Aleš Ulm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today we'll talk about what we're currently working on. We'll be mostly covering the new painting system but before we get to that let's mention one other feature. In one of the previous Dev Diaries, we mentioned several tips and smaller features that will be implemented rather soon to help you deal with griefers. We also said that those were not everything we're planning in this area, so today we'd like to mention yet another feature that we're currently designing. For some time now we've been looking into the possibility of players being able to claim smaller land areas where other players' actions would be limited in a certain way. Having a feature like this needs enough research and testing, because if it's something easily obtainable very early in the game and can be used to a large extent, then it can actually become yet another tool for griefers to use. If, on the other hand, it becomes available too late in the game and/or is difficult to obtain, it becomes useless for players. Also, we would like players to use something that is not really "superficial" but something that actually exists in the world - we would like this feature to take advantage of the energy system. It's still quite early to give you more specifics or any estimates as to when this feature might become available, but we'll update you about this real soon. The painting (or coloring) system is shaping up rather nicely so it's time we gave you some details. When it comes out you will be able to change the color of most of the game objects (at this point we are not sure if the first iteration will support coloring of plants and trees). In the upcoming update, you will be able to paint objects in two ways - through the dyeing station and with paint gun. The paint gun will be available both in games as well as in the Editor - the major difference being that in the Editor you won't have to care about getting dyes. The days of the limited color palette are gone, now you will be able to pick any color in any shade you like and use it. In many objects that are made out of more colors than one (obvious ones are clothes and armors) you'll find up to three different segments which you'll be able to recolor. Imagine an elaborate chest armor. There may be some metal parts you won't be able to recolor, but there could also be a chest piece, separate shoulders and, say, an ornament on top of it - for these three segments, you will be able to choose three custom colors. Remember these? What about having them in colors that you like more? But there's more! Some of you probably know that we're not using textures at all in Ylands. All the details you see are basically made out of colored polygons. Even things like paintings, ornate vases, rugs and such are made in this way, and therefore you will be able to recolor some segments of them as well! So if you like an image of a lady in a red dress but think that lady in blue would suit your living room better - go ahead and change it! There's obviously more to the painting system than this (we haven't even touched things like picking and storing colors from the object in the world and such) but we'll keep something for later :). So until we see each other again - have a great time ylanders and stay classy!

