Routes
Pick a route and the mod takes you to its start and steers all the way round. You set the pace on the bike.
New and not yet ridden in the game. Routes were tested against a simulated game only.
Riding a route
Press Home while on your horse. A menu lists the routes, each with a description, its distance, the expected lap time at 200 W and a small map. Choose with the arrow keys and press Enter:
- The screen fades and you and your horse are put at the start, facing the right way.
- The route appears on the map as a yellow GPS line.
- The mod steers. You only pedal: harder to go faster. The panel shows the lap, the distance done and the next landmark.
- Each lap is timed. A loop carries on until you stop it from the menu.
You stay in charge. Brake and the mod lets go of the steering while you hold it, so you can steer around something by hand. Get off the horse, switch bike control off with F8, or open the menu, and the route waits until you're back.
Peaceful
On by default: while you ride a route, Arthur and the horse can't be hurt, people and animals ignore you, crimes give no bounty and gangs leave you alone. Random events still happen. Everything goes back to normal when the route ends.
The routes
Times are estimates for a 75 kg rider at 200 W, on the flat plus the climbs. The map is small: 4 km in the game takes about ten minutes at bike speed.
| Route | Start | Distance | At 200 W |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heartlands Loop | Valentine | about 4 km | 10 min |
| Big Valley | Strawberry | 4 km, hilly | 14 min |
| Scarlett Meadows | Rhodes | 5 km | 12 min |
| Saint Denis & the Bayou | Saint Denis | 5.5 km, flat | 12 min |
| Roanoke Ridge | Van Horn | 4 km, hilly | 14 min |
| Dewberry Creek & Emerald Ranch | Valentine | 6.5 km | 16 min |
| Blackwater & Tall Trees | Blackwater | 6 km, the most climbing | 19 min |
| New Austin Desert | Armadillo | 7 km | 18 min |
| Along the Dakota | Valentine | 10 km | 23 min |
| Grand Tour | Valentine | 15.5 km | 40 min |
New Austin is only open after the story's epilogue. During Arthur's chapters the game kills the player there (snipers), so don't pick that route before the epilogue.
How the steering works
First lap: the game's own riding AI. The mod asks the game to ride to each waypoint in turn, the same AI that rides for you in cinematic mode, so it follows the roads. The horse still goes at your pace. If the horse stops, the mod gets it going again by itself.
After that: the mod steers. During the first full lap the mod records the path the AI took. From then on it follows that exact path itself, which is smoother and more predictable.
Recording your own
In the menu, choose Record a new route and ride it yourself. Open the menu again and choose Stop recording and save. It appears in the menu as "My route 1". If you finish near where you started it becomes a loop; otherwise it's a one-way route.
Route files and the editor
Every route is a small JSON file in the RDR2BikeModRoutes folder next to the mod. The standard routes are written there the first time you start the game, so you can rename, change or delete them, and add your own. Press F10 in the game after changing them.
The download includes a route editor that runs in your browser, offline. Load your own picture of the map and line it up by clicking two towns, then click a start, waypoints and an end. It shows the distance, the expected time and an elevation profile, estimated from the routes you've already ridden, and saves the route file. The routes menu in the game shows each route's elevation profile under its map.