October 2026 dev log, part two: new heads, a real economy and Equestrian 0.2.0

Part one ended with foals taking after their parents. The nine days since then have been the biggest stretch of work yet, and it ends with Equestrian 0.2.0 going up on the site. It’s also inside the Farm Sim Pack now.

15 October: four downloads in one day

The 15th wasn’t only foals. Four add-ons that had been Discord-only got their own download here:

• Farm Clothes, with one fix on the way: vests take a string now, and the gold and diamond hats take leather. No piece shares a recipe with vanilla armour anymore.
• Magic Clothes and Riding Clothes.
• Farm Bosses, a beta: Solara the Blighted and Hollowvine, each one summoned by planting a golden crop. It’s its own opt-in download and stays out of the Farm Sim Pack, so nobody carries boss fights they didn’t ask for.

The Occultist in the Magic Pack also stopped bouncing on and off a stair all night. She sits in a real chair now.

Then Equestrian Decor’s bridle rack disappeared from the creative menu, in every world, with no error at all. I’d drawn all 68 bridle and halter colours as their own pieces of the model. That came to 72 bones, 1,148 cubes and a 256 x 1024 texture, and Bedrock dropped the block without a word. It’s rebuilt to the size of blocks I already know load: 8 bones and 61 cubes, with the colour as a texture swap. Before a block ships now, I check it against the biggest one that already works.

17 October: the solarium, tie rings and the wash rack

The solarium is a heat lamp hood that hangs from the ceiling. Right-click it with a horse under it: it winds down, the lamps glow and light the stall, and the horse stands and relaxes. After a session, dirt builds up half as fast for three days. There are two looks: a closed green-and-white hood, and an open arch of twelve red bulbs on real chains that pay out link by link as it lowers.

Tie rings, which players asked for. Lead a haltered horse to a ring on a wall or post and it walks up and stands facing it. Put two rings across from each other and you get cross-ties: the horse walks into place between them with a rope to each side of its halter. The first test had it standing crooked. Minecraft only turns an animal’s body while it’s moving, so it now squares up by stepping round on its hindquarters.

The wash rack is a hose boom on the wall. Grab the nozzle and the arm swings round after you as you walk round the horse. Grime comes in two kinds now: dust brushes off, but mud from rain, work and a dirty stall only comes off with the hose or a swim. A wet horse drips until it dries in the sun or under the solarium. Still wet after dark, it starts catching a chill. The hose and the lamps never run at the same time, because water on hot bulbs cracks them.

18 October: horses can swim

In deep water the horses used to just float, walking in place or standing stiff. Now they paddle. The stroke is a diagonal, like a trot under water: the neck stretches out, the nose comes up and the tail floats out behind. They sit lower in the water as well, so the waterline is at the belly instead of leaving the legs in the air. Wading in shallow water is still walking.

The Styling Comb started the same day. More on that below.

19 October: two traps the tests can’t see

Two Bedrock traps cost me most of a day, and my test scripts passed both of them:

• Reading a value that was never set is an error, and it quietly comes out as 0. The rider’s seat read one like that, so riders stopped bouncing and sat in the game’s chair pose.
• One animation with an empty list of parts took down the whole file. Every rider went back to the vanilla pose, and nothing showed in the log. My build now refuses an empty animation.

20 and 21 October: new heads and necks, and the barnyard

Every head and neck is rebuilt from scratch, along with the ears and mouths. They’re all our own blocks, stepped through the crest, poll, cheeks and nose. The rider’s posture and the carriage teams got redone to match.

Then came hair. The Styling Comb steps a horse’s mane (from the front) or tail (from behind) through the styles its breed really wears and back round to natural. Craft it with a dye and it braids in that colour. Tangled hair has to be brushed out first. Every style on every breed was tested in game on the 21st, standalone and inside Farm Sim.

Over in the Farm Sim Pack, livestock got its own overhaul. Cows, pigs, sheep and chickens now have genes and star grades:

• An animal’s genes top out at 3 stars. Good care and a strong bond are the only way to 4 or 5 stars, so a 5-star animal is meant to be rare.
• Meat comes in grades, and vendors buy from 2 stars up.
• Sheep grow graded wool. It’s real coloured wool with its grade written on it.
• Bulls have a temper. At a low bond and in a bad mood, a bull will fake a charge, or make a real one.
• Petting an animal with an empty hand builds the bond.
• A Culling Prong and a Cold Storage block finish the job, and the Cold Storage opens like a chest.

The models are stand-ins for now. Bao Buns are gone.

Missing Blocks 1.3.0 came out on the 21st (and inside Farm Sim 0.6.6): benches 2, 3 or 4 seats long in every wood, the two stall woods from Equestrian Decor as building blocks (Euro Hardwood and Western Pine, with every fence, gate, barn door, stool and bench in them), and Euro Steel and Western Iron fences, beams and trim. Equestrian Decor went up on the site the same day, with solid stall walls and doors for a feed room, a Saddle Stand and a Western Boot Rack.

22 October: hair done, carts pass

Hair is finished for this release. The natural mane is rebuilt for the new necks too, and flower braids and a daisy plait are in. Every cart passed its test. Seasons now tells Equestrian what the sky is doing, which fixed horses not looking for shelter in the rain. Equestrian Decor 0.3.1 fixed the solid walls’ scrambled texture.

I also settled where fences go. Livestock fences and gates (tube gates, mesh gates, corral panels) go in Missing Blocks, so nobody needs Farm Sim just for a fence. Horse-specific pieces, like a 3-wide stall door, go in Equestrian Decor.

23 October: money

The emerald traders are retired. There’s one market across the LLS add-ons now, with its own money, and every add-on that sells something carries the same copy of it.

• Ten vendors, each with a counter to craft and stand behind on a server. In single player they visit your mailbox on their own days, 8am to 8pm.
• A trade window that looks like the villager’s, where one click is one trade.
• Quests: three a day, easy, medium and hard, the same for everyone.

Building that trade window taught me one of the strangest Bedrock rules yet: text that starts with a number goes blank the moment the screen checks it. I spent far too many tries guessing at it. In the end one test screen, with every line reading the text a different way, found it in a single screenshot.

Every price is a placeholder. I’ll tune the real ones at the very end, with the community.

The same day Night Lite came out of beta. Riding got a rework too: the gait readout always shows the gait you’re really in, letting go no longer quietly drops you down a gait, and a back tap drops exactly one gait instead of backing the horse up.

24 October: rearing, race tack and the release

The quest board became the Message Board: a big board you place on the ground, with notes on both faces. Your mailbox moved into the economy, so right-clicking it tells you the day and who’s visiting. Your money now shows on screen even without Seasons.

The last two things in before release:

• Rearing. Press jump while standing still and the horse goes up, and the rider’s seat goes with it.
• Race tack: a tiny flat Race Saddle with its white overgirth, a Race Bridle with blinkers and a sheepskin shadow roll, and a Race Saddle Cloth with a number on each side. All three come in 16 colours.

The horse models are officially done (the mouths get a small touch-up later). Equestrian 0.2.0 and Farm Sim Pack 0.6.7 are built, and Equestrian is inside the Farm Sim Pack now. One thing to know: horses from standalone Equestrian come back as new horses if you switch that world over to Farm Sim. Both pages say so.

One change in how it ships: there’s no Discord test build this time. Everyone downloads it from this site.

What’s next

• Livestock models, so the cows, pigs, sheep and chickens lose their stand-ins.
• Vendor looks, and real prices set with the community.
• A polish pass, then pulling the traders together across every LLS add-on.
• My first long video, the calm walkthrough of Equestrian in my own voice.

After this one, updates slow down for a while.