Aleš Ulm

Hi, please keep telling us what you think - we do listen and appreciate that. You made a valid point and even though I planned to address that in one of upcoming dev diaries I see no reason why I couldn't talk about it now. It's true that we're not getting new players (or in amount to speak of) and many people have left. It would be rather arrogant to say we understand all the reasons behind this but I'd say there's a pretty obvious explanation to most of what's happening. I will be completely honest with you - even though what I'll say may not be what you'd like to hear The main reason why no new people are coming is pretty simple - we are doing absolutely nothing to bring them in. People are not talking about Ylands, it doesn't get promoted in any way. Unless your game is already a massively known IP without active marketing support things just don't happen. While it would be great for the community to bring in some "fresh blood" the naked truth is that we've moved to polishing/bug fixing stage and we want to release Ylands with a big bang when it's ready. Then (actually some time before that) we will put a lot of effort in making sure people know we exists and have to be counted with. You can trust me that you will notice when that stage begins. We believe it will be very big, but we're not there yet. The reasons why people leave are several: * some expect new content to be delivered more often. This group, however, is not large - most are more interested in seeing what there already is working better * people leave because it's taking us too long to address some of the annoying issues and performance problems and we can't really blame them. This is already changing though - you will already find fixes to many issues in 0.10, and much more in 0.11. It's difficult to say if some of the more general optimization adjustments will show in 0.11 but we're doing out best that they do and if they do, you'll feel that. * when you look at some other games then you'll realize that they did much better job at getting players together, to form communities, working with friends etc. It's really simple - everything is much more fun when you can easily share it with your friends or family and people who form communities stick with the game longer. This is something we're working on. * for many there simply anything in the game that would drive them forward, no storyline to follow, no secrets to uncover etc. That is also something we're doing something about. Long story short - we don't have any new players because we don't look for any at this moment and we're losing the ones we have, because, while the game is good, it's not yet awesome That was just describing how things are now (which not a secret a you probably guessed most of it anyway). Now the part that may be a bit difficult to hear. Right now we focus absolutely on the game release. I know we've mentioned release date but the truth is if the game is not ready, we will wait with the release and keep working until it's just perfect. For the current players it doesn't mean that much - for you the game will get better and more solid with every single update. What probably is, however, is that you can't expect (unless something unexpected happens - like a big youtuber playing Ylands all of a sudden, which is quite unlikely ) many new players coming into the game before we leave EA. It would be just counterproductive to actively try to bring large numbers of people into a game that we know is getting better every single month. There's really no secret there - we will bring them in when we know a lot of them will stay. The good thing is, that you will see what the current state of the game is, we will hold nothing back and all the improvements and fixed you'll get as soon as possible and we will always talk to you about what's going on. So... that's it. Let us know what you think. Thanks. EDIT: fixed some typos

Which issue do you mean? The one where the compass didn't show when sailing a ship?

