Aleš Ulm

Well, hi there, ylander! If you want to create your own game in Ylands, this post, done in a form of Frequently asked questions, will help you with your first steps. If you need information, you can always head over to Ylands Wiki or ask here at the forum. General questions How can I ... create my own game? Games are created in the Editor - you can access that from the main game menu. Once there, you can start creating your world - or you can chose to start with a different map by selecting whatever you like under Editor/New. ... make games for PC / mobiles? How are they different? From the Editor the games can be exported either as PC or Universal (Game Settings / Common Settings). PC games can be played on PC only - those can be larger, support features like real-time terrain modification. Universal games can be played both on PC and mobile devices and because of that you need to pay attention to the limitations (the most obvious is that they support MUCH smaller terrain). It's important to decide what platforms will your game support before you put too much effort into it. Please note that the Editor is by default setup to export Universal games - that only a quite limited area is available to you to build in. ... share my game with others? Others can see and play your game when you export it from the Editor, upload it to workshop (simply by going to workshop.ylands.com, logging in and in "Your creations" press "Add creation") and make it public. Based on what kind of game that is (PC/Universal) players will be able to see it on PC or mobile platforms. ... test my game? When testing game in single-player is enough, you can simply run your game in the editor by pressing F5 (or, if you just want to run or fly around the character mode enabled via O may be enough). If you want to test the game in multiplayer mode, you will have to export the game locally and host it in Peer 2 Peer mode so that your friends can join you. Information on how to make a local export can be found here (Wiki) ... earn Coyns with my game? Please see the monetization section below. Game genre How can I ... create game genre XYZ? Is it even possible? Ylands is very flexible when it comes to creating your own games. The better your understanding of Visual Scripting is the more complex projects you can make. You can already work with various types of cameras (third-person, first-person, overhead, side-scroller - or define your own) and switch among them in run-time. You can control a character, drive a car, steer a ship. You can run, jump, fly, dive - you can do pretty much anything. You have a simple and intuitive UI editor at your disposal so you can do anything from ingame UI to games made completely from UI elements. ... will XYZ be possible later? What are your plans? What is not currently possible and remains to be added in one of the future updates, is the ability to click into scene and process the result, so some specific types of games can be tricky to create. We are aware of that and will be providing a way of doing that in future. Game world How can I ... create a new game world? What types are there? When you open a brand new world in your Editor, you can start editing literally on green field - but you can also go to Editor/New and have the Editor create "Empty map" - if you want to start building out of nothing "Flat map" - the default map consisting of nothing but flat terrain "Sea map" - map consisting of sea surface "Sandbox map" - there you can setup one specific yland in the sea "Exploration map" - this will create several ylands, a map similar to which you can experience when playing Exploration. Please note, that unlike Exploration map the ylands here are of the same tier and there are no Random encounters present. ... how do I add existing objects? There are well over 5000 objects of various types of objects you can place in your game. Those object can also be painted which gives you even more variants. Just take a look under "Add entity". If you can't find something by browsing the categories, try searching via search field. ... how do I create new objects? In Ylands you can build large objects from smaller ones. Build your house with bricks and breams... or chocolate blocks. Or cheese. Create new objects by visually combining other ones. Take a look what amazing things has the community achieved already. ... how do I group objects? Because objects in Ylands are often consisting of many smaller ones, it's important to group objects so that it's easier to work with them. Just select objects you want to be contained in the group and hit Create Group. You can also add existing object to existing group or select Edit Group if you want to operate with its objects without having to break to group. If you want to select a single object from the group and access its properties, double click it while holding Alt. ... how do I optimize my worlds? If you want your worlds to run as smooth as possible, you may want to start thinking about some simple optimization steps you can take when your structures become large and more complex. The obvious step is to use as little blocks as possible. If instead of four blocks you can use one larger, in the end you can save a great number of performance. When you know some of your structures are finished, you can "weld" them. This process can be reversed at any time, but when you're working with a lot of entities (especially buildings made out of lots of blocks). When you weld objects together, they basically become one and because of that they even react as one in the game. So if you weld together a whole wall, you won't be able to destruct single bricks - but that is often not necessary. In the end it's up to you to decide what entities (or their parts) you want to leave unwelded. Game world - interaction How do I ... decide where my character spawns? Where your character appears when the game starts is based on the position of Spawn point Game Logic object - it is already present in the world when you open a new one in the Editor. If , for example, you wanted for players