Ymir News

Another patch was applied today, adding new piracy countermeasures that i've been working on this past week.
This is mostly to prevent illegitimate copies of the game to access legitimate servers (as it only took a few days before it started spreading fast).
So... thank pirates for even slower development, as i doubt this will be the end of it!

This should also reduce the usage of multi-accounts, as they're most likely relying on the use of pirated versions as well.
I might start researching on how to limit this in the near future as it threatens the game balance, if it starts spreading on official games as well.

This update also adds bug fixes on the server side, still in an effort to increase server stability.

Most of the next patches will probably keep focusing on bug fixing and server stability/management and networking, so don't expect much new exciting features for now!


v0.1.0.31
- added piracy countermeasures to protect legitimate servers
- increased production of directly exploited metal ore tiles
- increased efficiency of furniture makers, and required workforce to produce furniture -> increase wealth from furniture makers.
- set realtime games character limit to 1.
- fixed invalid preview of generated resistance when claiming an occupied territory
- changed -1 resistance decay to a proportionnal to population decay ( 1 per 100 resistance )
- fixed bug of units deploying on the edge of the map

It’s been a rough week. Never had so many urgent things to deal with at the same time…
For the next weeks, i’ll probably be focusing mostly on server management, stability, and bug fixing, so don’t expect new exciting features for a while.


Here is finally the first patch of fixes following the release, with mostly server related things.
Notably it fixes the 2 infamous issues of the primitive tribe claims, and the carriers engaging enemies.
Barbarians activity in Solo and Realtime was also reduced.
Server can now auto restart on error, which should reduce downtimes greatly as well and increase the quality of life.
Next step is to find a way to do an emergency save when there’s an error, to avoid the weird ‘rollbacks’ that happen on error.


Besides that, I’ve been started renting a professional dedicated server. All official servers will be moved to it shortly, and a new ones will be started (offical 5 or official 1 ).
The previous official 1 is renamed Official test server, and will remain on the Tester branch, running on my own home server.
Official servers will now be located near Dunkirk, in the north of France, which is also near the Atlantic internet cables if that helps! 😀
I should be able to run eventually up to 8+ on that dedicated server, with much better performances than with my laggy home server. I hope it will reduce ping timeouts and connections issues greatly.


It was also discovered that steam lobbies were filtered by region by default, which is now fixed and will allow users to see all servers worldwide , especially the official ones for people outside europe.
That will reduce the issue of server shortage especially for players in the Americas.


And lastly, it didn’t take long for piracy of the game to spread. I thought i’d have more time 🙂
That can never be avoided, however the fact that pirated copies can access legit servers is a big issue, and this one can be fixed.
I’ve been working on it for the past 2 days and a fix for that is coming – although not on this patch yet .
I will increase measures to counter piracy with additional checks.
Eventually every player will probably need to authenticate its game at least once in online mode. Offline mode should of course still be possible.


v0.1.0.19
– errors on client now invisible, and dumped into an error folder in the “cache\logs\client\error” folder.
– errors on server now silent and combined with an immediate auto-restart, improving uptime ( also dumped in “cache\logs\game\error” )
– server list will now show all worldwide servers and not only the regional ones
– lowered realtime respawn timer to a base of 10 min instead of 1hour
– fixed exploit allowing to claim tiles of primitive tribes
– added popup warning when attempting to move primitive tribe when starting
– added configurable autosave frequency in server ini files
– reduced barbarian activity in solo and realtime, less frequent and slower difficulty increase
– fixed issue of own character showing up in diplomacy menu
– fixed pathfinding issue with buildings, in battles
– fixed battlecode error on server
– primitive tribe rebellions: fixed primitives deploying inside defensive zones
– “stand ground” units will switch en “engage” if fired upon by range units in same defensive layer
– fixed infamous bug of carriers being in “engage” mode in battles ( and hunts )
– fixed speed settings icons not combatible with CJK font
– fixed some localisation issues
– fixed multiple server side crashes
– fixed crash on worldmap when worldmap quality at minimum

Last night Steam finally approved my build - the same build they denied yesterday - and i'm finally allowed to release it!

So here it is: Ymir is finally available on Steam, one day late, but better late than never, and at least the week-end is not over!

About servers: I predict the next days will be quite eventful with the influx of new players. Please be patient! It will take some time probably for the community to get more servers going, and depending on the success of the game i'll look to rent proper servers to host more Official servers and accomodate more people.

One of my top priorities is now to work on my own master server to list open ymir servers, replacing the steam lobbies system and to allow for proper steam independent dedicated servers (which is somehow not currently possible to do on the engine i'm using ), which will help having more servers.

Yesterday Steam denied my current build for release, and today i'm therefore unable to release my game as planned, until it gets approved.

The reason given for this denial was that according to them "the game does not appear to currently support online gameplay ", yep, that's right.
Despite the fact that after more than a year in closed testing hundreds of players participated in games (mostly online), in multiplayer, and that as i received this reply the current test server i'm running myself had players online...

Now before i go on I must say that this also happened because i made a really bad mistake. I had so many things to deal with the upcoming release, that i didnt realize in time that i had to send a build for manual review and approval before being allowed to release. I wrongly assumed that releasing was automated (like pretty much everything else) and a formality that wouldnt take long like every other steps i had to pass before, especially as everything was ready. But i was wrong. This was the ONE of the few things that had to be manually approved by actual people.
When i realized it about 3 days ago, it said that it usually took 2 to 3 days to approve (but could take more if there was issues), so I hoped for the best and submitted it only to receive a negative answer yesterday night.
Of this i am totally responsible, I should have realized this before and started this earlier. Considering things now... apparently weeks before the release date!
This is my first game release, so i'm learning here and making mistakes, espcecially as being alone to manage so many different things and where an error in a single one can make everything else fail - as it now did. For this i apologize to everyone.

