Patrik from marketing here! 2023 was a wild one for Ylands. Just consider the craziest thing, instead of the awaited 1.12 version we released the biggest update in Ylands history: the 2.0. Even though this was the bomb, there were so many other important numbers throughout last year. Let's see some marketing and game data!




You sent 101 691 messages and spoke for 76 243 minutes on the Ylands Discord server. What can I say, you just love to chat and admire each other's work. If you want to find some friends to play with, our Discord server is the best place for you. Now, we know, that you were not bored, and here is proof that the Ylands Marketing team also had a lot of fun this year.

4 Ylands Streams were held, 1 of those was quite a revolution as it took place on Discord, being closer to you all as we were playing games together, competing, chatting, and chilling. We posted over 300 Posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter X, and within traditional weekly community screenshots, we shared 156 of your in-game screenshots and amazing builds. From the video perspective, we presented the world with 2 trailers and 61 short videos for our TikTok and YouTube. If you are not following us on some of these social media you should definitely give it a shot!

We held 18 competitions and contests, and delivered at least triple the amount of prizes and giveaway items! We simply don't know the precise number here as sometimes, we just have to reward you randomly for being so awesome and helpful to each other. Last but not least we released 50 Dev Diaries and 21 maintenances were run.

But let's get back to you, Ylanders!


5 617 blueprints, yes that many amazing creations were uploaded to the blueprint shop by you, Ylanders! And what about all the wonders you accomplished directly in the world of Ylands? Oh boy! You picked up and cut down 1 245 456 plants, tamed 11 227 animals out of which there were 1 777 horses, and crafted 26 705 134 items. Surprisingly enough, among these 26 milion, there was only a single cultist skirt crafted. Those are all amazing numbers and we couldn't be happier.

Thank you so much for all the time that you spent with us, whether it was chatting with other Ylanders on Discord, creating blueprints and sending us your screenshots, watching our videos and liking our social media posts, and most importantly for the time you've spent in the world of Ylands.

We wish you to Stay Classy in 2024!

Hello Ylanders,

We’re back with an exciting blend of news about our latest feature: Handbook Rewards. This addition is all about enriching your entire journey in Ylands, with a special focus on those initial, crucial hours of gameplay.






A Rewarding Start

We understand that the first few hours in Ylands can be decisive. Players who overcome the initial learning curve tend to find deeper enjoyment and stay longer. With this in mind, Handbook Rewards are designed to make the early stages more engaging and less daunting. By offering meaningful rewards for early tasks, we aim to help new players find their footing and uncover the true potential of Ylands.

Rewards Across Your Journey

But it’s not just about the start. Handbook Rewards bring value at every stage of your adventure. Whether you’re gathering essential resources, unlocking unique and powerful weapons, or acquiring special collectibles, these rewards are tailored to enhance your experience.

Streamlining Progression

A key goal of Handbook Rewards is to offer a smoother progression path. These rewards come in at just the right time to help you unlock new regions and tackle the challenges ahead. It’s about reducing the grind and increasing the enjoyment of each milestone you reach. While also giving you a long term goal to aim for in the case of Story Chapters or some more difficult Region conquering Diary Events.

Looking Forward

Handbook Rewards represent just one step in our ongoing effort to make Ylands more engaging. We see great potential in integrating this system with future features, like daily quests or login bonuses, to continually enhance your gaming experience.

Your Feedback, Our Compass

As you delve into this new feature, we’re eager to hear from you. Your experiences, especially during the early stages of the game, are invaluable in helping us refine and evolve the Handbook Rewards system.

Thank you for being part of the Ylands community. Your adventures, challenges, and achievements are what inspire us to keep improving and expanding the world of Ylands.

Happy exploring, and here’s to many more rewarding adventures ahead!



Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders!

Updates are consistently geared toward enhancing your gaming experience. Each update brings a combination of significant features and behind-the-scenes improvements to ensure smoother and more enjoyable gameplay. Let's delve into the journey of these features.



Wish List
Our wish list is a culmination of various sources, including community suggestions, insights from focus tests, brainstorming sessions with our designers, and feedback from our team members. We also take into account thoughts gathered from QA feedback sessions, creating a comprehensive pool of ideas.

Priorities
Every update is driven by specific goals, such as improving recipes for new players or transforming sailing into a thrilling adventure. We compile a list of approximately 40 objectives for each update, aiming for a balance between fun and functionality.

