Ylands News

TL;DR
Our Creative Director answers player concerns
- What to do in Ylands?
- Maps are small
- Can't find resources
- Game is crashing
- How can we play with friends?


Hey there, fellow ylanders! It's Aleš here, the Creative Director of Ylands.

Ylands 1.0 is out and even though we're already working on update 1.1 and planning many others that you will see in 2020 this feels like a good moment to slow down and address concerns that you voice the most.


We don't know what to do in Ylands

Right now there are three things you can do in Ylands.

Play Exploration (if you bought the DLC or if you are an Early Accesser), which is a survival game that is still being improved and enhanced.

Play other games - basically embrace Ylands as a platform. While Exploration has been around for some years the platform is fairly new and it will take weeks (and possibly even a few months) before the newly come creators get a full grasp of what it can do and interesting games start to appear in a higher number. The same goes for Playlands. We have bigger plans with it but we'll start by continuously adding more and more games. We are even planning to find a way how you, the creators, could have your minigames become a part of Playlands.

And finally, you can Create in the Editor or Sandbox. The Editor is more aimed at game creation with a huge amount of options, including visual scripting, while Sandbox is pretty much a playground in which you can build, experiment and more. We have already registered quite a few new creators, which makes us very happy and we are looking forward to your creations. If you need help with anything, don't hesitate to ask our new Content Specialist TG.

Exploration maps are small. We want bigger maps with more ylands. We want to be able to explore more.

We understand that this is a crucial issue. After all, it's called "Exploration". The reason why we had to shrink the map is purely technical. It doesn't have anything to do with the mobile platform since it doesn't include Exploration anyway, but we are already working on a way to give you a much bigger world to explore. We will be able to tell you more early next year.

We struggle when finding various resources

We hear you. We have gathered enough feedback and you will see some improvements in the next update 1.1.

The game is crashing, there are some problems with servers.

Unfortunately, the ultimate test for a multiplayer game is its release. A lot of never-before-seen stress-related issues surface and have to be dealt with. And that's exactly what we're doing right now. We've already released the first hotfix and are working on fixes that will appear in 1.1 that will be released in early 2020.

You've taken our private dedicated servers. We can't play anymore with our friends ... or can we?

The removal of private dedicated servers has caused a lot of accusations and wild rumours. Let's go over what it means and what it doesn't 🙂

Players can no longer host Ylands on their own dedicated servers. In other words, you can't have Ylands server running on your own hardware. But there are still many other ways how you can play with your friends and some of those come completely free.

If you don't want to spend any money you can host the game locally. That means that you will run Ylands on your own PC (not as a dedicated server but as a common game) and let other players join you. This obviously has one major disadvantage - other players can join your world only as long as your game is running.

If you want to do this but at the same time let your friends enter your world even when you're offline, you can use a feature we call sharegames. By using sharegames, your world can be dynamically hosted by any of your friends that are currently online. This way you can all play in the same persistent world.

The paid option is to rent a server from us and start your game there.

And in early 2020 we want to give you the option to be able to rent your own server from a certified third party server provider. That way you will be able to have full access to the hardware and decided yourself how and what is run there.


I hope this answers some of your most asked questions. We will be monitoring everything you tell us and do another dev diary just like this one soon.

And also we are entering the Holiday Season and so I'd like to wish you all a peaceful few weeks 🎄 The next Dev Diary will be next year the 9th of January, so see you then.

In the meantime - stay classy, ylanders!

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!

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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

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.

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

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.