Ylands News

Ahoy Ylanders,

Here we go with Update 1.11! 🙀

With every update we bring to our players, we get craftier! Get it? The update is called CRAFTY Crafts! 😁 We gave some much needed love to our core systems, namely Crafting, Blueprints and Visual Scripting. This update also enhances the RPG experience by giving you randomized loot drops from enemies, new monsters (did someone say ghost pirates?!) and a brand new gifting systems allowing you to show love for your friends! Now let's get to the good stuff!

• Crafting overhaul
  
• Blueprint market
  
• Gifting system
  
• Randomized loot
  
• New monsters
  
• New visual scripting
  

[h2]KNOWN ISSUES[/h2]

• Custom tools with variables and custom functions don't work.
  

We are working on a hotfix at the moment and it will be out soon.

[h2]Crafting overhaul[/h2]
Crafting is a crucial part of our game. We listened to your feedback on our forums so this update brings an overhaul to Crafting. Changes to UX/UI of a key part of the game might be a risky move, but we have done our best to combine your feedback with our design to bring a smooth experience backed by focus tests. New Crafting should be much easier to navigate and for newer players, it is much more user-friendly. As with any major change, it might take some getting used to so please send us your feedback along the way!


[h2]Blueprint market[/h2]
Since last update, you have been creating Blueprints in the Editor and bringing them to the Adventure mode, which is great! What is even better is the fact that this update brings the ability to share them with the world. You can either make your friends happy by sending them your creations as a gift or you can upload your Blueprints to the shop, where others can purchase them with coyns. This is only the beginning of what the shop is capable of and we can't wait to see it booming with your crafty creations!



[h2]Gifting system[/h2]
Do you have that special someone in your Ylands life? They deserve to know! And the best way to make sure they find out is sending them an in-game gift! Want them to sail the seas with you? Get them the Exploration DLC! Their ship isn't the best? Gift them a Blueprint of a cool ship! Want them to look sharp? They need a new costume and a new pet! Bonded while picking up sticks and crafting sails? Send them the Proposal emote ;)

[h2]Randomized loot[/h2]
Adventure awaits and so does randomized loot! As you explore, you may be surprised by the variety of loot that is dropped by enemies you slay and chests you discover in your journeys. Now be on your way into the unknown, adventurer!

[h2]New monsters[/h2]
BOO! Did you get startled? If you didn't, wait till you see the new monsters roaming the lands of Ylands! They're dangerous, they're mean and they're sooooo cute! We love them and we hope that you will too! But make sure you have the right equipment to face them because they can be tricky to take down!



[h2]New visual scripting[/h2]
Adventure is not the only part of the game getting our love and attention! Lots of hard work went into the Editor and here's what's new! Visual scripting underwent a major change in this update. Mostly in the user experience sense, where we for instance gave more room for the scripting canvas by reducing the size of Instruction palette. Canvas itself also underwent improvement, sporting a new grid system which is automatically snapping scripting blocks to the nearest cell, making the script looking nice and neat. Also, the main header is now redesigned to be more consistent with rest of the editor and is now ready for new features planned in future updates. Last but not least, a player requested feature: the new Favorites category, where you can store your most used instructions and categories!

[h2]Toolbox[/h2]
The Toolbox allows users to create and share Editor-side scripts that will help them with their specific problems or fill in the gaps in the Editor's toolset. Generate objects, create specific selections, modify the terrain, and more! Ideal for those projects that require a copious amount of round stairways!


Of course, there are lots and lots of fixes, additions and tweaks to make playing Ylands much more enjoyable. The whole team is super excited about all that's new and improved and we'll be waiting for your feedback about the update. To kick off the feedback, the Project lead of Ylands, Aleš, shared a bit about how he's feeling about Crafty Crafts: "I am really excited about the new loot mechanics. What you get from slain monsters is now more randomized and rewarding, and once again pushes the game a bit closer towards the RPG genre."

Stay Classy!

Changelog can be found here: https://ylands.com/community/topic/32204-111-crafty-crafts-changelog/

Ahoy Ylanders!

We're now very close to releasing update 1.11 and are getting closer to 2023 with every passing day. And because of that, I would like to use the Dev Diary to tell you what some of our plans are for Adventure in the next year.

In 2023, if everything goes as planned, we would like to release three large updates - 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14.

We've been working on Dungeons for some time already and based on their current "fun factor" (or the lack thereof) decided not to release them with 1.11 but to keep working on them until we're happy with the result. They may be released in 1.12, but because there is another feature that we definitely want to release with that update, Dungeons may appear as late as 1.13.

That "must-have in 1.12 feature" I mentioned is something we've been thinking about for about two years (and even mentioned it once or twice during that time :) ) and now it finally feels like a good time to add it to the game. We'll provide you with more detailed information in one of the January Dev Diaries, but - in a nutshell - we want finally to give players a stronger incentive to explore both the game world and various features. Make every game you play a bit less generic and a bit more of a story. And, finally, give players more goals to achieve.

As much as it would be cool to start naming cool future features the very important thing to say is that we still feel the game is not in the state we want it to be. After roughly two years of making wrongs right and getting back to the roots we believe we are now back on the right track... but there are still far too many things that need to work better, and, more importantly, be more fun.

Sailing and ships are a major part of the game and yet there is still a ton of work before we utilize their full potential. With the Energy, we barely touched the surface. Crafting, even with the UI improvements coming in 1.11 is still something that needs a lot of love. And we could go on.

