Ylands News

This week's Dev Diary is a little different.


We thought that instead of a Dev Diary, we would bring you an Ynterview. A different kind of Ynterview.
Because as you surely know, we have been planning to... WHOA! What is happening?

WHO IS THAT?! And where did I put my sonic screwdriver?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

A couple of years back we had to do something that was quite unpopular but, unfortunately, necessary. Ylands maps got smaller.

The reason for this was related to some inner workings of the Unity engine (or, to be precise, something that every engine has to deal with to some extent). In a nutshell - the further you get from the of your world, the less accurate some computations are. At some distance from this scene origin, the shadows started acting weird and other issues appeared.

Ylands wasn‘t the only game to experience this. In fact, every larger Unity-based game at that time suffered from this. And to make sure players didn‘t run into various problems in these more distant areas, we decided to make the maps smaller. It wasn‘t a popular decision by far, nevertheless a necessary one.

Why am I bringing this up you may ask?

Unity engine has come a long way since then and so I am happy to announce that with this issue gone we plan to make the maps bigger again. Consider this yet another step we‘re doing to get Exploration back on the right track.



Speaking of things that have improved and allow us to do things we were not able to do before:

The mobile devices (even the average ones, not just the top tier) can now handle even demanding, sophisticated games and so it‘s my pleasure to announce that Exploration is coming to mobile devices as well.

We see this as an opportunity to let more players experience it so that we can keep focusing on it more and more. And just to be perfectly clear - the existence of mobile Exploration won‘t affect the PC version in any way. PC players will still experience the game the same way they always have. We will release more information about mobile Exploration specifics in the upcoming weeks.

That‘s all for today. As always - stay safe and classy, ylanders!

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

We are currently finalizing a patch that will fix some things that have popped up since we‘ve released update 1.6 and are fully focusing on version 1.7 so it seems like a good time to start discussing some of the features (or changes) we are currently working on.

One of the things we would like to address in the next update is crafting recipes and how you learn these. We already have a huge number of items you can craft in the games (and, as promised, will be adding recipes for more existing objects based on your feedback). Right now there are over 2000 recipes in the game - which is quite a lot.



Being able to craft so many things is good, but working with so many recipes is not an easy task... and neither is learning them. In the past players used to learn those gradually based on some relationships between the objects they crafted and those unknown to them. This, however, wasn't working very well, so currently, the players have access to all the recipes right from the beginning. Even though they are divided into categories, finding what can be crafted can be quite painstaking and not fun at all. Also, and that‘s actually the most important thing, there‘s no fun in uncovering new recipes, no awarding those that deserve it.

To improve this game part we plan to do the following:

* dramatically reduce the number of recipes available right from the start. We will divide all the recipes into two categories - let‘s call them „core“ and „fun“. The core ones (mostly things needed to progress through the game) you will know right from the start. The rest (the absolute majority) you will uncover during your travels. So those, who explore, will have more interesting clothes, prettier houses, finer statues.

* group some entities even further, so instead of 20+ hay building blocks blocking (pun intended) what you see in the list you will see one „hay building blocks“ group

* do some UX tweaks to existing UI

We believe this change will have a major impact on gameplay. The exploration will feel much more rewarding, players‘ clothing and housing will be highly differentiated. This is also the reason why we won‘t let players choose when starting a new Exploration game whether they already know all the recipes - we want the world to feel real and plan to add the possibility of sharing the recipes with others.

That's it for today and we will talk to you again in a week. Until then, as always, stay healthy and classy, ylanders!

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

Update 1.6 is out and based on the initial feedback it seems you like it. There are some things we surely need to look into (yes, the propeller pack (smile) ), we need to fix some things here and there but in general, we think this was, once again a step in the right direction.

The 1.6 trailer in case you've missed it:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

So what‘s next?