Hi there, fellow ylanders! We received a lot of feedback based on the last week’s Dev Diary. You told us about your concerns, about various aspects of the game, about things you didn’t like and those you want us to improve. Firstly let me thank you for that - well structured and voiced criticism is a very precious thing and we do appreciate it a lot. Ylands is a very ambitious and in many ways unique project (that will become even more apparent in the features planned for 2018) that started really small and only in the last few months gained larger momentum. We’re learning a lot as we progress and yes, we make mistakes. But there are two main reasons why I believe we’ll end up having a great game - we try not to repeat our mistakes and we listen to you very carefully, reading everything you post pretty much immediately, discussing it every day. And when we see something isn’t working, we change it. So far we have thoroughly discussed two topics you brought up. Bug reports and your feedback There are several things we believe are not working as they should and need to be improved on our side. Firstly there’s a rather unfortunate thing with issues' “states.” Whenever you report an issue, Ane, our Community Manager, places it in JIRA, our bug tracker system, and marks the issue as “Under review.” As soon as the issue is resolved, she changes it to “Resolved” etc. Some of you probably remember that some time ago the states of the issues were shown next to the issues in forums (some relicts of that can still be seen here and there). Unfortunately, at some point, we upgraded our forum system and the plugin that does that turned out to be incompatible with the new forum in some places. The issues are still being marked by us as they were in the past but their current state is no longer obvious. We decided that starting right now, whenever an issue is reported in the forum, we will edit its name so that it contains the number it has assigned in our system. When the issue is resolved in any way, it will be stated there as well. So if you report something under “Annihilator doesn’t work” in the appropriate section of the forum, it will change to something like “[YLN-2156] Annihilator doesn’t work” and eventually to “FIXED [YLN-2156] Annihilator doesn’t work”. The fixed issues in the changelog will be stated along with their numbers. We will start checking regularly for any issues that have been reported for a long time without being fixed, and whenever we find one we will reply to it, explaining why it’s taking so long. However, at the same time, we would like to ask you to be patient whenever you report something rather vague or difficult to reproduce. From now on issues reported by players will have automatically higher than the standard priority for fixing. Dedicated servers The first version of Dedicated servers was, based on numerous requests from the community, released a long time ago... which turned out to be a bad decision, since the version was quite buggy and feature-wise rather incomplete. While the importance of having Dedicated servers (DS) was (and still is) obvious, we were the in position where we suddenly had far too many things to fix, tweak and improve - many of those arguably more important than DS - like “basic” multiplayer, optimizations, fixing game crashes, memory leaks or issues with online launcher and others, so the improvements to DS came rather slowly. We are still improving DS but we understand your frustration because it’s not fast enough. Also, while the current state is sufficient for our internal needs, it has become obvious that you need more tools at your disposal. Unfortunately there’s no way how we can have this in the upcoming update - the one that is coming shortly before the game becomes available on Steam - because there are still even more important things to fix (just to be clear - it isn’t and never has been that we put higher priority on having new features over improving DS. DS is something that isn’t developed by gameplay programmers so it's quite unrelated). Since we don’t want for the newly coming players to feel like we consider the current version of DS "good enough" we decided to take a rather radical step and do the following: in the next update (the one to become available on Steam), DS will be removed from the official game distribution and will become a separately distributed “closed beta” those interested in helping us improve it will get access to it and will be able to host games just like until now we will create a new, specific thread where we plan to gather your feedback and post a description of what our plans are as soon as the next update is released we will start working on DS improvements intensively, regularly sharing our progress with you in that thread. Our obvious goal will be for the DS to become good enough to once again become a part of the official Ylands distribution... and we want this to happen as soon as possible along with the game being released on Steam we will start several dedicated servers, which we will use to test things on our own I can see how this may not make you very happy. Unfortunately, right now there’s no magical way how we can improve DS right away to fit all your needs, and yes, we’re saying that it will take some more time to get where we all want it to be - and that we plan to start working on that fully in what is weeks from now. But it is a plan set in reality. If having better DS tools is what you are after, you will get the chance to work with us more closely on its implementation and have immediate info on how we’re progressing. I do hope you'll understand our reasons and maybe even volunteer to help us once again. In any case, I'd like to thank you for your patience. It does take longer than expected but we hope it will be worth it. You can expect us to address other issues you brought up in the future Dev Diaries - until then have a great time and stay classy!

Excellent! We'll be very grateful for any feedback you guys can provide us with!

Thanks for your understanding, everyone! @WijkagentAdrie We set priority ourselves based on how severe it is - but also based on other things (for example an issue considered normally critical may not be treated as such if the part of the code it comes from is already being reworked etc.) Having said that we always appreciate whenever an issue comes with any additional info. If you take your time explaining why you believe something to be more severe than it appears it can be really helpful because, for example, at first it may not be obvious that a seemingly unimportant issue might be something you run into very often or it prevents you from doing something else. So if you yourself tell us why you think something is critical (or trivial) it will be a welcome addition. As for how you can help us with DS - there's definitely more to be done than just playing In about two weeks (since the next one will probably be quite hectic - that's when the migration of players to Steam is planned to begin) I'd like to create a thread about DS and put there a rough list of features we'd like to add to DS, known issues etc. At that point, it would be great if you could also contribute to that list. Then we can discuss those features, talk about priorities etc. Ideally, this thread wouldn't die when the updated DS comes out but it would be used to discuss any potential future improvements.

