Ylands News

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

We're very excited to let you know that update 1.10 "Ymproved Ylands" has left our doors and after it goes through some external checks, you will get your hands on all the cool stuff it brings (*cough* FPS camera *cough *).

I realized that it might be interesting to explain what is going on with the game build now, and what it has to go through before it gets to you. So let's do it.

At some point, when we feel confident enough about the current state of the game version we're planning to release, we do what is called a "submit".

At that point, the version of the game exists in a specific development "branch" called RC - Release Candidate. This branch is created from the current game code branch that is generally called "trunk" when the data lock happens - when we reached a planned moment when we say "from now on, no new features will be added to the planned update and we just focus on testing and fixing bugs". At that moment, we copy the whole game source code and create the RC branch. It is necessary because some devs are already working on features meant for future updates and the last thing we need is them changing the game parts that have already been tested and approved for the release.

So once we're happy with the state of the RC branch build, we say that it's ready to be released. "Happy" as in "there are known issues, but they are not critical and there are about a million things we would have liked to squeeze into this update as well, but it's too late", not as in "there are zero bugs we're aware of and the update contains absolutely everything we wanted it to contain".





Next, we do what's called a "submission". All platforms have some rules you have to follow and an automatic process that checks your build before it lets you make it public, so we first need to send the game update for approval. On one side of the spectrum is Steam, where you can send pretty much anything and players can access it almost instantly. On the other side is Apple, where the guidelines are very strict and they change quite often and it can take days to find out if there's some issue, so every submission is, for the lack of a better word, fun.

Once we've been approved by all the platforms, we can do the actual release. We let you know that there will be maintenance beforehand and when the time comes, we prevent you from running the game. Every major update requires that we upload it to the backend (pretty much the game servers) and run it there. If we didn't do it, you would download version 1.10 which would try to communicate with the servers running version 1.9 and the game wouldn't work that way.

The actual update process is quite fast so the most of the two hours the game is unavailable to you we test if the connection with servers is working correctly and everything runs as expected. If we find a problem we fix it and if it takes a longer time than expected, the maintenance window is made longer.

So now, when you (hopefully) see the maintenance message sometime next week when you run Ylands, you'll know that somewhere in Prague, in a large glass building we are frantically trying to make things work so that you can enjoy "Ymproved Ylands" (the update, which, by the way, was originally named "Balanced Balance" :D ).

That's it for this week and we'll talk to you again soon. Until then - stay classy, Ylanders!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!


It's now just days before the release of the 1.10 update and since we've already discussed all the major features you'll find there, it seems like a good time to mention what comes after 1.10.

It probably won't come as a surprise to many that it's 1.11, but what we would like to talk about today is one particular feature that 1.11 will bring. And it's something we internally call "Dark Dungeons".

So you've been exploring Ylands for some time. You have a great mansion to return to. You're sailing on an awesome ship that you keep filling up with all the treasure and resources you come across during your adventure-filled journeys. You know all the Random Encounters like the back of your hand and with the best armor and weapons you can slay any monster with ease. And, in fact, you have slain all of them. Twice.




So what's next?

With 1.11, the gates will open and lead you to dark and dangerous places filled with puzzles, new monsters - both basic ones and those that posses some special abilities. Oh, and bosses as well. Fight alone. Fight alongside your friends. Pack whatever you need and enter that doorway.

The adventure awaits.

Talk to you in a week so until then...

Stay classy, Ylanders!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

We have some good news for those daring among you - you can now test the update 1.10 Experimental branch on Steam. The new update bears the name Ymproved Ylands, which is mostly because we focused on balancing the game and improving the features we already have. Oh, and the name of the update also helps a bit with the correct pronunciation of the name of the game ;)





As always this means that you can get your hands on the cool new stuff early, but you may encounter some bugs. If you do, we would be very grateful if you could report those bugs on our forums (please always state that you are playing the experimental!), along with any negative or positive feedback you care to share.

So what is it that you can expect, should you accept this mission to make Ylands better?

FPS camera (beta)
After a long wait, the FPS camera is back. It's not perfect, still has some quirks and things that we will iron out in the upcoming updates, but it's about 90% done. So hit "C" and let us know what you think

Exploration balancing
Resources are now spread all over the game world making you travel to other biomes as well - you can see what each biome contains on the world map. As you discover more about other places of the world you will find new interesting Random Encounters. In this update, we've mostly focused on bringing more content into arctic areas. It's the first step we're making while populating the world of Ylands with its backstory, creating its own long overdue lore that will be uncovered with each following update.