to spawn at various places based on some logic, you could use Player Role Game Logic objects (which can even be divided among various Player Teams represented as well by specific Game Logic objects). With those you could define various "roles" and have them spawn at various spawn points. Or you can simply use the event OnPlayerSpawn present in the Spawn point and move the spawned player whenever you want to. ... select what my character wears / has in the inventory? Usually you want your character to start with some clothes equipped, maybe with a thing or two in their inventory or in their hands. This is where we also used the already mentioned Player Role Game Logic object. Put one in the game, set it up as you see fit and assign a Spawn point to it. Aaaand that's it! Of course you can change player's equipment or inventory from script, so you can do it as well in the script after the character is spawned - or any time later, like making a character fully equipped when they enter arena and so on. ... choose what kind of camera is used? If you decide to use a different kind of camera, all you have to do is place a Custom Camera Game Logic object into the world and set it to the camera type you wish to use. If you set this camera as "default" (and keep this Game Logic object enabled), after you start your game this camera will be active. You can have more than one custom camera in your world (you can have many of them) and switch among them via Visual Script. You can, for example, have static cameras and activate them as players step into specific Trigger zones. ... make the game do something? How do I script? Now this is where things get interesting. Every game object can have various scripts attached. Based on its type it possesses various events which are called on various occasions. So Trigger Zone has OnTriggerEntered which is called when something enters this zone. The script tiles attached to this event are run one by one as soon as this event occurs. For more information on scripting go here (Wiki) ... I adjust my world's rules? Some of the world rules (like no player-to-player damage) can be set, when you starting a new game. If you want to do something more specific, you can do it again from the Visual Script. Just pick an entity and in one of its event (for example OnGameStart) set everything you want. You can have world when time is always set to a specific hour and never changes. World where it always snows or rains. There is so much you can set! And all this doesn't have to be constant. You can adjust your world once or continuously. You can do it based on a timer or when a player does something. This is all up to you. Protected vs unprotected games What is ... unprotected game? If game in workshop is set to be protected, it never gets downloaded into players machine and it cannot be played locally. The only way how to play such a game is by joining our official server or renting private server and placing the game there. This is the only way how to protect user made games from simply copying their content and how to secure possible coyn transactions and persistent save data. Please note, that any game with either monetization or persistent save data is automatically set to be protected. ... unprotected game? Unprotected game can be played on servers, but it can also be downloaded from workshop into players machine. User then can start local session of that game using for example peer to peer multiplayer. Unprotected game in workshop can possibly reach wider audience, but since it cannot contain monetization or persistent save data, it's more suitable for freeware games where creator doesn't care what people do with his creation. Monetization How do I ... get coyns from those who play my game? When other players play your game, you can charge them by using Visual Scripting. What will be paid in your game is totally up to you - you can create your own store and sell items, make players pay to enter a certain part of game, to unlock a specific feature and many others. For every possible purchase place a Transaction Game Logic in your world, enable it via Visual Script when needed and then evaluate the resulting events. ... find out what transaction have been processed in my game? You can get a list of all the transaction made in your game scenario_id in the last number_of_days days by executing this in the console: /gettransactions scenario_id number_of_days or /gettransactions asset_id number_of_days While finding out what scenario_id your game has is a bit tricky at this point (we're working on that) what asset_id it has can be found by opening the details of the game at Ylands Workshop and looking at the end of the www address. You will see something like workshop.ylands.com/asset/XXXX, where XXXX is the asset_id. The results will be save as TransactionList.csv into the game folder. You can use this info to analyze your transactions and you can also localize transaction id for any transaction that you want to refund. ... refund player coyns they spend on some transaction if there was a problem? If there is a problem with some of the transactions (usually resulting in player paying the coyns but not getting what they expected) they can report this to the creator, because the creator is always best suited to fixed (if a solution can't be found, players can always contact us). The creator can refund all the coyns players have paid. To do so, if the transaction isn't older than 7 days, it can be refunded via the following command /refundtransaction transaction_id Miscellaneous How do I ... get feedback from those who play my game? When players feel they need to report anything to the game creator, they can do it via the screen accessible from within the Ingame Menu. Those reports are sent directly to the email the creator provided when creating the account. Those emails have standardized Subject and are sent from a single address so that they can be easily managed with some sort of filter. Please be aware that if a player wants the creator to reply, they need to provide an email address.