Design
The Feature Owner plays a crucial role in crafting a design document with mockups to visualize ideas. Some features are even prototyped using our Editor, adding a tangible dimension to the creative process.

Design Review
A creative huddle takes place involving the Project Lead, Producer, and Designers. Their focused brainstorming session ensures alignment with our overall vision and addresses any potential challenges.

Implementation
With a detailed plan in place, we share our ideas with the implementation team. Each feature follows a specific timeline, accompanied by status meetings and vigilant oversight to ensure a smooth transition from concept to reality.

Feature Review
We did it! Upon completion, the Project Lead and Producer evaluate the feature's integration into the game, considering its overall enjoyment factor. Other developers also provide feedback during this phase.

Feature is Ready
The moment of truth arrives as QA takes center stage. Rigorous testing is conducted to identify and address any bugs, ensuring the feature is polished and ready for release.

As our team eagerly tackles the next project, they remain committed to resolving any issues promptly. We're excited for you to experience the new feature and have a fantastic time with it! 🚀🎮

And that is a feature's journey from the point of view of Production. Do you have any questions about this process? Let us know in the comments!

Stay Classy!

In this week's dev diary, us in the QA department have been asked to talk about game dev experience from our point of view. We've been scratching our heads how to convey the Tester Experience TM and after some thought and pondering, we've decided to focus on the life cycle of an update and put forth the following description of events. As you read this account of ours, try to immerse yourself in the spirit of good-natured humor sprinkled with just a tiny bit of desperation. We do love game dev in general and our game in particular after all, but perhaps being tasked with finding the mistakes and shortcomings in everything we touch reflects in the mentality and jokes we make. But all we do, we do to help make Ylands as amazing as possible.


The culmination of several months' worth of pressure effort and preparations. At long last, an update is released, however the work isn't done here by any means. For us at QA headquarters, the ride continues and the show goes on.

During the release maintenance window, we scramble to double check that crucial systems and infrastructure work. Some things we can reasonably expect to work once live, but things like logging into the app, the workshop, servers, exploration and similar cornerstones of the game can hide issues we only discover last minute. Usually things are fine, though sometimes the maintenance window needs to be prolonged for us to be able to deliver. And in the absolute worst case scenario, if a blocker is only uncovered now, we have the option to break the glass and hit the Big Red Button to roll back the update, restore the previous versions and dive deep into what went wrong. Needless to say, nobody likes to even consider this option, least of all us at QA HQ.

Let's assume things went more or less well, losses are within parameters and move on to the next stage. Our wonderful community manager announces that the maintenance is over and an update is live and we start dealing with the fallout.




It's close to assured that there will be issues to iron out after an update. Nobody is perfect after all, and while all of us in the dev team give it our best to achieve that state, it's ultimately impossible. So, in the first days or possibly weeks after an update, we spend much of our time investigating any issues that eluded attention until now and roll out hotfixes and patches to control the fallout. The tempo is rapid and while we all long for relief in this time, we know it's important to keep the pressure up. Rapid QA response to fixes and other commits, attention to detail and in some cases, figuring out why a critical issue flew under the radar are the items on the agenda in this period. Forecast: crunches with a chance of meatballs. Eventually, the most burning issues are wrangled and we can finally let out a tired sigh of relief. For a short while, it's done.


A thick line between the previous update and the next has been drawn and we finally start looking to the future. We regain our strength, we refocus, we learn. The length of this window heavily depends on how many patches were pushed for the last update and there always exists the possibility that relief never comes - the sheer amount of necessary work takes so long that we can find ourselves deep into the next update's life cycle even before the previous one is over. Speaking of the next update...

When an earthquake hits, a tsunami may follow. The development of features and new content doesn't halt just because things needed fixing. Eventually, we need to turn our eyes to what's on the horizon. There is a surge in workload as requests for testing start coming en masse and we give one last tearful wave to the short period of reprieve as it sails away. The quicker we dispatch these tests, the more time for adjustments, polish and feedback there is and, as it logically follows, the better the state these new features will be in. And as we send back bugs and feedback, retest, report newly found bugs, return whatever wasn't sufficiently improved, rinse and repeat.


