riding horses look like Suffolk Punches, weight rules still apply.

Pricing
All Breed Characteristics cost 5 BC tokens to unlock. You can buy tokens with IVs at a rate of 1 token per 200 IVs. It is much more affordable to buy them with USD at the cost of 5 tokens per $25. I recommend if you have the cash to pay another member to buy your BC tokens with USD. However, I know some of our members are sitting on thousands of IVs and we are glad to give them something to spend those on.

Once you have unlocked a Breed Characteristic you can use it to change the art of any breed you own, as often as you want. Once unlocked it is unlocked forever.

How to unlock new BCs.
Once you have your 5 tokens go to the "Manage My Breeds" page. There you will find the " Unlock Additional Breed Characteristics" link where you can see all available BC options.

Inheritance
Think of BC's like a tack item or an art filter. These are not inheritable directly. Breeding to horses with the Saddlebred BC does not guarantee you will get a Saddlebred foal. What is inheritable is your breeds. If a foal inherits a breed from its parents that has a breed characteristic assigned it will take that BC regardless of what BC the parents have. Keep in mind that while you can inherit breeds from other players you can never inherit a BC you have not unlocked from other player's breeds. To breed foals that automatically have a BC assigned you must have unlocked that BC.

Restrictions
There are no rules or limits about changing the characteristics of your breeds. If that for some reason becomes an issue we might have some limits on that in the future but for now, it is a free for all.

There are no limits to buying or owning horses with BCs you have not unlocked. BC are part of that horse's breed and the breed belongs to the original player. If you change the breed of that horse it will then update the image to whatever the art you have set for your breed is. Remember you can not produce foals with a BC you have not unlocked regardless of the breed, but you can buy these horses from other players intact or altered.

One final restriction these only work on the 500 high backgrounds. If you don't own the 500 high tack pack set you will still get the default 500 high image provided for them.

What's coming in the future with BC's?
We put in these months and months of groundwork to pave the way for lots of new breed characteristics to come. Our goal is for normal years to release 6 to 7 new BCs per year. They might come out individually, or as a triple set like this group is coming out. You will be able to vote to help decide what breed we will mimic next. There will be more BC coming out in 23 but our team is exhausted with this push and we have some other mission-critical things to work on, so this trio will be it for a while.

Ammit · Jul 26, 2023 12:16 PM

As I said above our team has been working for 8 months on this. We are tired. Furthermore, our daughter has only a scant few weeks left of summer before school starts. Her last summer in the US, so we are going to take a break to do some family stuff. Not everything is as polished and perfect as we would like but it is time to push this out.

Here are some things not working as well as we would like and are already on our fix-it list.:

Body Warping
Overall I am pretty happy with how well we got the body warping working, but there is always room for improvement. You can expect to see some more polish coming to these, and even the older art in the future.

Leg markings
The generator was really only designed to do two legs not four so some of the colors have some issues with either stray white markings or missing dark markings. This is number one on our fix list but is going to be a bit of a process. Please be patient while this gets sorted.

Old art showing up
There are two generator processes happening which is why you sometimes get images that don't match the advanced tack editor version of your horse. We are phasing out the old system, and the old tack editor, and can't wait to have that gone. In the meantime, you might on occasion see your BC-modified horse show up sans their new art. It should correct itself with out you having to do anything. If it is really struck just fresh the image and it will correct. This won't be an issue once the old editor is gone.

Body Tattoos
Tattoos you add directly to the body are going to be showing up in kind of funny spots for a bit. Sorry about that. It's highish on the fixit list.

University Horses
If you clone a horse already modified but a BC the clone will have that BC applied. What you can't do at this time is change the art used by any university horses. That is not intentional and you will have the option to change those.

What to expect over the next few weeks.
Critical bugs will get addressed right away. I will also be low-key working on identifying and fixing leg issues. You can also expect a fix out for university horses in this time window. For the most part, we won't be starting anything new.

What to expect over the next few months.
Once we are back from our break we have to dive into updating our payment platform. This is vital so the game can keep taking payments and it will save us thousands of dollars a year. It has to be done in August. So that is going to be taking priority. As soon as that is done there will be a whole nother round of work on the tack editor. Fixes like body tattoos, and tack system updates are expected during this window. We really appreciate your patience and understanding that payment updates have to come first.

