Hey there fellow ylanders,

We're almost there with the update (actually we've managed to sneak in some more goodies as you will see quite soon in the changelog) - in the meantime we can discuss another very important feature of the upcoming update 0.12 “Smooth Sailing” - the camera.

We have implemented a brand new system (yes, we’ve implemented a completely new system, all the original code was removed), and as a result, a lot of issues have been fixed and many features now work much better - from the overall "feeling", to solving various situations where the camera behaved in a less than ideal way.

There are tons of small improvements, which you may not notice right away, but we're sure that after playing for a bit you'll realize that you don't have to "fight" the camera anymore. Moving your character around now feels much more smooth due to better camera dynamics, and you should no longer experience camera stuttering while quickly moving (usually falling) the avatar. Also, the camera now doesn’t clip through terrain and objects.

We have also done improvements to vehicle cameras, so controlling ships and (especially) cars now feels better. We have some plans to improve the ship camera even further, but it will have to wait at least till 0.13.


Standing in the corner while looking into the room in 0.11 (left) and 0.12 (right)

One of the biggest problems with the 3rd person camera is moving around in tight spaces, where your character can obstruct what you see, especially when standing close to walls with your back. You'll see that this has been improved substantially.

There are obviously many things where the first person camera works better, and we’ve promised you a special mode that would help you in situations where you used to rely on the said first person camera (that we removed temporarily). Well, you will find this mode present in the update 0.12. We call it "Interaction Camera Mode". You can turn it on and off at any point by pressing the Camera mode change (default C).

This mode will stay active as long as you don’t move around (turning around is obviously fine) or start attacking. You will see everything from the first person perspective and have a cursor visible in the middle of the screen, which lets you easily interact with even tiny objects in the scene. You can also activate this mode even during building or while driving a car or sailing a ship, which is very handy.

While we understand that this can’t fully replace the first person camera mode, our tests have shown this mode to be very useful - and we believe you will see it the same way. :)

And now for your questions:


Not before 1.0. A lot of new clothing will be released in post 1.0 along with certain updates.


Being able to scale (at least non-animated objects) is among one of the most wanted features. We are already discussing all possible options.


That is a very good point, we can surely do that. Or, if you have any idea about what you'd like to see in the game, just let us know right away (be aware, though, that we have to respect existing IPs :) )


That’s it for now. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hey there fellow ylanders,

If you've been with us for a long time, you may remember that back in the day I was also part of the Dev Diary/Sneak Peek writing committee (throwback to June 2017, when I wrote the last one 😮), so I'm more than happy to be back in action!

So without further ado, let me present you today's topic... let's talk about costumes!

Costumes are basically unique skins that will let you adjust the overall appearance of your character. Once you equip them, they won't actually give you any advantages, they will just change your character visuals. So, for instance, if you put on a costume while wearing your armor, you will keep your stats, but you won't gain anything extra (but you will look very extra, that's for sure (gran sonrisa)). Beneath the costume you will still be wearing your regular equipment, and you will only be able to see the weapon you are holding, the propeller pack, and the light from the creator cube.

Costumes are not actually linked to your character gender, and most of them come with their own unique emote.


A yeti that is not blurry? Quick, make a wish!

To begin with, in the 0.12 update you'll get your hands on 2 costumes - the adorable yeti presented above, and... the other one... well, they want to remain anonymous for now ;) You will be able to get them for coyns from our Store, just like pets and skins.

Also, in one of the future updates, we want creators/admins to be able to set whether they want to enable costumes in their games - nothing more off-putting than a yeti running around in a Wild West horse chase (no offense, Mr. Yeti :P).


Now let's take a look at the questions you've posted in our forum during the last week! (much appreciated, keep them coming!)

No. While we plan to raise the maximum number of players in the future, it won't happen in 0.12. This needs additional testing and discussing - while it is perfectly fine for some games to support 16 players, others - those more demanding - will not be able to support this much.

It won't be in 0.12, but yes, we've decided to give players access to the power barrier in the Editor. We're just discussing the implementation details (also we would like the barrier to be able to utilize the Friend list, which is coming at a later date).

In 0.12 you can generate Explore-like maps, multiple ylands with various biomes and caves, so - yes (smile)

Not really to Explore maps, but as mentioned above, you can create an Explore-like map and edit it as you like.

All constructions can be optimized (it is actually extremely useful ESPECIALLY for houses), and you can place them to the aforementioned Explore-like maps.

Yes, we want players to be able to have some way of creating their own models. But this definitely won't be available before the 1.0 version.

That is true. We would like to do something about it in 0.13.