As the ongoing cycle matures, there comes a time when everyone needs to take a step back and look at the larger picture. Before the dev team fully commits to a given state of the game, feature states need to be re-evaluated and prioritized. Sometimes you can be enthusiastically crunching away at a feature but find out you didn't quite have the time to get it done, sometimes the core is done but during development you find out there are simply too many issues for you to be able to fix before it's too late and sometimes, a feature was just too large and took so long to finish that we at QA HQ simply don't have the time and people to properly make sure it's in the best possible state. This is the point where hard decisions have to be made. Will a feature be postponed? Will its scope be reduced? And will it still be viable after that? Sometimes it is better to postpone than to release something we're not happy with, after all.


The data just came in from the boys in the lab and it's dire. The vague threat of another disaster has taken a more concrete shape, the dreaded data lock. From here on out, no new features get in and it's all about polish, fixes and making sure everything works together. And even then, every new merge needs to be considered carefully - is it important enough? Is it safe? Can it break something else? Is it a new issue or something we've been able to live with already? These and many more questions are behind every new ticket we throw at the rest of the dev team from now on.


After data lock, a new branch is built - Release Candidate. It is here that any merges deemed important and safe enough go and are tested in the name of stabilizing the build and making sure it comes out in it's best form. For us at QA HQ, that's not all however. It is at this moment that we start retesting any and all new things, be it new features or tweaks of existing ones. No ticket gets left behind as we have to make sure that nothing broke between us first seeing a ticket and now, after hundreds and hundreds of commits that could have potentially influenced whatever we're looking at. We also launch a large scale integrity test of the whole game around this time to ensure that there are no critical weak points in existing systems. It is a long and laborious process, but we couldn't proceed without it.


Sometimes, when there is a reasonable need, it is prudent to prepare the public at large for the coming disaster. This is where an experimental build might be released for you all to romp around in once the RC build is in a reasonable enough state and there is need for community feedback on the changes the dev team has prepared. This spells another workload surge for us as we need to go through your reports and figure out what's already known, what's new, what needs to be fixed ASAP and to compile your feedback to figure out how to best utilize it. Often times balance changes are made based off of what we gather during this period, which then need to be tested once again.


As we're closing in, mobile and Windows Store submissions need to be covered as well. These can take anywhere between a few days up to weeks to resolve for each submission. The workflow changes somewhat during this time as we need to allocate more time to testing on these platforms before their respective submissions to ensure the builds are healthy, and once a submission has been dispatched we can then reallocate all of that time back onto the main game to run the same tests on the steam build.


It's almost here. The suspense is incredible. Tensions are high once again. Everything seems quiet, things look fine. Maybe it's the job, maybe it's just who we are as people, but whenever things go too well, all of us here at QA HQ start sweating bullets. Like any leadup to a big event, this is a very stressful time. After all, we could always find a last-minute blocker, which is a scenario nobody wants to see. In theory, should such a scenario occur, this is where QA can veto a build instead of giving it the coveted green light. This means an update could be postponed by a week or two to fix something absolutely crucial to the release, but schedule is often very tight and the release process is a complex matter, so unless it's something that renders the game or a large part of it unusable, we often need to proceed anyway. As a result, we might start getting first responders ready even before the disaster hits. During the last moments of this journey, an announcement about an upcoming maintenance is released to the public and soon after, the big moment is upon us all.


This seems familiar, doesn't it? Almost like we've been here before, one might say.

As we close this entry here at QA HQ, we would like to add that there are many aspects of our work, additional intricacies and processes that might even differ between different parts of the game. Those are, however, stories for another time.

Stay QAssy!

Ahoy Ylanders,

We've been hard at work on the upcoming update, which we titled Tremendous Techtree. And before we release it, we bring you the experimental build!

Available only to Steam users, the Experimental build offers you guys a chance to:

• test upcoming features & changes
  
• report any bugs & provide early feedback (#experimental_build room on our Discord server is a great way to do that)

HOW TO TRY THE EXPERIMENTAL BUILD

1. *optional* If you've been playing for a while and are not a newer player, please delete the contents of this folder C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\Bohemia Interactive\Ylands\Crashes
   
2. go to your Steam library and right-click Ylands
   
3. select Properties, click the "Betas" tab, and enter "PublicExpYlands" as the password (excluding the double quotes)
   
4. this will unlock the "i_will_back_up_my_saves" branch. (Please note that you don't need to back up your saves anymore this is just the name of the branch).
   
5. after selecting the branch and confirming it, Steam will begin downloading the new experimental branch

• Any progress you make on the experimental build DOES NOT carry over to your live game!!!
  
