Deadeye_Rob

“Hidden amongst the unforgiving tundra islands lies a forgotten monument to a civilization long-vanished. Hewn from the rocks of a mighty mountain, the Fortress Library has endured the ages longer than the very ink and parchment held within its halls.” Welcome to my Competition Thread! In accordance with the guidelines, I would like to use this thread to document my competition entry! I’ve played since 2017 but this is my first attempt to compete in a competition! *All information & content is subject to change until the final release version. SPECIFICATION A Mystery Island which will challenge players intellectually using a mixture of simple-to-complex puzzles. The Mystery Island will also introduce ’initial’ Lore and Mythology to the game which can be expanded upon in future islands/updates/content/etc. The architectural style and map design will weigh heavily on Fantasy Dwarven culture, drawing inspiration from J.R Tolkien, The Elder Scrolls, and other genres. The layout of the Island will consist of a large, desolate mountain with an entry way into a vast complex of halls, corridors, tunnels and vaults. Players progress by unlocking areas of the complex by solving puzzles or possessing items acquired from their previous adventures. The rewards of restoring the Library will be having access to a fully furnished home/guild HQ with the capacity to safely and proudly display all your artefacts, treasures and curiosities from all your previous adventures. PROGRESS TRACKER Map Geology -100% Library Floor plan -100% Zone Design -100% Lore & Story -100% Scripting & Mechanisms -100% I’ll post updates and screenshots as I progress! Stay tuned!

Thanks guys! Congrats to Oliver and my running mate, Mello!

You’re bang on! Dropping the anchor fixes the ship’s position. Therefore there is little to no lag because the system treats the ship like a static object. Framerate drops and lag are caused the moment the ship becomes dynamic upon raising the anchor as the system struggles to track and relay the movement of every block on that ship to all participating clients. This even applies to the ship ‘bobbing’ on the water in an idle state. Dropping anchor is the only remedy to fix the ships location.

@spiritchaser28, nobody wins sadly. My favourite ship is practically unplayable for myself and the others using the server. I wouldn’t say it’s a massive ship but the block count is quite high.

The biggest issue that I’d like this update to address is the fact that ship designs are becoming more detailed, and more vibrant in their design. Sadly the multiplayer aspect is not up to the current standards that players are building. My ships work fine in local/single player maps, but the moment I said into an online are however, the framerate plunges to unplayable levels.

You know what I’d like to see regarding the depths? I want something lovecraftian. There’s nothing more intriguing than some kind of unfathomable mystery under the waves.

The capacity to cope with large, detailed ships? P.S, I see what you did there with the thread title! ?

Adding on to @WijkagentAdrie’s post, there are some terrific ship builders within the Ylands community who have made some incredible designs that are so unique that they don’t resemble any template whatsoever. A major drawback that we discovered however was that complex designs are unplayable on multiplayer maps and create a crippling drop in framerate. Could this be looked into with more urgency? Great progress so far however! I’m enjoying the new improvements thus far!

Hi guys, I appear to have just lost my ship to a pretty nasty glitch. Naturally its exceptionally frustrating as it had all of my kit, and rare equipment on board. Now all gone! I paid a visit to my regular polar headquarters and suddenly my ship -and me- appeared to have spawned bellow the seabed and falling. After a few seconds, I spawned on the island coastline. My ship however, was gone and couldn't be re-summoned. It was as if it had simply never existed. Has anyone experienced any thing similar?

Hi guys, Shortly after experiencing depsawning/deletion of my mobile ship/base -See bellow-, I decided to settle on the starter island to rebuild a home there. I decided to take my ship and attempt to leave in order to gather more supplies and I experienced the following... Claimed Ship leaves map border. I select a new location -I have attempted to create a new map as well as visit a pre-exisiting one-. Loading screen appears -Saving Island occurs and progress bar moves- Upon 25 Percent of the progress, Saving island text disappears and an infinite loading loop occurs. At this point I have no option but to alt-f4 the game. I reboot it, and reopen exploration. My ship remains on the border of the starter island map. As a consequence I am unable to leave the starter island and am now trapped. I have attempted to use different ships to leave but with no success. Any thoughts? I have enclosed a copy of the files for further study. output_log_clean.txt output_log.txt

I did not sadly. But I have noticed something. The event took place on a map from a previous version. I’ve noticed that the boarders have moved and some of the mainland now exists outside the map. That tells me that as my ship has entered the map, it has spawned on land. Due to collisions, it’s glitched under the map and began to fall/despawn.

At this stage then, I might as well totally reset my character and wipe all my stuff. I've already lost my ship.

