October 2026 dev log, part one: test builds, temperaments and carriages
The first Equestrian test build, a world that froze every 18 seconds, horses with personalities, the site in three languages, the Fjord, horses that ran out of room in their own save data, and five horse-drawn vehicles in five days.
Half a month, and it’s already the busiest one yet. Nearly all of it is horses. Equestrian has taken off faster than anything I’ve made, and the Discord keeps sending ideas I actually want to build.
1 and 2 October: the first test build
One last bug before testers got their hands on it. Lying down was clearing a flag on every horse, harnessed or not, and that flag is what lets a horse jump. So any horse that slept, rolled, got brushed or went down sick couldn’t jump again until the world reloaded.
On the 2nd, Equestrian v0.1.0 went out to testers: eleven breeds, breeding and foals, care and bond, hooves, illness, stables, feeding, training, the round pen and the Horse Radar.
Two side projects came out of the promo work that day. Riding Clothes started from a thumbnail with a rider in a helmet: show and racing looks, six pieces, every one in 16 colours. And logo boards for a race track. They taught me that Bedrock refuses any block model that reaches even a pixel outside its own block.
3 October: personalities you feel, not read
The temperament system started. The rule: you should know what horse you’ve got from how it stands, moves, sounds and reacts. No stat screens, no new items, no new chores. Just more life. A skittish Arabian was terrified of a zombie in the first test, while the Clydesdale couldn’t have cared less.
Making Riding Clothes also turned up four identical recipes shared by Farm Clothes and Magic Clothes. In Bedrock, when two recipes match, one quietly wins. Every Magic Clothes piece takes its set’s element item now (blaze powder, packed ice, redstone or a Star).
4 October: the world that froze every 18 seconds
The world was freezing for about three seconds every eighteen. It looked like a horse bug. It looked like the logo boards. It was neither. The Content Log’s Watchdog line gave it away: the gap between freezes is the timer’s period plus the freeze itself, because the game stops counting while it’s frozen. Fifteen seconds plus three: a 15-second timer.
That timer was Seasons’ summer check for leftover snow. It went over up to 300 snowy spots every fifteen seconds with no breaks. It now sweeps a little at a time, only near players, and crosses a spot off once it’s clean. Play felt better instantly. The snow story is in making it snow on a plains farm.
Also that day: controller players couldn’t hold a speed, because a full push sped the horse up to a canter by itself. Every device rides by the same rules now. And the Magic Pack’s first boss, the Occultist, just in time for Halloween.
5 to 7 October: the site grows up
The site got a storefront redesign on the 5th: every mod at once, picture first, shorter mod pages. Then the 7th was a huge day:
- Spanish and Portuguese. Every mod page, guide and dev log post now comes in both.
- Accounts. Sign in with Google to comment, rate mods, make a profile and post in the forum.
- The first dev log posts, the deep dives further down this page.
- EZ Miner, a tunnel-mining pick you bind by its name.
- Equestrian Decor, from fan requests: stall walls and doors, saddle racks, bridle racks and blanket bars.
- Two hotfixes. Farm Sim 0.6.5 fixed the summer freeze. Magic 1.3.4 stopped End magic erasing bedrock, portals, spawners and anything with an inventory.
- Cross-bred bodies and rare coats for Equestrian.
8 October: hats that hang like hats
Equestrian Decor got hat and coat racks. The first version looked like a shop mannequin, with everything posed neatly. Real coats hang off a hook by the collar and real hats lean off a peg, so they do now: coats on wooden hangers, hats tilted 35 to 40 degrees. They take any head or chest item from any mod, with dyes and trims kept. A block’s click box was sitting in front of each hanger and swallowing the click, so the click boxes are just the board or post now.
The temperament system’s second wave went in too: Playful, Stubborn and Shy. One decision held firm: a spook is a shy, never a bolt. The rider decides every speed change.
9 October: the Fjord, and a lesson in save data
The Fjord, a player’s favourite breed, went in. Its stripe needed a fix, then it was live, and it might be one of my top three.
A tester pointed out a problem: on mobile the add-on list hides the pack name, so two builds of the same mod look identical when you go to delete the old one. Every LLS add-on’s icon shows its version now, and test builds are numbered #1, #2, #3.
Then a nasty one. With Equestrian fused into the Farm Sim Pack, every horse moved over from standalone came back a different horse. An Arabian mare came back a Quarter Horse stallion. Bedrock stores a pack’s saved data under that pack’s id, and the fused bundle has a different id. So Equestrian will ride inside the Farm Sim download as its own pack, with its own id, and nobody’s horses get re-rolled.
