A squeamish horse running out on jumps (Patreon)

Another post today! In this video you see a horse that is squeamish on fences (it's set to be scared of all the fences in the video) but instead of outright refusing, it tries to run out to the sides to avoid jumping. If you do get it jump to it also takes very exaggerated jumps.

There are a few ways the player can deal with this. For example, the horse will always try to run out to the side of it's canter lead. Keeping the horse "on the bit" by doing half-halts (a link to an earlier post explaining this in more detail - it's mainly a dressage feature) can make you more prepared to react, as the horse will not switch canter leads on its own while rounded. A faster pace might also help as the horse has less time to yield before the jump, same with intentionally approaching the fence from an angle. Another way would be to approach fences in trot, as the running out behavior only happens when cantering, though you would still have to switch to canter a little bit before takeoff.

There will likely be other things implemented later that prevents this behavior as well, similar to what we had in the demo with keeping the legs pressed.

Additionally, some of the animations have been tweaked since the last video.