Horses Released
 

A level containing a handful or so of original/dino style horses has been released within the trees next to the Brothers House (visible within the level shown in the video).

While this is somewhat of a random implementation horses are intended to play a role throughout future Quests.

This video is showing some of the improvements made plus other neat features:



Other notable differences:

The A key is now used for the eating + firing actions as this doesn't conflict so much with dismounting (which is now only possible when you are idle with no movement keys pressed anyway) as it would with firing a weapon on a horse.

With bush eating horses your bush count starts at an intermediate number (usually 2 out of 5) as opposed to 0, you can only reach 1 or 0 by being damaged.

Speed accelerates more smoothly compared to Default where it occurs in seemingly sudden bursts.

Horses are now actually a database of different types where we will for example be able to assign different horse images different abilities and speed ranges, for instance only dino style or mechanical horses could eat bombs while life like horses would not be able to.

Horses are not a portable NPC sold in a shop like on iPhone (LOL) but are intended to be obtained throughout various places in game, although eventually certain special horses may become unlockable or made personal to a specific player.

Looked neat :)

cool. nothing much fancy though:[ but how can you make a horse better?

While these are mainly improvements horses have been made in such a way to allow much more fancy stuff to be implemented later on, one thing I'd considered was for there to be a learn-able leap technique for jumping over obstacles or to attack enemies head on, boats are something I hope to do stuff like have ramps to ride up and fly down from.

:(

I want a pretty pink pony! XP

Also I think you should enable the usage of the snowball NPC while on horseback.

Horses that are organic should be able to fart from eating too many bushes, leaving a small cloud of gas that could gag a player into a ministun. Up to 3 extra bushes and the max would probably be about the radius of the player and horse combined. Make horse combat silly and strategic.

Looks good. :)

This is big news

The fire breath looks ugly, the rest is good, except the instant cliff jumping looks like it could be a nuisance. Maybe only enable it if you're above a certain speed, then default to the push-against-it-for-a-bit-first version? And you failed to mention you can fire weapons on a horse in the older clients, too.

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Not sure if that made the transition to GS2, though.

How does the fire breath look ugly?
Especially compared to Default.

The delay with jumping already takes your current movement speed into consideration, the push would take longer if you weren't travelling at full speed.

Acceleration is too slow.

Fading bushes looks bad, and is inconsistent with the rest. Why when I slash a sword it disappears but the horse eating it makes it fade? It doesn't represent getting eaten very well.

Why change controls? D isn't any more heavily used than A, and even if it is how often is there a conflict between eating a bush and using a weapon?

You should have finished the jump animation/arc before you showcased this, as it looks horrible when you run full speed at a cliff with a horse and almost instantly hit the bottom. I also thing it would be better with a slighter delay before jumping off.

I can't say I like the fire breath. A single line of fire could have opened up more possibilities than just a generic short-ranged explosion. Bombs don't offer the long-range accuracy that default horse-breath offered, and could have been used to your advantage, I think.

Also I can't say I like the merging of horse functionality with the GUI. Just more information stuffed onto the screen, even if it is small. Do we really need to know all the time that the horse has 5/5 speed, or that it's holding a bomb? Could these have been better implemented? What about showing smoke coming from the horses mouth if it's ready with a bomb? What about a temporary gui that fades in and out when needed? It's not like Zelda where you have to constantly micro-manage the stamina of your horse.

It really looks like piss, fire doesn't take the shape of rotating crosses.

I also agree with the fading bushes. If you're dead-set on having them fade, which I would recommend against, then at least have some continuity and make the bombs fade as well.

Have you considered making a horse track some were near the stables?

Speed does start off more slowly but increases gradually, whereas Default increases in 3 very sudden bursts a second or so apart from eachother.

The difference between slashing and eating a bush is that slashing is meant to be one swift action whereas eating occurs over a second, fading is supposed to represent this.

I had it set to D originally and found this awkward, whichever action had priority it wasn't exactly difficult to end up doing the opposite to what you intended, atleast using A it's much easier to differentiate whether you intend to dismount or do an action as if you were trying to dismount you would likely not be moving or holding down a movement key.

The fire breath while wider as it goes along is still almost the same length as Default, it's a 32 x 32 box directly beside you as you'd expect from a normal sword type attack, another box besides that with a length of 64 pixels across from the player, a box next to that with a length of 96 pixels, and lastly a box with 16 pixel width and 32 pixel length.

I considered a display above or beside the player but thought that this would conflict with the HP display, still the current display isn't exactly in the way.