Hey there fellow ylanders, Outside the scorching heat is raging, but the work on Ylands continues as always. Since the upcoming update is a truly big one, we’re still testing it and making sure everything works as designed. But it’s already obvious that this update will be a very important step on our way to make Ylands not only a game, but a platform as well. Since it's already August, let's start with Gamescom, which will happen in Germany at the end of this month, as every year. If you happen to be there you can pay our booth a visit - there will be several computers with Ylands installed, manned mostly by some of the Ylands QA staff, led by our QA Lead @Eris . They will be ready to help you with anything and answer your questions. For the first two days they will be accompanied by our Community Manager @Ane and myself, so if you can make it during that time we will be happy to see you! Speaking of showing Ylands to players, we should not forget to mention that Ylands is now being presented at Asia's largest game show, held in Shanghai - ChinaJoy. Our stylized lowpoly style is drawing attention of new fans and we’re really looking forward to releasing the game for them as well. Those who come to visit our booth at ChinaJoy can have their photos taken with a game character or try to sneak in the Ylands artwork As our focus shifts to polishing and bug fixing, we are implementing some new tools to help us with that. Just now we have implemented a new automated testing service that keeps checking various Ylands' aspects, warning us whenever any abnormality is found. Although this won’t affect you directly, we hope you will profit from this feature by being delivered stable builds with as few bugs as possible. So that’s it for now. We’ll look forward to talking to you next Friday - until then you have a great time and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow Ylanders! Today I’d like to talk about two things that people asked us, either publicly or through private messages. You asked us how Ylands getting published in China will affect the Steam version. We’ve already talked about that a bit when the deal was announced, but some probably missed that, and also, this is a place where we can discuss it in more detail. You asked about the monetization scheme, and well, it’s really quite simple. The Chinese version will have a different monetization scheme, one which will reflect the specifics of their market. Nothing is changing about how the Steam version is monetized, we plan to keep things as they are right now. So, there you have it The second topic of today’s Dev Diary is the answer to a question that usually goes like “How is a new feature implemented” or “Can you describe how things work in your office”. Eventually we want to create a video that will show you, but today I’ll just do a quick summary of what happens before you get your hands on a new feature (like the upcoming update's pets). Obviously, at first there’s a discussion about what features would fit in our game, based on an internal list we have and on your feedback and ideas that our Community Manager @Ane gathers for the team. Once we agree on something, a designer (or designers if it’s a bigger task) is chosen to be responsible for this feature. They come up with an initial design - they go over various possible solutions, look at how other games do it, and eventually create a design document. At that point, we (all the designers and me) sit down and discuss the particular aspects of it while trying to find weak spots and improve them. If the design is found solid enough, the rest of the feature “task team” gets to work on that. There is a programmer (or more) who implements the designed feature, artists, animators, and audio designer who contribute with the assets. Having a good team is everything...especially if part of it are witches... (Sun castle courtesy of @Christalle) Up until now we were interested in getting all the “core” features into the game as fast as possible to make sure we quickly to the point we could see the big picture worked, and left polishing the game for later. We reached that stage, and so now we’re also doing a really thorough final feature review. Every feature that is considered “finished” by the task team and the designer in charge, undergoes a review made by people who are not directly invested in it (Project Lead, Producer, Creative Director and possibly other Leads - artist, programmer etc.). We look at how it plays and how it feels, and point out all shortcomings, everything that feels not polished enough. If the result wouldn’t work at all (gameplay-wise) it would be returned for redesign and complete rework, but a much likelier result is that we return it with a suggested list of improvements. After those are taken care of ,our QA checks it for technical issues and those they find get fixed the feature is ready to be released. To some degree we have obviously done this in the past as well - that is, for example, the reason why we keep delaying the new combat over and over again. Now, however, we set the bar much higher, and we will try to make sure features that get released are only the ones that really deserve to be released. That’s it for this week. Thanks again and, until we talk again, have a great time and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Last week we looked at what we've done so far, so today we'll return to the present and let you know what's going on right now. You may like to hear that we've already fixed some of the issues that have been annoying both you and us for a long time (for example we - hopefully - fixed all the remaining issues where objects ended up stuck outside slots), we've done first updates and improvements to the new GUI (with much more to come), and more... We are making some final touches to the new visual scripting system (I know I always say it's awesome so that you don't think things got worse somehow - it still is awesome, and we just can't wait to see what cool and weird games and contraptions you'll create with it). Animators are finalizing flying pets, which we decided to start with. We already told you there will be a parrot so maybe this is a good time to give you at least a hint on one of the other pets you'll get to meet. Let me say that it's... a flying one (you probably figured out that much, right?), yet it's something you don't usually see flying in real life. And if you browse ylands.com a bit, you just might spot that peculiar animal. @spyler.1989's take on creating his own animals... too bad fish can't fly! Some of you may know that Ylands is built with Unity. Even though we managed to optimize the game somewhat over the past months, the current state is nowhere it needs to be. The good news is that the latest versions of Unity give us much more control over the problematic systems. These Unity features are rather new and so it can a bit tricky to "tame" them, but we are very excited about the potential they open. It's definitely one of the paths we're taking that will lead us to a nice, polished and well-running Ylands 1.0. Speaking of optimizations – so far, we lacked proper tools to map what progress have been made. Many times, some improvement we made helped with some specific case while having minimal or no effect over other features or situations. We are working on a new automated testing system that will let us keep you better informed about our progress by providing you with some relevant data. And that's it for today. We'll talk to you more in a week - until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I believe the building will definitely be improved before we leave EA. Also don't be afraid to voice any concerns you might have at any point - it's not really necessary to stress that you like the game (just that fact that you found time to provide the feedback shows that much ). Constructive criticism is always welcome - actually now more than ever.

Hey there, fellow Ylanders! Once again, the time to talk about the plans for the several upcoming months has come. This is actually a very important point in the Early Access development process. So far, we have been adding new features with a rather great speed (for those who came at a later date, I suggest checking the 26 updates on this page). There is just one last really big new feature coming - the completely new visual scripting system, coming in 0.10. We have been fixing issues as well (we have fixed thousands of them already), but now we’re getting into the last phase, which is mostly about fixing and polishing. You will see some results already in 0.10, but as soon as we get 0.10 out of the door, most of the team will start working on fixes and improvements. We have lists of dozens of features that need some love - from “details” that make playing the game either less fun or make it behave in unexpected ways, to things that are bordering on being unusable. Things like not being able to equip items directly from containers or not being able to remove stuff prepared in workstations. Things like not being able to take your car or horse to another yland with a ship. Not being able to hit another player in combat. Weirdly working animal AI. Hundreds of issues that are “proper” bugs - problems with UI where objects can get stuck outside of slots. Features not working as they should. All those remaining MP issues. We all also know that the game needs to run much better before we leave EA. We would like to thank you all for your patience and for staying with us this far - we understand that from your point of view some of the decisions we made (like to keep adding new features ) may have felt less than ideal, but they were necessary. Now we have a game on our hands that still needs a lot of effort to get to a polished state, but we have pretty much all the features we wanted implemented, and have time to further test them as we move through the polishing stage. There’s one last thing that needs to be mentioned when we talk about this. The date when we leave EA. This thing will fly no more ... but it will make one awesome place to live in! (Scavenged airplane house courtesy of @lunz) Initially we expected this date to be late August. Internally our plan is still to have the best version possible at that time, but since we’ve done our best to be honest with you so far, there’s no need to change this now - we don’t think it will be enough time to get everything in good enough shape. We went through all the features and came to agreement that some need to be much better and need radical improvement, and not just some quick fixes or hacks. So it is more than likely that we won’t be leaving EA at that time (and yes, I do remember you telling us so ). On the other hand, I think that for you this doesn’t really mean that much - one way or another at the end of August the game will be much better in many aspects, and if it takes a month or two more to get things done... then be it. We will keep you in the loop. Actually, it will be a time when we’ll try to be communicating with you even more actively than ever before, because every feedback will count. That’s it for this week. Thank you and - until we talk again - have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Thanks everyone for your comments @Nirish Exactly, leaving the EA without fixing things like this is not really an option.

