Horse Racing Manager News

[p]Last devlog we talked about horse updates, medical system, sound system and new scene.

[/p][p]The stable doors are about to open! We are excited for our demo release on 02/24/2025 Steam Next Fest. This is a huge milestone for us, and we can't wait to hear about your experience and possible feedback.

[/p][p]Exceptional progress has been made by our artist, we have implemented a new racecourse inspired by prestigious Prix du Jockey Club in France, it is designed to reflect the competitive spirit of real world horse racing and offers high-class racing experience.

Race track inspired by Prix du Jockey Club

The ranch track is a new local venue where races happen before reaching graded competitions. This track will add variety to race progressing structure and will serve as an early proving ground for horses.

Ranch

[/p][p]New horse model system is seeing continuous progress, this time we'd like to showcase some of new animations and coats. We also tried to make unique horses by making different parts, but this turned out not really work that well and we are now focusing more on making more coat colors. Perhaps different breeds in the future, but for now we are focusing on coat colours.

Trot animation

Walk animation

Yearling walk animation

Foal idle Animation

New coat designs

[/p][p]To make Horse Racing Manager more personalised for players around the world, our development team has implemented localization support. Now, players can customize the game to match their preferences, we've added wide selection of currencies, the ability to switch between imperial and metric units for distance, weight and temperature, and multiple options for date formats and number formatting.

Localization menu

[/p][p]We have finished the first draft of Facilities, we moved from a graph tree, to a folderlike structure. We think this is a bit cleaner. We added facilities for stables now, but the system is also built in a way where it can support facilities for race tracks and auction houses. We have integrated the effects of the facilities into the game around 50%. Currently there are 55 facilities in the game, but this might still change.

The UI is still a work in progress, but a sneak peek of facilities

[/p][p]One of many exciting systems that we are preparing for full game is betting system, which our team began working on recently, so far system includes betting types such as win, place, show, across the board, exacta, trifecta and superfecta. Our goal with parimutuel betting, also known as pool betting, is to create a betting experience that feels authentic, each bet that is placed is originated from somewhere, not just randomly generated.

[/p][p]In our last Devlog, we introduced the first steps towards immersive sound design, since then, we've focused on enhancing these elements. We've made improvement to the race track audio, adding some depth and detail to the galloping noises, crowd cheer, and ambient sounds.

The race announcer system has seen major progress, though the logic is still in early development. Currently, we are testing the feature using AI-generated voice to ensure that system works as intended and bring out immersion of racing. While this is a temporary solution, our long-term goal is to replace the AI with real voice actors, which will add more authenticity and excitement to every event.

This is also the reason why we put quite a lot of effects on the AI voice to hide its imperfections. One thing that is a problem with AI voice models is that you can't specify what tone or how excited the prompt should be, this makes it where this changes in a single sentence and sounds very off.

[/p][h2]UI/UX Development[/h2][p]Our specialist has made some significant progress on particular layouts, and I think we are reaching a point where game's final visual "identity" is beginning to take shape. More on this topic later, when we get closer to final designs. We have been thinking of doing a shadcn style, where we also change the top bar to be smaller and introduce a command menu.

Sneak peek of command bar

[/p][h2]Medical system[/h2][p]Several key improvements has been added to the medical system. the overview screen has been completely reworked and new graph has been added for player to see relevant data. We've also implemented allocate healing system, allowing player to manage horse treatment by distributing resources. This way system now calculates recovery times based on available recourses.

[/p][h2]Database handling optimisation[/h2][p]Now all database operations have been moved to memory, this improves performance significantly, allowing for smoother gameplay and better handling of large amounts of data.

[/p][h2]Scene management improvements[/h2][p]Our developers implemented a custom scene unloading system to handle larger scenes more efficiently and prevent crashes when switching between complex environments.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]We have member count of over 200 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!

[/p][p]We are continuing work on various parts of the game, and we will keep you updated on our progress. We are participating 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.

Wishlist Horse Racing Manager Here![/p]

[p]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.

[/p][p]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

[/p][p]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 Montê racing.

Updated horse designs and coat patterns

[/p][p]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

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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!

[/p][p]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.

Wishlist Horse Racing Manager Here!

[/p]

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

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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

[/p][p]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

[/p][p]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

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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 [email protected] 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.

[/p][p]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!

[/p][h2]Funding[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Racecourse Contacts[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Upgrade from Godot 4.1.1 to 4.3[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Finishing custom tables[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Finishing news system[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Finishing UI for medical UI[/h2][p]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".

[/p][h2]Maybe, just maybe, alpha?[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Implement actual game logic[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Cleanup of code, reorganising and static typing[/h2][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

Wishlist Horse Racing Manager Here![/p]

[p]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.

[/p][p]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?

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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:
[/p]

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

[p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

[/p][p]
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.

[/p][p]
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.

[/p][p]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!

[/p][h2]Funding[/h2][p]We're still awaiting news on our government grant application, though chances are slim. Discussions with private investors are ongoing.

[/p][h2]Racecourse Contacts[/h2][p]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 [email protected].

[/p][h2]Interview with Rattle[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Moving to Corporate Steam Profile[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Improved horses[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Advanced custom tables[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Save system[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Main menu music[/h2][p]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.

[/p][h2]Video Devlogs[/h2][p]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.

[/p][p]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.