We know there are some frustrating bugs going on with tack that we have had to push back for other updates but fixes for these are coming! Basically, it was impossible for us to address those until we got the code to a steady place with this release.

I also plan to start the breeding lab overall once the kid is back in school. Very excited about this.

Don't forget subscription prices increase probably in September!

The future of tack in game
I know people have a lot of questions about the future of tack in the game and how it relates to the new art. Yes! You can use the current tack on the new art, for whatever value it happens to fit now that is. In the past, we have had art that was specific to certain art assets. You may not have noticed but the basic halter had to be drawn three times. Once for light, medium, and heavy. In the future tack will no longer work this way. You will be able to apply any tack item to any horse. If the item does not fit you can rotate it or change the size to help it fit correctly. We will also be focusing on modular tack items that you can more easily adjust to fit any horse.

Yes, more mane and tail options are coming for the new art. We also have a lot of the groundwork in place so that you can have manes and tails in front of OR behind the horse's body and this will work on all bodies. You'll eventually have lots of options to swap them between BCs as well.

Yes, more tack is coming! Once our break is over Jenx will be back at it creating new art for you all to enjoy.

Have a favorite background you like and want to see 500 high. We are going to convert all the ones we can to be taller. Not all of them are possible but we are going to try! Give us time it will be a slow process. Backgrounds that were made by our members in past contests can not be increased and maybe eventually phased out. But we will have more contests to replace them if that is the case.

_______

Thank you so much everyone for an amazing 17 years. We are so excited about this update, and all the options it opens up for us. Thanks in advance as well as we polish all the details in the weeks and months to come. The hard part is done and we have lots more new features coming for you.

This post alone has been an exhausting write-up. I will post below shortly with examples of each of the new BCs and you are very much invited to post your own examples. I am also willing to take requests on showing the new BCs in different colors but I will only take the requests that sound interesting.

Ammit · Jul 26, 2023 12:16 PM

Adult Color Examples

Black

Gray on Bay

Bay

Liver Chestnut

Red Roan Dun

Grulo with Splash M, hom tobi, and hom Belton

Grullo

Brown Tobiano

Foal Examples

Bay

Chestnut

Silver Bay

Silver Black

Grullo

Black

Tack Examples

You can fit some tack items already

You can shrink down for the old backgrounds

Some hide items sort of work

Fantasy Examples

Onyx and Muddle Puddles

Nacre

Chocolate Grullo

Inkspot and Onyx

Ammit · Jul 26, 2023 12:16 PM

Adult Color Examples

Classic Black

Bay

Light bay - You can see that bays on this BC suffer from missing black leg syndrome. This one will be QUICKLY fixed.

Rich Brown

Brown but make it Buckskin

Silver Bay

Light bay dun with DFP

Same but with more dilute genes

Tobi and roan

Kit M

Perlino

Unicorn

Yup! They all come in pony size.

Foal Examples

Black

Lil Chestnut dude

Bay

Fantasy Examples

Ice 19 on silver bay

Nexus and paintbrush

Chinchilla grullo.

Ammit · Jul 26, 2023 12:16 PM

Adult color examples

Classic chestnut

Light Bay

Bay with minimal splash

Black

American Cream Draft!

Liver chestnut

Iron Gray

Cremello

Red Dun

DFP2 Grullo

Mushroom liver chestnut

Mushroom chestnut

Mushroom liver dun maybe?

Foal examples

Brown

Black

P+ black

Chestnut

Light chestnut

P+ bay

Tack examples

Lil size!

Fantasy Examples

Platinum liver chestnut

Flufflepuff made you this Unicorn. "Her name is Chunk. She is beautiful because she is so soft and round and good to hug."

VenomVixen · Jul 26, 2023 7:52 PM

Thank you all sooo much for all your hard work. Very excited for all the things to come. :) Enjoy your family time!

FollysFantasies · Jul 27, 2023 7:06 AM

Thank you Ammit and Team HAJ, I'm very excited by these updates! Definitely purchasing a BC for my tribute herd immediately.
I am very much looking forward to breeding lab overhaul as well. I created and implanted 600+ embryos this season, and it was a bit of a slog. Most seasons I don't do so much, but I had a lot of eggs that were going to expire soon.

Ammit · Jul 27, 2023 9:07 AM

This is now live!