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today I would like to talk a bit about the new visual scripting, but I will start by mentioning a patch that’s planned for next week. The patch contains several fixes (critical ones, there will be a patch with UI improvements released at a later date). In addition to those, we are now able to easily ban players on our side from hosting / joining MP sessions for a certain time (or permanently). Since we had received a lot of complaints about some players’ behavior (which now, thanks to the newly introduced game name, are easily identifiable) we acted immediately and they have been banned. When the patch is installed, they will see the information about their ban and the time left before it’s lifted (if temporary). Also, you may have noticed that linking your Steam account to BI Account is still disabled. Originally, we offered this to players so that we would have another unique way of identifying them outside of Steam (= on non-PC platforms), so that they would be able to access their progress/purchases/creations even there. With the introduction of the unique game name we’re looking into using that name instead, and linking might no longer be needed. We will keep you posted. As you already know, right now we’re working on 0.10, which will bring the new visual scripting. Let’s start with some basic information (we’ll be talking about this much more in the upcoming weeks). The new visual scripting is not only a very intuitive (and cool) way of scripting things in your world, but along with it we will be giving you access to lots of things you haven’t been able to affect before. The idea is for you to be able to easily script an action, adventure, racing, or puzzle game (or a mix of those, or even something brand new ). Even though there will still be some things you won’t be able to achieve in 0.10 (like side-scrollers etc.) because you won’t be able to change the character control scheme or use some specific camera settings, there will still be a lot for you to do. You will have access to things ranging from math and logic operators, to loops, arrays, string operations and much more. You will be able to display customized texts - game goals, elapsed laps, times or hints. You will have control over how the characters are spawn. Over the game time and its speed. Over weather. You will be able to put characters in control of ships and cars. Set your own description of objects, changes weapons' and armors' stats. You will be able to handle multiplayer by creating your own MP “lobby” - or simply importing one we created for you as a composition because, yes, sharing is caring, and we’ll be sharing a lot of things with you (and hopefully you will share with the community as well). Along with 0.10 you will get a new tutorial - which will be very interactive, and you will, as always, have full access to its source scene to check how it is done. The same goes for several game “templates” that will illustrate as well how various kind of games can be created. The night is deep and full of terrors... and so it's great to find nice place to lay your head (Blue Cottage courtesy of @bojo2736) And today we end with yet another portion of Questions & Answers: What's the next gaming show/place where we can find you? I enjoyed meeting a lot of you at last year's Gamescom Very likely Ylands will be presented again as a part of the BI booth at Gamescom, but unlike the last year, the people there won’t be the actual Ylands devs, since this year we will be extremely busy at that time - we;d like to meet with you more often in 2019. When will we get animal breeding? & Can we get more animals? Actually, the animals breed even now, but it’s some simple algorithm, and it happens only when the players are not around. While it would be rather easy to simply spawn a new adult animal when you put two of the same species next to each other, we want to add this feature when we can have animal babies, so that it actually introduces a new gameplay. This is on our list, but it will most likely happen sometime in 2019. I spend all of my time in the Editor. I love trying to create challenges for player and i was curious about what additions are planned? maybe some sound blocks where the pitch and length can be controlled? In that case you will love what 0.10 brings. Although there will be no sound blocks, you will be able to create something playing various sounds based on whatever you set up via the visual scripting rather easily. That's it for now. Have a great time until we talk again, and as always, ylanders, you stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! A week ago, we released the update 0.9 “Comfortable Cooperation”. Considering the massive size of the update and the effort it required, it went rather smooth. There were some issues though, so I’ll address them here and tell you what our plans are for the new features. New GUI Firstly, let me thank you for how constructive and civil the feedback you provided was. We understand that the change is rather big, and some things are a bit controversial (or they may seem that way especially because we weren’t able to have everything working in the way we wanted). In the past days we’ve gathered a lot of feedback - some of it confirmed what we knew was not ideal and needs adjustments, but there were some interesting points made as well. The most passionate reactions were definitely related to the new full screen mode. The fact that you now lack information about what’s going on in the world while there’s a lot of seemingly unused space. We are already working on a proper notification that the player is being attacked (that’s what the hearts in the top left corner are meant for). We have plans for some more elements that will fill up some of the empty spaces - also the large empty rectangle shown to the right side of the catalog and inventory will contain vicinity slots. We have been experimenting with various amounts of background transparency, which is what you’re asking for the most. We will be adding some buttons that didn’t make it into the new GUI (like the “Take all” button). There are several hints (and all tooltips) missing that will be added as well. An important thing to say is that we will be releasing the changes in a patch - no ETA yet, but we won’t definitely keep you waiting until the next update is released. Blueprints While still lacking in some ways (placing of the blueprint is currently rather “unforgiving”, we will be improving how the materials can be fed into constructed blueprint and so on), the blueprints seem like a very solid addition that will come in handy in many situations. Sharegames This is a big one. A completely new, unique feature not used in other games still needs some adjustments, but it seems to be working as we expected and it’s only a matter of time before more players find how handy this feature is. We will be polishing it (and advertising it) a lot in the upcoming months. Hmm, this looks strangely familiar (RedRocket Truckstop courtesy of @lunz) Ylands name One of the steps needed to give both us and DS admins more control over the game was the introductions of the Ylands / game name. This will also eventually lead to the creation of some sort of friends list, which will be useful in many ways. Some players have experienced issues when trying to link their account with the BI account and realized that their name was already taken (even though in reality it wasn’t). We’ve disabled the account linking until this issue has been resolved and will help said players by fixing their entries in our database. Speaking of linking the account - some players also reported that they had lost their progress after linking. We're looking into that as well (we should have more info later next week) - we will get in touch with you (or you can contact @Ane) and it shouldn't be problem to get you your progress back - nothing has been deleted from the database. Please note that we’re always ready to fix any problems you may encounter, be it related to your game name, coyns, or anything else. Just let us know and we’ll take care of it. That’s it for today. Please keep providing us with your feedback and we’ll talk again next Friday (where Q&A will return) - this time about 0.10 and the new visual scripting. Until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

