u/UpstairsImpossible

Demo v1.5 Update Notes (and new trailer!)

Overhauled the village:

- The Forge now sells armour with new daily stock

- There's a new Tailor where you can buy clothes (with new daily stock)

- The General Store now has an area where you can sell items from your inventory

- Fleshed out the Bakery and Greengrocer areas

- Some villagers have new roles, outfits and dialogue to match.

Improved and Added to the World:

- Added over 40 new hand-drawn clothing, armour and tack items with unique descriptions and stats

- Added a random encounter/event system to replace all NPC and Enemy encounters. Every time you leave the village will be a unique experience.

- Added new NPC's to bring the world to life.

- Mobs have been redone to be more optimised. They now come in an array of grotesque and terrifying forms with hand drawn animations and unique attacks.

- Night time is much darker and much more dangerous, but offers higher rewards for those brave enough to venture out and some equipment can only be found at night. You also now have a lamp you can use to light your path.

- Chests no longer have specific equipment in set places except as boss fight rewards and the tutorial. They are instead found throughout the world and lesser items are more abundant (for scavenging and selling!)

UI and Quality of Life:

- Gave the UI a makeover

- A notification when save is complete

- Transitions (starting/loading, teleporting etc)

- Settings are all now in their own menu off pause

- You now only save when you sleep at your house

- Coins now have different colours to express their value

- Added a notification when horse slots are full

- Improved the way music works

- Fixed stuff in the distance clipping

- Tweaked some existing animations

- Added more sound effects

- Added more hair styles

- Some textures and buildings have been replaced

- Item descriptions are, finally, visible

Free Demo:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4604470/A\_Noble\_Steed/

Discord - I'm super active and will fix any bugs reported pretty much then and there if I can!

https://discord.gg/qV8hECcSH

A Noble Steed Demo v1.2 Notes!

- Added a proper tutorial and updated the HUD

- This new panel also functions while you're out and about to generally guide you (it can be toggled)

- Replaced the horse name tags with a proper information display

- Claiming foals/horses is more ergonomic

- Breeding has been completely overhauled; it's now much easier to use and features a stat-focused system with more RNG elements - higher tiers are harder to produce and profit comes from breeding finer Steeds. This also fixes a lot of tier-related breeding bugs.

- Controls have been updated in lieu of a custom binding menu - you can also now use Shift/Ctrl to speed up and slow down as well as Up/Down to help with attacking using the mouse

- Attack is now ENTER or Left Click to help with sticky key issues

- Added more boundaries to the world so you can't "escape"

- Fixed horse face markings being incorrectly aligned

- Fixed a problem where mobs weren't respawning correctly

- Turned down the player's footsteps and the main menu music

- Moved some Stones of Safety that didn't make sense

Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4604470/A\_Noble\_Steed/

Discord (for community updates, bug reports, feedback etc!)

https://discord.gg/X8YKRe3Xz

Hi all, the free Demo for A Noble Steed is now live on Steam! Come and breed cute horses and slay zombies!

A Noble Steed on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4604470/A\_Noble\_Steed/

A Noble Steed Discord:

https://discord.gg/xN7NASFYy

Okay, yes, I thought I would be launching the demo this weekend. Honestly, I'm so proud of how far it's come and it's feeling really solid. BUT. I am getting ahead of myself a bit.

This is my first game launch starting from zero experience back in October, and I have had the amazing privilege to be able to talk to and pick the brains of other fantastic (and 1000x more experienced) people in this industry. As a result of this I've honestly realised that it would be a mistake to launch the demo without making use of all the available resources I have to really ensure this is polished to a high standard (especially for the sake of a few weeks).

So, while it has been tested, and it SEEMS okay, I have to admit it's all been very casual. As such I want to get a dedicated team of playtesters (who are actually interested in horses) actively playing the game and finding problems for at least a week so I can make absolutely sure I haven't missed anything before I launch the demo.

If you would like to apply to be a playtester, a select few places are available as I'm focusing on quality and communication.

You can apply for an access key by joining the new A Noble Steed Discord https://discord.gg/cBTpmdcvq and heading over to the Playtest Applications channel. You can also keep track of updates and the general state of the game on there as time goes on, and I'll be actively fixing problems, answering any questions, and acting on suggestions!

~ Louise, EscapedTreeFrog (Developer)

Hi everyone, I hope you're well and having a great day whatever you've been up to. This will be my final devlog before the demo launches! I've sent the Demo build off to Steam so it's just a case of waiting for approval now. Here are some clips from the first half hour or so of the game!

It is, for all intents and purposes, a "Demo" with a higher level of polish (and all the intended content / gameplay elements) than "Early Access" - but this is at the end of the day a game that is to be played by players! So if there are tweaks and additions that the community wants that can be implemented either before or as an update after the full game launches, I am absolutely down for all of that.

It's also probably wise for me to mention, this is my first game - I started from absolutely no experience back in October so it really is my first rodeo! I've playtested it on a number of systems but there are probably going to be a few bugs which I will be working around the clock the first few weeks to squash!

