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Ahoy Ylanders! As you might have gathered from the previous programming dev diary, changes always carry the risk of introducing bugs – and this goes double for last minute changes. Programmers are conditioned to avoid risks where possible; after all, it’s our job to make sure that this huge machine of a game works as expected. But in some situations – such as when a winter festival is to be held for the first time and the game lacks throwable snowballs – you just have to pick up the gauntlet and roll with it despite the short timeframe, because you feel that the fun potential is worth the risk. We already had throwing controls complete for grenades, but wanted the snowballs to behave more like an arrow does, just hitting a target and disappearing instead of exploding violently. Sometimes, programming new features is just like LEGO, you take existing pieces and creatively combine them in new ways, and that’s it. There’s also another way programming is like LEGO – sometimes to get what you want, the only way is to tear the current construction down and rebuild from scratch. Fortunately, for snowballs it was the first case, because we have already invested time into making projectiles work well beforehand. So let's have a quick look at how projectiles actually work in Ylands! There are two main approaches to simulating motion – kinematics and dynamics. Kinematics is where we directly describe the motion via an equation based on position, velocity, and acceleration. Dynamics behaves more closely to how the actual physics works, by applying various forces to an object, which can then generate motion based on its physical properties – mass, inertia, shape, etc. Looks like dynamics must be the way to go, being the more accurate option, right? Well, there's a catch. Due to its complexity, dynamic motion is much harder to predict, analyze, and make deterministic – key properties for a multiplayer game, since they allow us to have exactly the same projectile trajectory for all players. In fact, most motion in Ylands is kinematic, except for vehicles and ragdolls, which are too complex for kinematics. Choosing a simpler but a more controllable approach where possible is actually very common in game development! So we opt to simulate projectiles via kinematics, but we need an equation for projectile motion. Very fast projectiles such as bullets can be thought of as having a constant velocity, and thus moving on a line. Having an initial position P₀ and velocity v, their position at time t after firing can be easily calculated as P = P₀ + v ⋅ t. In fact, we can take bullets even further, thinking of their movement as instantaneous – their velocity is so large that they can reach any point we shoot at immediately after they are fired. This simplifies the simulation to checking whether any object lies in the line of fire between the origin point and the target point, which the physics engine can conveniently calculate for us via a raycast query. The simplified equation can only take us so far however, because it excludes the effects of a very common force - gravity. With bullets, we could ignore it because the initial velocity was so large that we hit the target before gravity has a significant impact on the trajectory. But that won't work for slower moving objects such as arrows, grenades, and, you've guessed it, snowballs. What gravity does is it applies uniform downward acceleration (gravitational acceleration) to the object, building up velocity over time. The equation for uniformly accelerated motion is P = P₀ + (a ⋅ t²) / 2 where a is the acceleration, in our case the gravitational acceleration g. If we combine this with the effect of initial velocity as seen on the bullets, we get the final equation P = P₀ + v ⋅ t + (g ⋅ t²) / 2. This is a quadratic equation, meaning that the final trajectory will be a parabolic curve – which is what we expect from snowballs and arrows. Once we have the equation for calculating projectile position at time t, it becomes a simple problem of tracking how much time has elapsed since the shot was fired and moving the projectile to the calculated position based on current time. Except now we are ignoring all the obstacles along the way! First thing that comes to mind would be checking for collisions at the current position – if we overlap with some object, we have just hit it and can deal damage to it. Unfortunately, this won’t work for fast projectiles and thin obstacles – the way the game simulation works, we can only update the projectile position after a fixed amount of time passes from the previous update. If we just check the previous and current positions there might be no collisions, but only because we have already fully passed through the obstacle – a phenomenon known as “tunneling”. But hey, we’ve already solved this for bullets! We can again look at the previous and current position and check if anything lies between these two points via a physics engine raycast. If we hit something, we determine whether the obstacle stops the projectile movement – in which case we stick the projectile into it and apply damage – or if the projectile should pass through the obstacle unhindered. And that’s the gist of it! This small bit of kinematics allows you to throw a snowball (or a grenade if you’re not feeling particularly festive) in the face of your fellow Ylanders. It also allowed us to implement gun and bow aim assist for mobile and gamepad controls in 2.2, so stay tuned for that – and stay classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! 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! Marketing 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! Game data 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!

Ahoy Adventurers! 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. Ground Zero - An earthquake update hits the floor 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. First responders & Damage control 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. Humanitarian relief 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... Another crisis on the horizon 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. Damage projections 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. A tsunami Data lock confirmed 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. Evacuation and infrastructure reinforcement 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. Simulations and drills 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. The tide draws near 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. The quiet before the storm 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. Ground Zero - A tsunami An update hits the shore 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! 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... This is Ylands! Oh... and Stay Classy of course!

A ho ho hoy Ylanders! 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? New Christmas Animals 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! Toy Collectibles 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! Snowball fights 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! 3 New Achievements 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! Time-limited holiday 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!