To put it in another words (to see, if we understand correctly) - the problem is that you had a game that other players used to join. Now you want to change that game into sharegame which requires a password - which is a problem because you might note have a way to contact those players and tell them what the new password is so that they can continue playing in your world, right?

True - we're definitely not the only ones to do this - but on the other hand I can see how it can be confusing to people who are not familiar with software development. I'm pretty sure though that it's something our players can deal with

Let me react to some questions / concerns you raised: Version numbering: The next update will indeed be 0.10. As some of have mentioned, the more logical step after 0.9 would be 1.0. That was indeed what we've originally planned - rather unrealistically I might add . Obviously, the game is not ready to be released as 1.0 and need at least one more update. While we could go with 0.91 (or 0.9.1, to be exact) we think that this would be somewhat confusing as well since after releasing 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9 having the next update named 0.91 would make it look like something minor while 0.10 will, in fact, be one of the most important updates so far. A lot of people have raised some concerns over the new GUI. I will be addressing those soon in the specific thread we created but be assured that we understand there's still a lot of work to be done and we believe that eventually most of the things you complain about will eventually go away. We just didn't have enough time to make it exactly how we envisioned it (so, for example, the hearts you see in the top left corner will eventually indicate very clearly that you are getting attacked, some buttons will be added/returned, there will be improved system for making favorites etc.). Also you should know that some of the changes and improvements to GUI will come sooner than 0.10. DS related issues - our programmers are already looking into it.

Ane is right, but it wasn't all of them - some of blocks them have been temporarily disabled and will return as a complete set existing for all the materials.

Hi, thanks for the feedback! As far as I know it should be still possible to edit your Explore saves in 0.9 - we'll look into the what you report right away!

You're welcome Also everyone please note that since this naming feature is very new there may be some issues even though we tested it a lot. Don't worry if due to some mistake or error you end up with some unwanted name. We will obviously help you resolve it if necessary.

Only basic alphanumeric characters are allowed - no spaces, no dots, underscore etc. You'd should probably go with MiguelPreguisa (we'll change the hints to make it more obvious, sorry about that)

As for not liking the new GUI : (let's leave aside that some things are still not working as they should since we'll fix/improve that eventually). We have experience from another developed games that every single major GUI change (I'm not talking about changing a button here and there or tweaking a color scheme) always results in large number of complaints. Don't get me wrong - complaining about the new GUI is just as valid feedback as any other and since we are interested in hearing what you have to say we even created a specific thread where we will gather you thoughts. https://ylands.com/community/topic/21448-new-ylands-gui/ On the other hand we will definitely want to give it some time before we react so that we get more relevant feedback and see how it works after everyone gets over the initial "shock" We have plans on how to build upon this, how empty space will be utilized, some buttons will be added / returned etc. but since we couldn't put it all into this build, tell us how you like what you see now. Another thing - normally we try to avoid releasing the updates on Friday. Unfortunately, if we haven't released it today, due to some technical issues it would be released later next week which after so many delays felt wrong. Finally - after a long, long time - we will be taking some rest this weekend so we might not react that much, but we will be watching the forums to see if there are any critical issues and act, if necessary. We'll be back in full strength on Monday, ready to answer all your questions and concerns. In the meantime have a great weekend as well and stay classy! Edited: removed part about version numbering that will be explained later in more detail