You should be able to find the ore at least in the caves but we are currently receiving other reports of ore not being present so it can be a bug and we will look into it first thing on Monday. Thanks for your feedback!

When we disable items - either temporarily or for good, we just disable them so that they are not visible in the cube, the Editor and can't be crafted - this happened to repair kits as well. But those items stay in the older games. More than 7 games: there are indeed fewer ylands now, but they are more different. Have a great weekend everyone!

We are discussing possible implementation of some kind of fauna regeneration. If we decide not to do it or it will be planned in distant future, some way of getting wood directly from trees will make it back, but in some limited form. Repair kits have been removed because tools and armors are not getting damaged anymore. The system behind this wasn't well designed so we removed it before 1.0. We believe this doesn't have that much impact on the gameplay but we will be monitoring players' feedback.

@Indomitus Yes, this was removed. The way how you could get infinite amount of wood this way felt inconsistent with other game mechanics and would cause very likely some problems in future. Thanks for pointing it out, I will update the changelog

@bojo2736 Sure, not having to support private dedicated servers solves some problems for us, but really there's no "you and us". If we don't manage to create an ecosystem that works, is easy to manage, where great games are created and played, Exploration continuously expanded and improved, and, of course, a system that creates a revenue, then, obviously, we all lose. I'm sorry, but I don't see things the same way you do when it comes to the current state of the game (but I'm talking about the version we have now, not 0.14 ) . I don't think the game is "dying with every improvement". Actually I believe the game is in MUCH better shape then ever before (it may not be obvious from this beta, since you can't access a lot of things, but I think it will be obvious when 1.0 comes out). Every feature we've added in the past year was crucial for the game's success - more tools for creators, social features, so that players can play and communicate together and more. Unfortunately, you're right that we also had to take some unpopular steps. We didn't manage to make the water work correctly and efficiently so we removed it temporarily. The same goes for FPS camera. Those (and few more) are obviously areas where we failed to certain extent but we believe that when the game is released it's important to only have features present that work correctly. I know that you and many other current players wouldn't probably mind having those even if they are not perfect, be we need to be prepared for the influx of new players who are unforgiving and expect certain level of quality. I'm sorry for such a long reply but there's really no other way of making things better than to bombard us with the bugs you experience and keep providing feedback. It's just like I said - for now we've believe we fixed the issues that caused slowing down instability in servers based on reports we got. If we get more, we'll fix it as well. If you knew how many bugs we fixed just in the past two months I think you'd worry about Ylands a tiny bit less

@RedEagle_P1. As far as I know since 0.14 we've fixed some issues that caused servers to slow down and become unstable (we managed to fix the issues we found in the games that players reported that we checked). I can't promise that we've fixed everything because there could be issues we didn't see/experience but I think that, in the least, you should see a big improvement.

@bojo2736 I hear you. Right now we're just doing some final touches and fixes needed for 1.0, but I can promise that once it's out we'll dedicate one Dev Diary to this topic, list everything we'd like to improve and hopefully even give you some rough timeline when these improvements might happen. If you have any more ideas or suggestions, please post them here or send me a PM (that obviously applies to all of you )

