Ylands News

Hey there, fellow ylanders!


The regular streams we‘re doing with Naru are a lot of fun and we get to answer a lot of questions from you, the players. Unfortunately, sometimes it‘s impossible to provide all the information you seek because it first needs to be consulted with the team. So today I‘ll post answers to such questions here and the next week we‘ll return to talking about the cool Exploration / Editor features, which the 1.7 update is going to bring.

Q: Can the Ylands Team add random encounters without uploading the game client? Or was that just for Custom Scenario islands?

A: At this point, it is possible only for custom scenario ylands.



Q: Will we be able to customize the appearance of the new vendors?

A: Technically it is definitely possible. We‘ve put it in our suggestion list, but it has a low priority.



Q: Can we change the terrain to y=0 in Editor?

A: To put this simply - the visible mesh is calculated from voxel terrain data and there is certain imprecision that is difficult to get rid of. So, unfortunately, there is currently no easy way for us to align the terrain precisely with the plane at zero y coordinate.



Q: When will the players be able to transport tamed animals and vehicles by ship? Is there an estimate for this time? (yes/no is ok)

A: We‘ve already tested various solutions and there are some serious issues with this (not unsolvable but requiring substantial time that would have to be taken away from other features) so in the end, we are leaning towards the idea of allowing (un)summoning those instead of transporting them. We would like to have this feature in the 1.8 update .



Q: Can the players have a branch of the tech tree for refining oil?

A: This is a neat idea and we‘re storing it for later (possibly when we do a major update of energy)


Q: Are we bringing back the repair system?

A: What is a very high priority for us is being able to repair ships so that players can engage in naval battles. We‘ll try to bring this to the game as soon as possible (sometime past 1.7).

The damage/repair system for items is something that we would like to bring back at some point but in a different, more interesting way. However, it‘s not currently slated for either 1.7 or 1.8.


Q: Can we have more slots in the toolbox?

A: That is definitely a problem and we‘ll fix that in the upcoming 1.7 update .



Q: Can creators get the hit position for thrown objects (grenades and arrows)?

A: This is currently not possible (basically right now whenever an object is fired/thrown it becomes a different entity and is stripped of most of its data), but we understand that this can be very handy and so we will look into it some more.





Q: Can creators create groups using scripting?

A: Not really. At this point the groups don‘t exist in the game, they are just a helpful way of putting together objects in the Editor and in the game this information is not present.


Q: Can players add grass terrain (like sand/dirt) in Exploration?

A: This is something we are currently discussing - not only this type of terrain but maybe also being able to „pick“ some water and drop it someplace else. We‘ll keep you posted.


Q: Can creators get a better raycast for where the players are looking

A: TL;DR: Right now it‘s not possible, but it should be in future.
Detailed answer: This is a good question because it touches an „issue“ that affects a lot of scripting done by creators. The way things work in Ylands is, that in the multiplayer, absolute majority of the game is simulated on the server and very few on the client. When you play a single-player local game, this isn‘t an issue. But when it‘s multiplayer, it‘s when things get ugly. For example, all the scripting is performed on the server, while the camera is handled only locally and the server doesn‘t have any information about where each player is looking (because it doesn‘t really care about that and in MP you always want to send as little data between a client and a server as possible). This is also why it‘s not easy for us to add some specific instructions. Imagine you would want us to add a feature where you would (on a mobile device) want to evaluate a pinch gesture to say, zoom your camera. While this would work well in locally run singleplayer, in a MP game we would have to send the current gestures data to the server, it would act based on that and send back the result to the client. If your latency is high, say 150ms, it would take 300 ms for you to see the effect of your action. Be assured that if the game took one third of a second to react to your gestures (or even more) it would be useless.
There are two ways of solving this. Firstly it‘s some sort of prediction (which we already use with some things like player‘s movement) but which needs to be specifically tailored to every feature/use case or by allowing some scripts to run locally and perform some actions without having to communicate with the server.
If you‘re among the creators that keep running into this problem you may be happy to hear that we are already discussing how to implement some sort of "local scripting" and even though I can‘t give you any timeframe at this point, we feel that this is extremely important and want to have it in the game as soon as possible.


Q: Can the players use a compass while riding/flying potion/driving?

A: Sure, we‘ll add that.




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

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!