Hey there, fellow ylanders! The update 0.8 is ready for release, but since we try not to release anything major on Fridays (so that the whole team is ready to react even the next day in case any problems appear), it will be released on Monday. As a consolation, let me use this opportunity to tell you what you can expect in the update 0.9, named “Comfortable Cooperation”. Even though “Meaningful Music” brings some very nice things, it’s much smaller than what 0.9 is going to be, because some of the fixes and features we've been working on are too complex and time-consuming, so they couldn't make it into 0.8. So what are some of the features you can expect in the next update? Let's start with the feature that gave this update its name. In the past weeks we have gathered your feedback on the current state of the dedicated servers, and in the upcoming days we would like to start discussing with you what issues need to be fixed and what features added to have a nice, solid DS foundation that can be further enhanced (obviously first we need to address the critical issues and features that are missing and only later we’ll get to nice-to-have things). Just few more days before sailing the high seas becomes more immersive with the new adventurous music introduced by update 0.8 Multiplayer mode is extremely important to us. As we fix MP issues (not as quickly as we would like - but looking back to when the game has entered Steam, we’ve already fixed dozens of MP-related issues) and are step by step getting to a working multiplayer experience, we are looking for ways for everyone to enjoy the social aspect of Ylands. There are some features planned to make playing with others more fun, mostly settings that those who start a new game will be able to set - things like PvP vs PvE worlds etc., but we want to make multiplayer more accessible even on a “technical level”, and that’s why in 0.9 we’ll be introducing our cloud save solution. Usually, the cloud save feature is not really related to MP, but our implementation is different. For us, the cloud save is used to solve the commonly known problem experienced by players who are hosting a game themselves. Their friends can enter the world only as long as the game is up and running. When the one hosting the game doesn’t want to play anymore or has to leave, the game is over. So far the only solution was to play the game on a dedicated server. And that’s where our cloud save comes into play. Let’s say Tom starts a new game that he’s hosting on his PC. His friends Jane and Peter log in and they all play. At some point, the game session ends by Tom quitting the game. At that point, the current game state is uploaded to the cloud. The next day Jane and Peter want to play, but Tom isn’t available, so Peter simply finds the game they played the day before in the list of recently played games and hits Play. At that point, the latest version of the saved game is downloaded from the cloud to his PC and is started with him hosting it. Jane can join him right away and so can Tom if he changes his mind and decides to play. Long story short - players will be able to play in the same world whenever they choose to even without hosting it on a dedicated server. Obviously, having a dedicated server will still give you more freedom, but from the feedback we’ve been getting, we think that a lot of you will appreciate this cloud save cooperative multiplayer. The cloud save data will be stored in third-party data centers (such as Amazon) to make sure they are safe and available everywhere. Every player will have a certain data limit (the more sophisticated the game, the more space it takes) and as long as the sum of your cloud saves doesn’t reach this limit, it’s free. When it goes over, you will have to either remove some of the games from the cloud or purchase additional space. This is necessary because, while we can support players to a certain degree by paying for the storage at the third party provider ourselves, at a certain point players have to step in and pay their share. We’re still figuring out the final numbers, but you certainly don’t have to worry that you would be able to reach the limit with a single game no matter how large. So that’s the first of the cool features coming with 0.9 - there’s so much more, though, which we'll talk about next Friday. Until then have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Right now, we’re testing the upcoming update 0.9 "Comfortable Cooperation". If things go right, this might be the last Dev Diary before it gets released. If, however, we see the testing requires more time, there will be one more before you get your hands on it. There’s one thing that we haven’t discussed yet that is part of "Comfortable Cooperation". As you may already know, one of the new features is how your avatar visuals will be treated. Up until now you always had to select a name and appearance of your avatar for every single game you started (Explore, Create, or any custom game). Starting with 0.9 you will have access to your persistent avatar in the Main menu (under the Home section, which we plan to make a cool place where you will be able to adjust your avatar, check your pets, achievements and much more). There you will be able to change your avatar appearance at any time / as many times you want to. In any game you then enter (new one or one where you already have a character), your avatar will look just the way you set it up. In some games you will still be able to choose a role before you enter them, which will change your clothes and equipment, but your character’s facial features, hair and skin color will be just as seen in the Main Menu panel. That much we already told you. At some point, though, we decided to add what we originally planned for some future update – a feature we might call Ylands name (or game name, if you wish). The way how players have been identified in the game has been a bit confusing up until now. When communicating with us, some have given their Steam Id, some their Bohemia Interactive id, the nickname they chose when filling in their Bohemia Interactive profile etc. Also, it was way too easy for griefers to simply change their name and keep harassing others while assuming a new “identity” with every game they entered. What we, in the end, decided to put in 0.9 is the following behavior. Every player (be it a new one or someone who’s been playing for a longer time) will be asked at the screen where their avatar can be adjusted to enter their new Ylands name. * this name must be unique. After you pick your name (if the game confirms that it‘s not already used by someone else), you can be sure that the only one with that name present at any game will be just you * you will be able to change your name one more time in case you make a bad call the first time. If, for some valid reason, you’d need to change it again, you would have to contact our support and they might help you with that * in all games, new or existing, you will be seen by others by this name * the name can contain only common alphanumeric characters There are many advantages to having such a unique easy-to-work-with identifier. It will be much easier for server admins to manage their players and for players themselves to report those who misbehave. It will be very helpful when, in the future, we implement some sort of friends list. The disadvantage is quite clear - some players might have liked the fact that they could enter each game as someone new, and those will probably miss that feature. We have, however, gone over both pros and cons of implementing this, and in the end decided that having an easily manageable environment, where people can quickly locate and identify those they want to play with and stay away from those who have proven to be problematic players, is something that we want. Some explore new worlds, others create them (First blocks of a Runescape Ylands map courtesy of @Demonai_Warrior) Here we come with another round of questions and answers! I think the game lacks a story line. Explore/survival mode shouldn´t be just go to island to island gather resources, explore caves and stuff. There should be like something you have to do to "complete" the game. For instance, Minecraft in survival mode, the "end" of the story line, is to kill a dragon. There are a lot of players asking for something like this. When Ylands comes out of EA as Ylands 1.0, it will be with a big bang and a whole new world (that is, by the way, the reason, why only a minimum of new objects are added into the game these days – we need something to fill the new world with ?). It will be at that point that a storyline will be presented to players. Any chance you have VR support in the plans? We have done some basic tests and were able to run Ylands with a VR headset. That being said, there’s a long way between putting together a quick prototype and something that is actually fun to play with (and something that doesn’t leave you feeling sick for the rest of the day ?). It’s definitely possible that we will venture further in this direction, but for now we have other priorities. How about making small npc towns, like maybe of 4-6 nps. Like in the image of this post, make a "native american" town, a wild west town, a small pirate yland town, or even a stone age town! And to make it simpler, just have only have one npc from the village sell the goods that they make! Something like that was our plan when we implemented the NPCs (along with pirates raiding ylands from time to time). Unfortunately, it became obvious, that we needed the programmers to focus on some other task, so while NPCs are in the game, their AI is pretty much nonexistent. Things are changing for better, though, because just yesterday another senior programmer joined our ranks. He will be focusing on AI, which he has a lot of experience with. The team is growing so fast now that we’ll probably dedicate one of the future Dev Diaries just to tell you who’s working on Ylands right now – we’ve definitely came a long way from the four or five people we started with ? Maybe can add more weapons? There will be both new weapons and armors available when the new world comes out with Ylands 1.0 later this year. How about specific weather or temperature on specific spot that you can set in Editor? This is, indeed, planned. Both letting players set a specific weather in the Editor, but also a machine that would let you affect the weather while in a game. So that’s it. As always – do let us know what you think and don’t forget to check next week’s Dev Diary. Until then, have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! In the past, I’ve already mentioned that in 0.9 we will be introducing something called “Blueprints”. For those that missed that, let me explain again, this time with some more details. Blueprints are meant as an easy way of building structures in Explore games. In the first iteration of this feature, you will be able to get blueprints in these ways: Capture an existing structure You will be able to create a blueprint of any structure inside your barrier. While this may seem rather restrictive, we know that a lot of players wouldn’t want others to easily copy their creations, and even though there are other possible ways of making sure it doesn’t happen, they all have their pros and cons, and this one came out as the best overall solution. With 0.9 the default size of the barrier will be made larger (currently we’re testing a volume three times the original size). That should be enough for you to fit most of your structures into it while having the barrier partially extended into the sea, which may come in handy in 0.10, where in addition to static structures, you will be able to create blueprints of ships (and cars). At this moment we are not sure if the already placed barriers will be enlarged (if not blocked) when you update to 0.9 - we will let you know. Find a blueprint in the world Some blueprints you will be able to find in the world (mostly in Random Encounters or, in the future, as a part of some rewards). Purchase a blueprint in our store It should be noted that the blueprints we will be offering for coyns will be consisting of assets that every player has access to, and so anyone can create those as well - this is meant for those who don’t feel like building something nice themselves or lack the time. That is, once again, what we consider a fair monetization. Get them from us for free Every player will have some basic blueprints to start with so that everyone can quickly build a wooden shed and other basic structures. Starting