Ales: Mostly game/movie soundtracks (right now my beloved Bastion)
Ane: I actually don't usually listen to music while I work, it kinda distracts me (I'm a dancer, you know!)
Marci: Well, I listen to Twitch streams :D

Definitely, we want for blueprints to play a much more important role in Ylands.

Importing your own assets into Ylands is a tricky business. Apart from the technical aspect (which is solvable), the biggest issue is the content control - this goes for models, bitmaps and sounds. Before we ever make this possible, we need to be sure that we can effectively filter out any harmful content, as we want Ylands to be a kids-friendly environment.



Aaaaand that's all for now. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and stay classy!

Sometimes even very peculiar mystery objects can be found in the Ylands offices. Just like this one. Can you guess which Ylands department has this beauty on display? #mysterypic

Hey there fellow ylanders,

Just like the last time, today we pick a specific topic that we'll cover in-depth. This time we'll talk about all the improvements related to ships and sea in general, that you will notice in update 0.12.

Pretty much ever since we added ships in the game there have been some related, annoying issues present.

Firstly, let's talk about multiplayer issues. Let me quote Filip "Buckey" Krijt, our programmer who worked on the fixes and improvements:

"Ships are a major part of Ylands, and sailing from yland to yland has always felt pretty cool in SP, but was tainted with the unpredictable danger of becoming shark food in MP. Basically, character movement on ships was not properly synchronized, so over time, the client would see their character in a totally different position than where he actually was on the server, and would eventually fall overboard. This was done because ships can only be correctly simulated and moved on the server, so the client’s character movement calculation would and the clialways be wrong,ent character would constantly be moved to new positions by the server – the lack of complete synchronization here, while annoying, was perceived as the lesser of two evils.

To solve this, we have integrated the notion of being attached to a ship into our network synchronization system, with an attached object now using position relative to that of the ship – effectively enabling the server to accurately tell the client where on the ship (instead of in the world) it currently is, and the client being able to simulate reasonably from there. Overall, we think this is a solid improvement and hope that, together with the ship physics and wave simulation movement improvements, it will make sailing in MP much, much more enjoyable for you!"


Yland Belle ship by Weezle (workshop)

Another problem was that ships were getting capsized by small objects, things were getting teleported away, and a lot of other interesting situations. With the upcoming update the ships have been re-calibrated, and so these situations should not happen anymore. The improvements we made have brought some other positive aspects as well, which never hurts, does it :D. You should be able to unstuck your ship by moving backwards with more ease. And while moving cars on ships still remains to be implemented, you can now transport horses.

Having ships consisting of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of custom blocks had a massive impact on game performance, regardless of whether the ships were moving or not, whether it was in a single or multiplayer. In 0.12 this problem has been resolved. The way ships (and cars, for that matter) are constructed has slightly changed. When you drop a ship hull in the scene, the ship is, by default, in what we call a "construction mode". It is absolutely static, can't be moved around, and so on. You can't leave the construction mode unless you have at least the bare minimum of what your ship needs in order to start moving around. Once you leave the construction mode, all the blocks you put on your ship get optimized so that they don't affect the game performance. This optimization process can take up to several seconds if your ship consists of a large number of blocks. If you'll want to edit your ship later, you can always enter the construction mode again, perform all your changes, and exit it again.


Ship of the Line by Georgecrushington (workshop)

But wait, there's more!

* There are larger waves at the sea now, so sailing is much more fun - we're sure you're going to like it.

* We have fixed the very ugly glitch where it was possible to look below the water surface without seeing the underwater visual effect.

* We have eliminated the effect the wind direction had on ships' speed, because the wind direction wasn't indicated clear enough, and until we found a way to do so, it was confusing for many players. The ships now feel much more responsive than before.

Also let's take a bit of tie to answer some of your questions:


We understand that this is an issue. Ylands is a complex game that requires quite a complex UI - but we agree that it's important that you shouldn't completely lose awareness of what's going on around you, so we want to make the UI transparent enough so that you still have some idea of what's going on around your character.


We are not entirely sure what you mean by this - Is this related to crafting in some way? Are you able to see things you believe you shouldn't have access to?


That is a good point. We'll discuss how to handle this in the best way. Maybe we could have a sticky forum post where all the features would appear as they are announced.


That's all for now. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hey there fellow ylanders,

As you might recall, in last week's Dev Diary Ales mentioned that there might come a day, when a Dev Diary will be written by someone other than him. That day has come. In case my name does not ring any bells - I'm the marketing person behind Ylands and it's my duty together with the amazing Ane (hi, Ane!) to make sure everyone hear about Ylands and love it!

The diaries from now on will differ a bit from previous ones - they will try to explore a specific topic (instead of many general ones) and go a bit more in-depth with it.

