Aleš Ulm

"talk about is the respawn after they die on a other Yland than where they started and need do the entire trip over again" @A3_Melle Yes, we watch those as well Just as I said - we have some future plans where the spawning scheme as it worked until now will make sense and will result in an interesting and fun gameplay but it needs some other features that are not in the game yet. At the same time we want for the players to have more controls over the game settings but it will, as well, come at a later date. We had a discussion about this and as a result, we decided for the time being to let players spawn at the yland where they died because we don't want the new players to get the wrong picture. To be honest I think that under normal circumstances the "punishment" for dying should really be more strict than running 50 meters back to where you died to get everything back because it takes away some of the thrill - but these are not the usual circumstances. Players can still die many times without being really responsible or without any chance of avoiding that - be it because of the bugs or still rather unbalanced combat. Also the navigation has a lot to be desired (although in few days you'll get your hands on a provisional GUI compass when sailing ships ) and because you still don't get to see other ylands in the distance, it can get quite difficult to find your way around. Because all of this it makes sense that we now make it easier for the players. At the same time, we'll still be working on some changes and improvements for future and I hope to share those with you soon. Thanks again for your feedback - it doesn't fall on deaf ears

Hi, thanks for the feedback (any is appreciated! :)). The truth is that while we are planning on expanding how the spawning works at this moment, in future we would also like to give players options to customize their games (Exploration included) experience much more which I think you will find interesting :).

Hey there, fellow ylanders! The “Countless Colors” have been released successfully so let me just quickly update you on what’s going on now and what is going to happen in the next few weeks. With less than two weeks before we hit Steam, we’re fully focused on fixing, tweaking and polishing. We already managed to fix some serious issues found in 0.6 as well as some that have been lurking around for a longer time. The feedback you’ve been providing us with is extremely valuable - we’ve even received lists of most annoying bugs from some of you and those are also taken into consideration as to what should be fixed next. It’s obvious that we won’t be able to fix everything before the Steam, especially since we can’t keep fixing bugs till the very last minute, upload the version to Steam and just hope for the best. The fixing will continue for several more days followed by yet another testing stage where only critical issues will be addressed and then, on Dec 1st we’ll release an update 0.6.1 containing mostly fixes. That for us will be “Steam Release Candidate”. We will be impatiently awaiting your additional feedback - unless some serious, critical issues are encountered, this exact version will be released several days later on Steam. "Countless Colors", the largest update released so far is now out there for everyone to enjoy With the game released on Steam we will also post information about what our plans for the whole Early Access stage (6-8 months) are that way you'll know what to expect in Ylands 1.0. A clear vision, a locked list of features and improvements that will be added to the game during this period will make it easier for us to meet the deadlines and for you to see how we progress and if there’s any delay. We honestly can’t wait to tell you what we have in store for you :). Before the end of the year, you can expect yet another small update (0.6.2) that will contain additional fixes and tweaks - things that won't make it into Steam Release Candidate as well as new ones that will very likely arise after the new players arrive. Let me thank you again for all the feedback and we’ll talk to you next week - until then you have a great time and stay classy!

Yes, the "sea legs" issue is annoying - we're already looking into it

Sorry about that one! It should already be fixed in the version you're playing - be sure to let us know if you still wouldn't be able to find those recipes.

There is one important information you mentioned - the new rubber trees are generated only on newly created ylands (= inside a newly created game). We understand that some of you may have put already a lot of effort into their current game worlds so if it is the case we could in the upcoming patch let you get some rubber tree seeds via specific console command. Would you find this helpful?

Unfortunatelly there's actually a lot of work to be done for DS to work correctly with 0.6 and Steam and since polishing the critical game bugs is now our top priority, we think it will become available shortly after the game has been released on Steam on Dec 6 and not before (also some time after that we'll start focusing on updating/reworking DS tools).