a new life? Not ready to leave your current house behind? May I suggest using blueprints, sir? (Watermelon house courtesy of @kimbuck) The actual building is quite easy - you select a blueprint and place it in the world. A special workstation appears in front of it that you can fill with ingredients needed to build the structure (anyone can add those even when it’s not their workstation). As you keep adding, you will see parts of the structure become “real”. As long as the building isn’t finished you can cancel it - but the parts already built will stay in the world and you won’t get your ingredients back. Also at least for now only building materials are stored in the blueprint - so no small objects, no paintings etc. which would make the blueprint extremely demanding in terms of required ingredients. We believe that blueprints will help with several problems - some players find the building process difficult, lack time, patience, or skill. Others are creating nice things that they want to keep when they start a new Explore game (or they may simply want to build the same structure on a different yland). So that’s it for today - we will talk to you again next Friday. Have a great time until then, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today I would like to talk a bit about the Ylands servers, which is something we promised a long time ago but didn’t have time to do so until now. We’ve gathered A LOT of feedback over the past few months - way too much to deal with in a single post, but let’s start with those things you mentioned many times and return to servers in Dev Diaries at least once per month or so (promise ). Server Linux distribution As you may know, Ylands is powered by Unity and making simple projects run on Linux is very easy. Unfortunately, Ylands isn’t a simple project anymore. Don’t let me be misunderstood - a Linux port is possible, but it would take time and manpower we now need elsewhere, and to be completely honest we will need it for another task definitely at least before the game comes out of EA. If we made a Linux DS distribution, we would have to take care of it - it isn’t a “Fire and Forget” thing. Once people start using something, you have to make sure they are heard, bugs are fixed, code is updated - and you are all aware that we have many problems elsewhere. It’s true that it seems things will finally get better with new senior programmers arriving, but we would rather make them fix what’s broken than have them work on something new. That being said - we do know a lot of you prefer Linux to Windows DS for obvious reasons. Simpler startup for new DS users I have to say that we’re really happy with how people are helping those who don’t have enough experience with DS (especially since we have a very minimalistic “manual”). Things can definitely be improved so that even less technically savvy people can enjoy running their own DS - but it is not our priority at this moment. It will happen, but for the immediate future, we will still rely on the helpful community and step in where needed. Be able to host XX players (where XX is any number higher than the current state ) The problem here is quite obvious - it’s not that we don’t want to change that one number somewhere in the code, it's just that the game is not ready for it. Our goal is to make sure that the game can handle more players at once (hopefully much more). This is one of the goals of some of our new colleagues. We will keep you posted on their progress. Servers get cluttered real fast by dead bodies, things just lying on the ground etc. This is something we are already working on. Bodies will eventually disappear and so will the random clutter. Things that decay will be removed first, solid ones later, and some specific ones will remain (no one wants a rare ylandium crystal to disappear, right?). What will also play a role is whether something has been spawned as a by-product (stone chunk as a product of digging) or if it has been placed in the world intentionally (so that stone chunks you placed along a path don’t start suddenly disappearing). Ability to toggle the Creator Cube without having to go to the Editor Yes, we hear you Regeneration of resources We know that it’s not a lot of fun to come to a world with all resources already gone. Pretty much from the beginning, we planned to have a system that would spread seeds and make all the flora grow - not only to recreate resources, but to make the world visually more dynamic. We also have some plans for resources that need to be mined. This won't come before leaving EA. Ability to teleport to a specific player Definitely a very useful feature. We will add that. A lot remains to be done... proper tools are needed! (Image courtesy of @TheClockArm) That’s it for the DS part - in a few weeks we will continue with this list (there are at least 20 other topics that we want to cover). Now that we’re answering questions - some time ago we released the Q&A video. Only a fraction of your questions made it into it, and we promised we would try to answer the other ones in our Dev Diaries. Here’s the first batch of answers. Will we be able to tame more animals in the future? Definitely (quite obviously goats, which will, by the way, provide you with milk). Eventually, we would like you to be able to tame even predators and use them to fight by your side. Will the map be bigger? If you’re asking about the standard Explore map then no, that is not planned in the near future. However, you will be able to travel from it to another world, which will be big enough to keep you occupied for some time. Could I please make popcorn with corn seeds? We already have a smaller update planned that will be about improved farming, cooking and fishing. It will make it more fun and rewarding, and bring new recipes like the one you asked for. Any chance you have some items that can be made from gold in the Workshop? Definitely! We are planning to let you create both small and large items (statues) from gold, to show the others who is it they’re dealing with How many major bugs need to be fixed before full release? Several thousand (when you count things like minor visual glitches, values that need to be tweaked etc.). Several hundred if you count “critical” ones (game not behaving as expected, MP issues etc.) Could you give us a sneak preview or mention a couple of the pets that will be introduced? It’s no secret that parrots will be coming - everyone keeps asking for it, and so it shall be done. I think we will be hinting about another one shortly. And that’s it for today. Have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! As some of you may know, we have been working on what could be called Combat 2.0. The current combat doesn’t feel right... at all. It’s challenging to hit anyone or anything - bordering on the impossible when both the attacker and the target are moving. We wanted to release the new combat in the last update - and failed. Now it’s obvious it won’t even be part of the upcoming 0.9. So I figured this might be a right moment to let you look behind the scenes, and show you how things (don’t) work with this specific example. The main problems are that it’s difficult to hit what you’re attacking. That even when you actually hit something, there’s no sufficient indication that you’ve succeeded; it lacks a good enough animation of the opponent getting punched, which would make it feel more rewarding and more “physical” at the same time. There is no space for any strategy, for right timing - it’s just pure button-mashing, which can be good enough in some other games with simpler combat mechanics, but we know we can do better. Typically, one starts by looking at how other games do it, see what works and what doesn’t. The problem with Ylands is that it is truly a hybrid beast, and we can’t just take what works elsewhere. For example, the combat would become much better if the characters and monsters could collide with each other. It wouldn’t be possible just to run through each other, which is what makes the combat rather chaotic - but doing that would bring many problems elsewhere. Just imagine how often would someone block you from moving somewhere in a narrow passage, intentionally or not. While this would make the combat better (and allow for a more strategical approach), there would be many other situations where this would simply become annoying (not to speak about potential MP related technical issues). This is where the testing happens. Boxes and weirdly shaped objects get hurt a lot but they know it's for the greater good In many MMOs, characters don’t collide as well, but the players don’t have a problem with hitting their targets, because there’s some sort of targeting system in place. You select your target and can hit it when you trigger the appropriate ability wherever you are (with the distance based on the type of ability). That is cool... but wouldn’t work with Ylands since this fits with a game where players use various abilities with various cooldowns - not just simple attacks. Doing the combat this way would feel extremely dull with only one or two types of attack. The next thing that we want to achieve is to be able to give players at least some way of affecting the outcome of the combat (in addition to what their weapons and armor are), to let them use skill, to make them think about what to do next. This can be done in several ways - by letting them select attacks, being able to defend and trigger a defensive stance at the right time etc. Several things can be done, but they all have certain prerequisites. If you, for example, want the player to be able to react to incoming attacks, you have to have a clear indication that the enemy is about to attack. Some games do it with visual indicators, but we don’t feel that this would go well with our vision of Ylands, where we try to avoid unrealistic visual hints as much as possible. The correct way (at least when it comes to Ylands) would be to be able to tell that the enemy is about to attack by merely watching them. Many games do that - but, simply speaking, the attack animations have a slower beginning, so that the player has a big enough time window to react. While this works well when fighting NPCs, we want the combat to be fun even when fighting another player... but using attack animations that take some time before the impact happens would make the attacking sluggish or unresponsive if players would use those as well. You see that sometimes implementing something that has been done many times before may not be that easy (especially when it hasn’t ). And these are just the basic issues we face. The hole goes deeper, much deeper than this - deep enough to a place where you find that a change that you just HAVE to make will have a very negative effect on some other aspect of this feature, rendering it useless... and off you go, starting all over again. TLDR; Developing a new feature is sometimes very difficult, takes a lot of tries and it can get very difficult to predict how much more time is needed to finish it. Questions & Answers Just like the last time, here are some of the answers you sent us and which didn’t get covered by our Q&A video. Will there ever be a way to transport water? Like in a bucket or irrigation system, aqueduct? This is indeed planned. There will be a way of picking up the water (and stack it in your inventory) and drop it wherever necessary. Also, we would like to add a pump machine which would let you move a larger mass of water from one area to another. For this, however, the water simulation needs to be fixed first. Minecarts?! We would like to have trains sometime after the game leaves EA (you might have noticed that someone has already created a pretty cool train with what’s already available). We just need to make sure those are made right, because we want them to be part of automated machines - we want them to be used to transport objects from one workstation to another (or from their source) “Factorio style” Will the crystals have any more use? Maybe I could link them in the weapons to make them more powerful? Fire, ice, electricity ... Let’s just wait till the next Explore world is released and see, shall we? Will it be possible to copy sections of land in the Editor? That’s something we’re looking into. Also, we need tools that let raise and lower terrain in more intuitive ways - not by just adding/subtracting terrain through the predefined shape. Am I asking too many questions? No. And that's all for today. We'll see you next Friday, so have a great time until then and, as always, stay classy!