The Discord also sent a list of care ideas that set off a rebalance. The chores that nagged are on a roughly weekly rhythm now. Water stays daily, because that round is the cute part.
10 October: carriages, and a horse out of room
Bedrock gives a mob 32 slots for its own saved settings, and the horse was using all 32. The carriages needed one more, so I repacked the horse down to 22 and freed ten.
Then the first vehicle, the market cart. Its lamps didn’t glow. Under the glowing material, a pixel’s transparency value is a glow mask, and the old notes saying “254 glows” were wrong: 0 is full glow. Show frames went in the same day (the way a breed carries itself), along with hunter fences and a dressage arena to show them off.
11 October: a wagon with a mind of its own
The freight wagon’s back end swung wildly. It took four rounds of testing to tame it, and on the way it turned out to climb onto every manure pile and bounce along. Also that day: foal bugs from Discord fixed, horses that fear thunderstorms and look for shelter in the rain, and the lunging girth and side reins.
And a version mix-up got fixed. A local build had marked itself as shipped, which pushed the number up to 0.2.1 when the public has only ever had 0.1.0. It’s back to 0.2.0. One update, one step, no gaps.
12 October: the surrey, the stagecoach and the horse box
Three vehicles in a day. The surrey’s rule is that one horse trots it and two canter it, and the wagon got the same rule with four horses. Four on the wagon first came out as “still only 2”. The lead pair had to stand within 1.6 blocks of an exact spot, and when they didn’t, it quietly hitched just the back pair and said nothing.
The horse box was epic. Loading and unloading worked first time. The driving lines didn’t work at all, though, with no message and nothing in the log. A long vehicle’s click box only covers its middle, so clicking the front end, where you’d hitch, hit nothing. An invisible front piece with its own click box fixed it. Halters and dyeable bridles went in the same day, including fluffy ones.
13 and 14 October: depth, and better saddles
The new vehicles looked sharp but flat, and the horse box worst of all, like a paper box. Thickening everything wasn’t the answer. Real ones were coachbuilt, with the frame inside and mouldings outside, so the fix was structure: mouldings standing proud of the panels, rails, trim, and visible wall thickness at every opening. Flat colours got per-pixel variation, the way a player skin’s shirt has it.
All four saddles were rebuilt on the 14th. Most players didn’t like the bare pad showing between the seat and the flaps, or the front and back of the seat looking like two blocks. The fluffy halters got tufts so they stop reading as a thick strap.
15 October: foals take after their parents
As of today a foal leans toward its parents’ temperaments. Each parent’s trait counts one and a half times in the foal’s roll, or double if both parents have it. Calm parents make a calm foal more likely but never certain, like the real thing.
What’s next
- A test build of Equestrian and the Farm Sim Pack for testers, with everything above.
- Equestrian 0.2.0 on the site once testers find nothing broken.
- A polish pass, then pulling the traders together across every LLS add-on.
- My first long video, a full, calm walkthrough of Equestrian built from the questions people keep asking under the shorts. And the first one with my own voice.
Part two at the end of the month.
The mods
Horses Trending LLS Equestrian
Riding horses that feel alive - eleven breeds, real gaits and coat genetics, show tack, breeding, care and training.
Horses Early access LLS Equestrian Decor
Horse stalls, a tack room and somewhere to hang your hat. Euro and Western stall walls, stall doors that swing or slide with a yoke that drops for your horse's head, racks for your saddles, bridles and blankets, and hat and coat racks for anything you wear.
Farm Updated LLS Farm Sim Pack
Drivable machinery, animals on a hunger clock, four real seasons, and a farm that keeps running while you're away.
More from the devlog
- Five Bedrock add-on bugs that fail without an error An invisible horse, legs running four times too fast, a mob that forgot how to jump, and a magic pack that broke without being touched. Five Minecraft Bedrock add-on bugs I hit building LLS Equestrian and the Magic Pack, and how to catch them.
- Making it snow on a plains farm: faking winter weather in Minecraft Bedrock Bedrock has no snow weather and decides rain-or-snow from the biome. How LLS Seasons builds a snowy day from fog, a particle and a snow carpet of its own, and the summer freeze a snow sweep caused.
- Making a gate swing in Minecraft Bedrock, when blocks can't animate Bedrock blocks can't move, and a custom block's collision has to fit inside one block. How the double-wide gates in LLS Missing Blocks fake both, and the collision tricks that keep a cow in and let a horse through.