Ylands News

Hey there, Ylanders! 

The holidays are approaching fast and it is time to for us to spread the words of thanks. 

First, we would like to thank you, our players, for your support, creativity, kindness, loyalty, and all the good vibes you've been sending our way. It is the source of energy that continues to motivate us and push us forward. Your feedback gives us valuable information and helps us improve Ylands. So thank you for that and please keep doing what you've been doing, we appreciate it very very much!

Secondly, I'd like to give a big thanks to the developer team. If it wasn't for your hard work, persistence, creativity, positive outlook, and team spirit, the game would not be the same. We are incredibly excited to work together in the upcoming year and bring our players new and improved features and big doses of awesomeness. 




The holiday season is a time of peace and rest, so don't forget to stop for a moment and take a break from your day-to-day life and enjoy the little things in life. We wish you all a wonderful holiday season filled with joy and love. 

We also wish you, Ylanders, to stay healthy, happy and classy! 

Hey there, Ylanders!


We are now fully focusing on bringing you adventures set below the waves and we're already seeing some pretty cool stuff that we'll be showing you in the upcoming weeks. This is how it always is quite early in the development of an update - things are being designed, a detailed document made, prototypes created... so not quite something that can be presented to the player base (especially since some of these things often end up being removed from the update).


But what we're working on are not only things that you players will experience first hand. Today we would like to mention a tool/system that our programmers have been working on for some months now - Automated Testing. Ylands is already an incredibly complex project and adding any new feature, regardless of how carefully done, many times ends with something breaking someplace else in the code. Regardless of the hundreds of hours that QA puts in testing before every update is released, it is not humanly possible to test all the situations which may arise. And this is where Automated Testing comes in. Even though the system still needs a few months to be fully ready, it's already possible to create various tests and run them regularly to see if something didn't break.


Imagine this very simple test - a few objects are placed in the level and the character is told to pick them up and then we test if they are all in the character's inventory. This could be one of hundreds of tests that run automatically and report only when the test outcome isn't as expected. It could be anything - a problem with reaching the objects due to pathfinding, objects disappearing, problems with picking up objects, or with the inventory. If a problem is found, it is reported and QA can check it (for example see a recorded session to find what went wrong). This will hugely (probably starting somewhere before 1.10 is released) improve the game stability and the number of issues present.



(screenshot by YoHasLEGO)


Automated tests or not, the most important thing we have apart from our internal QA is ... you. You have reported hundreds of bugs and the absolute majority of these have been fixed. Your feedback matters and the game is now so much better because of all the time you have spent talking to us. For that, we are extremely grateful.


So this is it for today and we'll see you next week when we're gonna start talking about some juicy Exploration stuff.


Stay safe and classy!

Hey there, Ylanders!

We’re thrilled to announce that we’re celebrating our second birthday this week!





It's been a long and crazy ride over the last two years, and while it hasn’t always been easy, your feedback provided us with the energy and determination we needed to keep going.

The same people who brought you the Ylands you knew and loved returned to take charge of the game about a year or so ago. Since then, we’ve released three major updates, with every one of them focused on improving Exploration, as well as offering larger maps, making improvements to multiplayer, and several hundred other enhancements and fixes – all of which culminated with recently released update 1.8.

We’re really happy with how the last update turned out and even happier with all the positive messages we’ve been receiving about the progress Exploration has made. We’re even seeing a number of players return after leaving Exploration because they felt it had been abandoned.

Well, we’re finally on the right track and we fully intend to stay there. For example, we just finalized our update goals for the upcoming new year and every single update is aimed at improving Exploration in a major way.

In honor of our second anniversary and to thank you for all your help, we’re offering a 50% discount on the Exploration pack and on most items in our shop for a limited time. An exclusive shark costume is also available, so you definitely won’t want to miss this unique opportunity!




Finally, our birthday simply wouldn’t be the same without you, so we’d love to invite you to a special birthday stream on Twitch this Sunday, December 5th starting at 4 p.m. CET. We can’t wait to share a virtual birthday toast with all of you!



Until next time, stay classy!

The Ylands Team

Hey there, Ylanders!

It's me! Your patch notes!





What's new

• New birthday-themed main menu
  
• Added Strong Shark costume asset
  

Assets
Strong Shark costume asset



Fixes
Fixed: Titles in player settings could not be set.
Fixed: Some collectibles cannot be equipped (e.g. Strong Shark)
[YLD-34808] Fixed: Locked entities on ship cannot be unlocked after travel
[YLD-34418][YLD-20905] Fixed: Water sometimes has holes in the distance when the terrain is loading
[YLD-34602] Fixed: rhododendron can be planted in pots

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!


With update 1.8 successfully released, we are now fully working on 1.9. We've already mentioned what its theme will be so maybe we can provide you with a few more bits of information.


Firstly, we are aiming at making ships a more important and integral part of life of those who choose to go and explore those far horizons. From small things like naming your ship to introducing some cool new things to make your seafaring more fun and more interesting, and last, but certainly not least, to being able to damage, sink and repair ships (in maps that are set as PvP).



(screenshot by NICO14973)


But that's just some of the things that will happen above the sea waves, but what about the vast areas below them? Well, they have been void and bare and both without enough interesting things to see and gameplay mechanics to play with... So this ends with 1.9. We are adding a lot of cool stuff in the depths (and obviously fixing some long-standing issues with light sources underwater). This is also extremely exciting but as much as we would like to share more, everything has its time.


And what else is new? We're getting close to announcing the results of the recent competition as the final votes are just coming in from the team Ylands judges. Also, it's been almost two years since Ylands left Early Access, and though we had some problems in the past, right now the game is much better and we feel we're on the right track... and that's definitely something to celebrate, isn't it? :) But we'll talk about this more the next week.

Until then make sure you stay healthy and classy, Ylanders!