Ylands News

Ahoy, Ylanders!

Today, we're diving into the creative process behind our latest trailer, which features an exciting live-action segment. We want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we bring our trailers to life, blending in-game footage with real-world scenes.

Concept
Every great trailer starts with a concept. We ask ourselves: What do we want to convey? What’s the purpose of this trailer? This stage involves brainstorming ideas and determining the key messages and visuals we want to showcase.

Script
Next, we draft a detailed script. This outlines the individual scenes and specific shots we need. The script acts as our blueprint, guiding the entire production process.

Asset Creation
Our fantastic artists get to work building the scenes in Ylands. This time, we went a step further and created a real-life set. We transformed an office into a cozy living room, adding an extra layer of immersion to our trailer.

Capture
With the scenes ready, our super talented video team steps in. Using our internal tools, they capture the scenes outlined in the script. When live-action elements are required, we bring in actors. Luckily, we have an actress on the team—our very own Brand Manager Nikki. She performed in the latest trailer and also did a voice-over for another trailer. Can you find which one it was? Post the link in the comments! (Hint: It was a few updates ago 😉)

Editing
Once we have all the footage, we begin the editing process. We review the scenes, pick the best ones that fit the script, and sometimes reshoot if needed. Our video team assembles the scenes into a rough cut. Once we’re happy with the concept, they fine-tune it to perfection.

Sound
With the final cut ready, it’s time to add sound. We choose the music or have our sound team create something new. In some cases, like with this trailer [link], the music is composed first, and the editing is done to match the finished track. We also add sound effects like creaking ship wood, underwater bubbles, and animal sounds to enhance the experience.

Endcard
Our graphic designers create an endcard based on the marketing team’s information. Sometimes, these endcards are even animated, adding a dynamic finish to the trailer.

Final Touches
Finally, we review the finished product, export it in the required formats, and our trailer is ready to share with you!

This ideal process isn’t always smooth sailing. We occasionally face hiccups due to time constraints and need to adapt on the fly. However, we're proud of how this latest trailer turned out. What did you think of it?

That’s all from us for this week!

Stay classy, Ylanders!

⭐ HIGHLIGHTS ⭐

• Tutorial gameplay tweaked, finally everyone can jump across the first ditch in the starting chapter
  
• Audio is not broken anymore once you finish the Elmwood's Outpost story
  
• General bug fixes
  

FIXED

[YLD-52720] Fixed: There is no music in game after disconnecting at wrong time from Story Land.
[YLD-52785] Fixed: VS: Custom tools: get/set obsolete position/rotation script tiles do not work with preview objects.
[YLD-52717] Fixed: VS: new Set position tiles do not work correctly with animated single entities/GLs and Move to script tile.
[YLD-52710] Fixed: Editor: Group templates supports Event listeners, Position animators and Rotation animators again.

Ahoy Ylanders!

Today, we are not going to discuss game development as it is. Instead, Štěpán, our designer will delve into a bit of bureaucracy and will talk to you about interdepartmental communication, which may seem straightforward but there are challenges and many layers of complexity.

The departments that designers communicate with the most are programmers, artists, testers, production, and marketing. With programmers, the most important thing designers need to communicate is the implementation of a feature and its technical design, where the challenge is to make sure that the overall intention of the feature comes across clearly, just like the smallest of the details. When something doesn't go according to plan, us designers also have to be the mediators between programmers and testers, to a certain degree. When it comes to artists, this is where we (as might be obvious) talk all things visual. Not only do we need to convey the intended use of the feature so that the graphical elements correspond to it, but also we need to check that everything is easy to navigate and does not hinder the use of the feature. Since I already mentioned testers, let's talk about our cooperation as well. With testers, designers need to make sure that the intended functionality and behavior of the feature is as clear as possible and also we need to keep an open mind for feedback when something we thought was good turns out to be... eh... not so good. It's also important that we give them all the help accessing the feature in question and that we are available to help them out with any and all aspects of the feature. The boss of the chaos, aka the producer, is a key person for all parts of the development team when it comes to communication. They set up a timeline for feature development and implementation and perform regular checks to make sure everything is on time and if it isn't, they help us find ways to solve it. Producers also help handle any other non-standard issues that we haven't run into before so it's important to communicate those very clearly. And we also have to keep in touch with marketing on a regular basis. That's not only so they help us write our dev diaries (big grin), but also so that we can explain the feature to them as clearly as possible. This is important because they then have to communicate it to our players and in case of our community manager, she has to be able to assist our players if they run into any issues regarding this feature.

Generally, the communication is well established since it's something we do similarly with every feature we work on so it runs well, but sometimes we can run into issues since Ylands is such a complex game with many features being worked on at the same time.