Hey there fellow ylanders, We would like for this post to be the first one where we‘ll try to address a rather specific kind of multiplayer issues. With the MP becoming more stable and fun, increasing number of players are joining online games, and because of that, we (as well as many of you) are beginning to see even some problematic behaviors. Some of these are clearly hostile or mean-spirited actions. This, which is commonly called griefing, is something that we will be focusing on the most, but it should be noted that there are many other ways how one player can irritate or anger others - many times actually either unknowingly or even with a good intent. It‘s important to understand that even if we managed to totally eradicate griefers in Ylands (which would be great, but is quite unlikely), there would still be many potential conflict situations that we can‘t prevent, and that is why you, the players, need to be proactive in these matters and take measures to prevent as many of these moments as possible. To help you do that, we'll provide you with some basic safety tips (these mostly apply to Explore game): * if you‘re planning on spending a lot of time building/exploring/leaving your mark in the world, you should think twice before hosting/joining a public game unprotected by a password, open to complete strangers * if you‘re in a game freely accessible by anyone, consider building your epic mansion (or any other creation that takes a lot of effort) on one of the more distant ylands. Since many griefers join games to do as much damage in as little time as possible, being somewhere where they can‘t get unless they first build a boat and locate your yland, can make a big difference Having nice sturdy doors is a way to go (Courtesy of blancket ) * if you build a house, make sure the main entrance is fitted with a lockable door (which you keep locked). Protecting other possible points of entry (such as the roof) might also be a good idea * we plan on introducing a feature that will prevent players from placing building blocks in the vicinity of doors placed by other players. While not a perfect solution, this should prevent ugly issues where some players have used hardened blocks to prevent others from entering their buildings * in the upcoming update you will also be able to duplicate keys - that way you will be able to keep your house locked while giving your friends a way of getting inside * don‘t forget to build a solid floor in your house - it is really easy to dig one‘s way inside through the dirt from the outside * use lockable containers where possible * we plan on adding padlocks (lockable by keys or codes/passwords) in the game, and we would like them to be used to lock most of the interactive objects (locks, levers, workstations). This should add yet another level of protection - especially for your boats and cars So that‘s it for now. Please make sure to let us know about anything that you don‘t like or annoys you in the multiplayer games (or anywhere else). We‘ll return to this topic in the near future - until then you have a great time and stay classy!

Just to keep you in the loop - we started discussing all the concerns you posted and we are coming up with solutions how to address those and improve whatever isn't working as it should be. In order for this discussion not to become too fragmented we decided to first discuss everything, then post all we plan to change (some changes you'll see already within the next few days) as a new Dev Diary (probably on Wednesday). Once it's out we'd like to ask you to read it and tell us what you think. Thanks again for talking to us, we appreciate it!

No problem and thanks for getting involved - this is exactly what we hoped for. Anyway - later today I will discuss the MP concerns with our programmers so that we can discuss it in detail here (that might not be today, but you'll definitely get your answers in this thread - actually feel free to voice any other concerns you might have right here).

Alright, I will try to quickly address some of the issues as possible (in no specific order) - I will add some more info once I have more time and after I've talked with our programmers (about things related to Dedicated Servers). Testing With the game being still an early alpha there are indeed lots of bugs, especially in the new features - but I'd say that we are, in general, getting better in handling this - for example the cars and weather system were really difficult to implement and yet they are among the least problematic updates. It is true that lots of bugs are found and reported by you, the players, but putting it as if we are doing minimal testing and let you "do the job" can't be further from the truth. For dozens of bugs reported on forums (and via ingame tracker - I must not forget about that because we do receive a lot of great feedback that way!) we found and fixed literally several thousands of issues. Also the feeling that things that you report just end up forgotten or ignored is wrong. I already discussed this in one of the previous Dev Diaries: The suggestions you make are discussed during our daily "design talks." All the issues you report are put in our internal system - even if you don‘t get an update about the state of the issue you‘ve reported after some time, it didn‘t disappear. We still know about it, and if it‘s not fixed in the upcoming update, it can be because of several reasons. Even though more people are coming to our team, there are still hundreds of bugs and design issues to take care of, and that takes time. Also, some of your bugs can be related to systems that we know we‘re going to rework soon(TM), in which case we don‘t fix them - we just wait before the new system is in place and then test if the issue is still there. And, unfortunately, sometimes our QA/programmers are unable to reproduce the issue you reported (even after we ask for logs, etc.) - in that case we just leave it in our system and wait if someone else doesn‘t report it as well, hopefully with some additional information. We've been already thinking about using a public tracker where you could check the state of the issue you reported, see/ask about its progress, easily find duplicates etc. However, from what we see in other games (Arma etc.) people prefer reporting issues over forum and only small portion use trackers even when available. Using a tracker at this moment would very likely end up in it being used by only several players while creating unnecessary overhead for us. We do, however, plan to use it sometime in future, when there are more players. Translations "I have the feeling that the translations were 100% made out of the game and the translations haven't been tested [speaking about the Dutch translation]". I'm not sure if I fully understand. Dutch translation is one of the community-made translations and because it hasn't been approved by at least some other players it's available only to those who explicitly run the game with -translator parameter (so that they can check it). It will remain in this stage until the community lets us know it's good enough so this is really up to the community to test it. We just make the tools for those who want to translated the game into their language. If you found some problems with it it's basically a proof that the system works - you should report it to us as an issue or in the localization thread and if you feel proactive you can take part in improving it and fix those yourself Griefing Maybe this is a misunderstanding but as I said in the post - here we just presented few quick tips (and features we know are gonna make it to the next update) that might make your experience more safe and pleasant. I even said that there will be more post like this coming so don't think that what we presented is everything that we are planning to do. Just like the quick fix with doorway I mentioned - we are designing a more robust solution which will very likely replace it but we're not sure when it becomes available (obviously we would like it to be asap). ( I will definitely address even the other concerns you have once I'm at the office on Monday)

