Horse Racing Manager · published
In the last devlog we talked about the race engine, weather system, UI overhaul and jockey mode.
The game now has a translation system covering 21 languages: English, Finnish, Czech, German, Spanish for both Spain and Latin America, French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese for both Portugal and Brazil, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
Preview of languages
All languages have base coverage. Community translation is open, so anyone who wants to improve their own language can contribute directly through link in Discord.
Coats have more variation, including face and leg markings. Patterns are deterministic, so exported horses keep their look. We also changed how pattern slicing works, which means some existing horses in older saves will look different than they used to. The horse builder can edit patterns and how they cut off, and gear is horse specific with a default for new horses, so exported horses bring their gear with them.
Different markings and coats
On naming, the stable has a bulk rename tab that makes renaming a whole foal crop quicker, and it takes a thematic list from outside the game. The general name pool holds 4,000 names, the masculine and feminine leaning pools 1,000 each, and per locale lists gained around 300 names. A custom name list can also be loaded at the start of a game.
Preview of bulk name change from custom name pool
For people there are new portraits, new avatar items and hairstyles, and appearance can be changed mid game from person options. Staff appearance can be edited as well. Character creation allows storing a roll, shows trait effects in tooltips, and has a max skill button, and custom skills keep what has already been rolled.
Preview of new character art
Every CPU stable has a unique set of silks from a curated palette. Player silks are picked as separate colours for the shirt, helmet and saddle pad, so each part of the outfit is set on its own. There are also more pets available to adopt to the stable.
Preview of silk customisation
Horses now have running styles. The active style can be set from the horse detail view, the context menu, and on the trials and stable pages. Running a horse in a style slowly improves its proficiency in that style, and the horse profile shows a breakdown. The style takes effect from the start of the race, so horses move toward their preferred position immediately.
Preview of running style panel
We spent a lot of this period on how the pack behaves. If a horse gets too far ahead of the lead pack, some of the others will give chase, and running alone out front carries a heavy penalty. Horses start building pace with 400 to 600 meters left, and that buildup carries into the final spurt. Preferred distance is experience based as well, shifting toward whatever distances a horse actually races at, with preferred max pace and stamina burn scaling on how far a race is from that preference.Horseshoes and weather both affect races directly. Worn shoes weaken their positive effects and raise injury risk, so keeping them in condition matters. Weather affects speed, acceleration, strength and stamina depending on the horse's weather preference, and injury risk scales with the weather and surface combination, so rain on a surface that handles rain badly is riskier. Storms, snow, extreme temperatures and wind all raise injury risk, and catastrophic race injuries are possible. Stat effects during races are balanced around these buffs so the final spurt still matters.
Preview of weather preference
For reviewing races afterwards, there is a pace and position graph in results and past results. The jockey report gives ten separate evaluations for own horses, which also helps us balance things when something is not carrying enough weight. The same report can be pulled up on older races with the peek function. The live race has a top view indicator. Controllers have haptic feedback and default joystick bindings, both adjustable in accessibility settings.
Post-race information
There is a new loan system where loans are negotiated directly with the bank president, and players can also become bank president themselves. A vote is held every year among the ten wealthiest people, and they vote based on their social relationships with each other. The role comes with a cut of loan profits and the final say on the largest loans.
Preview of bank loan negotiations
Venue management picked up a lot of smaller additions. Racecourses and auction houses can be renamed, demolished and set to renovate automatically, either individually or through automation options covering all of them. Financial settings can be copied between venues, and when several are owned, switching happens with a dropdown or the Q and E keys. Stable detail has a venues tab, and NPC stables buy and sell venues on their own.
Preview of some venue management
Breeders get a 10% breeders fee from the purse, which can be turned off in game rules. Equity requests are scaled to more realistic amounts, which makes early progression slower. Racecourse and auction house economics were rebalanced.
