1. Ylands
  2. News

Ylands News

Dev Diary #108

Tomáš Gestinger:

What’s up Ylanders!

I’m happy to make your acquaintance, my name is Tomáš Gestinger but you can just call me TG to avoid the confusing Czech/German combo 🙂 I‘ll be filling the role of Content Specialist which is a fancy way of saying I’ll be the person responsible for helping all of you with your wonderful creations, showing them to the world, and for making sure your voices are heard here inside the office. The content you create or want to create is going to be my bread and butter. I’ll be working closely with Adam so you’ll soon see both of us moving through the forums and other places.

To introduce how I got here, I have a pretty diverse background – I used to be a teacher, which is what I originally studied, then I moved on to game design, content production and management, and other boring stuff. I’ve been designing and producing different types of content for a while but the Ylands editor is a whole new level of excitement for me so I can’t wait to see what we’ll be able to create! My goal is to make sure the creative community surrounding Ylands can grow, to challenge all of you to make awesome stuff that will shape the future of the platform, and most importantly I want us to have fun with the game. 🙂 I'm a sucker for good stories, especially interactive ones, so you can expect some of that showing up in my work too.

If you're interested in some totally not boring and random stuff about me, the next paragraph is for you! Video games are a huge part of my life and when I'm not working on one, I'm usually playing one if there's enough time. My favourite game of all time is Gothic 2 (best game ever, fight me) and I love RPG games in general. Because of my love for storytelling I also love reading and playing DnD so if you have any tips on good books and/or role-playing related stuff, let me know. 🙂

Since we’ll be working together a lot you can always contact me or @ me with your creative troubles or ideas and I’ll do my best to help. Or just send me your freshest memes, I always appreciate that. 🙂

See you around and stay classy!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

1.0.1: Hotfix

Added

It is now possible to link accounts even when using a guest account

Tweaked

Maintenance message made more user-friendly

Fixed

Game crashing when running with certain AMD video cards

Microsoft Store lists game requirements as DirectX10 instead of DirectX11

UWP version renders the fog correctly

[YLD-21042] the player can't hit animals from the front side with firearms sometimes

[YLD-20962] UI: Invite to the game instead of join game text

[YLD-20926] Auto-balance button is enabled for bundles; Fixed: Trading with NPC will no longer select bundles tab if there are no bundles offered

[YLD-20857] It is now possible to disable the controller via Options

[YLD-20944] Event Listener name translations in Genesys

Dev Diary #107

Tl;dr
- A thank you to our Early Accessers
- Interesting facts from production
- Dev Team Video

Hey there Ylanders!

So…we have released the game! You can now play Ylands in 1.0. There are new Exploration adventures to be had new Editor features to play around with but most importantly there will be a host of new players coming in trying out your games Creators, because of going Free-to-Play, there should be an influx of players and we need to capture their imaginations 😊 We are really looking forward to seeing, what you come up with and since you have been with us the longest, we are doubly excited, what new mini-games and even proper games will pop up in the marketplace because you guys know more about the Editor than anyone else 😁

It will really be quite exciting in Ylands now, so hold on to your socks. And while I’m sure you’ll all be tinkering with the game now and enjoying the new features, I’ll cut it short and add the facts we were teasing 0.15 last week with for those, that might have missed some.

Did you know, that Ylands wasn't supposed to have deformable terrain? So Ylands were made out of huge hexagonal blocks that randomly generated glued together.


We started out with five devs, two of which are still working on the project. Aleš as Creative Director and our Lead Artist Karel. Now there's almost 10 times more of us.


Did you know, that as the crew grew bigger and bigger, we moved or did a major office layout change seven times 😱 Most of the team is now stationed in Prague, the capital of Czech Republic.


There were 4 major UI overhauls before we found the one we like the best…hopefully 😁


There are Currently around 150 Random Encounters that players can run into while exploring. The newest addition were aggressive NPCs.


In the last two years, we've optimized the game so much that some scenarios increased from running at just 10 fps or less to now running at a steady 60 fps and more.


Hardly a day goes by here without someone quoting the TV show Red Dwarf.
For instance, Marci and I use this one pretty often:

"Call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and hit it fast with a major - and I mean major - leaflet campaign."
- Rimmer, Polymorph.

or

"I've been so worried I haven't buffed my shoes in my two days."

- Cat, Marooned

And this has been circulating the office since Adam started doing the Western series… not quite sure why…

"I've seen Westerns, I know how to speak cowboy." [Steps up to the bar] "Dry white wine and Perrier, please."