Ahoy Ylanders! We are bringing you important updates from our design team this week! For a while, the issue about discovering new recipes was weighing on us heavily, as the current situation was not optimal. But finally, after many iterations and changes, we bring your the final result! We are introducing the TECH TREE! What does it mean? Recipes should no longer be learned by picking up ingredients, but will have to be discovered in the tech tree. This will give you much greater control over your recipe pool and progression in the game. At the same time, many recipes that were previously hard to find or were undiscoverable altogether, will now be found in the tech tree. How will it work? The main progression through the tree will include combat gear, vehicles and technologies. To unlock those recipes, you will need to provide resources found in the appropriate region. The side progression will be about optional recipes which include decorations like carpets or vases. And for these recipes, you will need not only resources, but also a small amount of Exploration Points. Each bunch of recipes is a so-called node, and all these nodes have dependencies between one another. So for example, to unlock the Junk Ship, you need to have already researched the node for the Primitive Ship etc. The tech tree is divided into 8 categories: Survival Vehicles Combat Manufacturing Decorations Apparel Furniture Building What's handy is that when you encounter an ingredient that your character does not know a recipe for yet, clicking on it will link you to its location in tech tree. And when you're in the tech tree, to avoid unnecessary clicks, you can go directly to crafting when you click on a recipe in the node. Another important point to mention is backwards compatibility. If you know all the contents of a node, that node will unlock automatically. And if you only know some but not all the contents, the node will be cheaper than a fully undiscovered one! To make sure that it all made sense, we also looked into and adjusted the way you receive Exploration Points and recipes from Random Encounters, which, we hope, should be more immersive and make more sense in regard to the specific region and its theme. What do you think about the first look at our tech tree? We're sure that you have many questions so please drop them in the comments! That's it for this week! Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! This winter we have a few gifts for you. As you can read in the last Dev Diary, the next update is going to be quite big, so we made sure to take our time with that one, but don't worry we ain't gonna leave you hangin'! What do we have in store for you? Let's see! Thanks, Ruth1ess! Maybe not a Christmas update but you can look forward to Ylands Winter Fest! Or as we in C.A.G. like to call it P...P...P...P...P...PARTEYYYYYY! Fun Activities and Achievements Explore the world for unique toys and tame festive animals to earn new limited Christmas achievements. There is one more activity that won't be revealed today. Guess what the third achievement will be for. Let us know in the comments! Sale and Gifts As every year there will be some Christmas gifts for you. Let us know what you'd like to see on sale in store. Also, there will be a small treat for anyone to pick up on our Discord. You just need to find it there! Discord contests and stream We don't want to spoil all the fun, but you can be sure, that there will be a full Christmas sock of it! You can look forward to opportunities to win some Christmas themed assets. Will it be a pet, a costume or even something completely different? We shall see... In the meantime, you can get some coyns back if you send us a screenshot or a video of your Scarecrow costume on our Discord into #halloween_payback! So don't forget to check out the current Halloween sale in the shop. Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! Ales, the Ylands Project Lead here. Today I would like to talk with you about the current state of the game, our plans for it and react to some of the feedback we've seen based on our Dev Diaries. Let's start with the current status of the game. We've managed to improve the game a lot in the last couple of years, moving from around 40% average rating on Steam to around 80% (82% when writing this). Improving the game this much was not an easy task and it took us quite long, but it was absolute necessity for us to stay alive. We would definitely like to move past the "fixing" stage to "hey, let's look at the amazingly cool feature we've added" stage or "hey, here's a ton of new content for those of you who already seen and experienced everything the game had to offer". You bet that it's what we all would love to do. But we're not there yet. The biggest issue we have is player retention and we are dedicated to fix it - in other words, we want you to have fun as long as possible and having players returning to Ylands is our main focus now. Like that everyone can get the grasp of how complex the game is and experience all it has to offer. Here are some reasons for it: We fail to present to players what the later gameplay is like early in the game and what cool stuff you can find or do. As the ratings go up, we get more and more of "hey, this game is so cool - why aren't there more people playing it" - but it mostly comes from people who get past the "you are on stranded yland so go and grab X sticks and Y of grass, just like you've done a million times in dozens of other games". Even though we fixed dozens of things that were annoying, unintuitive or didn't work as they should, enough of those still remain. Often tiny annoyances that add up and eventually lead to a rage quit. Playing with friends needs to be easier - especially on mobile devices. These changes will definitely improve the experience for everyone, both new and long-time players (actually many things in the planned update 2.2 come to mind), but indeed, there will be no "endgame" content added in the next six months, namely updates 2.2 and 2.3. If everything goes as intended 2.4 (Q2 2024) may finally see some major new world content. As for release dates - update 2.2 will be released in January or February 2024 but given how many improvements and features it has, we plan to give players access to the experimental branch already before the end of this year. What you can also expect is more Dev Diaries like this one to give you regular updates about what we're doing to make the game better and more popular among players. We've come a long way in the last few years. We've turned the wheel away from the "Roblox-like" path, put Adventure back together, and will keep doing that. So, big thanks to everyone who stayed with us even through our failings. Stay classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! ... BOO! ... did we scare you off? Hopefully not, since we are just about to invite you to our Halloween Discord stream where you can win glowing T-Shirts, new scary pumpkin scarecrow costume, meet us and other Ylanders and enjoy crazy-classy-funky-spooky time! When: 31. 10. 2023 at 3 PM CET Where: Ylands Discord Server - Join the event! 👉 https://discord.gg/ylands?event=1164158412033106040 What: Chatting about Ylands and various topics, playing scary Ylands minigames together and announcing the winners of contests! Yes, plural. Contest n°1: Fancy a Ghost Pirate T-Shirt? Create your own scary minigame which we can play on stream. First 3 contributors will win a glowing Ghost-Pirate T-Shirt! Submit your minigame before 29. 10. into #competitions_entries on our Discord once you are ready. Contest n°2: Fancy brand-new Scarecrow costume? Join other Ylanders in playing spooky minigame from player Mello. In case you want to assure your spot in the competition make sure to contact Anna, our community manager, and join the Discord event. Just in case there would be too many of us! 3 players with the highest score on in the minigame on stream will win Scarecrow costume. It will be a blast! No doubt there, especially if you bring your own camera and join us in dressing up Halloween style. Stay spooky!

⭐ Highlights ⭐ Crafting - Some statues gave you more stones than their cost after deconstruction. Not anymore. Handbook - Chilly Woes event fixed! You will no longer feel cold after finishing this event. Now, we let you craft and drink tea, which actually warms you up, instead of a soup which won't, since it seems to be a gazpacho. Handbook - The detection of the handbook opening works properly now. It helps us to keep improving your handbook experience. FIXES [YLD-47442] Fixed: Crafting: All eastern statues drop incorrect items after deconstructing. [YLD-47572] Fixed: Handbook: Chilly Woes event directs the player to craft Stew which doesn't help against cold. [YLD-47487] Fixed: Handbook: The detection of the handbook opening is not working properly.

Ahoy Ylanders! Today we want to show you something artistic. Yes, there will be pictures, new pictures and assets that you can look forward to, but that's not all. Today you will find out what were the thoughts of our artists Filip and Kuba while they prepared the new assets. Let's get into it! Chalk formations in Arid by Filip "We are always looking for some references. As you can see, the chalk formations on Earth offer some really bizarre constitutions but once you put those into the Arid's orange/red shades it can emit some serious "Mars vibes"." Skinwalker by Kuba "Seriously, when I was looking up references for Skinwalker I ended up having nightmares. I guess it makes sense when your main reference is werewolf. I tried to make its face blunt a bit like the kobolds from World of Warcraft, so it wouldn't be that scary and also I aimed for, let's say druid-ish vibe so the Skinwalker fits among our Wendigo and Goatman." Takahe bird by Filip "It is quite interesting what you can learn through artistic research! For example, takahe bird lives in swamps, and if they eat some specific leaves then they lay blue or green eggs. Also, their eggs have interesting patterns so if you feed them correctly you don't need to paint any eggs during Easter! Fun fact, you might notice, that all Ylands' eggs are blueish, well, now you know why!" Thank you, guys, for sharing your thoughts and creating these beautiful assets! If you are even more interested into how Ylands assets are created, you should check the diary about Jackals right HERE. Let us know what you think about these assets and in the meantime... Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! Today we will keep it short and offer you a sneak peek from your favorite section: "You want it, we got it for you!" - this time, featuring new item containers! It has been a few weeks now, since we talked about our community suggestion list in the Dev Diary #285. That is exactly how these containers came into existence. You suggested them! The Suitcase holds clothes and into the Folder you can hide sheets of paper. So, feel free to start preparing for your Ylands bureaucratic career or just matching all the different outfits that you always want in your inventory. Let us know what you think about the looks of the new containers and have a great weekend. Stay classy!