This (any other questions) will be answered in the post I mentioned - it should become available in an hour or two I will let you know in here as soon as it's been posted.

Actually, there's one more issue that needs to be addressed asap - we just became aware that formulas for the newly introduced padlocks may not show in the crafting panel. There will be a small hotfix coming out for this shortly.

Let me thank you again for all the feedback (it's more important now than ever before) and give you an update on the current situation * we are currently putting all the reported issues into our system (since it's all done in a single thread we won't be changing its name to show the issue number but if you ever needed to know under which number is a certain thing filed ask Ane and she will tell you) * later today we'll be making a post describing all the changes made to the tech-tree and what it means for you (we'll provide the link in here) * for Dedicated Server Beta to work properly with this Steam version some things need to be addressed first and it's quite likely that the updated version will be available shortly after the game released on Steam and not before that since now we're focusing mostly on bug fixing * absolute priority fixes for us currently are: - Dedicated servers crashing with players unable to log in - Adding ways for players to easily return to servers where they played via MP Lobby - MP games getting unplayable as soon as ships come to play We plan to release a large patch on 29.11. (releasing one sooner would mean a lot of additional time spent on closing it down and putting it to test at the cost of bug fixing) which should contain these fixes (obviously along with dozens of others - it's time the jumping sharks finally started to behave ) - that will basically be a Steam release candidate for us. Please note that in the upcoming days we will be working extremely hard so the communication from other people than Ane may be rather sparse and you may get some answers with some small delay. If you encounter any additional bugs we will very grateful if you report them to us.

Thanks a lot for all the feedback! On Monday we'll post some more explanations and answer all your questions left unanswered so far. Please keep the feedback coming (for those who haven't found out yet - Adrie has already started a special thread for that here (thanks!), but reporting anywhere on forum will get the job done as well ) - we now have a less than three weeks to polish the game enough to enter the Early Access in as good shape as possible

Damn, you're fast.... Thanks! As you can tell the update should be out rather soon EDIT: ha! Ane seems to have much shorter reaction time than Ido

