Howdy, partners!
🌉 The bridge
You asked for this more than anything else: to rebuild the bridge. The one that's been sitting there since day one. And across, a brand new stretch of the map: the trappers' lands. There's a whole settlement out there to poke around, a missing trapper to track down, some Sly Fox chores, and a puzzle tucked away deep into the woods..
And you're not making that crossing on foot. Horses are here, with a new horse trader!
🐎 Horses
Horses will be a real part of your ranch. Personal mounts you raise and lean on to haul your gear, with breeding and stables so you can grow your own herd over time.
You can kit them out with a range of saddles, and add saddlebags to turn a horse into a mobile stash. Every horse comes with its own mix of traits, so no two are quite the same. House them in stables, small and big.
Now, some straight talk.
We wanted this in your hands as a full release today, buuut… we didn't make it. Or half made it. And we're not going to shove something half-baked onto the main branch just to hit a date.
So today, the update goes live on the unstable branch. If you're one of the folks who likes to ride out ahead and test the new stuff before everyone else, saddle up. Kick the tires, break things, and tell us what's wrong. Your reports are how we make the main-branch launch smooth for the whole town.
How to jump on the test branch: Right-click Cowboy Life Simulator in your Steam library > Properties > Betas > select the unstable branch from the dropdown.
The full release lands on the main branch within about a week or two, we still want to deliver our July promise. Fingers crossed, and thank you for your patience.
About fishing 🎣
We also promised fishing, and it's not in this drop. It grew bigger than we could fit in, so we're splitting the work.
A week or two from now (and today on unstable): Horses, the bridge, the trappers' lands, and everything below.
About a month from now (about two weeks on unstable: Fishing, as its own dedicated update.
Two updates over the next couple of weeks instead of one.
Thanks for hanging in there with us, partners. You're the best community in the West. 🤠
Questions? Drop them in the comments or on our Discord channel!
Happy trails!
Odd Qubit team
📋 Full Changelog
New Features
Animals: lighter and smarter
Animals are now much easier on performance. The game scales how much work each animal does based on how close and relevant it is to you, so critters far away cost far less than the ones right next to you. Paired with reworked movement, spawning, and sensing systems, you should feel a real boost.
Quests & Story: the bridge and the trappers' lands
You can finally rebuild the bridge. What used to be off-limits is now a full questline: meet the mayor and gather the oak wood to get it built. Crossing it opens up a brand new part of the world, the trappers' lands. Explore their settlement, track down the missing trapper, deal with the trapper leader and the Sly Fox, and solve the puzzle hidden in their territory. There's plenty more to do along the way.
Quality of Life
Cow-O-Mat: a new build inspired by parcel lockers, to help you move items around the world.
Stack and sort buttons.
Shift-click and Ctrl-click to manage your inventory faster.
Gamepad controls (still experimental, so expect a few rough edges).
Farm lamps now turn themselves on and off.
New Items
New items and decorations to dress up your ranch: hanging lamp, horse equipment, cutlery, and more.
Optimization & Graphics
UI widget and icon pooling, plus a fix for white/invisible icons.
Canvas panel moved to side box (~20% performance gain).
HLODs, RVT mips, texture pool changes, AO resolution, and lower light resolution.
Material and texture cleanup: removed duplicate and unused assets that were being loaded into memory.
Darkroom optimization.
Reworked shadow and bloom render settings.
New hair shader.
Bug Fixes
Animals & AI
Fixed a crash on crowd agent registration (added AI controller validation).
Fixed goats glitching while moving.
Fixed animals teleporting when off the navmesh.
Capped animal start delay at 5 seconds.
Fixed animals escaping from their pens.
Fixed farm animal state incorrectly saving as "loaded"; position-in-array map now repopulates on unregister.
Fixed a stray arrow appearing on the animal panel.
Fixed the chicken coop blocking chickens.
Quests & Story
Fixed the mayor meeting in "My House, My Home."
Fixed Otto not completing his quest.
Environment
Landscape and object scale fixes.
Navmesh fixes.
Fixed floating foliage.
Disabled collision on small objects.
Rain fix.
Fixed floating chests.
Bloody Shroom spawn timing fix.
Various level error fixes.
Fixed placeholder meshes in buildings using the wrong material.
Other
Fixed settings menu lag.
Hay fix.
Some buildings had their initial rotation changed so they face the player.
Fixed the UI icon not showing up / appearing white.