Ahoy Ylanders, recently you asked us a question on our Discord server, whether we have hidden any easter eggs into the Ylands. Hmm, did we hide something cool into the massive procedurally generated open world game where you can interact with basically everything? To offer you a simple answer let us quote Billie Eilish: "Duh". Towards the more elaborate answer, let's look at some of those easter eggs. Only 10 though, you wouldn't like us to rob you off the thrill of the exploration, right? Beluga car - Was named after Anna, our community manager and her nickname Beluga. Author: Designer Prokop Winston ball from Cast Away - That is one we simply couldn't let slide. Yet, if you are lonely, we suggest you meet some other players for example on the already mentioned Discord server. Author: Former Designer Khan Pipe from Wolfenstein - Do not attempt to use it for climbing! Author: Senior Artist Kuba Crowbar from Half Life 2 - Who do you think is more famous Gordon Freeman or his Crowbar? We couldn't figure it out here. Author: Senior Artist Kuba DayZ helmet and random encounter - When your pals next door are creating one of the most famous zombie games out there you just can't resist the urge. Author: Cooperation of DayZ and Ylands teams "Minecraft" skull - In game of course called differently Strange Head Block. Author: Senior Animator Matěj The secret behind that underwater eye-encounter - Easter egg which originated in the hearth of our community, the Ylands Discord server, call out Stiegi for more info! Leeeeeeeeeeroy Jeeeenkiiiins! - The legendariest of the legendary legends of war crafts himself. Author: Lost in the history One of the players Azeris wrote on discord: "I was searching a haystack in one of the REs and literally found a needle" - As much as we would love this to be coincidence it is not. Author: Wish to remain unknown Go out there and find your own! There is plenty of these. What easter eggs have you found already? Let us know in the comments and have a great weekend. Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! adventurous music, howling wind, waves splashing, boat parts screeching and your footsteps on the deck. Only rarely these sounds will draw your attention, but without them? You would hardly ever feel like you are truly on board. Are you curious about how this extremely important, immersive and beautiful part of our beloved game is made? Meet Jan, our senior sound designer! Can you introduce yourself to our players? I've studied sound design at FAMU (Prague film school), and I work at Ylands for exactly 4 years now as this diary is released. What was your way into the Ylands team? The usual, I found an open position and we got in touch with the recruiter. Funny enough, I was still finishing my degree during the hiring process and then I started to work at Bohemia Interactive. Does sound in the Ylands game work the same way as in other games? There are specifics since Ylands is a procedurally generated game. There are no fixed levels. For example, whenever a biome is generated, specific ambient sounds are generated along with it. When do you create new sounds into the game? When a new asset is added like an item or an animal or when a new feature is designed it often requires some sound support or even a whole new set of sounds, like when the underwater world was updated in update 1.9. Of course, there are also trailers and big marketing videos that I work on. Often, I work on redesigning old sounds that feel outdated, I am doing my best so that all Ylands sound are fresh and updated. Definitely let me know in case you think some sound should be better or more real. What do you think is the main purpose of sound in Ylands? It definitely brings the procedurally generated world alive, also the support of emotional impact of the game is really important. Just remember the last time you have entered a cave. Are there any sound-based features that you created from scratch for Ylands? Editor game logics would be the biggest ones probably as they present the players with an opportunity to add their own midi tracks and a lot of other options to work with sound and music. In adventure the coolest sound feature would probably be the real time sound calculating of effects like reverb and echo, so when you are inside a building or a cave, everything starts to sound very differently than outside. What you like the most about game sound design in general? Definitely achieving immersivity and a lively feeling of the world. Just try to play Ylands without sounds once. It's also quite cool to be able to offer information to the players from any possible direction, like from behind, above or even below! Unlike the visuals which can provide information only in a specific angle. Thank you so much for your answers, Jan. Do you want to ask Jan anything or are you curious about sound in Ylands? Just ask in the comments or on our Discord and we will let you know his answer. Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders, Let's talk about your problems! More specifically how we deal with any issues or ideas you report to us. You usually contact us with three main things. QUESTIONS Questions are quite self-explanatory (pun intended). When you ask us about something, we answer. Obviously, we are not omniscient, sometimes we have to consult within the team what the correct answer is. I might be the Community Manager, but I don't know all the specifics and details about, say a programmer's work. SUGGESTIONS AND IDEAS These are also fairly simple. I just copy-paste them into a channel on our work Slack. Once every two weeks I go through all of the ideas, and we inspect them within the team. What features and suggestions are the most wanted? How complicated they are and how will they affect the gameplay and fit into our plans? Based on that (and much more) we decide on their priority and start the implementation! BUGS AND ISSUES Definitely the most complex things we communicate about. As I try to remind on our Discord (which you should definitely join) - always report issues through in-game feedback messages. See, to understand what really went wrong we need your "logs". Logs are note files filled with various information about your last game session. For example, it can tell us what went wrong before a game crashed, or that you can't place that one block in your house because there is an unfinished Blueprint somewhere underneath. When you send us an in-game feedback message logs are automatically included. Once I get the game report, I send it over to Quality Assurance team. They look at it and tell me whether it is a bug, a mistake or if something else is going on. Then I usually contact the player whether we are able to fix it soon or how they can get out of that buggy situation. With that said please do report any issues you run into and give us all the feedback and criticism you can. All of that helps us make our game better as many of your awesome ideas have made it into the game already! You can read about those HERE. 😊 The most frequent advice I give? Write /unstuck 0 in the chat! Stay Classy! Anna Community Manager

Ahoy Ylanders, 🏝️ we opted for more personal behind the scenes today. While we are at work, we are building Ylands together, whether that means programming, drawing jackals or designing new features, we will get back to these behind the scenes some other time. What we wanted to share with you today is what we fancy doing outside of working hours! TOP FIVE YLANDS DEVS HOBBIES 1 Videogames Booom, breathtaking, right? You will find literally any game genre among our favourites. There is even one person who is over 250 hours in the Baldurs Gate 3 right now (cca month after it is released). Just in case you need a proof. 2 Board games Among ordinary board games, there is a special spot for Magic the Gathering and Pen and Paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, but there is also occurence of miniature wargaming games like Warhammer. 3 Watching movies and series That would be the case when you wanna play a game, but you need to handle your popcorn instead of the "insert your preferable control device, we don't judge". Just kidding we love cinematography, some of us even studied it at the university. 4 Reading books and Sports Big battle for the fourth spot ended up... in a tie! There is decent amount of readers and sport enthusiats among us. Interestingly enough a lot of us likes to do both. Fun fact: we also have players of sports like curling or even quidditch! 