Hey there, fellow ylanders! If everything goes right, you’re about one week from getting your hands on the very large, highly anticipated update 0.6 Countless Colors. A lot of effort went into it and we are really looking forward to getting as much feedback from you as possible. But now I’d like to take this opportunity to address something else. I want to talk about what we have in store for you, who have helped us evolve into what we feel can now be shared with the general public on Steam. Those of you who have been with us for a longer time have already noticed that for us talking to our community is very important. But just talking wouldn’t be worth much if we weren’t acting based on what you tell us - and because a great number of features and tweaks added to the game were both directly or indirectly based on your feedback I believe we’re doing this right. We’re not right every single time, though. We’ve made our share of mistakes and, to be honest, I think we’re very likely to do some in the future as well. But I truly believe that as long as we’re owning up to them, make sure not to repeat those we already made and stay honest with the community, those mistakes are simply a part of the creative process and in the end will help us make the game better. We’ve said several times already that the best is still to come, that we’re basically just starting. Soon we’ll enter Steam Early Access and later next year we'll get to Ylands 1.0, which for us means a solid, polished version, as bug-free as possible, that will be a foundation for many great updates to come. Getting to this moment wasn’t always easy but together we made it through and we want you to know that we are very grateful for that. We, however, believe you deserve more than simple thanks. We want to give you something to make you understand what your support - in times where the game was nothing like it is now - meant to us. You probably know that in this update we’re introducing the Ylands store, a place where you’ll be able to buy things with our in-game currency, the “coyns.” Right now it’s still in a sort of experimental state, with only a specific, small amount of content available - we plan on testing it intensively and to listen to your feedback. I’m mentioning this because the introduction of coyns has also given us yet another option to reward players and so we’ve decided to use this as one way of showing our appreciation of your loyalty. Every one of you who has bought Ylands up until this moment will, when we get to Steam, get coyns worth roughly 45 USD. You can spend them now or keep them for later - it's obviously up to you. Speaking of money... we just have to show you this twin-engine security van beauty But we don’t want to show our gratitude with just money - honestly we believe that there are more important things than that and so in the future you will also receive a certain pet that no one else will ever be able to obtain, and that will forever mark you as the ones who helped us getting this game started. Also, on our forums, you will get a special badge so that even there everyone recognizes you as the one that belongs to a rather small and elite group of Ylands players - a true pioneer ylander. We sincerely hope you’ll like this and that you’ll stay with us so that together we can keep improving Ylands for many years to come. If you feel like helping us a bit more, you might want to post a review on Steam once we get released there - letting potential players know what to expect will be very important at that point. Thank you again and as always... you stay classy, ylanders!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! This Sneak Peek will be rather short but there’s a good reason for that. November is here and with the 0.6 Countless Colors update around the corner we’re extremely busy testing everything works as it's supposed to. Let me use this post to summarize the most important features you’ll get with this update, which is probably the largest we’ve done so far. * Firstly the new painting system that lets you change the color of most of the assets in the game with the exception of flora (that should come in the game rather soon) and terrain (for that the terrain system first needs to undergo a massive rewrite) * Special containers like herb pouch and key chain, that you can craft, keep in your inventory and use to store things like herbs, keys and many others * Padlocks - both ones with keys and those that use codes or passwords - that can be used to lock many interactive objects in-game including ships and cars * Many improved animations and a new character control system. Actually, an extreme amount of effort went into this. Not only the character feels more responsive now, but the system is now clean and open for many cool future improvements Clean wall... check. Paintgun ready... check. No one around... check. Art, here I go!! * New interactive ambient audio system. When you hear raindrops hitting large palm leaves right next to you for the first time you’ll understand * New GUI sounds * Enhancement to Editor scripting. We’re introducing something that will let you keep track of your game progress, create car races and similar games. It may not sound like much but this feature takes possible interactions to the next level. * Cosmetics store. The first iteration of the Cosmetics store is filled with first items so that we can test it. * The first iteration of the new radial menu that lets you quickly access new emotes and tools like Terraformer or the newly introduced Paintgun * Improved crafting “tech tree” * New, more advanced MP list screen * Tons of fixes and tweaks And that's it - it's quite a lot, right? I’ll see you next week in a special Dev Diary where I’ll talk about what we have in store for you, who have helped us get where we are right now Until then - have a great time and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Firstly let me mention Dedicated Servers. Originally we wanted to start discussing those this week but other things got in the way, so we‘ll start next week (around Wednesday). We‘ll start a specific thread where we will post our analysis of the current state and what we consider our goals. It would be nice to get as much feedback on that as possible - features you think are important and which we might have missed, ones that you consider most critical and those which can be added at a later date... We will provide you with a link where those interested will find the DS to play with - but as I already said in the previous posts, do not expect any improvements in this build since we‘re still fully focused on polishing Ylands for the Steam release. We will let you know as soon as the work on DS starts and we're fully focused on it - at that point, we‘ll proceed based on your feedback and will keep you informed about our progress. So what‘s new with the painting system? Well, Countless Colors is shaping up to be one of the best updates to this date. For example, have I told you that you can paint animals? Obviously, there will be some limits - for example, you probably wouldn‘t like to find your own horse painted blue by someone else after getting back to the game, right? On the other hand - if your idea of a perfect world is having a Barbie-like pink house surrounded by wild pink horses who are we to say "no" to you? Something tells me you don't meet animals like these quite often in your world... Also, there‘s another new feature we‘re testing - a context radial menu. We really need that for a lot of things; many important features and actions are now hidden under obscure keys, which are difficult to find when playing with mouse/keyboard combo... and impossible to use when using a gamepad which the menu will solve. For example, emotes will be removed from F-keys, where they are now by default, and will become accessible via the radial menu (you will still be able to bind emotes to any keys you like, though). The radial menu will be set up in such way that getting to often used features will be easy and fast and it will even let us use previews, which come handy especially for things like the mentioned emotes. Also, as we keep adding more sophisticated items in the game, we feel that some of those could allow for more interactions than is now possible, and one way of solving that would be to contextually put some of the lesser used interactions in the radial menu (with a proper indication that such an extra object interaction can be found in it). In general, we feel that the contextual radial menu will have a very positive influence on how user-friendly controlling the game is. Even though some features may come at a later time, the first iteration of the radial menu is planned for the upcoming update. So that‘s it for now. Next time we‘re going to talk a bit about what we plan to do so that combat becomes more fun. Until then you have a great time and stay classy!