Sharegames are here to stay

Hi! just few quick notes If any of you decide to try the beta build, please note that it connects to a different environment, so this hugely affects what features data you have access to so not being able to log in with your existing character is to be expected. As for the dedicated servers - even though they are not in an ideal shape if you take a look at how we started I'd say we've made quite some progress (I know it probably wasn't as much or as fast as you'd have liked but I can honestly say we tried really hard). The private dedicated servers we made available to you in the past are the same dedicated servers you use when you rent a server ingame or from a certified third party. It was in our best interest to make them work as well as possible (that being said the dedicated servers will constantly be improved - the beta has again some improvements over 0.14) so thinking that we somehow put less effort into private dedicated servers than to some other version is not correct - there has always been only one version. Also the decision to discontinue private dedicated servers is something we were internally discussing literally for months now and it has been a very difficult call to make. The reason why we're discontinuing private servers now and not sometime after 1.0 is exactly the same reason why we introduced monetization during the Early Access. We feel people should know what they're getting into. Letting Player to make an attachment to the game and then take something essential from them is always unfortunate (otherwise we obviously wouldn't be here discussing this ?) but we feel that when it happens during the Early Access when we're figuring out how the whole system is supposed to work, it is a step that people can understand. Doing this after EA would be very unfortunate.

Hey there, Ylanders! It's been some time since we last talked, right? I've been sooo busy with getting 1.0 through the door that I barely have time for anything else. What later became Dev Diaries had started on 12th July 2016. I've been talking with you about our plans, achievements and fails for quite some time and now, when there's big news to be told, I'm here again to both tell you about it and then discuss with you any potential concerns. Let's cut right to the chase: with version 1.0 Ylands goes Free to Play, or to be more exact, most of it is. For new players, Exploration will be available in a separate Exploration pack whilst Early Accessers will already have this pack and all that comes with it. Why are we doing this? Ylands is predominantly a creators platform. For a platform, it is crucial to be available to as many players (and creators) as possible. Because of this, changing to a Free to Play format is a logical step. With this one "simple" step, suddenly a massive number of players will be able to access Ylands, play it and create new content. There will be more creators resulting in a higher quality of games and more players to play these games (monetized or not). We never wanted the premium model to be what keeps this beautiful platform alive in the future - this can be achieved only by a strong and transparent ecosystem with enough creators and players. At the same time, we believe strongly that Exploration brings a unique experience and is worth the money. With 1.0 it will get a lot better and we will keep enhancing it for many years to come. However, please note, that currently, Exploration will be available only on the PC, not mobile devices. The reason for this is simple: We don't want to compromise the PC Exploration experience for the sake of the Mobile version. Also, one thing needs to be clearly said. Even though this is an add-on, this doesn't mean we are planning to add others like this one. We are not in the "DLC" business. It's just a convenient way how to make an already existing specific part of Ylands premium on Steam. We are focusing all our work on making all of the different aspects of the game better, be it Exploration, Sandbox Mode, Playlands or the Editor. How much will the Exploration pack cost? We are planning to sell the Exploration pack containing the Exploration mode, a hefty amount of Coyns and some cool cosmetics and pets for 20 USD. Early Accessers, of course, won't have to buy this, as they'll already have the Exploration mode unlocked and they'll get the extra items and Coyns upon release. What about you, the players who already bought Ylands in Early Access? You helped us get where we are now and we will not forget. It goes without saying that for you nothing changes - basically you already own Exploration. In addition to that, you'll get every bonus that those who buy Exploration separately get (a truly epic special costume, a great pet and coyns). And on top of that the promised pet that only you, the Early Access supporters will own. When planning this, the most important thing on our mind was to make sure this doesn't affect you in a negative way. I'm happy to say that you will always be the ones who get the best deal because you stuck with us for all those years. What will happen to coyns you currently possess and all your purchases? You will keep all your coyns, purchased costumes, pets etc. as we move into 1.0. What does this mean for Ylands itself? If anything, the only change you'll probably notice will be us putting more continuous effort into making the Exploration mode more awesome. Ylands will release as a free game for everyone with the mobile version being also free. This will mean, that anyone will be able to make a game on their PC and jump right on to their mobile device to play it there and share their game with their friends and others in the community. The mobile platform truly lends a huge new aspect to the game, because for creators it brings a brand new audience to create for and connect with and in the future, once we also release on Android, anyone anywhere will be able to join in the fun of Ylands. We believe this will really help Ylands grow as a platform and it will also serve as a gateway for players to then go and download the game on their computer as well because they'll want to try out the more majestic creations, that only a PC can offer. We understand that this is a big change and we're ready to discuss all your concerns until there are none. Thank you for your patience, support and for staying classy!