5 Making music and visual art Funny enough, music and painting/drawing/ etc... are also in balance in the Ylands team. There is also a bunch of people like cosplayers, Rubic's cube solvers, slam poets, actors and, you would never guess this, hobby game developers! So that's us, come and meet some of us for example on our Discord. See you there and Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders, 🏝️ Have we already mentioned how we like getting your feedback? Well, just in case, we love it! What we really revel in though, is implementing your suggestions! Here are the most impactful and/or recent of those that are already in the game. Returning the first-person camera Inventory sort button Ghost pirates ARRGHHH! I for inventory - TAB for latest tab Bigger stack size for resources Clay found in Tropical region (yea, it's caves but they are totally tropical) Bag for ammo, pew pew! Expanding usage variety of some containers (bye bye seashell jar) More variety of blueprintable items Less oppressive fog and rainy weather occurrences reduced How do you like these changes so far, and how was Ylands life before these went live? Let us know in the comments or on our Discord What might come next? Whether it will be the next update or the one after that, we are always making sure to implement some of your ideas. These are next in the queue! Great return of clay to the starting yland. Suitcase! Finally, a proper inventory container for everyone's fashion desires. Aspiring lawyers and bureaucrats in the world of Ylands get ready, 'cause our eyes are set on the document folder inventory container! If you would like to see the muuuuch longer list of what you have suggested, take a look at this recent dev diary about that very topic HERE. Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! Here and there we notice that some of new adventurers are not quite sure what Ylands is about. TLDR; Ylands is an adventure game. Whether it's sailing the high seas, exploring diverse ylands and vast underwater world or fighting in dangerous caves, building exquisite ship-bases, experiencing the story, creating wonders in sandbox creative mode and scripting in editor it is all there. Of course, you can always resort to slowly chilling through your days while growing crops, taming animals and watching beautiful sunsets. Alone or with friends, the choice is yours. Since the forms and enjoyment of Ylands comes in so many forms, you just need to find your own, like other Ylanders! Read on and learn what they cherish the most! What Ylanders love on Ylands zenbubbha "Moving into my first "Castle in the Sky" is my most memorable experience. Because I thought: "Here's a game that really rewards creativity and experimentation yet is structured enough that those creations can be found, explored, and used by other players just like any original game asset." That's a rare balance." Thomas Lawrnece "I love to play the game with all the feature, from the exploration with its beautiful places and editor for building new things and experiment. I love the fact that all the people are not toxic but gentle, want to enjoy the game all together and help others, and kind devs who are in my opinion the best devs I've ever met." YoHasLEGO "...Islands were pretty far apart at that time (early access), and we did not have the view distance like we have now. Spending days at sea, not knowing if you'll ever find another island. Those were the true adventures. (...) Nowadays I like to spend most of my time building in the editor. Not for minigames and such, but rather builds that could be placed in adventure. Being able to use them in this infinite adventure world, really gives them a sense of purpose." spirit 2.2 "I stumbled on a multiplayer server called "World of Dreams: Journey to the 12 Kingdoms" that was created by Spyler and Christal and instantly became enamored of the effort they had put in the map. Here was a multiplayer server that had 12 ylands to explore, all with puzzles and monsters to defeat, and even the occasional boss monster. The structures they had created on these ylands were a sight to behold. It gave me inspiration knowing there was a lot more to the game than met the eye. The day I met Spyler and Christal and discovered a community of people that loved helping others is my most memorable experience, and I probably would not be playing the game these days if I had not discovered them." What you love about Ylands and what you like doing in the game? Let us know in the comments or on our Discord server! Stay Classy

Thank you so much for the feedback. I personally love the wallpaper/ very thin blocks idea, so cool. :3

Ahoy Ylanders! As you probably already know, we love implementing stuff you've suggested. You venture out there to the world of Ylands, exploring it and its laws and giving us hints and suggestions how to improve the world. That's the real adventure for us. Ultimately, we want to bring to this world one of the most community driven game of them all. Here is small part of the list of your suggestions, tips and ideas we haven't implemented yet. Of course, we have to have a list. Community Ideas Claiming more boats Avatar clothes and accessories More faces and hair Costumes for animals Vending machine to sell your items to other players Add body sizes for characters Candles that don't burn out Adjustable armor look Pick where to enter a map Pin recipe on screen Always showing compass Hold click until you fully mine a deposit Ride a horse together Possibility to eat while sitting Enabling growing mushrooms Float when jumping with an umbrella Portals to other ylands More sea creatures Flying on birds Baby animals More block variety Customizable flags and banners Night vision goggles Magic Improving ship combat Lakes and rivers Hunger bar Chinese and Indonesian languages Perk/Buffs you can learn Friendly NPC like residents and villagers and much more! We can't be more thankful for all these great tips. Yet, even though we barely scratched the surface here, in this case, more is simply more. That's why we wanted to ask you again what would you like to see in Ylands? Say anything! You never know what can find its way to our backlog. Maybe next time we can show you the list of your features that we already implemented! What do you think about that? Let us know in the comments if you would like to see dev diary like that. Thank you for reading, playing, feedbacking, suggesting and adventuring, Ylanders. You can send your ideas directly here to the comments or into #suggestions_and_ideas room on our Discord. Stay Classy!

Ahoy Ylanders! Last Friday was quite unique. For the very first time we, Ylands devs, were casually meeting up with our adventurers Stiegi and YoHasLEGO. They have been at the core of our community for quite some time, whether it's on discord, in the blueprint shop or on the C.A.G. server, you probably met them too! So how did it happen that we actually met up? There is a story, of course... This is not actually exactly how the story goes - it was much simpler. A few weeks ago, YoHasLEGO and Stiegi contacted Anna, our community manager, that they would be in Prague, where our HQ is located, and asked if we wanted to meet up. Of course we want to meet some of the most active community members, especially since they agreed to answer our questions in a proper game dev meeting while exploring, in true adventurer nature, the wonders of Czech cuisine. So we decided to share the meeting notes with you and give you a bit of an insight into the process featuring actual players! Community Meet Up Date: Aug 4, 2023 Atendees: YoHasLEGO Stiegi Anna ChoCho pYpse Nikki Patrik Prokop Mr. Fluffy Secretary: Nikki (I wish our Senior Producer was here, he takes the best notes) Goal: Get together, talk about Ylands, other games and life in general. Refreshments optional. Topic 1 - Ylands: Stiegi thinks it is the best game in the world and so does YoHasLEGO. They need some very specific piece of triangle building block. Design is taking notes on the specifics and will discuss them with Art. YoHasLEGO will follow up with us in more detail. We discussed the whole process of reacting to community ideas together and we didn't miss the opportunity to ask for specific feedback from our players face-to-face. Designers were asking about general and specific design ideas and followed up with questions about the direction of the game. Senior QA ChoCho and CM Anna were curious about bugs processing and if we are dealing with them to the players content, and Marketing was interested in conceptual topics such as understanding motivations, drives and player journeys and inquired about specific merchandise ideas and in-game items that players would like to see in the shop. NEXT STEPS: Ask community to react and feedback these points as well, right here in the comments. We will be happy to read your feedback. Topic 2 - Grabbing dinner: Adventurers are exploring new things practically non-stop, which is why YoHas had "svíčková" and Stiegi fried cheese, new dishes for both of them and true signature, authentic meals of the Czech cuisine. Along with that they both tried Kofola, which is a Czech herb-ish cola-type soda. For future reference: The Slovakian "halušky" is not a good choice at this particular establishment, go with the "svíčková" or fried cheese instead. Dessert was kindly provided by Stiegi's mum who made us Ylands themed cookies! Delicious, thank you! Topic 3 - Other games: Long discussion, since all of us are gamers and we love talking about all the games all the time. The discussion went on until quite late and this is where a Senior Producer would take much better notes because I got too invested in the debate and forgot to take any. ACTION ITEMS: Thank Stiegi and YoHasLEGO for their visit and cookies Wish them good luck in their studies closely related to Ylands in one way or another REMIND the community to join our Discord server to be able to chat with us even more often and more closely about Ylands! Prepare the next Dev Diary about the Community Ideas List Thank you for reading the notes and we'll be back next week! Stay Classy!

