Ylands News

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tl;dr
- New Ship - The Junk Ship
- It's many uses
- A change in the team

Hey there Ylanders!

Today I have two pieces of news to share with you. First, let's begin with some new cool content, that will be arriving in the next Goodie Pack: The Junk Ship!

This has been quite exciting for us because we weren't sure we'll manage to finish the development on this beauty on time, but because of some really hard work by our team, it will appear in the next mini-update. This new ship will bring countless new possibilities to your builds and a missing Eastern feel to our growing navy 🤩 The first Junk Ships appeared during the Han dynasty in the 2nd century and were an integral part of river and sea voyages throughout history up until today in and around China and her neighbours. The supposedly largest Junk Ship ever built was that of Admiral Zheng He. It had nine masts, was 130 metres long and 55 metres wide 🤯

While our junk ships won't resemble those of the legendary Zheng He, they will be pretty easy to build and will be as fast as a small wooden ship, making it a great vessel to start your adventures on 😁 Also it is an absolute must when travelling to the Eastern Biome regions as it will fit right in 😀

And the second piece of news is a bit bittersweet because after nearly two years having fun with all of you and working on one of the most exciting projects I will be leaving Ylands in three weeks time. It really was a great honour and wonderful experience to start my gaming industry career with you all and I couldn't have asked for a more chill and classy group of individuals 🤗 But as with every great story, there comes an end and it is time for me to sail off to my next adventure. We are already searching for someone fun to replace me and take care of you all and this is by no means a goodbye from me. I'll still be here for three weeks, so this is not my last Dev Diary and we'll have time to chat some more. And even after I leave, I will always take an interest what's happening on my favourite Exploration and Creative platform 😊 But in no sense is my leaving because of any dissatisfaction with the community or Ylands, quite the opposite I have really enjoyed every second of it chatting with you, seeing Ylands grow and improve while making silly videos and getting to know you all during our Streams 🙃 Just a new adventure called and me being the adventuring type I had to heed that call. So again, thank you all for your kindness, creativity and classiness and I'll see you around.

So until next time, stay classy Ylanders.

tl;dr
- Continuing work on Exploration
- Feedback very important to us
- Easier building mechanics
- Nerf propeller pack
- A lot more to talk about in coming weeks

Hey there, fellow ylanders, it's me, Aleš! 😊

I'm very happy to say that based on the way you react to the new Exploration we feel that we're moving in the right direction. We are fully aware of the new issues you're facing and we have already fixed quite a lot of those so when update 1.5.1 is released (which should be in early February), hopefully, your experience will get even better. But as we said before, 1.5 was just a beginning so please let me share with you some of the plans we have for Exploration in 1.6. Before I do that, however, I would like to mention that we are now listening to your feedback even more closely than ever so in addition to "new" features, we will be fixing and tweaking a lot of things you keep reporting. I believe very strongly that when 1.6 hits your devices, you will see that what we said about creating the new Exploration together weren't just empty phrases.



Today I would like to let you know about something we plan to do about building (actually we have quite larger plans for 1.6 when it comes to building, but we are not yet far enough with these to make them public (smile) ). Many times the building in Exploration simply sucks. When you compare it with the editor, it's so much more difficult to build anything sophisticated. Your avatar gets in the way, you can't get to places that are too narrow or too high... and so you often wish that you could just fly freely around and place things. And that's exactly what we plan to give you in 1.6.




Our plan is to introduce a new simple (re)movable workstation in 1.6 that when used will let you fly around it within a certain radius with a free camera view and build with ease. Obviously, you have to be careful around your surroundings because that will leave your Avatar exposed but I think that it always is a good idea to get rid of any predators around you before you start building a house anyway. We believe that this will result in building things in a much more intuitive and user-friendly way.



And since we're talking about flying around - we are fully aware that the propeller pack is now quite overpowered (especially since your enemies can't often get to you) and so we're doing some changes to address that. We won't be removing it because it's a lot of fun but we will adjust the way it works so that by crafting it will make your life easier and more fun, but won't result in you being immune to every danger.


There's so much more to tell you about and I'm looking forward to talking about the new Exploration in the upcoming weeks. Until then - stay healthy and classy, ylanders!

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Salutations Ylanders!