• When you start playing experimental, we will now copy your live progress into experimental for you. You can try your actual progress in the new update right away (remember that you are playing in a separate environment so it will not affect your progress on live by any means).
  
• What WILL be copied:
  
• Adventure mode progress,
  
• All editor scenarios and tools,
  
• Non-protected workshop scenarios and all the blueprints you have uploaded to the workshop
  
• All your purchased blueprints
  
• All your local blueprints
  
• What WILL NOT be copied:
  
• Sharegames
  
• Rented servers (if you want any of those maps on experimental, you will need to turn them into singleplayer maps before you start experimental for the first time)
  
• Any workshop assets with global user data (leaderboards, game sets, etc)
  
• Do not copy any local files! Any TAMPERING with local data can lead to irreversible loss of progress!!!
  
• Not all features that will be released in the full release are necessarily available in the Experimental build. It is possible that some features available in the Experimental build might be changed, balanced, or removed before the full release.
  
• Please delete the content of the folder:
  
• C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\Bohemia Interactive\Ylands\Crashes
  
• If you forgot to delete the content of the folder and the game starts as a new game contact us for help.

...with that out of the way...onto the good stuff!



New Experimental!
Brand new way of playing the experimental build, now your live progress is copied to experimental so you can try the new changes with your own character and with your own progress! You can also try out your Editor tools and scenarios and see if they work, please keep us informed!

Tech Tree
Progress through core and most optional recipes is now based on a Tech Tree, allowing for more a controlled and fun system of unlocking crafting recipes.

Handbook rewards
New rewards for handbook tasks and story (bear in mind some of them are placeholders in experimental). Some rewards can be obtained only through the handbook and nowhere else, so remember to claim them!

Compass overhaul
Compass is now always visible and has an all-new visual for increased contrast. We also added the detection of cave entrances.

Proximity chat
Players are now able to communicate via a built-in proximity voice chat in multiplayer sessions.

Inventory context button improvements
We felt the item detail window was too hidden, so we displayed it more prominently (replaced the "Used In" button). Used In was moved to the item detail window, along with several new functions (Link to the crafting recipe, ability to craft more of the same item, etc.)

Alchemy changed to crafting
The alchemy table now works as any other workstation (potions are researched in the tech tree as most of the other recipes).

Region map is now single-player by default
Do you often run out of space in the region map? Now all your maps are single-player by default. Servers are always accessible by a separate game list in the region map. This should double the space for your ylands!

Avatar frames
Now you can change the borders of your avatar's face. You can gain some as a reward or buy some in the shop. Frames are visible to all your friends.

Biotop polishing
Flora and fauna are now region-specific. We also changed the visual (both terrain and new entities) of every region. There are now some new animals like hens, and many new plants, rocks, and trees.

Random encounters
Random encounters are now region-specific (except for vendors). Vendor encounters were rebalanced and their compositions were updated. Optional recipes were separated into smaller pools to reflect progress in the Tech Tree. We also added a new method for the optional recipe and exploration point acquisition (Interactive entities hidden in Random encounters).

Quality of life improvements
List of valid entities for inventory containers extended (or changed). Tutorial rebalanced for new changes. Items automatically removed from containers no longer drop on the ground
Destroyed entities from REs no longer drop resources. Hardened items no longer fall to the ground when terrain is modified below them. Stumps can be removed using a pick tool. Empty categories in the Crafting menu are hidden until you learn their contents.

Sailing speed rebalance
Boats were rebalanced to be slower than most ships. Ship speeds were rebalanced for a more linear progression. The angle of optimal wind was increased and the negative effect of sailing against the wind decreased. The power of sails and engines is applied by an exponential curve - less power is required to reach a reasonable speed.

Gamepad PC alpha version
Early access to the implementation of Gamepad controls for you to try out. Bear in mind that some UI windows are still in progress and you will not be able to use the gamepad in them properly. But especially in combat or general gameplay, we would like to know how gamepad controls work for you. Also please try our new aim assist using the gamepad. Full gamepad implementation will happen during next year.

Aim assist
Players using a gamepad or playing on mobile are now being assisted with aiming.

Secondary Interaction bound to E key
We moved some radial menu actions to a separate hotkey.

Feedback improvement
You can send feedback messages with save files attached.

Indicators for saving and bad connection
Whenever the game autosaves, an indicator flashes in the bottom right corner. Should you experience issues with an internet connection, the game will display that as well. Also, losing progress when your internet connection is poor should be mitigated to a minimum.

