*Decorations idea: costume items

Originally suggested by Cherry Willows Ranch, I'm just expanding on it and giving it its own topic. ;)

Just wondering how people feel about decoration items that allow you to dress your horse up in a costume or similar, or dye its coat? Where applicable, would you prefer it to be a 'realistic' costume, e.g. pegasus wings that make it look like an actual pegasus, or would you prefer an item that makes it more obvious it's just wearing a costume, e.g. pegasus wings that show straps holding them on? For coat dyes if it were to be 'realistic' then the horse would look like it was actually the specified colour/pattern, whereas if we went with a 'costume' interpretation then it would perhaps have features like paint splatters or missed spots where the original coat shows through, which makes it more obvious it's just a dye job.

Note that regardless of what it is, they'll be decoration items that behave in the usual way, i.e. can be added or removed at will, doesn't change the horse's listed colour, pattern, breed, genetics, stats, etc. Also, in order for this to work well we'd probably need the ability to disable the normal tack as a visible item, and also have the feature to turn all decorations on/off for anyone viewing the horse, that way they can readily see what the horse looks like in its natural state.

To avoid confusion/deception, I don't think the dye sets should allow you to turn your horse into a realistic colour, e.g. chestnut, buckskin, etc. Although maybe make an exception for things like solid white or solid black, as I can see them being useful to work with other costume items. Something like spots could work, but only if it was obviously different to the leopard patterns.


Some item ideas (these are just examples of things we could do, I'm not saying add ALL these in)
costume pegasus wings - gives your horse bird-like wings, maybe have a few different varieties, such as white, black, bay (brown inner feathers, black primary feathers), mottled, etc
costume butterfly wings - gives your horse fairy wings, again could have a few different varieties such as red lacewing, monarch, tiger swallowtail, green birdwing, mountain blue, dragonfly, etc
costume unicorn horn - gives your horse a unicorn horn
costume deer antlers - gives your horse large stag antlers
costume peacock tail - adds peacock feathers to your horse's tail
full body dragon blanket - a blanket your horse wears in the design of a dragon, such as this or this
top hat, witch's hat, deer stalker hat, etc - a hat your horse wears, maybe with its ears poking through
warhorse armour - full body set of medieval armour
carousel costume - full set of tack and accessories that makes the horse look like a carousel horse
mane feathers - feathers, plaits, ribbons? and beads woven into the horse's mane, similar item for tail as well
mane flowers - various colourful flowers dotted through the horse's mane, similar item for tail as well
tiger body dye set - changes your horse's coat, mane and tail to have tiger colouring and stripes
rainbow mane dye set - changes just the horse's mane to rainbow stripes
green body dye set - changes the horse's coat to green, while leaving mane and tail unchanged (then there would also be a green mane dye set, green tail dye set, plus the same in other colours, which would allow you to mix-and-match)
skeleton dye set - adds a white pattern in the design of a horse's skeleton over top of the horse's natural colour/pattern, such that it is unchanged everywhere else
black zebra stripe dye set - adds black zebra stripes over the coat, allowing the natural colour to show through everywhere else
golden hoof paint - turns the hooves gold


How do people feel about this idea? If this happened, what decoration items would you like to see? And would you prefer them to be realistic or more costume-like?

Last edited on 2018-05-28 at 15:12:38 by River

I'd vastly prefer the ones that look clearly artificial (like this) and are realistic (stylized manes, etc.), but I support.

Last edited on 2018-05-28 at 07:45:38 by Raptor

I love the idea of little things like peacock feathers in the tail, feathers and flowers in the mane, ect. I don't like the idea of things that totally turn the horse a different color, though, although I know if I don't like it I can just not use it.

No support. 

I absolutely hate it when horses become unrecognizable. In other games that have a lot of costume items, I can't even see the original appearance of animal itself. I often find myself overlook so many of studs/broods due to that, especially when the owner never reveal the genetics because I have NO IDEA what they are.

I am fine with small minor (and realistic) modifications such as styled manes/tails (plaints, ponytails, shorter, longer, flowers, ribbons, etc), more variety to markings (ex: 5 different Sabino markings, etc), and different tack colors (we are supposed to get this anyways). I like what we have so far: plants, birds, Christmas turnout blanket. We can expand them and add more turnout blankets, birds, and plants.