Short answer is no - actually what we call painting is closer to "color switching" - I think you'll understand more when you try it because it's not that easy to explain this in words. Each object can have up to three areas (channels) defined that contain colors that you can change. For example grey stone block has one channel - if you paint it red, it will - as a whole - turn red. Armors may have parts that can be colored and three zones where you can change the color. Coloring only one side of a block is not possible - technically that is basically painting only some of the polygons. While this would be technically possible it is far from trivial (both because of amount of data to store/send, the need for very precise controls etc.) if it is implemented it will be in rather distant future.

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today I’d like to talk about a very, very sad moment that - sooner or later - comes to everyone. The moment when your avatar dies. The death of your beloved low poly guy or girl can be handled differently in various Ylands games, but now I’m going to shed a bit of light on what our plans are for the Explore game. I’ve briefly touched this subject before but there have been some changes since then, and with this getting implemented rather soon it would be good to talk about details. We see every Explore game that you start as one long-lasting adventure (which would, eventually, become way longer, but more about that at some other time ) where various characters are washed ashore on desert ylands. They explore, create, fight... and die, and at that point, a new character arrives at the yland to continue in their predecessor’s footsteps. This is actually what “respawning” means to us in this context and we are making some changes so that this cycle is more apparent to you, the players. Eventually, we even want to create something like a storybook that would map the history of your game. You would see all the characters that came to the yland. You will be able to read about their successes and failures. About their deaths and about those who came after them and grand things those achieved. Your game itself will become a story. When you die you will be able to continue only as a new character. You will once again choose the avatar’s name and visuals - but with the last character’s values already preset so those who prefer not to change anything can just hit a button and they will be good to go. You will appear in the game equipped in the similar way as if this was your first time - but with a few extra items. The most notable is the Testament - a piece of paper stating that your previous character, in case of their death, bequeaths some of their belongings to the new you. This way you will still know all the formulas you’ve learned, all the animals you tamed will recognize you as their owner etc. Keys and maps that were in the now-dead character’s possession don’t drop with other items for others to loot, but are transferred to your new avatar instead. This will prevent other players from easily taking control over things you spent tens of hours putting together. The world of Ylands isn't really that dangerous... but sometimes you're just in the wrong place, at the wrong time We understand that removing some items from the loot isn't very realistic and it is our goal to put as much realism in the game as possible. We want you to know how things work when you first see them. We want to meet your expectations so that when you can’t light a fire in a pouring rain you understand why that is or that you aren’t surprised when your character doesn’t do very well when running naked in a blizzard. This is the kind of realism that is very important to us. On the other hand, there are some situations where we (when out of other options) opt to take a less realistic way - mostly in situations where actions do not have the discouraging consequences as in the real life. In a game, building something nice can take a lot of time, while killing someone and taking their stuff is very easy and usually goes without punishment. While we think that losing some items when being killed or robbed is fair - having someone with nothing to lose try killing you over and over again until they succeed and take your house or a ship (or who just happens to be near you when you get killed by a predator) is something that needs to be addressed. We understand, though, that not everyone wants the game to be this safe and that is fine as well. In the future, we want, in general, to give players more control over how Explore is played. We believe that everyone should be able to set up the difficulty as they see fit - from simple changes like deciding if some items can be carried over o the new character or not, to setting up the ultimate permadeath mode. For now, as a default, we chose to make sure that dying is “punished” only by dropping the items carried with only some very specific exceptions. If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask them here - otherwise, we'll talk again the next Friday. Until then - you stay classy and have a great time!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Let’s talk about what happened this week at our offices. Firstly we created a thread that we would like to use to inform you about the current state of the Dedicated Server support (DS), our progress and where we can discuss its development. Since the time when we focus primarily on DS is still some weeks away, it contains rather general information only about the first steps we intend to take and will be expanded later - your ideas, though, are welcome at any time :). The thread can be found here. Currently, we’re finalizing several features at once. The padlocks (both lockable with locks and codes or passwords/phrases) are working great and so are the special containers you will be able to craft and carry in your inventory. Specific objects will be placed inside those automatically (or manually), making the inventory more organized and spacious. We believe Herb bags, Keychains, Seed packet boxes, Material containers and others will make dealing with items much more straightforward and fun. So no more going through all your keys to find the right one - just use the keychain on the locked door and it’s done! Teaser alert! Meet us or your friends on this brand new yland once we're released on Steam! The painting system is almost finished - now we’re mostly figuring out how to make the controls and feedback as user-friendly as possible while doing some balancing as well (basically where can you get pigments from, how many you need etc.). New character controls are almost ready as well and controlling the avatar now feels way better than before. The radial menu is coming along quite nicely - right now we’re doing tests about how effective it would be to control terraformer options through it and the results are quite promising :). There are also two or three more features that are pretty much finished as well but I’ll tell you more about those in the next Sneak Peek! Until then you have a great time and stay classy!