Please keep in mind that the image updating process will be running in the slowest possible mode and we are going to have thousands and thousands of horses running updates over the next few days. If you want to see a horse with the new art right now you need to open their page and refresh the image.

Please DO post your examples here, I will post mine a bit later as they are still generating.

Please DO NOT post bugs here. Post them in the bug section, and make sure you read the info above about it before posting. If your issue is already addressed you will simply be linked back to this thread.

We are going to go do some much-needed errands and once we are back we will address any of the critical bugs that are bound to pop up.

BeyondOblivion · Jul 27, 2023 9:11 AM

Gmt 11236368

So cute!

pestilenttempest · Jul 27, 2023 9:23 AM

T3 10717225

Void on the Friesian lines :)

Choc 10339453

10394950

10480027
Black and satin

LVR 10482259
Liver

10586585
Brown dun

11160783

Ammit · Jul 27, 2023 9:37 AM

Links to my horses - note updates might not be finished, check back later if not

Bluegrass
https://www.huntandjump.com/adv_search.php?runsearch=go&jump=0&hpp=100&owner=1&breed=Waxedler

Forest
https://hj2.huntandjump.com/adv_search.php?runsearch=go&jump=0&hpp=100&owner=1&breed=Amatorated

Mesa
https://mesa.huntandjump.com/adv_search.php?runsearch=go&hpp=100&owner=1&breed=Proterriveer

This gives you a good example of when tack goes wrong with these guys as well. :D

BlueValley · Jul 27, 2023 9:52 AM

I am so excited to get all the new characteristics, but I'm really thrilled with how my cobs are turning out! :D

BV Martian Marbles UD
Mushroom, DFP2, jewel box, Belton spotting, grey/grey reduction on homozygous pearl

BV Chief T
Satin, pangere+, grey/grey reduction on a bay

BV Makuba PD
Platinum, chocolate, DFP2, pangere+ (and more) on a brown dun base

BV7 11054479 aga
Liver mushroom with sooty+

BV2 Brave The Mists T
Satin, pangere+, grey/grey reduction on a bay

BV3 11232979
Phantom roses

BV3 11232948 worse
Tobiano and KP

BV3 11232943
Chinchilla, ice 19, and phantom pumpkins

11232925
Onyx, Chinchilla, and void

Firebrand · Jul 27, 2023 11:19 AM

These are absolutely incredible. The amount of work that has gone into this I just can’t even imagine! Thank you so much Ammit and Jenx!

Ammit · Jul 27, 2023 11:38 AM

Oh, Haystack did all the editor coding on this one. I did all the front-end coding and Jenx did all the art so it really was a whole team effort!

Firebrand · Jul 27, 2023 12:32 PM

Awesome! Thanks to the WHOLE team! :x

Summervine · Jul 27, 2023 5:03 PM

Friesian characteristic bab :x

bSV Broken Stars

HighstormFarm · Jul 28, 2023 7:50 AM

Silver Black with Pangare +

HF Talked Organize

PlumHill · Jul 28, 2023 7:58 AM

I decided to try out the Suffolk Punch on my cob line and am loving it so far! Thank you so much Ammit and the team for making this happen!
I color-code all my mares by generation using backgrounds so I was a bit worried about how that would turn out with using the old (short) backgrounds, but am thrilled to see that they fit! Well, 14.2hh aaalmost fits, but I like my cobs to be under 14hh anyways so it's all good.

C5 183 Tense
14.2hh Silver Bay Chinchilla Pearl Onyx Tobiano Appaloosa

C5 141 Harmony
14.1hh Grullo Roan

C5 141 Stating
13.1hh Watercolor Silver Bay Chinchilla Roan Onyx Rabicano

C5 183 Convicted
Silver Bay Chinchilla Appaloosa

C5 141 Treasure
Silver Bay Pearl Dun Tobiano

C5 183 Stakeholders
Grullo Chinchilla Tobiano Appaloosa

BeyondOblivion · Jul 28, 2023 8:35 AM

10ge7 10911322

RoseFlute · Jul 28, 2023 3:17 PM

I am SO psyched that there's a medium bone option because I was looking at the Friesian type wondering how to get heavy boned stock in with my riding horse types and YAY now I have Friesian/Arabs! Thanks to the whole team!

This is a stud I had decked out and I KNOW this is all gonna be fixed but I think it's hilarious.

IV Ashflow 1ccxxW 4gS

z5 11166728Planetarium 1