- Rimmer, Gunmen of the Apocalypse



Did you know, that for the first prototype of the game (that had very little to do with what the game is now) we used a soldier borrowed from the Arma Tactics game as our main character...now we're stuck with Major General 😭


And that’s that, so enjoy yourself Ylanders and remember, this isn’t the end, it’s not even the beginning of the end but rather the end of the beginning. Now we’re off again to prepare the next big update, to fix what needs to be fixed and to make the game even better, than it is now. Stay classy Ylanders.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Changelog: https://ylands.com/community/topic/26346-10-ylands-yncoming-game-released/

Release of 1.0 Now Available

Ylands launches out of Early Access with the Ylands Yncoming update

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The newly released free to play version of Ylands brings players infinite potential for fun!

The 1.0 version of Ylands - the definitive creativity toolbox from Bohemia Interactive - builds on the foundations laid down in Early Access and complements the core gameplay with many new features and additions to bring limitless fun and creativity to old and new players alike.

Ylands will undergo some important changes with the 1.0 launch.

  • FREE TO PLAY: Ylands is now free to download, install and play - anyone, anywhere can access the endless library of player-created games or take a jab at creating something of their own via the built-in Editor.
  • EXPLORATION: The "Explore mode" is now a stand-alone DLC (that is freely available to anyone who bought the game during early access).
  • YLANDS MOBILE: The handheld version of Ylands is designed from the ground-up to support and work on mobile devices. Most of the games are shared between desktop and mobile versions, so you’ll have access to worlds of content.


Especially the Free to Play aspect is a big move for us and it has come from many months of research and deliberation.

Ylands is an awesome creative platform with many cool features, especially in the Editor. But for this platform to work properly, we decided to go Free to Play, because then anyone can create and share their games with other like-minded people. This step will open up the doors of Ylands to a huge audience and anyone can give Ylands a go.

We will keep supporting Exploration of course, because it is a huge part of Ylands and we love it and players will be able to support our efforts with the Exploration add-on but if you are into creating and playing new and original games made by the community, you won’t have to dosh out a single cent.

Dev Diary #106

Hey there Ylanders!


So we have some mega big news today! You might have noticed the kind of countdown we had going on Social Media and might have wondered, what it was for. Well not anymore! Because we are releasing the release candidate (or update 0.15.1) which is the final version of the game before release! This means we are all but ready to release 1.0 and this was the final step, the final part of the puzzle. Now we’re giving ourselves a little bit of breathing space for a bit of fixing and polishing and then it is off to the official release of the game, which is coming REALLY soon! We are releasing this update as a kind of soft release to see that everything works and get some feedback from you guys and then we'll go official 😁



So what can you expect today?

Well, obviously the update and all that comes with it. Every feature we announced, that would be in 1.0 will be in this update and you’ll get to try it. You’ll finally get to try out the new Exploration and all the cool things we added in there, such as new encounters, animals, map functionality, sleeping saves, ship and car blueprints, hunting mutants and Alphas, much-improved weather system, Yland tiers and much more. Please give us your feedback on what you think about these changes because Exploration will always be a work in progress and we’ll always add more things in and more features. Not to mention all the features added into the Editor and we can’t wait for you to try out and experiment with 😊

At this point, we are moving dedicated servers to Nitrado, so those of you that had dedicated servers set up, these will shut down. You can now purchase Dedicated Server time through the in-game shop and we are also working with Nitrado to bring you the option to buy servers directly from them to give you full control over them while still making them certified and fully supported by us. We are also introducing much more capable servers, that will be more efficient and powerful, so try them out and tell us what you think, because we can still tinker with that till the release 😉

We are also releasing over 400 fixes and improvements, which we’ll list in a changelog (link at the end).

Some of you will also get to try out the Mobile version. We are releasing Ylands on Mobile in Scandinavia, Canada, Czechia and Slovakia for iOS and Android. The version currently on Testflight will also be updated, so everyone with iOS will be able to try out the final Mobile version too 😊

And finally I want to thank you all, that stood by us all these years. Today is Thanksgiving Day in America, which seems fitting because we have a lot to be thankful for. For being able to work on a project we feel truly passionate about, for all the great people we are surrounded by but especially for having such a great community of players, that stuck with us through thick and thin. Your support, suggestions, criticism and bug reports were instrumental in making Ylands what it is today and so we offer you our deepest and most sincere thanks.

And now off to Explore dear Ylanders and stay classy 😁

Changelog:

https://ylands.com/community/topic/26189-0151-ylands-yncoming-ylands-10-release-candidate-28112019/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9D0eRge6S0