⭐ Highlights ⭐ Keep your data safe - you can use Google/Apple to store your progress even as a Guest Retain items after death adjustments - players will keep only important containers if they die Tutorial fixes - crafting, respawning and inaccurate images have been fixed Elmwood's Outpost and Crimson Shores fixes - cutscenes work after player reconnects FIXES [YLD-46821] Fixed: Players should no longer get stuck during the crafting tutorial if the pre-select the axe before the tutorial runs. [YLD-46951] Fixed: Capturing blueprint causes an exception in some cases and could not be captured. [YLD-46894] Fixed: Obsolete crossbow bolts cause Blueprints to not load properly. [YLD-45395] Fixed: Interactions that change an item inside an inventory container (e.g., lighting a torch in a toolbox) no longer break character control. [YLD-46905] Fixed: Sleeping pad should now be placed correctly when placing it for the second time in MP. [YLD-46171] Fixed: Mythical animals won't spawn in MP. [YLD-46817] Fixed: Custom camera watching player is shaking when player is moving. [YLD-46781] Fixed: Editor: Cut operation gets cancelled when you try to paste onto a ship via RMB context menu. [YLD-46626] Fixed: Custom Tools: UI aligned to screen edges is not aligned correctly. [YLD-46755] Fixed: Bigfoot were missing sound for charging animation and were using default horse sound. [YLD-46633] Fixed: Some Blueprint icons were incorrectly loaded [YLD-46846] Fixed: Could not update and edit blueprints properly [YLD-46799] Fixed: player should no longer gear or see air tank bubble particles above water - water splash sounds should not appear when npc or player appears in scene [YLD-46459] Fixed: Text bubbles above scribbled signs should be seen correctly now [YLD-46741] Fixed: Bronze hinge is now correctly destroyed [YLD-46767] Fixed : Piece of metal had two same recipes [YLD-46774] Fixed : Removed duplicated recipes for oriental roof blocks [YLD-46832] Fixed : Bronze helmet now yields correct drop [YLD-46783] Fixed : Removed duplicated recipes for some stone blocks [YLD-46834] Fixed : Coral recipes and sponge recipes were removed from game since they were not usable anyway [YLD-46770] Fixed: Bronze armor pants has no correct negative bonus on running [YLD-46859] Fixed: Player retain only those containers which do not drop content (ammo belt, toolbox, medical pack, key chain, potion holder) [YLD-46614] Fixed: Issues with camera when placing objects and moving [YLD-46872] Fixed: Workstations from 2.0 or older did not have their recipes updated properly [YLD-46617] Fixed: Various problems on Crimson shores story yland - should be much easier to see a falling star, fix some cutscene problems [YLD-46826] Fixed: Strings and incorrect images in hints in tutorial [YLD-46817] Fixed: Missing interpolation in custom camera focusing player [YLD-46912] Fixed: Editor: Fixed broken Custom HUD/Tools/Window with text field widget [YLD-46862] Fixed: Inventory sorting did not work properly with multiple same inventory containers [YLD-46821] Fixed: You could stuck during crafting of stone axe in tutorial CHANGES Creating new account window or changing existing has some tweaks, android and iOS users should have now easier login through their respective google/apple accounts. Steam users can buy shop assets even as guests. REMOVED [YLD-46873] Removed: Southern uniform was obsoleted

Ahoy Ylanders, My name is Patrik, and I am a marketing specialist for Ylands since March. I am chilling with Nikki and Anna in our new office, and you might remember me from our spring stream with Anna. As of today, I've spent almost 50 hours in Ylands Adventure mode, and I wanted to share with you the 5 things I wish I knew before I started playing. 1. Do NOT venture to more advanced Regions unprepared The first 10 hour of my gameplay? Well, those pretty much resembled DayZ. Trying to lure wolfs away from my loot box so I can quickly grab my stuff and ride away on my horse Rockyta. Why? Cause I thought it is a brilliant idea to skip Arid and sail to the Far East right away. I've never been so wrong. 2. Blueprints are super cool It's an understatement to say that I am a poor builder. Yet, once I discovered and understood Blueprints, the game instantly became 10 times more enjoyable for me and I started grinding resources to have some fancy ship to cruise the seas and to live in. Also, Blueprint workstation should be placed on land. Not in the water. Yes, even if you are building a ship. On the bright side, I drowned only twice. Or was it just a bad dream? 🤔 3. Reset specific ylands After I mined all the iron and cut down all the trees for the much needed first epic ship Blueprint, I felt ashamed. The look of the devastated land was simply, well, devastating. I felt like I destroyed the home of every living creature and that I need to be punished. Luckily, with a hit of a button, nature was nourishing once more, all the pain and devastation was gone, and all the resources were up for grabs again! btw. I didn't discover this tip on my own but thanks to 0utsiDer2522 and his cool giveaway video. The concept of which, as you might notice, I also kinda totally ripped off for this diary. Thanks Outsider! 4. Recipes are important I have spent almost 20 hours grinding the resources for a Blueprint I chose. Traveling to other regions to get access to the other ores and resources. All that just to figure out that the Blueprint I am building needs recipes that I do not own. Sadly, the ship is still left unfinished. Well, Random Encounters, here I come! 5. Ylands Wiki What the hack is Tubular Porifera, how to get my hands on some Devil's Teeth and what is needed to craft a Bear Bait? It's all there! With how complex of a game Ylands is, this is the true gold mine. All thanks to the one and only handofthesly, feel free to join and post correct Ylands info on your own! Link HERE. Oh! I almost forgot about this one, more sails = higher speed of the ship (not infinitely ofc). The hours I spent on a primitive ship sailing 1 knot per 6 days were excruciatingly long. Anyway, that's it from me. What would be your advice for starting players? Please let me know, since I need it. 😁 Stay Classy, adventurers, see you on our Discord server or directly in the game. - Patrik / Pogoer