EDITOR: Custom tools folders
Organize Toolbox neatly into virtual folders.

EDITOR: Debug stepping alpha version
Introducing an alpha version of a powerful debugging tool for Custom Games containing complicated Visual Script. Add breakpoints to Visual Script tiles, test the game in the Debug mode, and walk through the script step by step. This feature is hidden by default but can be enabled by /enabledebugging 1.

Critical Blocking Issues:

• tech tree does not work properly in multiplayer
  
• handbook rewards can disappear in multiplayer
  
  
• Please note that not all texts are translated at the moment and some old texts are not updated yet.

Ahoy, Ylanders!

Embark with us on a visual journey into the realm of artistic creation as we unveil the process behind some of the mythical animals in the Ylands universe. Today, we'll delve into the minds of our talented artists: Karel, Filip, and Jakub, as they created the fantastical beings that already inhabit your Ylands experience.

Wooden Golem by Karel
"Research is key to capturing the true essence of the Wooden Golem. I drew inspiration from my favorite Lord of the Rings movie, blending majestic and dangerous Ents with dumb and heavy Trolls. The challenge was to strike a balance between enchanting and mysterious, ensuring these creatures seamlessly meld into the forest landscapes our players will explore."



Stormfeathered Banty by Filip
"Creating the Stormfeathered Banty was a challenge. I immersed myself in the world of flying beasts, drawing inspiration from our animator Matej and his pet hen, as well as the old Mayan kingdom. It's fascinating how ordinary animals and tribal art can breathe life into these mythical creatures."




Emerald Scaleneck and White Burroworill by Jakub
"When thinking of Emerald Scaleneck and White Burroworill, I drew my inspiration from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail (easter egg) and the TV series Dinosaurs. Incorporating these comical ideas into these mythical creatures added an otherworldly dimension. It's amazing how a blend of fantasy world, funny animals, and artistic interpretation can create creatures that feel both cute and captivating."




A heartfelt thank you to Karel, Filip, and Jakub for offering us a glimpse into the creative process that births these mythical creatures! For a deeper dive into our artistic endeavors, don't forget to explore our art developer diary in the future. Share your thoughts on these extraordinary creations, and until our next artistic revelation...


Stay Classy!

Welcome to Dev Diary number 300! The Ylands team is a cheerful bunch and we love any opportunity to celebrate and we wanted to invite you to celebrate the release of 300 Dev Diaries with us!

First of all, let us thank you because without you, Ylanders, there would be no need for Dev Diaries. Thank you for being here and for being awesome! 

When Ylands was still a baby, Aleš and the team released sneak peeks every now and then, but eventually, they started releasing Dev Diaries. If you don't want to go looking for the very first one, we've dug through the archives and pulled up the link for you here: https://ylands.com/community/topic/285-dev-diary-1/



We've come a long way since then, which we touched upon a bit in Dev Diary #200. So it is only fitting that we look at what's happened since number 200!

---

Update 1.9: Ocean Odysseys took a deep dive, literally, into the ocean. Sharks made a big comeback after learning their place (which of course is not in the skies above but in the waters below), many new fish made Ylands their home and the underwater world became a much more exciting, but also dangerous place. To sail such dangerous seas, we added an entire arsenal of ship devices that help navigate the unpredictable waters, where ships might get damaged and even sink!

Ymproved Ylands, aka Update 1.10, brought oh so much new stuff!

• The FPS camera was brought back
  
• Mythical Animals appeared in the game
  
• Blueprints got better
  
• Mounted actions became a thing.

Probably the most important improvement of this update was the beginning of a larger scale Adventure balancing for the best possible gaming experience.

To continue the improvement of already existing features, Update 1.11: Crafty Crafts focused on crafting and Blueprints. The entire crafting menu got a much needed overhaul and Ylands creators could upload their Blueprints to the market so that as many players as possible can enjoy them! Many other pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place with a new gifting system, randomized loot, new monsters and many more tweaks and fixes.

---

And finally, the Classy Adventurers Guild opened its doors to adventurers young and old and welcomed them in Ylands Update 2.0! C.A.G. has brought one of the most important features into the game: Adventurer's Handbook and with it the very first mission: find Horation Reginald Elmwood, the adventurer extraordinaire! Handbook was such a big deal that even on its own, it would have been huge. But we know that you wanted more and we delivered! Ylands introduced sailing with wind, improved terrain generation, new main menu, better tutorial, new random encounters and soooooo much more.

