Ylands News

[h3]Hey there, Ylanders![/h3]

We're starting this Dev Diary with the usual greeting, but this Diary will be a bit different, because we're celebrating the big number 200! 🥳🥳🥳
So this week, we'll be looking back a little bit, but also, we'll look at what lies just ahead of us too. It's a long one but it's also worth reading through!




The Ylands team has been hard at work since the very beginning, but especially the last few updates, we have stepped up the consistency and brought you many cool new features. Whether you've been with us since the start of the Ylands or you're a recent addition to our fantastic community, we want to remind you of some of these features.


[h3]A journey of discoveries[/h3]

Let's venture into the past and have a look at updates 1.3 - Watery Water and 1.4 - Creative Call. These updates brought a lot of features to the Editor part of Ylands, which might not have been the most popular decision back then, but allows us to fully utilize the potential of Ylands in the most recent updates. With 1.4, maaaaaany new assets were also introduced, such as all of the Atlantean assets! Creators Club was also established! Are you a member?

In 1.5 we got the Editor and the platform into a state that we were happy with and we started Enhancing Exploration (yep, that was the name of the update!) and created one big Exploration world for your adventure to take place. This was the update, where editor features allowed us to start working on a better Exploration because every update from this point on would bring a huge new feature to Exploration.




With that said, it feels like 1.6 came out yesterday. And believe it or not, it's been over 7 months since Trading Territories. With this update we fixed many issues that Exploration had and which were heavily requested by the community, on our part, it was also a confirmation that we are serious about focusing on Exploration much more. Trading Territories also brought vendors into the game, which is particularly useful if you're planning big projects and want to get the necessary resources. Speaking of big projects, 1.6 made sure that Random Encounters make more sense and they became biome-specific.

Marvelous Mysteries, the 1.7 update, was jam packed full of new features, improvements and fixes (this Dev Diary is already long enough, so we're only gonna list a few of them). Yet another example of what wouldn't be possible without all the Editor features we have worked on in the past are Mystery Ylands. These yland-sized mysteries, puzzles, dungeons, stories or anything else you want to call them, are incredible creations that will draw you in and won't let go until you've solved them! With 1.7, our mobile players can also enjoy the wonders of Exploration and what's more, switching between mobile and PC is possible. And in case anyone is not sure if they want to commit to the Exploration DLC, we added a demo, which isn't time limited so adventurers can take as long as they need to decide! Not forgetting about our talented creators, we also continue improving Editor tools, this time it was Object Brush, which makes it easy to span a large number of objects over any terrain.

In between updates, we also added over 4500 unique entities to the game, ran Creator Competitions, streamed Ylands, answered your questions in various Q&A streams, gave out goodie packs, asked for your feedback, released several patches, showed you a bit of what goes on behind the scenes and well, released 200 Dev Diaries.

A perfect transition from what was to what will be is provided by Aleš Ulm, the Project Lead of Ylands: "Seeing how much we've improved the Exploration during this year makes me incredibly proud of our team. In a way, we're returning to a path that we left at some point and we are getting closer to the game we've always wanted to make with every passing day."


[h3]What lies ahead? [/h3]

Next week is the week we'll finally get to share all the hard work with our players, who can look forward to larger maps, animal companions, Achievements and Titles, Exploration tutorial, mass pick up of items, multiplayer rework and oh so many more quality of life improvements that you, the players, have asked for. Oh, and a beautiful new main menu, it not only looks good but it is functional!

We're extremely excited about this update, not only because it symbolizes all that Ylands has achieved and how far we've come, but also because we believe you will love it as much as the CEO of Bohemia Interactive Marek Španěl, who beautifully summarized the journey and told us what he thinks about 1.8 - Awesome Achievements: "A small team of developers started a new project eight years ago that later turned into Ylands. Little could we imagine what an incredible journey it had started. Sometimes, it felt like we were reaching something extraordinary and unique. Sometimes we got utterly lost on the way, and everything looked bleak and hopeless. With update 1.8, I feel like we are getting close to the game's original vision. I think we are only a few more updates away until we can fully realize the nearly infinite potential of Ylands. Big kudos to the entire team for making it happen and the incredible community that stays with us. I hope you will enjoy update 1.8 as much as I do, and I am very much looking forward to what is beyond the horizon. Stay classy, Ylanders."





[h3]Looking beyond the horizon [/h3]

Speaking of what is beyond the horizon, as we're nearing the release of 1.8, it would be appropriate to tease a little of what is to come in 1.9 and 1.10. All we're gonna say is that in 1.9 we will explore the ocean a bit more and give it some love and by 1.10 we will work on lore and everything we love about Ylands. Any guesses what that might be? 😉

What we can't forget to mention is to say thank you. Thank you to all of our players who have been with us since the start, thank you to our players who joined during major changes happening in the game, thank you to players who have joined more recently and stuck around and thank you to all future players who will bring a fresh new outlook to the world of Ylands. We can already see an uptake in new players and we hear your positive feedback on the changes we've been making, which makes us not only extremely happy but also very motivated to keep going and to keep bringing more amazing stuff to Ylands!

One big thank you also goes out to the team who's worked on Ylands. Without your hard work, there would be no Ylands, so thank you!




A lot was said, but as always, one more thing left to say in this Dev Diary and that is...

STAY CLASSY, YLANDERS!