Update, now im stuck with what looks like the same bug. I cant unstuck myself either as i just appear at the same place. I now have no ship, or any ability to move at all now!

Awesome! It’s already beginning to echo the charming simplicity that won me over back in 2018! Great job guys, I look forward to checking it out.

A very pleasant and promising read indeed! The main menu concept is certainly a huge improvement and I look forward to seeing it what else is in store, particularly anything to do with the seabed! The sea is calling on me to colonise her!

Submitted! Ladies, Gents and anyone in between! It has been an exceptionally emotional competition! I can say I understand the strife experienced by modern game developers even though my experience is very small in comparison! The Fortress Library is a labor of love to me. I have poured in as much creativity as I can muster and I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I've had building it. I aim it to be a slow-burning experience that will encourage you to come back for more. Thank you all for your feedback, support and kindness. I am now going to take a well-earned break and read a book! -Time to curl up with a book!

Scripting and preparing for release! Goodness me! It's been a very hard and methodical few weeks! So I've spent the last few weeks undertaking the very boring element of writing, testing and reviewing all the scripting required to bring my creation to life! With the deadline looming I am confident that I will be able to submit a well oiled and smooth-running entry for you all to enjoy! I have had to cut a few bits out of the final product but this was not an unforeseen event. Rest assured I think you will all enjoy what I have made and I will be uploading my entry to the judges soon! All thats left to do is perform a quick bug-sweep of all mechanisms and scripts. Then I will polish up all the decorations and atmospherics! -A truck-load of reference points for movements, mechanics and other mind-blowing stuff!

Final Puzzle Okay so I managed to get some unexpected time off today... And what better way to spend it than developing my entry! I have been pondering for a while about what kind of reward would a player get upon reaching the end of my Mystery Island Questline. Riches? Weapons? Resources? Well, if you're a hardcore player like myself, the accumulation of wealth is quite easy if you know how. Collecting and trading artefacts is also a lot of fun although I have laced that into previous puzzles, so rewarding players with rare objects is also off the table. Then the solution hit me! Whilst I will not divulge exactly what players will receive upon gaining entry to the Mimir Gate, I can assure you that it is well worth the effort and certainly worth the bragging rights if you have the skill to open it by yourself! Please keep in mind that in order to open the 3 locks of the Mimir Gate, you must have completed every major puzzle within the library. Make no mistake, they're not easy!

Final Puzzle - Mimir Gate For those who don't know their Nordic Mythology, Mimir is the deity of knowledge amongst other things. Her name adorns the lintel of the biggest gate in the Library. The gate has always been there, yet what lies behind it is an absolute mystery, forgotten through the ages. Will you be able to unseal it and discover the final secret of the 'Stone-Smithers'? SPOILER ALERT! To get the best experience of this game -IE A genuine sense of wonder and discovery- I implore you to not open the spoiler tabs. They have images of areas that are not immediately accessible! Game Lore & Storyline As I've stated before, I want to lay the groundwork for some Ylands-friendly lore and mythology. Who are the Elves? Who are the Atlantians? Who invented the Banana Pistol? As you delve deeper into the library and scavenge it's dusty shelves, you might find a scrap or two which hints at the library's backstory. I've also introduced a few backstories which will hopefully inspire some more creative writing from the community which could sow-the-seeds to making a fully supported Ylands-Storyline =D I'm nearing completion of all physical locations and areas. I shall begin working on coding and animations shortly!

Hidden Areas & Optimization Evening guys, I hope you all had a pleasant weekend! I've begun focusing my attention to optimizing the performance of my map. This has been more time consuming than initially thought but I've noticed the increased load time of the area without having to drop any of the detail. Welding has truly been my best friend! Also as Dwarven Architecture is traditionally straight edges, my designs remain unchanged. As a side-effect however, weather such as rain and snow will now appear inside the caverns. I will look to come up with a work around with this so don't worry! Now on to more intriguing things! Secret Zones! -What secrets lie behind? As I've stated before, there are areas to unlock that appear obvious. The puzzles required to unlock them however may be harder to spot. Further more, the Library is huge, expanded and improved upon during each reigning monarch. There will be many forgotten and obsolete passages and halls to discover, each with their own unique feel. The spoiler bellow holds a concept of a particular hidden area. Once again guys, its been a pleasure building this all for you. I'm nearly at a point where the overall layout is complete. Its hard to stop myself tinkering with bits and pieces but I'm in a good position! Next up is adding decorations, props and completing the scripts -Something I'm not looking forward to doing! =P Thanks for your feedback guys!