Ylands also changed its visual identity, not significantly, but enough to be recognizable, unique and truly ours. Since this Dev Diary is written by the marketing department (remember when we told you that each Diary will be written by a different department to give you more of an inside look? ) we can only say how extremely proud we are of our entire team for making 2.0 happen and to give us something incredible that we are so excited to show the world every day. But we didn't stop there, of course!

In Update 2.1: Sunken Sands, inventory sorting was implemented and made all of our lives much easier and organized. If you're not the social type or simply enjoy playing Ylands in Singleplayer mode, pausing the game was likely a very welcomed upgrade to the experience. And you got your second big mission from C.A.G., this time in the Arid region! And as always, there were many more quality of life improvements and additions to the game. Which ones were your favorite? 

---

So what's up ahead? We've already told you about the upcoming tremendous techtree that will make its debut in 2.2 and we really think that... wait a minute. Tremendous Techtree. Tremendous Techtree? Tremendous Techtree! Let's call it that! So in Update 2.2: Tremendous Techtree you can look forward to just that - an amazing feature, which will surely be helpful for any and all C.A.G. members! What else? You're gonna have to wait for that a tiny bit longer, but worry not, that info is just around the corner and we aim to reward you for your patience.

Once again, we are very grateful for your support and love that you show us everyday. Thank you and as always...




Oh... and Stay Classy of course! 

A cup of hot chocolate next to you, a fluffy blanket around your shoulders, a soothing crackling fireplace in front of you and then... *SPLAT* a snowball hits you in the face! Well, not you, but your Ylands character!

Welcome to YLANDS WINTER FEST!



We hope that you are ready to spend this winter in the world of Ylands, exploring the lands and searching for 6 new Christmas themed animals and 10 different kinds of collectible toys, completing 3 new achievements, and throwing snowballs left and right!

So what have we prepared for you in this time-limited winter event?

---

Six kinds of our animals have put on Christmas bling and can now be seen roaming around their respective regions. These can be tamed using a special Christmas bait which is found as a reward in random encounters. If you want to befriend these special animals and keep them even after the event ends, hurry up and go tame them now!




Christmas came early and there are many wonderful gifts hidden within random encounters! Can you collect all 10 kinds of toys and earn a special new achievement? You will of course get to keep all the toys you collect even after the Winter Fest event is over. And then you can spread the joy and give them as gifts to your friends in the game!




Who threw that snowball? Who was it? *brushes snow from face* We're just trying to peacefully explain all that's new and available during the Winter Fest and you go throwing snowballs at us?! Well, we can't really blame you, because throwing snowballs you discover in random encounters is sooooo much fun! We will even organize a snowball fight with the developers on December 21 at 5pm CET!




Tame all 6 Christmas animals, collect all 10 kinds of Christmas toys and throw at least 30 snowballs at your friends or NPCs - that's the way to obtain these special achievements, which will be available only during the Winter Fest event. Don't forget to show them off, it's no small feat to gather all three! And if you complete all of them, run to our Discord and let us know! The first three people to do so will win a free pet!




Is Socky the Shark the cutest pet to ever come to Ylands for an exchange program? Definitely. Is the Santa's elf who went to the ocean instead of Socky struggling in the depths of the water? Who knows 😅. In any case, grab Socky from the shop before his exchange program ends!



All the new things that Winter Fest is bringing are just tools for you to shape your own holiday adventure and we love to see how you use them, so please join our Discord and let us know! Share screenshots, find friends to throw snowballs at, show off your toy collectibles and much much more!

Winter Adventure Awaits, Ylanders!

Stay Classy (and warm) this winter season!

Ahoy Ylanders!

In this dev diary, we will take a deeper dive into our programming and patch/update release workflows and we'll get a bit more technical, as our programming department shares the ins and outs of the job!

Since we just released the Winter Fest patch and Update 2.2 is on its way, it is a good time to peek behind the scenes at what it even takes for a new release of Ylands to get to you, our dear player!



Each new release contains a multitude of new features requiring new code and data. We toil on them daily, saving (or committing, as the proper lingo would go) our changes to a 'version control system' (VCS). A VCS helps us keep track of project history and lets us recover an old state on the off chance we ever mess up. Importantly, it also allows us to work on multiple versions of the project (called branches) at the same time, with work on one usually not disturbing the others. Daily changes are committed mostly to the trunk version (branch). On a busy day, there can be over a hundred changes made to the trunk.

