anna_svecova

Ahoy Ylanders, I have some news. Tomorrow is my last day on Ylands. I am starting a new job on Monday. It all happened very quickly so this news is pretty sudden. It was an honor to help you as a Community Manager. Over my 10+ years in the gaming industry, I have not met a better community than around Ylands. There is so much kindness, fun, and helpfulness all around. The way you take care of new players is amazing. I was always impressed by your creativity and knowledge of the game. From the bottom of my heart - Thank you for making these last two years so lovely. Please stay as creative and kind as you were. Lastly, please keep in mind that community management will be taken care of. Nikki and Patrik are taking over my responsibilities. They will have a lot on their plates so please be patient with them. Stay Classy... and something more! ❤️ Anicka

Ahoy, Ylanders! Today, we're diving into the creative process behind our latest trailer, which features an exciting live-action segment. We want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we bring our trailers to life, blending in-game footage with real-world scenes. Concept Every great trailer starts with a concept. We ask ourselves: What do we want to convey? What’s the purpose of this trailer? This stage involves brainstorming ideas and determining the key messages and visuals we want to showcase. Script Next, we draft a detailed script. This outlines the individual scenes and specific shots we need. The script acts as our blueprint, guiding the entire production process. Asset Creation Our fantastic artists get to work building the scenes in Ylands. This time, we went a step further and created a real-life set. We transformed an office into a cozy living room, adding an extra layer of immersion to our trailer. Capture With the scenes ready, our super talented video team steps in. Using our internal tools, they capture the scenes outlined in the script. When live-action elements are required, we bring in actors. Luckily, we have an actress on the team—our very own Brand Manager Nikki. She performed in the latest trailer and also did a voice-over for another trailer. Can you find which one it was? Post the link in the comments! (Hint: It was a few updates ago 😉) Editing Once we have all the footage, we begin the editing process. We review the scenes, pick the best ones that fit the script, and sometimes reshoot if needed. Our video team assembles the scenes into a rough cut. Once we’re happy with the concept, they fine-tune it to perfection. Sound With the final cut ready, it’s time to add sound. We choose the music or have our sound team create something new. In some cases, like with this trailer [link], the music is composed first, and the editing is done to match the finished track. We also add sound effects like creaking ship wood, underwater bubbles, and animal sounds to enhance the experience. Endcard Our graphic designers create an endcard based on the marketing team’s information. Sometimes, these endcards are even animated, adding a dynamic finish to the trailer. Final Touches Finally, we review the finished product, export it in the required formats, and our trailer is ready to share with you! This ideal process isn’t always smooth sailing. We occasionally face hiccups due to time constraints and need to adapt on the fly. However, we're proud of how this latest trailer turned out. What did you think of it? That’s all from us for this week! Stay classy, Ylanders!

Hi there, Ylands on Nintendo Switch releases tomorrow!

Hi there, I changed it for you

Ahoy Ylanders! Today, we are not going to discuss game development as it is. Instead, Štěpán, our designer will delve into a bit of bureaucracy and will talk to you about interdepartmental communication, which may seem straightforward but there are challenges and many layers of complexity. The departments that designers communicate with the most are programmers, artists, testers, production, and marketing. With programmers, the most important thing designers need to communicate is the implementation of a feature and its technical design, where the challenge is to make sure that the overall intention of the feature comes across clearly, just like the smallest of the details. When something doesn't go according to plan, us designers also have to be the mediators between programmers and testers, to a certain degree. When it comes to artists, this is where we (as might be obvious) talk all things visual. Not only do we need to convey the intended use of the feature so that the graphical elements correspond to it, but also we need to check that everything is easy to navigate and does not hinder the use of the feature. Since I already mentioned testers, let's talk about our cooperation as well. With testers, designers need to make sure that the intended functionality and behavior of the feature is as clear as possible and also we need to keep an open mind for feedback when something we thought was good turns out to be... eh... not so good. It's also important that we give them all the help accessing the feature in question and that we are available to help them out with any and all aspects of the feature. The boss of the chaos, aka the producer, is a key person for all parts of the development team when it comes to communication. They set up a timeline for feature development and implementation and perform regular checks to make sure everything is on time and if it isn't, they help us find ways to solve it. Producers also help handle any other non-standard issues that we haven't run into before so it's important to communicate those very clearly. And we also have to keep in touch with marketing on a regular basis. That's not only so they help us write our dev diaries (big grin), but also so that we can explain the feature to them as clearly as possible. This is important because they then have to communicate it to our players and in case of our community manager, she has to be able to assist our players if they run into any issues regarding this feature. Generally, the communication is well established since it's something we do similarly with every feature we work on so it runs well, but sometimes we can run into issues since Ylands is such a complex game with many features being worked on at the same time. Imagine it like this: you start a fire with the intention of sending a clear smoke signal to someone over the hill. Everything seems fine until, suddenly, there's a gust of wind. Not only that, but someone next to you starts their own fire and begins sending smoke signals to someone entirely different. To top it off, it starts raining, and you realize you're standing in the fire. What started as a clear message stating, "Performance has improved, and the previously mentioned issue is no longer present. Thanks," becomes, "Revolution is coming; prepare the oatmeal." But in the end, we all love video games and we want to see the things we are working on bring joy to our players so we all work together to make sure everything gets resolved. I hope that this insight into the development has been interesting and has shown you another side of our work and since all the fires have been extinguished and smoke blown away (for me at least) this will be all for this week and I will go get some more inspiration in sunny Greece. Stay classy!