Long story short - even though the next year will see new features coming to Ylands, our priority will be to take the things that you already like and make them better. All this is based on your direct feedback, just like the last two years.

That's it for today, so stay classy, Ylanders!
Aleš

Ahoy Ylanders,

With the update release coming closer, our work is focusing on polishing all the details and quirks. This week we held an event called a focus test. What is a focus test you ask?


"Focus tests help us find out information about our game through the eyes of new players. While working long enough on one project your view of the game can become subjective (you know how everything works, where to find everything, and what to avoid doing). It essentially prevents you from seeing the game the way a first-time player does. We try to follow how people understand the main menu, and user interface, if the player knows where to find everything in the inventory and other screens and if tutorials and hints are helpful enough. We have had a great experience with focus tests in the past in our Ylands team and I find them an important part of game development."

- Michaela Bódi, QA Lead


We invited some of our friends to come to play the game in our office and give us honest feedback. They have never played the game before. This time we wanted to know what a new player thinks of the tutorial, progression, and overall feel of the game. We had designers and marketing there to collect all the information and after 2 hours of playing we sat down with our testers and they told us what they think of the game.

How did it go?

Everyone loved the day, our friends had fun exploring a new video game and we got pages and pages of valuable feedback. We already had a first meeting where we discussed our notes. You will see some changes regarding clarity and simplicity in the future, that came from our focused feedback. Huge thank you to everyone involved!

Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders!

Update 1.11 is just a few weeks away so it feels like a good time to remind you of some of the cool things you will get to experience in the Adventure mode when the update comes out.

Let's start with some good news and bad news. The dungeons we told you about some time ago look great, and we're very excited about them. Originally, we hoped we would be able to release the dungeons in the upcoming update, but we decided to delay those until 1.12. All the systems needed for it are ready and working. We are generating random dungeons filled with both easy and sophisticated random encounters. It is possible to enter those with your friends (similar to traveling somewhere with ships), fight enemies, and solve encounters leading to the final ones you might call "boss fights". A lot of pieces have already fallen into place with the exception of one - the gameplay is simply not as smooth and fun as we would like it to be. It simply needs more time to tweak. And after far too many hits and misses with other features in the past we rather delay a feature in progress (or even entirely scrap it, if need be) than release something that we are not happy with. So, no dungeons in 1.11. On the other hand, working on dungeons made us give more focus to fixing issues related to combat and pathfinding. The first minor fixes are already present in 1.11, with more coming in 1.12.

The rest of the planned features ( and a bit more :) ) is coming out with 1.11. You can expect a reworked crafting UI that lets you easily find what you're looking for and utilizes some principles and ideas you proposed. On top of that, we are discussing ways how we can open the recipes more gradually in the future and for this to feel more rewarding.

We have a brand new loot system in place so that things that mobs drop will be more varied in numbers and objects and specific monsters and hostile characters will drop rare things or parts of armor sets. There are a whole lot of things to look for and look forward to!

Many new players have told us that the initial yland wasn't enough to decide whether to buy the Exploration Pack or not, so newly for those without the Pack the whole tropical region is now open and we've also added options to unlock the regions one by one instead of opening them by only getting the Pack (which, however, remains the most efficient way to experience all of the Ylands content as intended).

As the night falls, cool ghosts (with some really, really cool stuff they can drop) may appear at various random encounters. Just beware - destroying those can be difficult without the right equipment ;)

Ghosts are, however, not the only new inhabitants of the world of Ylands. Scheming pangolins or colorful morays are nothing compared to the epic tamable creature, that can be acquired only by those who have tamed all the other mythical creatures.



As usual, you can expect more than just these bigger features plus a ton of fixes and smaller improvements. Hopefully, you'll like that!

Stay classy!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

Many of you have been spending countless hours not just fighting or exploring, but also building. You've built houses small and large, elaborate ships for your avatars to live in, and much more. And when the update 1.11 lands, in addition to capturing those you will be newly able to share them with others. That way, even if some may not have the skills or ideas, they may still be able to build such great creations as well (although they still need to get all the resources, obviously 😉).

Since you can now create in the Editor elaborate Blueprints that players can build in Adventure, we're adding something that will help to create even more spectacular content.

Something we call... Custom Toolbox.

If you build your houses, ships, cars, and everything else directly in the game, this probably won't interest you that much. But if you're one of those that are going to use the power of the Editor to, for example, build a Blueprint of a magnificent mansion to act as your base (or pretty much anything else, for that matter (smile) ), you should read on.


So, what is it?

The Custom Toolbox is a tool with which editor-side scripting should cover all those specific issues players can have like selecting objects based on their color, changing position and rotation for every stone axe in the game, and replacing all wooden beams with different wooden beams...you get the idea. But maybe you are a scripting guru and want to take a shot at a tool that generates pictures based on imported .xls data? Spheres, circles, and weirdly bent walls? Or dig tunnels under a path? We've got you covered! These tools, once scripted, can then be shared with other players, who can use them without any scripting knowledge - by simply selecting the parameters. Each tool comes with its own Custom UI editor, which can help with giving instructions to the user or may add a couple of handy buttons and inputs to use.

How do you like it? Will you give it a try?

Let us know and we'll talk to you again in a week. Until then... stay classy!