Thanks everyone for your feedback and have a great weekend! ? If you have any more questions, just ask - we'll keep checking this thread

It's true that many people will not play Exploration but it will always be integral part of Ylands in a sense that for every new feature implemented (if it's not directly meant for Exploration) we ask "how can Exploration benefit from this" and this way Exploration grows larger and better (you'll find some preeeeetty cool things in 1.0 Exploration possible only because of things we added primarily for Creators). Also we have planned something very special for Exploration which will hugely expand it's replayability and very likely draw many of those who might not want to play it otherwise. We wanted to have this before 1.0 but it will take some more time to implement .

We plan that players who have Exploration will have ways to host the game even for their friends who don't own the pack. When Ylands comes out it we expect that it will run even on much weaker PCs than it has so far.

Adam said it well enough, but to make sure you believe it - Exploration is, indeed, here to stay. Not only are we already planning what new features and improvements it will receive in 1.1, but we will start working on those as soon as 1.0 Release candidate version is ready. We've spent years working on Exploration and we intend to continue

Hi Red, this wouldn't work. The monetization can work only when it is running in a secure environment - in other word on dedicated servers provided by us (or our potential partners). There is no way how we can safely let monetization work in scenarios that players run locally on their computers. A.

Hey Igor! Will featured games by users be accessible on the playground? Yes. Not right at 1.0 but we would definitely like to present games made by the community there. This was the actually the initial idea behind this features. What kinds of games is the Ylands playground going to focus on? Duration, engagement, multi vs single, etc? The first iteration of games are meant for 5 players (now temporarily 3) with duration around 1-1.5 minutes. When players come with Ylands 1.0 we need to see how this works and based on that we will later release same guides for creators. What kind of "soft limitation" should we expect? (Since phones are much weaker than computers) This will as well be part of some guidelines. For example due to net traffic there are some general rules how many animators should be active at the same time etc. Lastly, I understand right now there are local "files" that can be saved into a game. Ex: Warrior Level 10. And everytime you start that game (even if it's fresh) the local file will remember Warrior Level 10 solely for the map file/version. What you're asking about will be added in the next update A.

What Adam mentioned is really the Holy Trinity of funny TV shows. I love them all to death but I also prefer some things that are delightfully weird. If you like Flight of the Conchords, I really suggest you give Mighty Boosh a try To name some other series - Firefly goes without saying, so do Scrubs and Community.

Definitely! We'll start with minigames made by us but in the future (post-release) we would love to see community made minigames added there as well. The whole point of Ylands platform is to give you all the tools you need to create amazing things which others will get to enjoy as well ?