⭐ Highlights ⭐ New Story yland is here! C.A.G. needs your help in the Arid region! Bringing peace, restoring the order and crafting dozens of straw hats, you know casual world saving stuff. As always, the supreme adventurer superstar Horacio Elmwood is looking forward to offering you a helping hand. Visit him at Elmwood's Outpost's ancient library where you saw him the last time and he will tell you more! Inventory sorting You asked, we delivered. Test our sorting with by hitting a single button. Pause the Ylands Developing the pause was paused for a while but it is finally on! Hit ESC to pause in singleplayer game. Retain some items after death Sometimes it can be very frustrating to step into a wrong neighborhood. So some of the most crucial items earned well deserved don't-fall-out-of-an-inventory protection. Recipes definitions improvements Unlocking new recipes should be way less overwhelming and will make so much more sense. New animals - Alpacas, Jackals and Coyotes Amazing, right?! Btw. did you know that internet claims that Alpacas are thought to have been domesticated more than 6 000 years ago? You should tame one too! Camera improvements (interpolation) Let's skip the technicalities and put it like this: Great performance improvement on high-end setups. Quality of Life improvements: Y2.1 - fog You couldn't see your hands in a fog? Well now you can! Hitting the waves was never so easy. Anchor will automatically rise when the player get in the control of the helm. Feel like selling your vessel for parts? Go for it. Ship hull can be deconstructed now if there is no other device/asset built on the ship. Mobil UX improvements The picking items area on the Mobile were enlarged. Deconstructing things is now way easier to find. Brand new icons for free camera and the building plan. Added descriptions for core progression items We noticed there are missing some important descriptions in inventory/crafting. So we added/changed 150 of them, give or take a few. Editor: Custom Tools Improvements Custom Tools can be assigned a keybind and played by pressing it. Game Logics of specific type can be spawned. Objects can be focused in the scene via a Custom Tool. An array of objects can be listed in the Object Explorer. External files can be read line by line once the path is selected. Label objects can be referenced in Custom Tools. Editor: Group Enhancements Groups can contain scripts just like other object types from now on. Added Group Label and Group Storage game logics to complement the already existing Group Template. Editor: Improvements Various improvements and fixes of the Editor and Visual Scripting, including: Character limits for various text fields are now set. All enums are now visible in the "Enums" subcategory. Various fixes of the new Document Switcher tool. For example, all variable type tiles are now shown when user searches for "variable". Using cut/paste on a function definition no longer removes function calls of that function in other objects. It is now possible to save blueprint with an Ylandium generator in it. All "entity" categories now display their name correctly. No custom tools now display "Add Script" button while already containing a script. Empty tile slot no longer substitues "NONE". It is now impossible to operate with tiles containing empty slots. Creating new scenario now generates correct terrain type. 🎨 New Assets 🎨 ITEMS Elephant Grass Blade Bronze Hinge Bronze Bow Bronze Crossbow Bronze Hammer Bronze Pick Bronze Saw Obsidian Armor set Crystal Backpack Lightsticks (purple, ghostly and orange) Flint Chunk PLANTS Elephant Grass Plant ACTORS Alpaca Emerald Scaleneck (Mythical Alpaca) Jackal Crimsonmane Hellhound (Mythical Jackal) Coyote Praire Ghosthound (Mythical Coyote) BUILDING Straw Roof Blocks Copper Caster Empty Sarcophagus Primitive Ladder Larger Ship Helms (Old Ship Helms were renamed to Small Ship Helms and new ones are 4 grid long so you can better center them upon ship halls) CHANGES: Iron Chisel is now decorative tool and is no longer used in any recipe. Stone Mortar is now decorative tool and is no longer used in any recipe. Ships and cars (hulls and chassis) can be now deconstructed. Armor no longer slow you down while swimming. Blueprint camera can now use free camera mode similar to building plans. Copper can be found in arid region now, clay was moved to Tropical Caves. Bamboo was moved from tropical to far east (it was replaced by elephant grass). Food was rebalanced with many food recipes moved to optional. The core food recipes were divided into several tiers, each tier dependant on specific workstation (campfire, stove, energy stove). The higher the tier, the better the bonuses. Hunger and saturation values were rebalanced as well. Character can survive for up to three days without food and food saturates the hunger much more efficiently with higher tiers. Piece of metal, piece of gold and glass shards are now only optional recipes and cannot be found casually in world, they were also removed from recipes. They are no longer dropped after breaking items (replaced depending on type of material to stone and ores). Energy items which required copper have changed recipes and require also zirconium stuff (cogs and such) for crafting. Torch is NO longer a weapon, but you can ignite it without inventory just by interaction in hand. Grain can be now placed into herb bag. Stepstones are now craftable. Animal rebalances - Deer should appear only in far east region, jackal appears in far east region and wolf is now only in taiga region (wolf stats were increased a bit), rabbit appears only in temperate region, coyote appears in temperate region, alpaca appears in taiga region, and arctic wolf appears only in polar region. Obsidian Saw recipe is now optional. Young versions of plants will only yield grass now. Algimer Blocks and Algimer Shapes lost their shading (they only have a blank white texture now). Many entities in the Inventory (Crafting and Cube) have now rotated preview so you can better recognize them (ship helms, chests, anchors, sails etc.). Rice and corn now yield grain upon breaking. Spinach and sorrell leaves can no longer be eaten. Any mushroom in recipes was changed to any edible mushroom to make more sense. Ship anchor behavior was changed. When a player grabs a ship helm of an anchored ship and attempts to move forward or backward, anchor is automatically raised up. When there are no players present on the ship, ship anchor automatically drops. Animal drops were rebalanced, also animal drops are now more needed for weapon and armor crafting. going from easiest tropical to polar it is (crab carapace, feather, scales, tooth, horn, magic dust, wool, claw, fur tuft and antler). Seashell Jar was changed Sealife jar and can contain many more entities (f.e.: Tubular Porifera, Kelp Fiber, Coral Pieces, Porous Sponge, Giant Spore, Hard Snail, Anemone Goo, Sea Urchin, Sea Urchin Spine, Oyster) Additions / Removed [YLD-35643] Added: New particles during interaction with oxygen harvester. [YLD-45620] Added: Send feedback button is now present in-game settings as well. [YLD-43895] Added: Editor: Script support by groups, group label and group storage game logic objects. [YLD-44784] Added: Editor: Show references to RMB context menu for selection which will show all objects connected with lines to current selection in Object Explorer. [YLD-44795] Added: Editor: Orbiting camera (alt + RMB hold). [YLD-45241] Added: Editor: You can now assign key binds to up to 10 custom tools. [YLD-45262] Added: Editor: "Search object type" option to RMB context menu for single object selection. [YLD-45432] Added: Editor: Collapse button for descriptions in properties. [YLD-45443] Added: Editor: Import tool button to Toolbox window. [YLD-45915] Added: Editor: New set of palette colors to Color picker window which has alpha set to 100% by default (no transparency). [YLD-46265] Added: Editor: "Show in explorer" button to object lists in properties window. (eg. filter all entities with target label in explorer). [YLD-43307] Added: VS: Playtest is now prevented when there are obvious errors in script. (eg. using number tile in place where vector is expected). [YLD-43880] Added: