Ylands News

Hey there, Ylanders! 


A new streaming season is upon us! And we kicked it off with yesterday's Q&A session with Aleš and Nikki. What did we talk about, where to watch it if you missed it live and what is this new streaming season? 


In yesterday's stream we answered questions about the Editor, Exploration, 1.8 update and more! We started off by answering several Editor questions including those about adding half and quarter blocks, selecting multiple entities based on their color for quick color changes and entity pivot changes. In the Exploration block of questions, you were interested to hear, for example, about eating while sitting down, larger ships, turning off the freecamera on private ylands and also glowing paint being available in Exploration. Apart from these two sections, we also covered changes to clan management, controller and console plans and possible new assets. We also revealed the name of the 1.8 update! 


If you missed the stream, head over to our Twitch channel to watch it! You can find the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1182006596








This Q&A session was only the first of many streams and it was the start of a new schedule of streams. From now on, we will be streaming every two weeks and will cover a variety of topics with guests from the Ylands (and BI) team. Because we know that you enjoy gameplay streams as well, Nikki, our community manager, will be streaming weekly on our Discord server, so if you'd like to come explore together with her, head over to our Discord! 


Oh, and speaking of 1.8 and all the good news we have for you guys - especially those playing on PCs. We did say that we'd added some cool optimizations that will make the game run faster in some cases, but we, quite unexpectedly, managed to implement yet another pretty sweet optimization, just before the datalock. This will make your graphic cards utilized more efficiently and we are very happy about this since this will result in many of you getting a quite significant rise in FPS.


Stay healthy and stay classy, Ylanders! 

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

Tomorrow is what we call a "Datalock". That's the day when all the Ylands features planned for 1.8 should be ready and we will mostly focus on testing, which will result in releasing the Experimental game branch and later on, the full-fledged release. It‘s only fitting that we reveal a bit more about what to expect from this update, which in terms of the sheer number of fixes, improvements and new features seems to be the biggest ever by far.

Most of what you will experience is the direct result of your feedback. We‘ve already mentioned some so let‘s add some more!









We want ships to play a larger role in your exploration endeavors. Up until now you could have (and many of you do have) super cozy ship rooms where you spend your seafaring days. But what good is it to have such a place when it rains inside? Many of you felt (and rightly so) that this totally broke the immersion. However, this was not a trivial thing to fix. Fortunately, one of our programmers has found a way and boom... no more rain inside your shippy home! And if you like ships and sailing, you will LOVE update 1.9 - but that‘s a story for another time ːsteamhappyː

And secondly - you complained about torches you hold not lighting caves properly. That‘s fixed as well. And for 1.9, we are also working on a fix for how lights work underwater.

What are some more things you reported and we work on fixing? Improved visibility of game hints. Fixes to Radial Menu. Additional Workstation fixes. Tons of Editor fixes and quality of life improvements.

We hope you are hyped about 1.8 as much as we are ːsteamhappyː


That‘s it for today and we‘ll talk to you in a week. Until then - stay classy and healthy, Ylanders!

Hey there, Ylanders!

Fall weather is settling in here in Prague and while we are excited about all the pretty colors of the trees around us, hot tea and fluffy sweaters, we are even more excited about bringing you news about the 1.8 update!

Exploration is getting a ton of love this update, but we are keeping lots of it to give to our wonderful creators too!


As a creator, have you ever wondered why your multiplayer game is sometimes a little bit laggy? The thing is that all the scripting within the game needs to be crunched by the server first and then synchronized with all the players, so that no cheater can break your game. However, we have put our heads together and came up with a new feature - Client Scripting! What does that mean? For selected Game Logics, it is possible to create locally executed script, which does not have to be synchronized with the server so it runs much faster. This is especially useful for creating a nice and reactive User Interface. You can now even create client-run 2D games within UI and it will not ruin your performance.








However, as with everything, there are a few things to keep in mind while using this feature. First of all, not all Game Logics are suitable for this kind of scripting. And second, there are also certain limitations to the script itself, which is not as extensive as the server script and has a limited set of instructions. We hope you will find Client Scripting useful and can't wait for your feedback!

That's it for this week and we'll be in touch with more news about 1.8 soon!

Stay classy, Ylanders!

Hey there, Ylanders!


While polishing and reworks are in full motion and 1.8 is coming along very nicely, we want to show off another new feature!

Speaking of showing off, we want you to be able to show off too, which is why we are bringing Achievements! Achievements are a form of in-game milestones, which you can obtain by completing certain tasks. It can be a matter of exploration, crafting, fighting or anything else really. These Achievements will only be a part of Exploration and we hope that PC players will be happy to hear that these will be connected to Steam so you can earn in-game and Steam Achievements at the same time!










To keep things interesting, there will be two kinds of Achievements in terms of how much information you get about the tasks you need to perform. One type will tell you what you'll need to do to receive this particular Achievement, while allowing you to track progress on that Achievement. And to not ruin the surprise, several Achievements will be hidden until you've completed them!

And to make showing off your Achievements easy, you will find Titles alongside some of them! Titles will be displayed next to your nickname in messages, menus and of course, in the game! There will be plenty of them to choose from, even though not all Achievements will come with a Title.


That's it for this week, everyone!

Stay classy, Ylanders!

Hi there, fellow Ylanders!


One of the updates in the past has brought a very unpopular change to the game - the maps and ylands got smaller. It‘s something we had to do due to a bug in the engine we‘re using, Unity, which caused various problems as the players got further from the center of the map. This was something that many (quite understandably) felt was limiting the Exploration experience. It was a tough, very unpopular call but one that had to be made.

It is with great joy that I can announce that in update 1.8 you‘re going to see large maps return. With the issue on Unity‘s side mostly fixed and some clever programming our smart guys did we‘ve fixed yet another problem that prevented you from enjoying Exploration to its fullest.






Not only are the large maps returning but they can be even bigger than before. How big, you ask?

Currently, we are still experimenting with filling the larger area with content. It would be easy for us just to spawn a lot of similar ylands across a larger map but we feel that true Exploration comes from reaching new interesting places and facing new challenges so the last thing we want is for you to feel like we simply „stretched“ the current maps.

It‘s possible (actually it‘s more than likely) that the larger maps won‘t be used to their full potential in 1.8 and this feature will become more apparent when we also do the planned changes to landscapes so that it‘s generated more unique and interesting, but you‘ll surely start seeing the results of us getting past this issue in the upcoming update.


That‘s it for today and until we talk again - stay classy and healthy!