One part of a programmer's job, on which we spend a great deal of time, is dealing with bugs. A bug is a term used for any issue with the game, whether it comes from bad code or bad data. The development of a long-term project like Ylands is fundamentally about adding or improving new features as well and as fast as possible while minimizing the number of new bugs we accidentally add.

The first line of defense against the insectoid menace is something called 'continuous integration' (CI). CI is a term for a system that automatically integrates and tests changes made to a project. It is important to say that 'integrates and tests' actually means specific things for specific projects. For Ylands it goes like this: several times a day, about every hour or so, a new build of the game is made with the new changes made since the last build (from only a couple to low tens of new changes per build). Before each build, we run set validation procedures that help us automatically check any rules that we can enforce without the need for human oversight. If validation passes, we build a new version of the game. A successful build continues to automated testing, where our in-house automated system simulates player input to run the game through a range of predefined gameplay scenarios to detect any regressions (a feature that worked but does not work anymore after a recent change). Recently, we also introduced multiplayer testing against dedicated servers.

CI, in our case automated building and testing, usually uncovers the most obvious regressions in existing systems. For anything more complex, we rely on our QA team, who know the game inside out. They test new features, to ensure they are the best they can be and also continuously check that our meddling did not break any of the existing stuff.

This process of daily development and CI continues merrily until the release of a new version draws near. We set a date of a 'datalock', usually about a month before release. A datalock comes when all new features should be good and done in the trunk branch and no new changes should really be required, besides the occasional bugfix. In theory at least. On the day of datalock, we copy the trunk version into a new 'release candidate version branch' (RC), so that it is not further disturbed by daily changes. We then proceed to test RC builds rigorously. The RC branch receives only as few changes as possible to avoid introducing any more last-minute issues.

In some cases, the RC build is made public as the Experimental Steam beta branch about two weeks before a release. We closely monitor player feedback and react to any critical issues that might be found. What is super exciting, is that starting with the 2.2 Experimental, it should be even more useful for us, as it will let players continue with their existing progress from the live version of the game (but not carry over experimental progress to live).

Finally, once the day of release is set in stone, we announce a maintenance window. On the day of the release, we flip the button, push the final build of the game live, and do a last round of checks to make sure that everything works. We celebrate, take a breather, and start the whole cycle anew.

And there you have it, Ylanders - the release cycle summarized from the point of view of our programmers.

Is there any topic from the development of Ylands that you would like to hear about? Let us know here or come chat with us on our Discord!

Stay Classy, Ylanders!

⭐ ⭐

• Snowball fighting - find stacks of snowballs in Random Encounters and use them in fun battles with your friends!
  
• Christmas animals - you can meet new Christmas variants of specific animals on newly discovered ylands and tame them.
  
• Toy hunt - Christmas came early and you can already find presents hidden in the world of Ylands. Merry Christmas! 

DISCLAIMER: These assets will be available only during the event. Once you acquire/tame them, you will be able to keep them even after the event ends. 

(exclusively in new maps in Adventure)
Festive Terrorbird
Festive Rhinoceros
Festive Tiger
Festive Bear
Festive Wolverine
Festive Penguin

Toy Teddy Bear
Toy Doll
Toy Robot
Festive Bait
Thrown snowball

Socky The Shark

Having a Snowball (throwable)
Santa's Little Herder
Santa's Little Hoarder


______________________
FIXES 
Fixed: The player's ship should no longer appear in the middle of the Elmwood outpost.
Fixed: We fixed the problem with the safe in Ember Yland which did not unlock also Distant memory should no longer disable music for players.


ADDITIONS
[YLD-48435] Added Anti Cheat sanitation. Multiplayer will be a safe place again.
[YLD-48791] Added: Editor: Trigger On player created / On player spawned on Spawn point.
Added: Three new Achievements - SANTA'S LITTLE HOARDER, SANTA'S LITTLE HERDER, HAVING A SNOWBALL


CHANGES
Changed: All new festive items can be found in chests in random encounters, happy hunting!


TWEAKED
Tweaked: Resource price for unlocking the Adventure region is reduced.
Tweaked: Some recipes in Adventure were not obtainable, but now you can find them in random encounters.