Among other things that are related to balancing (there are quite a few of them there), we can name the fact that various resources now require specific tool quality. So while some early resources can be mined with a basic pickaxe, for something rarer you will have to craft a better type of pickaxe.

Improved fishing
Fishing is now more interesting - not only is the actual action more fun but there's a lot you can catch (as well as new recipes related to that). What depth you fish at, time of the day or even if it's raining affects what you get.

Improved Radial menu
The radial menu now controls more intuitively. And since we found that a lot of new players have no idea there even is one, we've added a hard-to-miss radial menu hotkey hint (which you can disable in Game settings).

Mythical animals
You can now run into some very specific Random Encounters that let you acquire one of the very unique animal companions. Those are sort of a puzzle, but if you manage to solve them, the result is surely worth all the work.

Notice Board
Now you will never miss anything important because of the cool new Notice board! Look for the owl button in the Main Menu.

Editor improvements
Creators will find some pretty handy improvements in Editor - like Visual Scripting multi selection and better object placing tools.

...all this and much, much more.


What's missing:

1.10 will bring a big update to Blueprints but that is not yet present in this Experimental branch. It will, however, be present in the full release later.

For information on how to access the Experimental branch please visit our forum here. Please note, that you will have to play as a new character and any progress you make in the Experimental branch will be eventually wiped. Playing the Experimental branch has no effect on your regular game character or progress.

We look forward to hearing what you like and don't like, please let us know! 



Stay classy, Ylanders!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

Today we will mention one change that you will notice immediately after you start the new update 1.10.

So what is this change?

When you first start the new update, you will see the familiar Main menu, with some somewhat unfamiliar labels.

Instead of "Sandbox" there is "Creative mode", "Playlands" is now called "Minigames hub", "Custom games" have become "Community games" and, finally, "Exploration" has become "Adventure". We haven't gone crazy. We're not even trying to confuse players (even though yes, some slight initial confusion is something we expect). As weird as it may sound, this is one of the steps we've taken to get more players into Ylands. Let me explain.





Unless you disabled the anonymous data gathering in Ylands settings, we get information like "Some player started Ylands for the first time and first they clicked on Playlands. The second thing they clicked was Sandbox. Then they left and never returned". And because we consider Exploration to be "the game", something we want the players to try first to hook them up (and ideally never let them go :)), this obviously is a problem.

When you get info like this you need to dig deeper and then you figure out something like: way too many players consider "Exploration" to be something like "showcase of features" or some sort of "god mode" that lets you explore what the game has to offer - or some other things, but not something that holds the actual game. And pretty much every other choice they find more interesting. So they check one of those or two, if we're lucky, and they then leave and don't look back. Sure, it's not every player that decides to give Ylands a try, but the number is surprisingly large.

So, we have changed the labels to make Exploration stand out more (sure, it will be some time before we actually stop calling it this way and if you feel like calling it Exploration it's fine if you stick with it). The second reason is that it's not just about exploration but what ever you do, it's an adventure.

We will still have "Exploration pack" because it does what it says - it lets you explore, go farther, see more.

And speaking of the Exploration pack - we have some interesting plans with that that we'll talk about some other time, but in a nutshell - we want to give more freedom to those without the pack so that they can enjoy the game more, while at the same time owning the pack sounds even more interesting. That's yet another step we would like to take to bring in more players.

And that's it for today. Have a great week and until we talk again... Stay Classy!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

So, let's see... You have explored dozens of ylands, uncovered hundreds of recipes and laid down thousands of blocks. And you think you know it all. That you've seen it all. You have it all. Right?

Wrong!

Update 1.10 brings something special for those of you who travel the uncharted horizons. Those who welcome challenges.

If this sounds like you, get ready to start the grand search for the fabled mythical animals. In the upcoming update you will be able to come across notes left by the famous zoologist Nicholas Arbeo. Each note can lead you to one mythical animal no one has ever seen in Ylands. And you can be the first one to tame it.





There are a lot of those to discover. And if you - as unlikely as it may sound - manage to discover and tame all of them, you're up for a pretty cool surprise in 1.11.

That's it for today, my fellow explorers. Until we meet again - stay classy!