Good point! Actually, I will be talking about this (along with other things) in this week's Sneak Peek so stay tuned!

@A3_Melle Each of those will take up one inventory slot (you can have more than one of those) - what you mean is that "equipping" one of them would keep it separate from other things in the inventory and prevent you from accidentally dropping those? If that is your concern I can see how we could make some critical objects (like a keychain) popup a confirmation window whenever you try to remove it from your inventory. In (probably 0.7) we're planning on improving the concept of those bags even further - for example by letting players quickly access objects from the bags they have in hotbar without actually having to enter inventory etc. We're also experimenting with accessing most commonly used item from the newly introduced radial menu (not sure if this radial menu feature will make it to 0.6). Yes, we are very happy with how padlocks work at this moment but we're looking forward to feedback we get when players actually start using them :).

Hm, it seems we fixed only some of the circumstances where this happens (our QA wasn't able to reproduce it anymore with the fix applied). Unfortunately, this can happen when, as stated in the changelog, the fix is actually more of a temporary hack applied before a solid, proper solution is introduced (and that takes time since this issue is actually a bit tricky to solve). Nevertheless - thanks for the report. We'll keep looking into that, let you know how we proceed and get rid of that shark menace as soon as possible!

@BigBoss87 We still need to do some tests to see what would work well with the menu. I'm not sure if we end up using it even with crafting at some point (in fact, the menu is not meant to duplicate those existing controls that work well and can already be accessed without much effort) but what I meant when I mentioned interacting with objects were situations, where you're focusing an item that can have several possible interactions (for example armed bear trap can be both armed and picked up ). The current controls are not very good at handling these situations but the radial menu would let you access some of the additional interactions with ease. Also since I mentioned emotes (short animations like waving, dancing etc.) - imagine that you have 20 or 30 of those and want to find and use a specific one fast - using the menu with previews will help you with that. We are considering letting players quickly toggle pieces of equipment via this menu (like a turning on/off a headlight on a helmet without having to go to that item's detailed view etc.). There's really a lot it can be used for. @WijkagentAdrie Speaking of huge tasks - this was a huge task for our artists as well since they had to manually adjust most of our several thousand assets to make them work properly with the new painting system (but even they agree it was worth it ).