So with great pleasure, let me welcome you to the latest Dev Diary (written by me) in which we'll talk a little about the UI facelift (User Interface - essentially everything that stands between you, the player and the game, and your way to interact with the game's world) that will land with update 0.12 - arriving shortly, to an yland near you.

When we decided to give the UI a facelift we have set two distinct overall goals for ourselves:

• make everything more intuitive
  
• make everything visually more appealing

Let's start with the first point - making everything more intuitive.

As you know, Ylands is a pretty complex game with many mechanics, interactions and information constantly surrounding the players. A good UI should make sure that any interaction between the player and the game is as logical and straightforward as possible by making sure the relevant information is always at hand so players understand the mechanics thus can interact with them.

It's also equally important to make these elements visually appealing, so the players not only want to interact with the mechanics, but that interaction is pleasant and leaves a good aftertaste in your brain's mouth.

So with that in mind, let's break down what we did to achieve these goals:

• our goal here was to make sure custom games are more emphasized than before
  
• so players have an easier time finding the game modes they are looking for (without having to muck around the MP lobby for example)
  
• so now it is easier and more streamlined to join to multiplayer games, thanks to the new "autojoin" feature we are introducing

• we have updated the shop with some colorful new visuals to get you in that sweet "let me get myself a new pet" (new ones coming in update 0.12) mood
  
• we are also adding a new "purchased" tab, so you have a quick and easy overview of where all those coyns went

• we have spent a lot of time improving this screen, as you'll spend quite a lot of time staring at it
  
• the big victory here is that now you have all the information you could possibly need (about selected items for example) on one screen, without having to open other ones

• we have also updated the crafting screen, added important and relevant information like requirements to start crafting something or whether a workstation is lit or not

• you can now set custom color presets up in both the editor and the dying stand

• you'll now see the ingredients required for a blueprint without having to place it first

Of course, these are just some of the changes, we have made numerous other improvements to every UI element out there.

We would like to keep some of them a secret for now, for a few different reasons: while some are still being worked on, we also want to make sure that when you get to play with the new UI, you won't actively be on the look out for the specific changes - this way, you can experience it more organically and as such your feedback will also be more natural. And of course, for some...we just want you to see for yourself Smile :)

A usual disclaimer: everything that you see here is "work in progress" and might change / look very different in a week / a month / a year / a decade. We'll also be taking your feedback into consideration and keep working hard to make sure your every interaction with Ylands is a pleasant and memorable one!

And now for some sweet interactivity: if you have ANY questions regarding this dev diary, the UI, the update, the game or just us, please let us know and we'll do our best to answer them in next week's diary (and going forward, this weekly "mini Q&A" will be a returning feature)!

And now...until next time: stay classy and have an amazing weekend ylanders! 

The animation team comin' at ya! 🗡️

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

Today I would like to tell you the about the direction we’re planning to take after 1.0 when it comes to Ylands as a platform - namely, features that Creators will benefit from the most, features that will allow them to keep coming up with more and more custom games.

Many of these features won’t come as a surprise, but it’s important for you to understand that what you see now is just the beginning of the journey.

We are aware that currently a lot of the quite basic features are either missing or not working as they should, so we will definitely fix those - with many of those fixes happening before 1.0.

Our ultimate goal has always been to provide creators with the means necessary to make games across any genre. To allow that, we will be introducing the following features to the Editor (with many more to come):

* A more flexible camera system that allows the creation of static game cameras, the ability to animate them or even to attach dynamic cameras to objects other than the player

* The ability to evaluate players' input

* Have access to / ability to modify more things about game entities

* Have control over the game's music

* Adding features that will make the process of creating games even easier and less prone to errors (versioning system, etc.).

We understand that these features are crucial and players and creators used to other platforms (like Roblox for example) expect no less from us.


Yet another view of the amazing job done by the P1 team - Castle Hunt.

There’s one more thing I would like to talk about in this Dev Diary.

With us finalizing and polishing the game, we have more and more work to do and due to this, I haven’t been able to talk to you as much as I used to. I feel, however, that this special relationship we have is very important (for both to you guys and to us), so I will be delegating some work to others, so I have more time to discuss things more in-depth with you. From your side, one of the things that will change will be the fact that some of the Dev Diaries - in addition to the ones I write - will be written by our Marketing Guy (tm) “Marci” Marton and some by our beloved Community Manager Ane. Also, we will be looking more into specific things, providing you with interesting photos, sneak peeks, spoilers and such, instead of trying to superficially cover a lot at once. We are positive that you’re going to like it :).

That’s it for now and we will see you in a week. Have a great time and stay classy, ylanders!