I can see where those arguments are coming from. I understand that when you're playing "Explore" combat plays often a minimal role and making it better won't improve the game for you much, if at all. The problem, however, lies elsewhere. We see Ylands as much as a platform for making games as a game itself. We want players to create different kinds of games and share it with each other. When we released Ylands on Steam we created some premade scenarios - one of them (Gym Brawl) was an arena where players could fight each other. A lot of people have tried it ... and left because the combat was poorly implemented. We know there's a lot of people who would like to try creating something like that on their own but won't because at this moment, with this combat, it wouldn't be fun to play. We had players asking us numerous times if/how could something like PUBG be created in Ylands. Don't get me wrong - we are not crazy enough to think that we are making something where people will be able to create games that would be on par with top shooters or action games. But in 0.10 there will be a new scripting which will let you do A LOT and suddenly it will be possible to do very interesting car races, adventures... and action games as well. They won't be AAA titles but with the tools at hand they can be highly innovative and fun ... and they will be yours. And if combat sucks no one will create those. If no games like that are there, people won't even realize that combat can actually be fun and won't miss it. In other words - having a good combat will open door for many types of very creative and fun custom games people will create and play with their friends. Mark my words - with good combat we'll get to some pretty impressive things made in Ylands in the future (don't forget that both DayZ, PUBG and few other games started as mods ).