John, there's absolutely no need for you to be "positive" about things that you don't like about the game and I definitely don't see your post as "rude". I see well-articulated concerns of someone who's not happy with the current state of things and telling us about it - which is exactly what this forum is for. While it's nice to read when you guys like something, we welcome critical posts as well. So - and this is meant for everyone - don't hold back! As long as you voice your concerns in a civil manner, we'll be more than grateful for it. In fact, I'm glad you posted this because it gives us a chance to address concerns that even others may have. Unfortunately, right now I don't have enough time to post a detailed enough answer, but I will definitely do so later this weekend - I just wanted you to know we've read this and we will discuss it with you. In the meantime enjoy your weekend!

Hi there, fellow ylanders! With two major events - Gamescom and the release of Rainy Roads - behind us we can now once again focus fully on the development of new features and fixing and polishing of the existing ones. However, before I get to talk about the features we’re working on right now, let me quickly mention some general topics. Based on what we learned from implementing the cars we decided to move NPCs into a later update (the one released sometime after the game becomes publicly available on Steam) so that we can give it all the time such a sophisticated feature deserves. Because of that, the next update 0.6 is now called Countless Colors and will contain - you guessed it - a new way of colorizing objects in the game that we believe especially those creative among you will love. There will be other cool features there (read further) but the important thing about 0.6 is that it will be a build we plan to release publicly a few weeks later, so it will also contain a lot of fixes and improvements. Also, the moment when you'll be able to play the game via Steam is already very close (it shouldn't take more than two weeks). When that day comes, we will inform you both via forums and email and tell you how to proceed. And the last thing before we dive into the beautiful sea of new features - at the beginning of the next week we will post a FAQ about our monetization plans. We decided to structure it in a way that would let us discuss features that are about to be implemented/introduced in detail while leaving the ones that are planned for distant future (which can be even more than a year from now) for later discussion, because a lot of things can change in the meantime and going into details now wouldn't make much sense. Also, to make sure the discussion stays easy to read, we'll move some of the topics into separate threads. The first of those, the one that we plan to add sometime after releasing the Monetization FAQ, will be used to discuss how we plan to protect your creations - since you are already sharing your games and compositions via Workshop, we feel having a discussion about IP/Copyright protection makes sense. So, getting back to the cool stuff - what are some of the things we’re working on right now that you will get your hands on in 0.6? Obviously, the system where you can colorize lots of game assets. Gone are the days where we limited you by letting you work only with assets existing in a predefined color palette. Now you'll decide which of the Countless Colors you’ll pick for your house bricks. Not happy about some clothing and armor? Then change its color... no, change its colors - many pieces of clothing will let you color their various parts with up to three different colors. And did I mention Paint Gun? No? Well... I have to keep something for later, don’t I? We believe you'll welcome the option to lock your precious vehicles (Courtesy of Adrie's Shipyard ) For some reason, some people steal. Both in real life and in Ylands. In real life, you just lock what you don’t want them to take - while in Ylands... you will be able to do exactly the same! Right now we’re designing padlocks that players should be able to use with a lot of interactable objects - ship helms, car steering wheels, workstations, otherwise unlockable containers, levers... To use those locked objects you’ll have to have a key (we’re also adding a way to quickly make key duplicates so that even your friends can access your stuff). We would also like to provide you with locks that can be opened with codes or passwords, but those may be introduced at a later date. We know that for many (especially early in the game, before they get used to containers) inventory space is a big issue. In 0.6 we’ll bring you special containers (herb bag, key chain etc.) that you can have in the inventory and to which items of a specific type will be put automatically - effectively enlarging your inventory space while making things more organized at the same time. One of our programmers is working on a new environment audio system. Right now we can’t tell if it will be released with 0.6 or 0.7, but what we know for sure is that for Ylands this will make a really big difference. And that's not all we're working on... There's improved respawning of animals, more interesting (and dangerous) nights and more - but that is something we'll discuss in some future Sneak Peek. Until then have a great time and stay classy!