VS: New player event "On damage". [YLD-44348] Added: VS: Disable Hud script tiles now supports option "Status effect". [YLD-44488] Added: VS: Client Event listener: On Loaded Camera Faded In/Out. [YLD-44669] Added: VS: Get widget id script tile. [YLD-44696] Added: VS: You can now disable opening map. [YLD-44445] Added: VS: Enum to array now works also with custom enums. [YLD-44733] Added: VS: Get/set price to custom tools. [YLD-44734] Added: VS: Is <entity type> <class>, Get All Entity Types <class>, Get parent <class>, Gen children <class>. [YLD-44736] Added: VS: Spawn From Preview tile now can return spawned object. [YLD-44738] Added: VS: Get object id tile for custom tools. [YLD-44809] Added: VS: Get/set variables script tiles have now "Show" button in context window if they are used outside of their definition object. [YLD-44856] Added: VS: Dedicated Server Mode script tile. [YLD-44938] Added: VS: Delay function to client script. (be aware that save/load will cancel Delay triggered in client script). [YLD-45196] Added: VS: Send message tile which allows to send messages among objects in the same scope (server/client). [YLD-45347] Added: VS: Send message to client/server script tile variants accepting arguments as an array. [YLD-45489] Added: VS: Plus button to empty slots which helps to refill them again. [YLD-45869] Added: VS: Get/set value of data set working with numbers instead of names of columns/rows. [YLD-45876] Added: VS: Entity label script tiles to custom tool's scripts. [YLD-46004] Added: VS: To string <object> script tile. [YLD-44735] Added: Custom tools: Spawn game logic <game logic type> tile. [YLD-44737] Added: Custom tools: Focus Object/s script tiles. [YLD-45253] Added: Custom tools: Overlap sphere/block/capsule tiles with filter on object type. [YLD-45268] Added: Custom tools: Read all lines from file script tile. [YLD-45269] Added: Custom tools: Show in Object Explorer <array of objects>. [YLD-45417] Added: Custom tools: Get/set editor time. [YLD-45737] Added: Custom tools: Replace equipment script tile. Added: New resource icons for world map. Added: Player can now turn off BLUR effect during motion (sailing) in game video options (new option there). Added: New random encounters for three new mythical animals (alpaca, coyote and jackal). Added: You can now make doors in Adventure opened counter-clockwise from radial menu. [YLD-32493] Removed: VS: "Add to label" script tiles which were duplicates for "Attach label" Script tiles. Tweaked [YLD-44479] Tweaked: Three quests have suppressed unlock notifications now in order to reduce the visual clutter (they all get unlocked at the same time). [YLD-44880] Tweaked: Redeem code input field is now a button. [YLD-44962] Tweaked: PC only blueprints are no longer shown in mobile store. [YLD-45618] Tweaked: Inventory containers now have an icon in the inventory screen indicating they can be opened. [YLD-26449] Tweaked: VS: Adding new arguments to binary expressions will now prefill them with literals of correct type. [YLD-40638] Tweaked: VS: Added missing enums to enum category. [YLD-42599] Tweaked: VS: List of available script tiles in Controller's script. [YLD-43884] Tweaked: VS: New "Resistance type" tile added and replaces usage of "Damage type" in Get/Set resistance script tiles. [YLD-44268] Tweaked: VS: Cut and paste of custom function between 2 objects will now rewire calls of original functions to a new one. [YLD-44783] Tweaked: VS: When there is error inside Delay function you will now get also info about place from which was the delay function called. [YLD-44875] Tweaked: VS: When calling function expecting array of items of specific type and you provide array with objects of wrong types then you should get more info in error message now. [YLD-45548] Tweaked: VS: To prevent unwanted bugs it is now not possible to play test/export game with empty slots in scripts. [YLD-45566] Tweaked: VS: Script tiles used in Controller GL now do not have "Controller" as argument (only "THIS" script tile was valid there). [YLD-45617] Tweaked: VS: Individual enum tiles in menu palette now show enum names instead of default value names. [YLD-45775] Tweaked: VS: Get parent group <object> now supports Group, Entity and Game logic object as argument. [YLD-45941] Tweaked: VS: Any sound can be now used in Screen shake at script tile. [YLD-46205] Tweaked: VS: You can set type of local variable to types not available in target scope. [YLD-44523] Tweaked: Custom tools: Cancelling Progress screen in Tool mode now does not revert made changes. [YLD-44822] Tweaked: Custom tools: Improved performance when tool works with selection. [YLD-32433] Tweaked: Editor: "Ask player dialog" will not force answer text to be in upper case letters. [YLD-44474] Tweaked: Editor: When placing single entity with a light source in editor then the light source should be active. [YLD-44594] Tweaked: Editor: LMB click on one object when multiselection is active should now select that single object. [YLD-44612] Tweaked: Editor: Camera FOV is settable for all camera types. [YLD-44870] Tweaked: Editor: When there is an error in Custom tool's script then show Game log panel. [YLD-45492] Tweaked: Editor: Default text color for text widgets is now black. [YLD-46098] Tweaked: Editor: Game logic object added to preview of creator blueprints. [YLD-46101] Tweaked: Editor: Engines placed in editor are now fully charged. [YLD-46103] Tweaked: Editor: Current charge of engine is now settable with slider in engine's properties. [YLD-46151] Tweaked: Editor: Object explorer: Groups are now sorted by name. Tweaked: Adjusted source elements, no more Piece of Metal, Piece of Gold and Glass Shards dropped. Their recipes were now moved to decorative tools bundle. Tweaked: Algimer Blocks and Shapes change to blank texture. Tweaked: Armors no longer slow swimming. Tweaked: Changed default hit reactions to minimize unwanted shoulder movement. Tweaked: Hunger Rate slowed to 16,7 percent per Sandbox day (33.3% per Adventure day). Tweaked: Stone Mortar moved to Decorative Components and no longer needed for core crafting. Tweaked: Tags in crafting now reference adequate recipes. Tweaked: Decrease minimal Dig strength on Copper vein so that Obsidian pick can dig it. Tweaked: New camera interpolation - players with more than 40 FPS (and especially on monitor with higher refresh rate) should no longer experience LAGGY movement. Tweaked: Decrease minimal Dig strength on Copper vein so that Obsidian pick can dig it. Tweaked: All Atlantean encounters changed visual to look more like meerfolk buildings. Tweaked: Glass genesis task in diary now needs obsidian pick instead of obsidian saw. Tweaked: Energy age task is no longer triggered by copper ore or copper ingot (zirconium is used instead). Tweaked: Unearthed wonders task is no longer triggered by goat encounter. Tweaked: Honey Badger: Changed heavy attack to be more fierce, higher jump and in style with new combat design. Tweaked: Badger: Faster hit in Charge Attack without sliding. Tweaked: Badger: Light Attack without jump. Tweaked: Bear: Changed Heavy Attack to be lighter than Swipe (used former swipe animation as foundation). Tweaked: Bear: Changed Light Attack to paw slash + changed heavy attack to special