That is so wholesome!! Thank you so much for this message Hope you will both have tons of fun with the game!

Hi there, what is your in-game name? We can unlock it for you

Hi there, sorry about the issue. Could you please send us an in-game feedback report and we will look into what is wrong? Thanks.

Ahoy Ylanders! We will keep it short today. We have an announcement to be made live very soon. The stream will be held on Tuesday, 28. 5. at 3 PM CEST here: https://www.twitch.tv/ylands This news is the result of a lot of hard work and answers repeated calls from our community. We look forward to seeing you there. Stay Classy!

Hi there, they may be available during this year's Christmas again

Hello, I haven't received any message from you. Where have you contacted me?

Ahoy Ylanders, Let me start by saying that we love all feedback. Both positive and negative. One of the things that makes us happy is reading your suggestions on what to add to the game, how to balance it, and how to make it better. And we get tons of suggestions and ideas every day from you. How we collect feedback Every month or so I go through every site we have (Forum, Steam, Discord, social media, ...) and write down in a huge multipage table what people suggested and how many people want that idea in the game. Then we talk about the most wanted or just generally very creative ideas at a meeting. We discuss how we could implement them, what would it change and how long would it take. The process of getting your idea into the game is not simple. For every Update, we have a list of features that should be added and bugs that should be fixed. So after we talk about your suggestion in a meeting, we try to figure out which Update it would fit in. Generally, it should go with something similar. Example: Many people wanted to see ghost pirates in the game and we needed some more Random Encounters for Temperate Region et viola! So please note how much work and time goes into getting just one idea in the game. And we have collected hundreds of ideas from you. With the process out of the way let's talk about some ideas that already made it into the game! You suggested adding a utility belt, a backpack with more slots in inventory, an ammo pouch, or more containers. Done! We expanded all containers greatly. We have added an ammo pouch. We have added the much-requested lunch box! One thing we cannot do however is add slots to the inventory, imagine the mess it would create. You wouldn't see the icons properly, we would have to make all the buttons smaller and add a scroll bar in the inventory. Overall this change doesn't seem effective to us. We are always thinking about how to make your traveling luggage lighter though! So I am sure we will come up with something to make you even more content in the future. Tech-tree Tech-tree is something that was suggested many times over many years. And from the first time we read the idea - we agreed! After many months of discussions and work the Tech-tree is now a reality. Blank book/ folder to add notes in Done! We added a folder for all your various notes. One suggestion we get a lot is adding a book you could write in. While it is a great idea it is also very complex since it would require a custom UI screen. Chickens Just one word for you - Takahe. Other things you wanted and we added: Custom Editor tools Running Auto-sort in inventory In case you want to know more about what can or cannot be implemented in the game read our Community Corner: here Thank you again for motivating us to make the game better. Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! Today’s dev diary will be about how we created life and populated Ylands with various creatures. We believe the visual style of Ylands is best suited for hand-keyed animations. We decided not to use mocap in development as the cartoonish animation style brings more freedom for us as creators and is the only way to achieve the desired animations in many cases. Can you imagine someone could train and force an endangered species like a Pangolin to do a special attack in mocap? (big grin) Yeah, we can't either... So it is also very humane and no animal (or monster) was harmed in the process of animation. When we want to get an animal into the game we first work with references. We try to get as many videos, movies, and pictures as we can. That way we can establish the character and behavior of the animal. If we have a clear character for it, most of the work will be much easier as we know what we want to achieve. We animators need to interpret the character of the animal as we are a type of actors who are not standing in front of a camera but are comfortably hidden behind our computer screens. We don’t experience stage fright, that's cool, isn’t it? For some animals, it is easy to get inspiration as we have them at home, or a nearby zoo, for some it is more difficult like the Pangolin we already mentioned. Sometimes, it is outright impossible to get a real-life reference, such as when we introduced alien animals. But this also has a positive side: if there is no reference for the animal/monster, we can use our imagination! And that’s so much fun! After that, it’s pretty straightforward. We have to make a set of 23 animations that we need for monsters - for example, various attacks, walking, running, and idle variants. For tamable animals, we need a few more animations, and for mountable animals, we need up to 32 animations. Making those hand-keyed animations can take up from 2 to 5 weeks. As all entities share almost the same amount of animations it gives you, the player, the freedom to make animals behave as you wish in the Editor. You can force the peaceful rabbit to behave like a rabid monster. And that is what we like at Ylands, it is your call, your game! So go on, find them, take screenshots, can you count how many animals and monsters are in our game? That's all for this week! Stay Classy!

Hello, we are very sorry about the issue. It will be fixed in the upcoming patch. Thank you for understanding

Hello, we are looking into what is the problem.