Wishlist Horse Racing Manager Here![/p]

In our last devlog, we mentioned focusing on visuals and UI, and while this remains true, we also dove into a deep efficiency rabbit hole. How fast can we make the game? This became an obsession, but more on that later.


In our last devlog, we mentioned developing the auction system. While the system is still in it's early stages, the visuals for the auction houses came from the artist, and they look stunning. We wanted different tiers of auctions, so as the player progresses, they can access more expensive auction houses. The visuals represent this progression, and the final result is pretty cool.

Example of the different auction houses.


We also worked on the financials page, mainly line charts. The charts are custom-built since ready-made solutions didn’t work. We plan to add bar graphs for more informative visuals and to make data "glanceable" in the game. The charts still have bugs, like negative numbers performing oddly (lines going out of bounds).

Currently, the financial page is simple and a bit barren. For now, it serves its purpose of giving the player a picture of the stable's current financials. We plan to improve this page later but believe our time is better spent elsewhere for now.

The financial overview.

You can make a deep-dive into the income and costs.

The assets and liabilities, the option to take loans are now in the game.


We went deep into optimizing efficiency. Previously, a year took 30-40 minutes to simulate, meaning a day took 5-6 seconds. By moving many functions to pure SQL, we drastically improved this to 1 second a day, or 6 minutes a year. We handle bulk transactions rather than individual ones, reducing thousands of transactions to just a few.

This required rewriting some custom logic, and while the code isn’t as universal, it’s much faster. For instance, paying all employees monthly in a large stable now takes 1-2 transactions instead of thousands. However, our first round of optimizations broke many functions, so it took a long time to fix these issues. It's also very tedious to code stuff like this, since you don't really see any "new" progress.


You can see where some of the optimizations were made.

Our goal for a day simulation is under 500ms, but we’ll revisit this once the game is finished.

Here are the current execution times for daily functions:

• Daily training: 359 ms, 36.56% of total
  
• Daily race register: 154 ms, 15.68% of total
  
• Monthly salary payments: 102 ms, 10.39% of total
  
• Monthly breeding: 94 ms, 9.57% of total
  
• Horse value calculation: 90 ms, 9.16% of total
  
• Need to liquidate horses check: 82 ms, 8.35% of total
  
• Hiring daily process: 35 ms, 3.56% of total
  
• Role-based stars daily update: 22 ms, 2.24% of total
  
• Get stable economic factors: 22 ms, 2.24% of total
  
• World economics: 9 ms, 0.92% of total
  
• Births daily: 5 ms, 0.51% of total
  
• Horse death daily: 5 ms, 0.51% of total
  
• Monthly loan payments: 2 ms, 0.20% of total
  
• Racing daily: 1 ms, 0.10% of total
  

[h2]Game Balance[/h2]
We also improved the data tracking in the game, developing 121 different metrics tracked daily. These include metrics from the average cash of the stables to the total prime racing age horses. This foundation will make balancing the game easier in the future. We can now generate a 300-page PDF on the game world’s performance in under a minute. This will be improved further during actual game balancing.

Example of a graph that tracks the number of foals and yearlings in game.

[h2]Focus[/h2]
We received mail from a fan about the game’s complexity, suggesting we focus on creating a working product before adding complexity. We agree. We’ve discussed many features still in the pipeline: countries, trotting, steeplechase, breeds, jockey mode, and more.

Last devlog, we spoke about the grant application and the game design document. A game design document is a detailed document describing the game in detail, that helps to scope the game to avoid scope creep. It's a living document, but the "frame" should not change. We also submitted the grant application, we will get the information if we got the grant or not on July 1st. Let's keep our thumbs up!

It made clear that we are making a horse racing managerial game first and foremost. It should be made clear, we want to make this the most realistic horse racing simulator in the world. But we have to be realistic, we don't have the resources to make that in the first iteration of the game. As a comparison, Sports Interactive Inc. (the developers of Football Manager, a huge inspiration), currently employs around 300 people. In contrast, Sheep Meadow Road Games currently employs one (1) part-time employee, me.

So it's clear that we can't reach that level, yet.

We have been discussing with a Swedish game development school about a possible intern, but nothing has been decided yet. While the intern would work for free, one of the company ethos is to pay everyone fairly for their contribution. Since the company bank account is close to zero, we will probably pay them with a revenue share programme, if they do a good job. But as said, nothing has been decided yet.

[h2]Real-Life Racecourses[/h2]
Speaking of the level of detail, one of the top wishes from the fans is realistic scheduling and racecourses. But as they also point out, we can't just put whatever we want in the game since we would then have licensing issues. Just for fun, we tried contacting 10 world-renown racecourses. None of them has yet answered our emails, and there is a slim chance that they will, but let's follow up on this in the next devlog.

If anyone has contacts with a racecourse or brand interested in being featured, please reach out to [email protected].


With summer vacation approaching, devlogs might be less frequent as we take some time to relax. We’re also considering video devlogs, despite lacking experience in making YouTube videos. It’s a learning curve, but it might be more relaxing to consume than text. Let us know if this is something that you would be interested in.

StayAtHomeDev featured our game in one of his videos, I would recommend you to check him out, he has fantastic content!


Our next update will likely continue to focus on the interfaces for buying and selling horses and the auction system. The next new key feature will likely be the news system, after that a overhaul of the race simulation system. 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.

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/