I do not support unrealistic decorations. Nobody force their horse to wear pegasus wings everyday.

Last edited on 2018-05-28 at 07:32:30 by Andromeda

 ^ No support for the same reasons as Andromeda

these could maybe be a halloween thing? or maybe all distributed in october? (like ruby shards for february)

I like what TG suggested. I would totally support that

Whilst I'm for decorations on horses, I agree that they should be decorations that minimally cover the horse. Unless you are given an option to view the horse without decorations, much like the "hide tack" function, except available to whoever's viewing the horse or an account option. 

Super support for horns and wings though along with styled manes♥
Don't support full coat dye, though skeleton/rump marks would be acceptable to me.

I agree with Andromeda, I'd much rather have decorations that seem more realistic.
However I do like the idea of costumes for Halloween (where you can get unicorn horses, etc.), but I want them to look artificial, not real.

In my opinion, I couldn't care less for the over the top costumes for decorations, I'd much rather have a bunch of different backgrounds and tack decorations. Like Arabian tack, parade tack, medieval tack, etc. More bird or farm animal decorations would be really nice too.

^^^ YESS! I agree! I rather to have more backgrounds and tack decorations instead of unicorn.

I also would like to see more variety in horses' appearance (mane lengths, different tobiano pattern, different type of star marking, etc.) Right now, those breeds with limiting colors/patterns ends up look like a clone of other horse. I had several of Morgans who all look exact same until I switch their coat color into something else or add flaxen/silver etc. At time like that, I wish that I could personalize them little more such as one chestnut stallion will have shorter mane while other chestnut stallion have longer mane. etc etc.

I think that ability to personalize your horses would be much more fun than costumes. I rather to see money and time being invested into those items (background, manes, etc) instead of costumes.

Perhaps as a compromise between those who are opposed to realistic unicorn or pegasus decorations, and those who'd like to dress their horses up as such things, we could have carousel tack in a variety of designs, including one for a unicorn, one for a pegasus, and some non-mythical versions. Carousel tack is usually brightly coloured, highly detailed and extensively decorated, and could easily incorporate elements such as wings or horns in a matching style. It would be clearly artificial, on account of being tack, sometimes with the wings/horn made of similar materials, but would still offer people the option to make their horses look like a unicorn or pegasus (plus would be absolutely gorgeous). I'm thinking if we have several designed then we can have a themed one released with some events.

Some examples of carousel tack: traditional1, traditional2, traditional3, traditional4, traditional5, traditional6, traditional7, traditional8, traditional9, traditional10, sea theme1, sea theme2, star theme, spring theme, autumn theme1, autumn theme2,  winter theme, summer theme, jousting theme, ribbons and bows theme, chequered theme, christmas theme1, christmas theme2, halloween theme, skeleton theme, sort of dragon theme, egyptian theme, tooled leather theme, griffindor theme, pink theme, purple flower theme,

I couldn't find a decent unicorn or pegasus example, although this comes close, but essentially the horn is incorporated into the bridle, and the wings are attached to the saddle a bit like the winged hussars, but much more elegant. The wings and horn are done in a similar style to the rest of the tack.

*edit* Here is an interesting video showing what real life carousel-like tack can look like, which includes a good pegasus example. The wings are attached to the saddle. And here and here are good real-life carousel unicorn examples.

Last edited on 2018-05-29 at 08:43:38 by UlyssesBlue (spare)

Soooo... on a related matter, I might have fallen in love with carousel tack. I now require 50 of them. Immediately. ;)

I wouldn't mind carousel tack, although hopefully the pole will be left out lol. I agree with RemRem on the animal decorations (I want bunnies and cats for all my horses now), although I'm opposed to the idea of unicorn horns and pegasus wings unless they looked obviously fake.

^ Haha, yes, definitely no pole. :P Just the tack.

All your examples are incredible, Ulysses, and I need carousel tack too! I played a game with unicorn horns and blankets and moveable decor, so you could layer 50 forest animals over the horse, but where our 'Random Horse' button is was a 'Show Horse Image' button, so it'd hide custom art, if any, and all decor so you could actually see someone else's pixel pony. Perhaps that's how it'd work if costumes were added?

Last edited on 2023-01-05 at 12:07:48 by Kali Pickle's Horses