It only took 15 years?!
It never was a big development milestone, in part because gameplay didn't really required vehicles of some sort, but this year came with lots of big changes and additions and... here we are. I'll save you the technical details, isn't really hard to add horses to Source engine if you go the simplest route, but there's a lot more. Riding horses probably wouldn't have happened without the superb animations made by Nimrod Hempel, community member that has helped FoF over the years. The main motivation source came from the sheer will, positiveness and insistence from another community member called Paralhama. Finally, also big thanks to The Saloon people that joined our playtests and helped with final touches.
Concerns?
The inclusion of horse riding into a game known by its small arms and silly footed combat could cause some scepticism at first. So let me clear something up, we don't want to change how most of our maps play. We have chosen a few regular maps as Fistful, Depot or Tortuga for this experiment to take place, there still exist areas (mostly indoors) where cavalry can't enter. A couple of new horse exclusive maps were added, this is probably the main direction where horse riding should be going, but I must say that the experience in some of our larger traditional maps has been very positive so far.
Horse riding explained
Horses offer great advantages when it comes to movement speed and attack power. For instance, there's no moving penalty while aiming or slowed down speed while reloading. Ramming other players to death is a key advantage for riders.
However, horse riding requires good control, isn't just about speeding around mindlessly. Turning fast at high speed makes horses slide/drift. This side effect may be used to deal with trailing enemies though. The control scheme is quite similar to standard first person view, in short: aiming and movement direction are tied. Some degree of free aiming should be expected in upcoming updates, such improvements were delayed due time constraints.
And this is just the beginning!
We are reaching new horizons, do you want to ride along us?
Credits : The Saloon ("Badass Gunslingers" steam group)
Playtesters : Nimrod Hempel, Paralhama, El Indio, Chitch, Yami, Flaydin, Kyeki, Papa Pasda, Paollus, Decathlon Antifa, Ranger, sid3windr, Ψευδαίσθηση, Treed and YAYOI.
Also thanks to Kyeki for providing a test server for the beta tests. Pass the whiskey!