Imagine it like this: you start a fire with the intention of sending a clear smoke signal to someone over the hill. Everything seems fine until, suddenly, there's a gust of wind. Not only that, but someone next to you starts their own fire and begins sending smoke signals to someone entirely different. To top it off, it starts raining, and you realize you're standing in the fire. What started as a clear message stating, "Performance has improved, and the previously mentioned issue is no longer present. Thanks," becomes, "Revolution is coming; prepare the oatmeal."

But in the end, we all love video games and we want to see the things we are working on bring joy to our players so we all work together to make sure everything gets resolved.

I hope that this insight into the development has been interesting and has shown you another side of our work and since all the fires have been extinguished and smoke blown away (for me at least) this will be all for this week and I will go get some more inspiration in sunny Greece.

Stay classy!

Ahoy Ylanders,

The term "GOOD GAME UI" doesn't necessarily imply that the user perceives a smart or enhanced user experience. In fact, the best UI is achieved when the user does not think about it at all. Allow me to briefly outline our UI process for you in this diary.



The initial phase of designing a new UI feature always involves extracting as much information as possible from the feature designer. This primarily entails understanding their vision and the intended user experience. The subsequent phase typically involves research and brainstorming. If similar features exist in other games, I review those UI visualizations and distill the vision into simple wireframes and sketches, based on those precedents, to avoid reinventing the wheel. These preliminary mockups (which I refer to as "grayboxes"), utilize mainly text and gray boxes to represent buttons, headers, tabs, text areas, scroll areas, etc.

I use shades of gray because, for conveying UI ideas, nothing more in this phase than contrast and size is essential. These elements resonate universally. Colors I usually incorporate later, recognizing that color perception varies among individuals.If any ambiguity persists after discussing the mockups and the flow or user experience remains unclear to anyone, we turn to Figma prototypes - For those unfamiliar, Figma is a brilliant tool for facilitating idea communication among designers, UI programmers, and UI artists.

Anyone can test the feature in a working prototype within a few hours. Once the design is crystal clear, I commence creating visual mockups tailored for the various platforms we support. This phase involves collaboration with the art director to ensure alignment with the visual style. Screen design is influenced not only by diverse display sizes (resolutions and aspect ratios) but also by the method of control:

• Touch display (mobile, tablet)
  
• Mouse + Keyboard (PC)
  
• Controller (Xbox, PlayStation)
  
• Controller + touch display (Switch)
  

Each platform comes with its own set of rules and requirements, necessitating seamless and predictable accessibility for every aspect of the feature. For instance, standardized text sizes differ between mobile and PC, while mobile touch buttons are typically substituted with controller hint icons on consoles, and so forth. Subsequently, we create Unity Engine UI layouts based on the visual mockups. And let the UI programmers do their magic. Then comes the polishing phase – replacing placeholders, animating buttons, localizing texts, incorporating hover elements, adding subtle visual effects, fine-tuning transitions, etc. Following that, QA tests and optimization ensue. This phase often involves resolving numerous bugs, glitches, and incorporating implementation feedback from playtests.

A particularly challenging scenario (my private nightmare) arises on Switch with russian language. Switch is using large standardized texts and other large UI element sizes with long texts alongside controller hints.

That's it for today. Thank you and

Stay Classy!

[h3]Ahoy Ylanders! [/h3]

After the exciting news of last week:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We are back with another announcement: Update 2.3 is live now and packed with content! Are you ready to get your ELVEN EXPEDITIONS started?



[h2]Random Encounter Objectives[/h2]

You don't just get rewarded when you encounter a Random Encounter, now you get an objective instead! And to make sure you know what to do and how much of the doing is left there is also brand new objective progress tracking! We hope the exploration will be even more fun now.

[h2]Luring lighthouse[/h2]

A new chapter of the story takes you to the Monsoonal region where strange things started happening. Could this have something to do with the arrival of elves into the region? It is up to you (and Horatio Reginald Elmwood, of course) to find out what's going on!

[h2]Gamepad support[/h2]

FINALLY! You can play Ylands with a gamepad, including an aim-assist support to help you during combat.

[h2]New Random Encounters created by community[/h2]

Ros Bobb has been given a makeover by our community. In each region, you can find new stalls, galleries, and houses made for Ros Bobb!

[h2]Quality of life improvements[/h2]

You may now use the free-placing feature for your blueprints, it can be freely rotated and snapped to ground at your will. And a few more things here and there :)

[h2]EDITOR improvements[/h2]

• Polished ease of use of input fields throughout the editor.
  
• Merged Terrain and Advanced Terrain Tools and split Game Logics into Basic Logics and Script Logics.
  
• Custom Enums are now a standalone Visual Script Category.
  
• Custom Localizations basic workflow introduced - create your own localization tables for custom games.
  
• Positions and Rotations in Visual Scripting reworked to be more intuitive.
  
• New Project Browser makes searching and opening Editor Scenarios much easier.
  

Are you curious about other new features, fixes and additions? See the Changelog for update 2.3 here: https://ylands.com/community/topic/32843-23-elven-expeditions-changelog/