But i have to say you'd be surprise how even as a dev, we have pretty much zero human contact with anyone from Valve either. Its more of a self running website where all you're left with is some documentation and a forum of other devs trying to figure out things themselves too and sharing experiences. You can't get any help, and the whole steamworks interface is very confusing, sometimes even faulty/buggy, which doesnt help to make things intuitive.
Is there still humans working at Valve ? nobody knows. I personnally suspect Gabe merged with the mainframe "lawnmower man" style years ago, and left us all to despair with this platform.
More seriously, the ONLY way to contact anyone human at Valve is to send... a support ticket. To which you'll eventually get an anonymous response of about 12 words -at best-, after a day or more. When i realized my mistake i did that. Luckily i got a one line answer - as is tradition - saying they'd speed up the process, but only to receive this absurd denial an hour later.
And the denial explanation was the most cryptic part: " we found out that the game is using the public IP instead of the IP4 address which the port is open for. This happen with hosting only a server form the localfolder. "
If anyone understand the meaning of this sentence, please give me a call.
What is this rambling about the 'public IP' when for an online multiplayer game, that's what it should be using to allow others to connect... online, rather than using a local IP only reachable via LAN ?
What is this thing about 'instead of IP4 address' when all IPs ARE in IPv4 format ?
ANd what the hell does " hosting only a server from the localfolder " even means in this context ?
Nobody knows.
Apparently not only did these testers failed where hundreds of testers have never had trouble doing so during over a year of tests (which is to simply join an existing server), but they ignored the visible public server showing online players at that very time, and concluded that surely that must have been an illusion and that online multiplayer did not exist in this game, while giving the most absurd explanation that made zero technical sense to me.

And as it was an anonymous message with no way to reply directly, that means being back at square one, having to resubmit, and wait again 3 to 5 days. I have no way to ask these specific guys what the hell did they mean or tried to do.
Worst of this is that i don't even know what to change , considering their reply made no sense, so i just ended up resubmitring the exact same thing... with one minor change: i removed the "online multiplayer" tag as it's apparently what triggers them, adding insult to injury for a game that is mainly... online... and multiplayer.

So here i am now, on release day, unable to release my game after about 8 years of work.
Big AAA city builders games are about to be released in a week or so. I had the perfect release day planned, and now it's ruined.

But even though it's partly my fault, i can't keep but feeling bitter at the lack of understanding from Valve's side. On one hand because they didnt seem to care that denying me this for some absurd reason ruined such an important day for me, and on the other because i can't help but feel infuriated that somehow my game was under greater scrutiny and had to meet high quality standards( resulting in a denial), when in the meantime the cheapest porn games and asset flippers seem to be released on a daily basis without the slightest oversight on steam. Like...really Steam? MY game gets its release denied but those are fine?

So what now ? Well i'll release as soon as i can. I don't know when that will be now. I can't do anything else right now but wait...

Best case scenario it sill somehow happens today.
If not its probably over until at least Monday as this will be the week end.

This is the last 'update' before the release!
Actually it’s not really an update but more of a summary of all the successive hot-fixes that have been applied since the last patch while preparing for release.
It doesn’t add any new feature in particular, but many fixes and re-balancing of various aspects of the game.

The pre-release update

v0.1.0.x
– trade routes pricing is now fully dynamic and can go down automatically ( and not only up as before ). Minimum price is the production cost of the exporting territory.
– added more UI price details to the Resource menu
– fixed issues with market study not taking into account multiple resources competing for the same need (leads to global decrease of food prices).
– added side pannel with Resistance details in the Loyalty tab of the territory menu.
– lowered resistance growth in occupied territories by 2.
– added UI honor warning when converting an occupied territory
– removed resistance penalties when transfering ownership of occupied territories
– fixed display bug of units in high altitude ( hills or mountains )
– increased distance penalty on required cargo amounts for trade routes
– fixed purchased resources on markets not being state owned
– fixed bug with world pathfinding, rights of passages, and national armies
– auto shut down of all trade routes after an invasion
– all resources are now state owned after an invasion
– added tutorial toggle option in the main menu
– added basic camera key bindings
– fixed issue of doubled AP costs in battles
– fixed case of infinite battle
– placing some infrastructures now require profesionnal builders
– added missing income taxation to sales profits of producers whn selling resources in the market
– reduced palissade cost to 1 wood.
– reduced fuel cost to refine gold.
– reduced state power cost of subvention and state workers policies
– fixed issues with demand/ideally needed/sold in the resource distribution
– resources pricing: profit marghin is now proportionnal to production costs (+20% of production cost) instead of being always +1.
– fixed UI issues with nation names
– rebalanced resistance
– lowered resistance by 50% when transfering culturally integrated cities within a nation (cities that have been in the nation for a long time)
– adding social buttons in the main menu (porcopedia, discord)
– lowered honor penalty of losing to partisans by 60%, but still capped at 50 honor.
– improved decision making of the population to decide when they rise to help defend their territory.
– changed windowed mode to borderless to circumvent an engine issue that had no solution (glitched display espcially visible with fonts)
– fixed issue causing freezing at the end of a battle
– new mission to assist with barter transition now converts all resources to state owned as a reward.
– fixed merchant building not unlocking when adopting barter until the game was restarted.
– added auto creation of market stands when adopting barter
– fixed bug with price arbitrage and world area prices
– reduced UI flickering when opening or refreshing some tabs.