The visual breeding preview shows buckets of probabilities, which reflects how breeding actually works. Past foals are plotted underneath to show where earlier pairings landed, and they can be clicked to open the horse or inspected with the peek panel. A sim coats feature shows every coat a pair can produce, and a stats option puts both parents' stats in floating panels, toggled with Y. Traits and peak stat are shown in those panels too.
Preview of breeding probabilities
Inbreeding detection goes three generations deep to be closer to real life, and there is an inbreeding filter on the breeding page. A bred horses tab shows every horse the stable has foaled, including ones that have since been sold, and the stable has a breeders tab for a full view of standing studs and leased mares. Horses can be bred with ownership shared between both parties, and pedigree has a sibling table. Mare lease values are considerably higher, which makes leasing out a good mare worth more.
Bred horses tab
First version of Workshop support is in, covering horses, training plans, scouting assignments, race templates and auction templates. Anything shared there can be pulled straight into a save, and we want to hear what else would be worth Workshop support.
Preview of importing/publishing horse to Steam Workshop
Steam achievements are supported.
Preview of Steam Achievement
We also put in a beta arcade online mode where horses exported from a save can race against friends and strangers. It is a side mode rather than part of a career, and we are not certain it will stay in the final game.
Preview of hosting an online race
Freelance rides can be taken as an owner, and owner guidance reflects the horse's running style. Freelance offers are gated behind jockey skill, so the better races only open up once a jockey has built up some standing. Jockey skill builds slowly, which keeps top level rides a long term goal rather than something reached in a season or two.
Salary can be renegotiated from my employment, and each renegotiation adds a new line to the work history so the full progression of a contract stays visible. Jockeys can get headhunted and receive end of year raises, and an email is sent if no raise is given. Person detail has a race history tab covering every race a person was part of and their role. Open positions show the maximum mounts available, and assigned horses scale better with standing.
Unsuccessful negotiations as jockey
Adult children receive dating requests, and they can also start dating on their own. Refusing is possible, with varying success and consequences, and their relationships can progress to marriage. Discovering that a spouse has a lover opens a confrontation option.
Staff can infect traits to other staff, and both the mechanic and its emails can be turned off. An email is sent when a trait is picked up from a social event. Spouses send anniversary emails, kids, spouses and lovers ask for birthday gifts, and towns can send messages, which can also be turned off. Social relationships carry more weight overall now, and language learning comes from both the stable location and the home location.
This was a big period for performance work. The game moved from Godot 4.5 to 4.7, and we also removed the half-simmed entity system. It was meant to bring scale to the world but never delivered it, and it caused somewhere between 50 and 100 bugs over its lifetime. Removing it improved sim times outright, and we are looking at other ways to bring scale.
Training simulation is about three times more efficient and the race engine about twice, with around fifteen smaller optimizations on top of that. Staff training runs on a weekly cycle. Betting, auctions and hiring were made faster, which helps most at the start of a game.First open times for horse profile, person profile, home, stables, trials and standings improved a lot in big worlds. Finder pages were reworked for large saves and table search handles big tables much better. Saves are smaller, very large saves including ones over 2GB load correctly, and migrations on mature saves run in seconds.
Preview of new simming speed
Steeplechase is in progress right now, and we are reworking the race announcement system with a real voice actor, and there is separate voice acting underway for the tutorial. These are the last larger pieces we have open before the game moves into its final phase.
Once they are done we move into final balancing and start preparing to leave Early Access. Before the full release we want to run a survey in the community to hear where people think the game stands at that point. That feedback will shape what gets attention in the last stretch, so it is worth taking part in when it goes up.
We also want to flag something we previously said, where our plan is to remove all AI content. For the inbox messages and interaction messages we have used AI as a base and then modified them quite heavily to fit our tone and get rid of typical AIsms. We have thought about bringing in a professional writer, while we don't have lots of funds, we are opening applications for the community.
If you know a good writer, you can ask them to contact us at [email protected]
We have member count of over 1600 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!
Development is ongoing, and we will keep you updated on our progress. 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. Your support is crucial for us and greatly appreciated.