Hi guys! If you’ve read my previous post about this game, you’ll know that I put caution to the wind, bought and played it! I’m exceptionally impressed! In a nutshell, it’s Minecraft, but with polished mechanics to facilitate working community governments and even a fully fledged currency system! ....oh and a meteor is going to crash into your world in 30 days unless you prevent it! Im going to leave some entries relating to my experiences on a particular server. It’s a real blast!

Reliquary updates Work within the Reliquary moves ahead slowly. Its becoming apparent to me that this area will become the primary zone for storing all those treasures and rare items you've all collected on your adventures. The scripting however is fiddly, laborious and quite frankly boring! It will take the majority of my time (and Jack Daniels) to complete and bug-sweep. Moving on from my previous comments, by collecting certain treasures, players will unlock further points of the Library. This is something I'm keen to build. I would like players to discover long-abandoned and dilapidated halls that lead to some kind of one-off lore-based reward. Once the player is done with that area, I may try to include a script that despawns the area to keep the map running efficiently. Some of you have asked the question that what with the scale of my entry, will mobile games be able to run it? My answer is that I simply don't know! The majority of my construction work will be welded to reduce performance and I have always kept an eye on the memory allowance (bottom left meter) to ensure that it will run. If there are serious problems post-release, I will endeavor to improve it and even release a Library-Lite version for mobile devices. Sadly my experience in mobile games isn't great but I will be as accommodating as I can! Thanks for your support guys! Keep the feedback flowing! -The Reliquary will be capable of displaying your finest 'boom-sticks'!

If it’s any consolation Mello, I’ve spent 3hrs trying to work out why a seemly simple object movement script won’t work. I ended up calling it a day early just out of frustration!

The Reliquary, Mechanicum & more atmosphere. This evening's binge in the Library has been a good! Although after a frustrating hour of trying to make a simple movement script work; I decided to call it a day! I've begun working on another large unlockable main zone in the Library- The Reliquary. Continuing on from the theme of displaying your collections and treasures, The Reliquary will enable you to display them in all their glory! I know a lot of people have desired this since the Exploration update was released. Now I'm pleased to say that you may well have it! But take note! If you collect certain treasures, you may find the Library will reward you for your efforts! -The Reliquary, an immense, ornate hall for you to store and display all your treasures and collections. -Work in Progress. As I've mentioned on previous updates, I'm really enjoying the employment of atmospherics and as you delve deeper into the library's abandoned and forgotten places, you may just be able to unlock certain mechanics and systems to personalise the feel of your Library. From warm, cozy fire-lit halls to dark, gloomy-yet-mystical corridors. Make it your own! -An example of my custom-lights. These welded entities emit a low blue light with highlight and fog particles to create a little atmosphere! I hope you've enjoyed this update for tonight. I hope to bring you more in the next couple of days as I attempt to flesh out the Reliquary some more! P.S with so many puzzles and mysteries now complete, its getting harder to publish spoiler screenshots. With that said, anything that may ruin your future experience will now be held behind spoiler guards! ?

Cosmetic Updates & Puzzles So I'm pretty happy that the Alchemy Zone is ready to go in all respects. It is a fully furnished area with some great lighting and atmosphere effects. With this in mind, I have begun to experiment on some atmospheric effects in the rest of the complex. -If a player progresses far enough, they will be able to unlock the ability to introduce new lighting to the Library with extra gloom! When Players first set foot in the Library, it will be up to them to make the place habitable once again. As they progress however, new features will be available to them such as 'fancy lighting'. I hope to add a number of optional cosmetic features to be unlocked as a form of rewards for progression. -Make the Library yours! Display your treasures with pride! Whenever I meet another player online in Exploration, I'm always keen to see what artefacts and treasures they have found in their adventures. With this in mind, I'd like to give players the ability to store their unique items from their travels. Pre-made exhibit stands like this will allow players to place unique items on display. Once on display, players can also take them back again too! When a display is empty, it will show a 'blacked out' vacant outline. I want to add some descriptions and Lore to some of the weapon/armour sets. If anyone has any good -but brief- descriptions, please PM me with your suggestions! -Quarters of the Chief Librarian, now it belongs to you! The Librarians Quarters is coming along slowly, partly due to 'writers block' but its looking homely at least. Players can move in and use all storage containers available. It is my intention to make this area suitable for novice players to use as a pre-made beginners home. It will also offer some creative inspiration as to how they could build their own bases in future! The Librarians Quarters will have a small office that will contain a number of clues as you try to piece together the Mystery of the library that it's previous occupant failed to do! -The Library holds many clues! Some of which aren't so obvious! Finally guys, before I turn in for the night I want to show you the early designs for one of the later-stage puzzles. Whilst you might have figured out how it works already, it wont be as easy as you think! Thanks for your continued support people! Stay tuned for the next update!