attack. Tweaked: Big Cats: Heavy attack is 0,4 sec. (12 frames) shorter. Tweaked: Big Cats: Light attack is slower by 0,2 sec (7 frames). Tweaked: Big Cats: More readable swipe attack. Tweaked: Bigfoot: Retimed Heavy Attack, Special Attack and changed Charge attack to be different from Heavy. Tweaked: Brawler: Has arms higher to avoid clipping, charge attack different to heavy. Tweaked: Brawler: Weight of some vertexes for better body shape. Tweaked: Unlock biome popup has adjusted layouts, so that headers under ribbons would have more space for translated titles. FIXED [YLD-30819] Fixed: Pigment should be correctly consumed now and entity should be colored even when coloring animation does not finish. [YLD-39529] Fixed: An issue where players in the friends list would appear online even though they were actually offline. [YLD-44664] Fixed: "You are buying gifts for" text in the gifting label is not translated. [YLD-44682] Fixed: GenScript properties should have type handling equal to functions. [YLD-44743] Fixed: RE272 has a palm seedling that grows into a full tree on a table, exceeding all weight limits for the particular furniture. [YLD-44804] Fixed: Players still joining session cannot be kicked by AFK system now. [YLD-44973] Fixed: Trigger zones incorrectly interact with rotated box objects. [YLD-45129] Fixed: Cannon can be loaded from ammo belts. [YLD-45158] Fixed: Achievements: steam progress is not updating sometimes. [YLD-45250] Fixed: Player cannot get into clan. [YLD-45413] Fixed: When re-binding controls in the Settings screen while in-game, panels no longer trigger for specific bindings (e.g. TAB). [YLD-45472] Fixed: Lanterns and other items sometimes have wrong colors in their thumbnails after being colored. [YLD-45709] Fixed: Opening last edited script does not work for script of templated objects. (unfortunately the fix will reset last edited script in old saves). [YLD-45751] Fixed: Path editing: adding point to the end of path does not work. [YLD-45752] Fixed: Handbook events requiring players to craft items wouldn't trigger if the crafted item was dropped on the ground due to not enough space in inventory. [YLD-45752] Fixed: Programming: Crafting with full inventory doesn't complete tasks in Diary. [YLD-45776] Fixed: Pressing esc when placing blueprints doesn't remove blueprint preview. [YLD-45804] Fixed: Exception: +t ylands.SessionContext.get_World when joining custom scenario with more than 1 Player Role on RDS. [YLD-45925] Fixed: Some obsolete paintings are missing from the replacement offer at the Ros Bobb's stand. [YLD-46104] Fixed: Game with Player team GL does not work correctly when played on DS. [YLD-46211] Fixed: Only one detail panel (item / bundle) should now be visible at a time in the trading screen. [YLD-46361] Fixed: You cannot playtest games with Player teams with assigned Player roles in some cases. [YLD-31197] Fixed: VS: Add Particle VS naming convention. [YLD-42513] Fixed: VS: Character limits for variable/custom names are too big. [YLD-44128] Fixed: VS: Hair color name "beige" is not appropriate for the color (new name is "burgundy"). [YLD-44156] Fixed: VS: Script browsing history gets reset when reopening an object. [YLD-44268] Fixed: VS: Missing function after Undoing Cut and Paste of function from one object to another. [YLD-44271] Fixed: VS: Show bubble text's is not shown in player's chat messages. [YLD-44337] Fixed: VS: Destroying Reference point used in a rotation animator does not disable the rotation animator. [YLD-44350] Fixed: VS: Disabling "show radial menu" action hides also hints for Inventory/Handbook. [YLD-44482] Fixed: VS: Some script tiles in This category do not have "This" script tile prefilled in the first slot. [YLD-44155] Fixed: VS: Script Explorer object highlight is out of sync when switching with Previous/Next script. [YLD-44578] Fixed: VS: Custom enum with item named "default" (or another script keyword) breaks user script. [YLD-44695] Fixed: VS: Disabling and re-enabling console causes console messages to not show console window. [YLD-44812] Fixed: VS: Issues caused in script of spawned object did not have enough info to navigate a source of the issue. [YLD-44887] Fixed: VS: There is no correct error log when using wrong argument in Delay function. [YLD-44948] Fixed: VS: Templated objects with scripts are not listed in Script explorer. [YLD-44965] Fixed: VS: You get now internal error when entity spawned by script is immediately destroyed. [YLD-45326] Fixed: VS: On container withdraw event does not trigger when you equip an item directly from a container. [YLD-45491] Fixed: VS: Missing "Scope" argument for leader script tiles. [YLD-45889] Fixed: VS: You can not drag and drop "mobile touch" tiles to server script in SP only game. [YLD-46287] Fixed: VS: Enum to array does not work correctly in Custom tools. [YLD-46371] Fixed: VS: Functions with arguments of Entity/Game logic/Group array type does not work correctly. [YLD-42516] Fixed: Editor: Having 2 or more Custom control game logic objects does not work correctly. [YLD-43352] Fixed: Editor: Explorer filter dropdowns open outside the explorer tab. [YLD-43885] Fixed: Editor: Event listener with trigger object set to "Any entity" can trigger even if there is no trigger object. (eg. On damage (interaction between 2 entities) is triggered even if damage is caused by fall damage). [YLD-44267] Fixed: Editor: Cut and paste of objects now only moves cut objects. (so all in/out references persist). [YLD-44379] Fixed: Editor: Alt+asdw movement does not work correctly with child groups. [YLD-44526] Fixed: Editor: Enums of wrong type in GenScript do not show any error. [YLD-44576] Fixed: Editor: Set Look At object causes the object to be partially transparent as if too close. [YLD-44875] Fixed: Editor: Running custom tool on new map ignores some "wrong argument type" errors. [YLD-45132] Fixed: Editor: Undo for updating Global storages with newer version does not work correctly. [YLD-45232] Fixed: Editor: Custom Controls' right panel doesn't update properly. [YLD-45330] Fixed: Editor: Repositioning with Alt + ASDW does not work correctly in some cases. [YLD-45332] Fixed: Editor: There is missing text in Game settings for Global Ambient Sound. [YLD-45594] Fixed: Editor: Custom tools: undo does not work correctly when deleting equipment of NPCs. [YLD-45784] Fixed: Editor: Meaning of team friendly fire is opposite to the one expected. (new - friendly fire set to 1 now means that your team mate will take full damage). [YLD-45668] Fixed: Custom tools: Undo step for moving items from Player's inventory/equipment + chests + vehicles does not work correctly. [YLD-45718] Fixed: Custom tool's HUD UI is over default editor's UI. Fixed: /freecamera now works with mobile controls. Fixed: Replaced obsolete painting entities with functional ones in Painting vendor bundle. Fixed: Tutorial text typos. Fixed: Several blocks were missing in sets. Fixed: Editor: Ctrl+F focuses object's pivot instead of objects visual center. Fixed: VS: Delay tile is visible in client script which does not support Delay tile. Fixed: Seagull relay theta Mystery yland is back again. Fixed: Several building blocks were missing in recipe bundles, this should no longer be a problem.