Our quest for better Exploration continues. Our plans for 1.7 are, among other things, to give Exploration more meaning, give players more incentive to explore and progress. We are also planning to introduce some major changes to the crafting system so that it‘s less overwhelming and more rewarding. And as I already mentioned before, we want everyone to be able to give Exploration a try and see for themselves, if the changes we‘re constantly making have made it good enough for them to invest in by buying the Exploration pack.

Editor and platform will see some cool improvements as well - we will, for example, finalize the text scripting, which we think will give creators better tools to create complex games (speaking of scripting, you may want to check scripting.ylands.com to see for yourself if it‘s something you‘d be interested in using).

With 1.6 released we are gradually starting to talk about the specific 1.7 features and plans (and even the roadmap for the rest of this year) and there‘s definitely much to look forward to.

And last but certainly not least, today we welcome our new Community manager Nikki! Let‘s give her some space to introduce herself:

Hi everyone!

What a huge honor to be joining this awesome community! I can´t wait to get to know you better and join you in your continued efforts to push Ylands towards even more awesomeness.

A few words about myself: I am a geeky nerd who loves D&D, plays Quidditch and reads lots of books and plays lots of (board/video) games.

At the same time, I love good fun (and a good prank here and there) so the fact that I´m joining on April Fools Day is very fitting and I´m sure it´s also a sign of all the fun that the Ylands community has to offer!


So, that‘s it for today. I will see you next week and until then... stay healthy and classy, ylanders!

tl;dr
🏝️ Handcrafted Exploration ylands
🏝️ Vendor crafting
🏝️ Many many, Exploration improvements & changes
🏝️ Text scripting
🏝️ Global leaderboards
...and more!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Clean your spyglasses and tighten the riggings - we are charting a course to ylands no one had seen before! Update 1.5 meant a new dawn for Exploration and we are continuing the trend with update 1.6 - Trading Territories.

The biggest feature of this update is the ability to encounter completely customized, hand-built ylands while exploring your world map - carefully created and curated by us. In the future, not only player created ylands, but entire games will be discoverable this way. Think of the possibilities!



Players will also be able to set rules on an yland-to-yland basis now, giving them control over who can visit & build on their lands.

For the hardcore creators we have a real treat in this update: the beta version of our text-scripting API, that will allow unprecedented flexibility for all you creators out there!



Of course, we have sprinkled quite a few other amazing features, so read on to find out more!

Update 1.6 - Trading Territories - major features


Handcrafted Exploration ylands: think of these as random encounters on steroids! Entire ylands, flora & fauna, carefully crafted by our designers, ready to offer you never before seen sights and truly unique Exploration adventures. And this is just the beginning, in the future you'll see holiday themed ylands, player created ylands and even entire game modes showing up in your Exploration games!


Building station: just stand next to this amazing new invention and feel like the weight of the world lifting from your shoulders as you fly around its area of effect, making building a breeze.




Vendor crafting: ever felt you need more trading in your Exploration games? With the new vendor crafting station, this can now be a reality!


My yland, My rules: players will now able to set rules for every ylands they discover (and belongs to them), enabling who can build & where, giving them full ownership of the yland.


Other Exploration changes: we have changed quite a few Exploration bits; the barrier is now gone from the early game, the propeller pack is now not game-breakingly powerful & changes to how "block hardening" is handled means a more streamlined Exploration experience. And let's not forget about an addition that will warm the heart of all the homeowners...a rake, for all your terrain smoothing needs!


Text scripting: a new extremely powerful way to code your games within the Editor - the new scripting API will let the best creators out there use our own specialised version of JavaScript to create games of never-before seen complexity. We cannot wait to see what you can come up with!




Global leaderboards: Creators will now be able to implement leaderboards that span the entire game, across servers and instances of their games, collecting competing players' data from within the entire Ylands ecosystem! Daily & weekly breakdowns will make sure there is always something or someone to compete with.




Misc. changes & addition: as usual, we have also added numerous quality of life changes to both Exploration and the Editor and squashed more bugs that we can remember,


To read about the nitty gritty details, follow this link to the changelog.

To keep track of all the latest news, follow Ylands on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Until next time, stay classy!