Hey there, fellow ylanders! I have some good news and some (well, actually one) bad news - so let‘s start with the bad one. Internally we planned to release the update 0.9 early this month, but it has become obvious that it will happen sometime in the second half of May instead. There are several reasons for that - the most important being, as usual, that some feature requires more testing - in this case, blueprints. Also, what started as gradual GUI tweaking ended up as a complete GUI / main menu / in-game menu overhaul, which is also taking more time than expected. So let‘s move to the good news. To make up for the delay, we‘re adding one of the first options players will be able to set when starting a new game. In 0.9 you can set if in your game players can hurt each other. This means damage done by melee and ranged weapons, but even catapults and such machines. There is, unfortunately, one area where deciding whether what players do should hurt others is not always trivial - explosions. What we're very likely to do is make the option allowing you to set if players get hurt by explosions a separate one, and leave it up to you to decide what works the best for your game. We hope that this (along with many other game customization options that will come in the future) will improve your Ylands experience, since many of you have been asking for this for a long time. Also, we‘re all aware that there are still the two elephants in the room, so let‘s talk about them. MP issues and optimizations. Another good news I have is that recently we have been able to acquire several new senior programmers, and more will be joining us in the next two months. So far, every single new programmer has made quite a difference, so we‘re very excited about this. And now, after we announced our partnership with Tencent, things seem to have accelerated even more. Blueprints will be great... but they need a bit more time Because we‘re quite busy with testing the upcoming update 0.9, let me mention just one last thing. For some time, we have been working on the new visual scripting that is planned to be introduced in 0.10. We will start discussing with you some of it as soon as 0.9 is released, but at this point I have to say that I can't remember the last time I got so excited about some new Ylands feature. Not only is the new scripting truly fun, but along with that, we will be giving players much more control over various aspects of the game world (remember how some time ago - not that long ago, really - we talked about being able to chose if players can hurt each other? Well, things like that you will be able to affect during the game with your scripts...) So that‘s it for today. In the next Dev Diary, we will be discussing dedicated servers - we are aware that we promised you we‘d do that quite a long a time ago. Until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!