Anyway, here's what's been done since my last update:

- I've broken the horse sprites up into a bunch of pieces and overhauled their animations so their necks, shoulders, haunches, ears etc all now move.

- Steeds now have unique personalities - so they don't all move and act the same way! These aren't "traits" written down anywhere and they don't have names, but they completely change all aspects of the movement and behaviour of the individual steed - each gait has a different animation override and jumping is different as well. Different personalities have small boosts to certain stats.

- Also made them a tad smaller to be more historically accurate. As the art has been re-done I also gave them some subtle shading to match the rest of the art, and there's a few different bases - roan, dun (with stripes!), points etc - so that the colours feel accurate. The sprites are based on medieval tapestries and are a kind of goofy Destrier.

- Markings are now per-body-part, meaning many more millions of possible combinations, and the system has been simplified so it's very easy to add new markings. The chances of getting markings have been lowered as breeding was resulting in fully painted horses almost every time.

- Face markings are now showing up as intended in all directions.

- Personalities and markings are RNG for now so a bit like real life, while there's a bit of a formula for getting the base colour you want and improving stats, the rest is up to chance.

- Added more colours such as silver dapple and red roan.

Other Stuff:

- Added more detail to existing building models, such as wood panelling and clearer 3D doors.

- Added readable books/notes and lore

- Added variety to all the zombies, added some difficulty scaling for areas further out, and added two new enemy/mob types.

- Fixed many things

- Added the last UI prompt bits for inventory, character creation etc

- The world for the demo is pretty much built, with one boss area and three unique biomes to explore.

- The player's farm layout has been improved and the upgrade system has been streamlined.

- Continued working on water, and sorted the edges out, so it looks pretty great now!

- Fixed sound effects as they were a bit messy

The plan is to launch the full game after October NextFest - it may be on Halloween or might be the 1st. I feel the zombie apocalypse vibe fits in well with the season (which is my favourite holiday as well!). Thank you all for all your interest and support in my little project so far, I can't wait to see where this journey takes us next.

Full dev log coming soon (likely the last one before the demo launches!) but I wanted to share a preview of the new animations and unique horse personality system which I'm really quite excited about.

Each personality has a completely different set of animations which change how they move and behave. Some are a bit impatient, some bouncy, and some are maybe a bit too laid back!

There are currently five different personality types ready for the demo with at least three more planned for full release.

Also featuring a snippet one of my favourite compositions so far from the OST.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to check in with a bit of gameplay footage as the project approaches demo launch status. These areas still need populating with mobs and loot and all of this is still "in development" but I can't believe how far it's come!

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I basically want the whole map to feel like one big cross country or point-to-point course so I've been having fun watching lots of footage of real courses and seeing what sorts of things I can include in the environment.

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There are a few tweaks that need to be made with the jump animation timing being a bit off which is related to jump power and horse stat scaling, there's a bit of hoof sliding going on, I don't like the edges of the water there; essentially I'm down to all these tiny bits that just need polishing off now. If anything jumps out at you (pardon the pun) let me know, now is the time for all the niggly bits!

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Also featuring a bit of original soundtrack composition by myself - I come from a musical family but it's a bit weird composing orchestral music digitally. I use BandLab, great app!

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100% AI free - all writing is my own, artwork done by hand in Pixel Studio on my phone, and music is Band Lab. Coding I mostly watched Night Run Studio to learn the fundamentals and then other tutorials to fill in the gaps.

Just a little update on how A Noble Steed is shaping up as I head towards launching the demo! Thank you all for your support and interest in this little project so far, especially as it's really starting to come together now.

- Added boss fight mechanics and created the first boss for the demo.

- Made some adjustments to the basic Zombie design and redid their animations

- Started adding new types of enemies

- Named NPC's are growing in number, each with unique dialogue to give you pointers or lore etc as well as their own schedules

- Horses are now born as foals and grow up over a few in-game days

- Horses now breed "naturally" if a male and female are roaming together in the breeding pasture. When breeding is successful, a notification to birth the foal will appear.

- Mares (female horses) now have a breeding cooldown of a few days

- Steeds now have name tags and icons to show their tier and gender instead of the UI popup, these can be turned on and off as desired.

- Made some tweaks to the galloping animation

-Smooth camera follow, look-ahead based on speed, depth of field, and more!

- Massive performance improvements to handle the large amount of enemies and NPC's on the map (my ancient laptop doesn't let me get away with anything!)

- More polishing - UI adjustments, quality of life additions/improvements, and little bug fixes

- I've now got at least six original music compositions (by myself) ready for the soundtrack

I've posted a new dev update on A Noble Steed's Steam Page, I'm honestly overwhelmed that this project is nearly at 100 wishlists already. It's just inspiring me even more to polish it and make it the best it can be.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4604470/A\_Noble\_Steed/

Here's a little video montage of some of what's new as I continue to work towards a lovely demo.