So it's finally here! The first-ever Ylands Creators Competition Winners Announcement! 🤩

And first of all, let me stress, ALL entrants were great. There were loads of truly fantastic games and we really really enjoyed playing them. But there can only by a certain amount of winners, so here we go:



Best Game Award

1st place - ☆TINY SEA☆ (Spyler & Christal) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8712

2nd place - NEXT GENERATION (Mello1223) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8739

3rd place - Puzzle RPG - Spirit Guardians: Dalvanie (Eucha) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8821

4th place - Lochford Horror 3 (Euphe) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8605

5th place - Police Pursuit (P1 Gaming) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8931



Special Category Award

Best action game - ☆TINY SEA☆ (Spyler & Christal) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8712

Best RPG game - Rigale (Cernunos) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8622

Best puzzle game - NEXT GENERATION (Mello1223) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8739

Best narrative game - Lochford Horror 3 (Euphe) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8605

Best composition - Santa's Workshop (HanniNanni & Dr Hase) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8733



Congratulations to all winners, but if you haven't won in this round, do not fear, because VERY SOON a new season of the Ylands Creators Competition will begin 🤩 And if it's just half as awesome as this one, it's going to be...AWESOME 🎉 

So try out the games of the winners but also all the other games that were made for this fantastic competition and till next time, stay classy Ylanders 😊



P.S. Join us tomorrow on https://www.twitch.tv/ylands at 16:00 CET to play the winning games and more with me 😁 And don't hesitate to jump into Ylands to join in the fun while we're at it. I'd appreciate it 😅

Hey there Ylanders!

It's getting a bit chilly outside 🥶 So I thought I'd show you some of the cool stuff coming in the next Goodie Pack 😇



A lot of new items and creatures are coming in the next Goodie pack, so I sneaked into the polar regions and took a snap of a few of them. The whole theme of the Goodie Pack revolves around coldest places on earth, and so we added a host of new creatures to inhabit these regions. So you'll be able to befriend a Reindeer and run away from a Snow Tiger. And of course beware the fierce Wolverine 😬 But even more ancient beings will appear in Random Encounters: The Mighty JÖTUNN!





You'll also need some warm clothes, so either put on some tried and trusted expedition gear or don the latest in Expedition fashion. You'll also get some new research equipment to decorate your humble Expedition Station, which you'll be able to equip with some new metal doors, plastic pylons and ice formations 🧊





Coupled with that the new Goodie Pack will come with some new exciting Random Encounters and a slew of bug fixes, that our team has been tirelessly working on, though even more bug fixes are planned for the Major Update 1.6 🥳

So until then, stay classy and warm Ylanders 😁

tl,dr
- what's next for Exploration



Hey there, fellow ylanders!

Update 1.5 is finally out and boy, what a big one. We brought you a lot of optimizations, as well as some extremely handy Editor tools - especially the ability to add your own images to be used in your user interfaces, will help you create even cooler games.

For many of you, however, the most important in this update is something completely different - the first step towards reworked Exploration.

I know that it took us quite a long to make this first big step. I also know that no matter what we do this first step won't please everyone. But I consider it a new beginning, a clear signal that we're serious about this. And because since it's just the first step, let me tell you what our vision is. Please note that I'm talking about a vision and not about things "that are planned". That's because we will carefully listen to what your wishes and ideas are and even though it's obvious we won't be able to implement all of those, together we will make sure that we're addressing things that are important.

We see Exploration as a unique world filled with places you can visit, explore, where you meet your friends and strangers alike. Where there is ALWAYS a new place to go, new yland uncharted, new challenge to accept. Place where you build yourself a home, a place which you can make sure will be there and won't get wiped with any update. Place, where you can enjoy whatever new we introduce without starting a new game every single time.



A world where we care more about things that are broken than adding new features at all cost. That doesn't mean that there will be no new content by all means. Even though many of you believe we should add flying vehicles, trains, submarines and a thousand other things as soon as possible (just like we ourselves used to believe), we will primarily focus on making sure that what's already in the game works as expected. That it's fun. That you can live amazing stories with your friends.

Now let me get back to the update at hand. This update was huge, the changes we made under the hood were quite big so there were some issues that need fixing - for example the one that prevents players from eating under some circumstances. We've already found and fixed the most annoying issues reported and will be releasing a hotfix today or tomorrow.

Let me thank you again for your patience. Stay safe and classy, ylanders!