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

In the last Dev Diary (and the one before that) we talked about our plans for the period before we leave Early Access.

Starting today we will discuss with you what we’re planning to add to Ylands after the release (version 1.0), still in 2019. So buckle up, because I think these Dev Diaries will be to your liking!

This may obviously raise the question “When are you going to release Ylands 1.0”? The (usually very unpopular ) reply is “when it’s ready.” It will definitely take a few more months and a few updates to make sure we are ready to present it to the general public. I can promise, however, that we will tell you more as soon as we can.

Let me tell you about the directions where we want to go beyond 1.0.

One of the first things we would like to do beyond 1.0 is focus on how much fun you can have at your existing yland. In general we want you to have much more fun farming and fishing. To give you things you will like to return to and watch them grow. Things that will reward you for your hard work and will make your settlement more unique. (Stardew Valley anyone?)

We have also mentioned many times that we will be adding a whole new world for you to explore and tame. We’ve already put quite a lot of effort into it, but it was put on hold in favor of fixing and polishing the game before 1.0. This means that this new environment will come sometime after the release. But to give you a little teaser, I can tell you already that it will have new biomes, weapons, armors, monsters, recipes and much more!


Can things get prettier? Hardly (Amazing Castle Hunt courtesy of The P1 team)

In the Q&A sections you asked a lot about flying vehicles and carts. We try to meet your needs and wishes, and so we will do our best to give you those to play with.

On a more general note, in the future we would like to add much much more machinery and give you options to create ylandium factories, automation, and infrastructure (Factorio anyone?).

There are also plans for some very unique features in 2019 that we would rather not present too early, because they haven’t been done before (as far as we know) - so first we need to do some testing, making sure we can pull them off. But if we can (and personally, I’m more than confident about that), they will add countless of hours of fun to the Explore mode.

Finally (for now), we are also planning on expanding some existing aspects of the game (protective barriers anyone?) and improve areas that we believe should be much more interesting (the underwater life, for instance).

Oh, and we want to work on features that we temporarily disabled, like the first person camera and the water simulation.

We will, of course, provide you with more details in the upcoming months.

That’s it for today, ylanders. Have a great weekend and, as always, stay classy!

ːsteammockingː

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

Today we’ll talk about what tools and improvements we’re planning to provide Creators with before Ylands 1.0 gets released. If you're not interested in creating your games, you can skip this Dev Diary, but if you do, we think you will find the following very interesting.

As a sidenote - this week we were presented with some of the games the P1 guys are working on, and some of the things we saw were just breathtaking. Kudos to everyone involved!


Inside the Editor you will be able to create maps like the ones that we generate for the Explore mode. Another cool feature is that it will be possible to add multiple objects to labels via multi-editing (this probably sounds like dark magic to those who are not familiar with labels, but those who do will love it (wink))

We’ve added a brand new Game Logic and made large improvements to existing ones, so you will be able to place impassable barriers to prevent players from getting to (or out of) specific places. Speaking of zone game logics - we made them dynamic, so it is now possible to change their position, rotation and size on the go. And last but not least, the Event Listener has been MASSIVELY improved, so we have added many new event types and it's now even possible to set multiple events for one listener.

Visual scripting will be much more fun with a support for "For loops", "Break" and "Continue" instructions. You will have control over energy linking and you'll be able to dynamically change player roles and teams. Process custom player console commands. Perform string and math operations with flexible number of operands. All this and usability improvements as a cherry on top.


New Visual Scripting instructions make the scripting much more powerful.


The absolute majority of improvements coming with 0.12 are based on your direct feedback, and we will keep providing you with things you need to make great games before 1.0 is released. Because future changes and updates are interconnected with your feedback, it’s difficult to predict what the exact changes will be - however, there are two larger features we know we would like to implement before 1.0.

Right now, moving (or rotating) objects around dynamically via script is very painful. It requires a lot of effort, and as every operation is performed every frame, it takes some toll on the performance (and this has to be done for each of the objects you want to move).
So to combat this, we would like to implement what we are calling Dynamic groups. This will let you organize objects into hierarchies and link them together - so that in order to move a lot of objects at once you will only need to move their parent object.
At the same time, instead of animating the movement yourself, we want you to be able to just say “move this there in X seconds.” We have seen a lot of your creations where we think this feature alone will save you countless of hours of scripting.

The second thing we would like to add is a GUI editor. Right now you can script a very primitive GUI for your games, but it’s not very intuitive and it's very limited. We want to give you something where you will be able to see the GUI right as you’re designing it. We will give you ways of evaluating events like buttons being pressed from the script, so you will be able to create your own panels with custom functionality.

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!