Hey there, Ylanders!



As we're nearing the release of the next update, which is jam packed full of fixes, quality of life improvements and polishing, we wanted to check in and say that it's looking great!

So far, we've told you about mass pick up, custom map markers, workstation fixes, new Editor features, larger maps, achievements, client scripting and ship and torch improvements. But that's of course not all. There is much more coming and it is coming soon. Apart from the sweet sweet update, we will also be hosting a live stream with the developer team showing you some of those features and also answering any questions you might have, so start writing them down so that we can answer them for you during the stream!



(screenshot by YoHasLEGO)



And since we're now past the datalock (remember datalock? we talked about it here), we're of course already working on future updates and thinking about what is going to be next for Ylands. One feature we would like to give more love to are pets. Pets deserve our love in real life but also in the game. And because we want you to have the pet that you like the best, we'd like to expand the choice of pets in Ylands. Soooo... what kind of pets would you like to see in the game?

Let us know what kinds of pets you would like, any details about pets in general or what you like and don't like about pets in their current state.

We're gonna get back to work, but please do let us know about pets!

Stay classy and healthy and the amazing players you are, Ylanders!

Hey there, Ylanders! 


A new streaming season is upon us! And we kicked it off with yesterday's Q&A session with Aleš and Nikki. What did we talk about, where to watch it if you missed it live and what is this new streaming season? 


In yesterday's stream we answered questions about the Editor, Exploration, 1.8 update and more! We started off by answering several Editor questions including those about adding half and quarter blocks, selecting multiple entities based on their color for quick color changes and entity pivot changes. In the Exploration block of questions, you were interested to hear, for example, about eating while sitting down, larger ships, turning off the freecamera on private ylands and also glowing paint being available in Exploration. Apart from these two sections, we also covered changes to clan management, controller and console plans and possible new assets. We also revealed the name of the 1.8 update! 


If you missed the stream, head over to our Twitch channel to watch it! You can find the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1182006596








This Q&A session was only the first of many streams and it was the start of a new schedule of streams. From now on, we will be streaming every two weeks and will cover a variety of topics with guests from the Ylands (and BI) team. Because we know that you enjoy gameplay streams as well, Nikki, our community manager, will be streaming weekly on our Discord server, so if you'd like to come explore together with her, head over to our Discord! 


Oh, and speaking of 1.8 and all the good news we have for you guys - especially those playing on PCs. We did say that we'd added some cool optimizations that will make the game run faster in some cases, but we, quite unexpectedly, managed to implement yet another pretty sweet optimization, just before the datalock. This will make your graphic cards utilized more efficiently and we are very happy about this since this will result in many of you getting a quite significant rise in FPS.


Stay healthy and stay classy, Ylanders! 

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

Tomorrow is what we call a "Datalock". That's the day when all the Ylands features planned for 1.8 should be ready and we will mostly focus on testing, which will result in releasing the Experimental game branch and later on, the full-fledged release. It‘s only fitting that we reveal a bit more about what to expect from this update, which in terms of the sheer number of fixes, improvements and new features seems to be the biggest ever by far.

Most of what you will experience is the direct result of your feedback. We‘ve already mentioned some so let‘s add some more!









We want ships to play a larger role in your exploration endeavors. Up until now you could have (and many of you do have) super cozy ship rooms where you spend your seafaring days. But what good is it to have such a place when it rains inside? Many of you felt (and rightly so) that this totally broke the immersion. However, this was not a trivial thing to fix. Fortunately, one of our programmers has found a way and boom... no more rain inside your shippy home! And if you like ships and sailing, you will LOVE update 1.9 - but that‘s a story for another time ːsteamhappyː

And secondly - you complained about torches you hold not lighting caves properly. That‘s fixed as well. And for 1.9, we are also working on a fix for how lights work underwater.

What are some more things you reported and we work on fixing? Improved visibility of game hints. Fixes to Radial Menu. Additional Workstation fixes. Tons of Editor fixes and quality of life improvements.

We hope you are hyped about 1.8 as much as we are ːsteamhappyː


That‘s it for today and we‘ll talk to you in a week. Until then - stay classy and healthy, Ylanders!

Hey there, Ylanders!

Fall weather is settling in here in Prague and while we are excited about all the pretty colors of the trees around us, hot tea and fluffy sweaters, we are even more excited about bringing you news about the 1.8 update!

Exploration is getting a ton of love this update, but we are keeping lots of it to give to our wonderful creators too!


As a creator, have you ever wondered why your multiplayer game is sometimes a little bit laggy? The thing is that all the scripting within the game needs to be crunched by the server first and then synchronized with all the players, so that no cheater can break your game. However, we have put our heads together and came up with a new feature - Client Scripting! What does that mean? For selected Game Logics, it is possible to create locally executed script, which does not have to be synchronized with the server so it runs much faster. This is especially useful for creating a nice and reactive User Interface. You can now even create client-run 2D games within UI and it will not ruin your performance.








However, as with everything, there are a few things to keep in mind while using this feature. First of all, not all Game Logics are suitable for this kind of scripting. And second, there are also certain limitations to the script itself, which is not as extensive as the server script and has a limited set of instructions. We hope you will find Client Scripting useful and can't wait for your feedback!

That's it for this week and we'll be in touch with more news about 1.8 soon!

Stay classy, Ylanders!