Hello there horse lovers of Roblox, WoodReviewer here to take a second look at Horse Valley by Ming Horse Valley, aka SirMing. Now if you are curious why you never saw my first review of Horse Valley that is because it dates back to August of 2016, almost nine years ago. For those hardcore horse game fans out there that have gone back and looked up the review, I’m sorry for saying that you’ve probably never seen it, but for everyone else please stop lying, the review has had less than 50 views in the last five years, I know you haven’t read it.

So, what exactly has changed in the last nine years? Well, for starters most of the game has followed the trends on Roblox to just switch to smooth plastic for everything, so that is something. Take this well from my first review. It has about half a dozen separate issues with it.

Now take a look at the modern version of this well. It is all smooth plastic, so problem solved I guess.

While yes you can have an opinion on if the aesthetic of this new well is better or worse than the old one you cannot deny that it has less bad wood grain. This same thing can be seen with the barn. The old one had bad wood grain everywhere.

Whereas the new one has some wooden planks with all the “difficult” trim pieces just being made out of smooth plastic.

So case closed, the wood grain is fine.

Right.

Right?

Well, not right. While I have to admit all of the common mistakes have been fixed by making the game mostly wooden planks and smooth plastic a few small issues still exist. However to go other these we first need to understand wooden planks. You see wooden planks are just a bunch of wooden boards put next to each other. Let’s take these individual wooden planks, for example.

When you put them together you get this. I changed the colors so it is easier to see, but there is a slight line between where the boards meet up on the top and on the end.

Therefore for a proper wooden plank texture you should line up the end so that the gaps on the end match the gaps on the top face. Due to how Roblox handles textures this effect is better with planks that are narrower than .8 studs, but it is better than the alternative up until probably 3-4 stud thick wooden plank sections.

Why is this important? Because a vast majority of the issues I found were in relation to this issue. Take this deck of the bridge. The top face of the bridge goes from the front to the back of the image. So based on what I stated above the end grain of the planks facing the camera should line up with these gaps, but they don’t.

However the bridge deck is a bit thicker than most wooden planks so it might get a pass if I was in a good mood. The railings, however, are a different issue. Like the deck the top face of the railing has the gaps in the planks, but the end grain on the planks goes side to side.

If you want it mocked up the grain goes like this.

For it to be correct the grain should go like this, just slightly horizontal to account for the slope of the railings.

While the railings are more obvious than the bridge decking because it is close to a stud thick, and even more egregious is with these picnic tables. They have the same basic issue but as they are closer to .2-.4 studs thick the proper fix will make them look even better than the thicker examples above.

Anyway that is all of the obvious issues I have with the wood grain, and as much fun as I would have finding every single example of bad end grain on wooden planks I really want to finish this post and do other things. Like reviewing tree bark.

You see unlike normal wooden textures tree bark is not a structural part of the tree and can go in any direction. However, tree bark almost always grows in the same direction relative to the base of the tree. So take the above tree, for example. This is how it should go, with the bark going up on the trunk and then growing away from the trunk when the branch splits off.

This is different from how the tree actually grows in-game with the texture on the branches being vertical.

Furthermore this isn’ just an issue on that one tree but rather almost every tree in the game.

Next up on my list of increasingly minor things that I am nit-picking is the is the way the siding is put on several buildings on the map. Take the wooden siding on the stable, for example. While the main body of the building has vertical siding the space between he roof and he window has slightly diagonal siding. While this was likely done to not have to use a union here and there is nothing technically wrong here, it just looks odd.

Additionally on the saloon the siding is also inconsistent. Here you can see that part of the saloon has vertical siding while the front part has vertical siding.

And then on the back it has horizontal siding again. While this isn’t technically wrong it just looks off. I mean there are structural reasons why the different orientations of siding need different support structures behind them but that is way outside of the scope for a blog whose criticisms 95% of the time or for what a basic 2×4 looks like.

Anyway that is most of what I have for Horse Valley today. Is it better than it was back in 2016? Yes, but that isn’t exactly a high bar, and overall there are still many issues in the game.

Oh, and as one more added bonus this game also has the bad end grain for planks on crates. I just didn’t have a good place to put this in the blog without rewriting parts of it.