Player 2.0

Hello!

The day we were all looking forward to arrived quickly, and the homepages of Star Stable players' social media were flooded with photos of new characters. Yes, we are officially starting the beta testing!

 

About the beta test

The Beta Test of new characters takes place on a closed testing environment that cannot be accessed by anyone other than the 150 randomly selected players, ambassadors and employees of Star Stable Entertainment. This means that other players cannot meet this revamped character "live" during their gaming. However, testers are encouraged to post content on what they're testing, so by October 3, when the beta test ends, you'll probably see quite a bit of it on social media.

We should keep in mind that although the new characters are functional enough to play and test with, they will still bring along bugs, the team is still working on them and it is not a finished product to be released for everyone. Here are some issues the team mentions as unresolved:

★ longer hairstyles collide with the back and shoulders

★ many clothes aren’t yet fit with the character bodies

★ the majority of the saddles are too small

★ the animations aren’t yet synchronized with all the breeds, and need to be adjusted to each body shape (fixing for example arms that can go through the body)

★ the character is not holding the reins when riding or leading the horse, and the “props” (objects held by the characters) are attached to the wrist instead of the hand.

I'll also add that the faces of the characters are not animated yet, so they can seem quite sad or even doll-like. The finished product should have both animations and blinking!

Okay, now we can move on to the more fun part, which is actually testing and, most importantly, discovering what the team has prepared for us. I decided to focus this post on introducing you to all the elements that make up the appearance of the character, plus its animations. So you'll see body types, head shapes, skin and eye colors, eyebrow shapes and colors, renewed hairstyles and makeup. I hope it will help you to imagine your character as well as all the other people you pass on the Jorvik trails in a new edition that will sooner or later be available to everyone!

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Creating the player

My account information was transferred to a separate, closed server, so after entering the game everything was exactly as I left it when logging out on the main account (in short, my account was copied, so the main one is left alone and nothing I do in closed server on the copied account affects the main account, they both are independent from each other). Because of this to completely change my look, I had to go to the stable and choose the right option from the stable board. The character creation window has been renewed with a pasture in the background. The editor offers us a change to:

★ body type

★ head shape

★ skin color

★ eye color

★ eyebrows shape

★ eyebrows color

 

There are also buttons that let you hide accessories, makeup and hats for a better view. What bothers me a lot is that for now we cannot 'move' our character, change the perspective from which we look at it, move it around. The character makes moves itself which often makes it hard to see certain parts of the character, so I spent a lot of time waiting for an animation to finish so that I could see the part of appearance I was thinking about and make a choice.

Everything from the selection range offered to us is completely new (except for the eye colors), so I will show you all the options currently available to us.

Body types

Skin color

Head shape

Eye colors

Eyebrows shape (you can choose no eyebrows)

 

Eyebrows colors

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Hairstyles

In the character editor, we cannot choose either the hairstyle or the hair color. I don't know what it would be like to actually create a character from scratch, but in my situation I had to use the hairdresser. All hair models have been completely refreshed, so let me show you everything!

 

Renewed hairstyles are undoubtedly one of the parts of the update that I like the most, and I am happy with the new models of the hairstyles, but I am really looking forward to getting more hair colors. There's a lot to fix here, especially hairstyles that were previously white do not look good in shade of gray.

I'm also really excited about the return of the hairstyle à la Marilyn Monroe!

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Make-up

To fit on every face, the make-ups had to be renewed too. What's cool is that we can also choose to not wear makeup at all! I both am sad about this update (my favorite make-up has been changed a lot, I love how the bright red lipstick currently stands out on my old character, the lipstick on the new one is barely visible), but I'm also happy about it, especially when looking at Halloween make-ups!

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Animations

It is definitely one of the most interesting topics for the players, regarding the new characters. But as I've mentioned, they're not ready yet. In many poses (e.g. sitting or chat reactions) the character's hands fall into the rest of the body, the character is not properly positioned on the horse, and the face itself does not have animations at all. I want to show you everything anyway! I think you will like the character's posture when they're riding a horse - at least I think it already looks good and realistic. I also like the animation of shielding our eyes from light when our mounted horse is not moving!

 

Animations of character sitting on a horse

Walk, trot and gallop

Gallop and canter

Fast stop

 

 

A little hack on a beach!
 

 

Jump

Walk and run of a character (from the back)

Walk and run of a character (from the front)

Dance

Dance

 

Dance

It was a fun, yet long and exhaustind day for me, so I will just say that although there is still so much to improve or add: more body types (also differing in types, proportions, and not only sizes), more hair colors, more choices in make-up and ready animations; after what I have already tested, I am very happy and excited. And remember that this is only a beta version!

 

I'll see you tomorrow in the next post, this time less focused on showing all the information and available options and more on my renewed character and my gameplay with it.

Bye! ♥