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today I’d like to talk about a specific feature that will help give game creators even more creative freedom and allow them to customize their games even further. While it is already possible to perform various interesting actions via Visual Scripting, it wasn’t possible to bind it to a specific key or button. Well, at least until now... With 0.14 we’re bringing you Customizable Controls Input. What does that mean? Well, let’s say that you want to open a fancy new UI panel made with the fancy new UI editor - something like a scoreboard, your own inventory, skill tree or anything else. Now you will be able to create an action and specify which key or button triggers it. Then you can listen to this action being activated and run whatever action you wish. Look, mate - your own controls! Aaargh!! And as a bonus, if such an action is active, we will even display a hint showing the name of the action and the key assigned. We believe that this will come in very handy for anyone trying to make a custom game with specific control set. That's it for now. Have a great weekend and until we meet again - stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! In the last Dev Diary we discussed the new GUI Editor. In the upcoming months you will probably notice that we’re going to focus on a lot of the platform aspect of Ylands. You can already see it when you look at the previous Dev Diaries - we’re giving the Creators among you more and more tools to create great content. Even though it may seem that Explore is no longer among our priorities, that is absolutely not the case. Explore will undergo some very interesting changes before 1.0 as well. I’m talking about both the features specific to Explore (the actual exploration) as well as about improvements to various features and mechanics which are integral for the Explore experience (and can also play a major role even in custom games). Let me now quickly go over some of the features that will make (not only) Explore more interesting and which are planned for 0.14. We hear your complaints about the missing first person camera view. We introduced the Interaction view, which helped to a certain degree. But we want to do more. While we can’t enable the FPS view entirely (there are a lot of situations where things are very broken), we decided to set the first person view as the default view for building. This means that whenever you are placing something, FPS view mode is activated (you can still switch back to the 3rd person view via “C”). We are sure that this will make building a lot easier. Building. First person camera view. It just works. Second thing I would like to mention is the updated Codex. We’ve changed how it looks and how it works. The new codex contains basic information on various topics. You can always get more detailed information by clicking an appropriate button in each topic. It will take you to the wiki where we are going to place additional information, images, tips - and so will you, because we want the wiki to be our common achievement. Then there are a lot of improvements that are smaller, but fix a lot of very annoying issues. You will get better indication whether your target is valid/in range when using tools like annihilator or paint gun. We’re also improving digging, and the ways the players use torches and sleeping pads and much more. There is so much planned for Explore before 1.0 (and yes, even some major crafting mechanics improvements) but we’ll talk about this more some other time. Have a great week until we meet again and, as always, stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today we’ll talk about a truly amazing (and stylish!) feature that will help creators make games with much friendlier user interfaces that give more control over the player experience in custom made games. This feature we’re talking about is the new GUI (Graphical User Interface) Editor...inside the Editor (this time we’ll omit the obvious Inception reference ? ). So far making a custom GUI was limited only to solid color panels and texts with rather limited formatting options. Well, no more. Please welcome the new GUI Editor which let’s you add and edit visual elements in a user friendly matter. New GUI Editor (Work In Progress) Let me just give you a quick taste of what you’re going to get: edit positions and scale of elements in a natural, intuitive way add solid color boxes or images from internal image library advanced anchoring system that lets you position elements relative to specified screen areas or stretch them in a specified manner. This way your GUI will display correctly with various screen aspect ratios. define your button elements and perform actions when they’re pressed via Visual Scripting (mouse pointer becomes visible whenever you activate such a dynamic panel) New GUI Editor (Work In Progress) As you can see, this is a HUGE win for creators - with this new addition, the level of custom games can truly skyrocket into unseen heights. We can't wait to deliver this (and a LOT of other) new feature to you in the 0.14 update. And that’s it for today. Have a great week and until we talk again - stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today is the first Dev Diary dedicated to update 0.14, and we’re starting with something pleasing to the eye. If you’ve been with us for a longer time you may have noticed how the avatars' visuals changed over the course of time – especially their heads. They’ve become more detailed and we added a lot of new ones. While we are happy with the results, this created too big of a contrast between smoother-looking heads and still very low-poly bodies. In 0.14 we’re changing the bodies as well, so that they fit with the heads. Also, we wanted the characters to stand out a bit more, to become somewhat more distinct within their environment. This is done by the combination of the avatar being slightly more detailed than their surroundings and also by a specific new shader applied to them. Original avatar / new avatar with the new shader applied / new avatars with shader and new clothes As you can see in the picture, the new character looks much more consistent. Also, in the right section of the image you can see the character wearing modern clothes. This is also something worth mentioning. While this won’t be present in 0.14, we do plan on adding a lot of modern-looking assets before update 1.0. This will give you even more creative freedom. That’s it for now. Have a great week and until we talk again – stay classy!

There's no reason to "hide" it The shift from more low-poly to higher-poly (but still quite low when compared to other games) character models was made because of feedback we got from various groups of players. We are making Ylands as a platform in the first place and as such it needs to attract large number of players to be able to compete with Roblox and similar titles. We need the game to be popular among kids and casual players to make sure Ylands creators (which is mostly folk like yourself) will have an access to as large player pool as possible - both to make sure that your creation get enjoyed by as many people as possible and also to make it worthwhile to ones of you who will decide to monetize their creations. For the "ecosystem" to work we need players and adjusting the character visuals makes it easier to attract them. On the other hand we don't plan to do any other larger adjustments to game visuals or features so don't worry that this is a start of some trend. The upcoming update 0.14 will bring a ton of new stuff and then we'll do 100% polishing and fixing for a few months before we the fun begins

Every fix needs to be properly tested before it's made public and it's Friday afternoon We are planning to provide creators with "a preview" branch in the future, but it will always be available only some time before the actual update, not the whole time.