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Before we get to discuss cool features that you can expect to see in the game in the future, let me first touch two specific topics. Initially, we planned to release the game at the end of November but it will actually happen in early December. This is more of a marketing decision (you‘ll understand why when we get there) and it has nothing to do with the current state of the game. Also, don‘t mistake this with the release of the Countless Colors update, which will happen in November. So, if you own the game already this doesn‘t really affect you - just don‘t be surprised if you see that the Steam release date changed to December Also, some time ago we talked about Dedicated servers and what we planned for them. We didn‘t put it aside and forgot about it - next week we‘re going to tell you more about what we‘re going to do, how is the public beta going to work and how, if you feel like it, you will be able to help us with that. Now let‘s get to game features. For some time now we have been going over our „tech tree“, analyzed what it lacks, which workstations work, which feel unnecessary and which we are missing. We revised ways of creating certain objects, particular ingredients, and their necessity. Based on that we did some changes to the tech tree, which you will experience in the upcoming update. While many changes won‘t be visible right away, we believe we managed to improve the overall crafting experience. The formulas have also been divided into several tiers (or „eras“), which will allow for a better filtering and easier orientation. What we feel still needs to be done in order for the crafting to be really good is to rework workstation GUIs that are still more of placeholders than a real thing and do some adjustments to the crafting panel. Once the energy barrier generator is added to the game, your cozy rooms will be safe from griefers. Courtesy of Adrie We proceed with designing the energy barrier generator that you will be able to use to protect your house etc. Currently, in Explore we see it working in the following way - you will start with a portable type of this generator which, unfortunately, got damaged as your ship crashed. The energy bits are intact but you‘ll need to fix some mechanical parts. For that you will have to create some iron parts, meaning that you will have to play for some time in order to make it work. Once it‘s fixed, you will be able to place it and turn it on. From that moment other players won‘t be able to destroy, build, terraform or paint inside of the created barrier (its exact size still needs to be decided). However, there will be a way to overcome these limits for those you consider worthy. Please note that the barrier won‘t protect you from being attacked, your items from being stolen etc. If at some point you create a better house at a different location, you‘ll simply shut the generator down and take it with you wherever it‘s needed. Later in the game, you will be able to create generators like this (and even more powerful), but be warned that creating those will be anything but easy. And speaking of securing your things - we can now confirm that in addition to the usual padlock, in the upcoming update even those that use codes or passwords will be available. And that‘s about it for now. We‘ll be looking forward to talking to you in a week - until then you have a great time and stay classy, ylanders!

You made a very good point with cars - we've already discussed that we're gonna some need large doors so that players can build garages and you're also right about the ships being a bit trickier to protect. The easiest way of protecting your ship that comes to mind is building your house next to a pier where your ship would be stationed so that they are both in the zone covered by the generator. That is something that will definitely be possible - but it is obviously problematic in several aspects. You'd have to make sure that you returned your ship there every single time before logging off etc. Placing the generator on the ship itself would solve that but having mobile generators brings up other issues - especially the problem with two (or more generators) overlapping which, if not handled properly, could lead to it becoming exploits. One of the possible ways of solving most of those issues that comes to mind would be to say that while a generator placed on a solid surface creates a zone, the one placed on a vehicle affects only the vehicle itself (all the blocks and items connected in any way to hull/chassis but not the space around it). That being said we still have to look into mobile generators more.

This would probably require a longer explanation (and there will probably be one as a part of some future Dev Diary) but to make the long story short: yes, the game should be more optimized :). There's still a lot of things we can do on our side (some of them quite major) plus the Unity engine itself is getting more efficient performance-wise. My rough estimate is that we will be able to tell where the actual limits lie after the most of the planned optimizations are finished which should be in about six months or so (definitely before the game comes out of Early Access).