Aleš Ulm

Hi there, fellow ylanders! We're back from Gamescom and even though there's plenty of things to be done, it feels right to say at least a few words about the event. We just loved it. With 16 computers occupied almost permanently by those wishing to learn something about the game (as well as by those who kept returning along or with their friends, which was also great) and a great looking large booth our presence was way bigger than at any previous event we went to. Gamescom 2017 was just awesome! We watched hundreds of players play the game and discussed various features with them. Once again the feedback we received was priceless (actually, in the second half of the show we were showing a build where we already made some changes based on that). Those who got their hands on the weather system and the new version of cars seemed to like it a lot - it felt good to see that our decision to give the cars some more time was worth it (thanks again for your patience). We'd like to release that update later this week so even those who couldn't come will be able to play with it. We even met some of our dedicated players and it was really great to actually see the people behind all those nice posts! Adrie is just checking out if our excitement about the new cars has some solid basis or if we're just crazy people I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all our guys who spent the long hours manning the stations, those who helped us from our HQ at Prague and also our friends who came to present Arma and DayZ - we had a lot of fun together. Well, I guess we'll get back to work now and I'll talk to you later. Until then... you stay classy, ylanders!

That is simply amazing! EDIT: seeing how you're locking your ship - you will probably find tomorrow's Sneak Peek rather interesting

Hey Adrie, 1) to be honest animal respawning works real bad right now. We tried to go with kind of a "realistic approach" where the animals procreate are but given how small many ylands are and that it's super easy to kill off all the animals quite quickly that now leaves the ylands empty anyway. We want to change this behavior soon so that animals respawn more often and (at least larger) ylands don't become dead forever anymore. 2) no, that is yet another thing that needs to be implemented 3) not now but we see where this is coming from and we're already thinking about it 4) yes, I hear you. Definitely something we need to remedy 5) good point! We'll discuss that - thanks!

Thanks for your effort! As I stated in another thread - we are perfectly aware that we need to address griefing and trolling in some way before entering Steam in the best way possible (even though there, unfortunately, isn't really a perfect solution to this). In near future, we will discuss with you our plans.

With MP finally becoming a solid experience (technical wise) we are now focusing on issues like griefing and try finding ways of making MP more fun and safer for everyone. We understand that these things, at least in some way, definitely need to be addressed before we enter Steam. In near future, we plan to discuss with you what is it that we have planned to battle this.

Hi there, fellow ylanders! So what’s going on with Ylands? Quite a few things actually! We’re about to leave for Gamescom... but before we get to that let’s talk a bit about the upcoming update. As some of you know, based on the final tests we decided not to release the Rainy Roads update and take some more time working on the cars. It wasn’t an easy decision, especially given the fact that due to many other reasons this update has already taken WAY longer than our updates normally do. But every single time I sit down behind the wheel in Ylands and take one of the nice (or weird) cars for a ride I feel more and more that it was the best call to make. The cars have been reworked to a great degree and things you can now do with them are just incredibly fun - long jumps, driving inside a U-ramp or doing some pretty cool tricks with the handbrake. The good news is that we’ve been able to get the vehicles to this point rather fast, and while those who come visit us during Gamescom next week will be able to get their hands on them, the smaller part of the team that stays back here in Prague will use the week to do some final touches. If everything goes right, we’d like to release the cars sometime after we return from Gamescom. The new cars went through a lot of intense testing The bad news is - well, actually right now there aren’t really any Also, some time after we return from Gamescom and everything settles down a bit again, we will give you the update info about monetization - we’ll post the FAQ we promised you some time ago. And now to Gamescom - most of the team will spend the whole next week in Cologne, Germany, presenting the game to players. Those of you who will be there make sure to come visit us - talk to any of us, tell us that you are already ylanders (that actually means a lot now, given the fact that the game is not being sold till November! ) and we’ll greet you with all the glory you deserve On the other hand, since Ane, our Community Manager, and pretty much everyone who often replies on forums will be there during that week, it may take longer for you to get replies - we will try to keep you updated about how things are going in Cologne at least from time to time. We’ll be looking forward to meeting some of you in Germany and with the rest, I will get in touch through the next Sneek Peak. Until then - have a great time and stay classy!

Yes, the next time we need to come better prepared with enough goodies even for the younger kids (fun fact: we sort of expected the German authorities to give us 12+ rating which would prevent the younger kids from even entering our booth - in the end though, we were pleasantly surprised we got 6+).

So much joy! This really made my day - thank you

Yes, we actually had a lot of players returning to our booth which felt really good With exception of leaving for a quick lunch or having a short break our guys have been there the whole time - all of them, every day since the early morning till the late evening (plus the extra day when we were setting everything up). It was quite tiresome but totally worth it :). Thanks for the car feedback, we'll see what can be done about it

Hey guys! With Gamescom behind us, the team is heading back home right now. I believe they've done a truly great job there (presenting the game 10 or 11 hours straight for several days both preceded and followed by a 10-hour drive home is no easy task ) and they will be getting a little bit of rest tomorrow after which we will try to get the update out as soon as possible (meaning that unless something very unexpected happens we'd like to release it later next week). Also tomorrow I hope to find a bit of time to write and post at least a short Dev Diary - GC2017 post-mortem, go over forum thoroughly and answer any questions I find. Right now I can already say that it was even better than we anticipated, players were just amazing (thanks again to those of you who came to visit us ) and once again we got a ton of feedback (actually the cars we were showing in the second part of the convention had been already tweaked based on the feedback received during the first day or two of Gamescom). Have a great Sunday and I'll talk to you tomorrow!

Oh boy, this is what happens when you give away all your secrets On some of the PCs we will be showing a newly made racing track but if you'll want to try to drive it through some rougher terrain I'm pretty sure for you guys we can go beyond what's meant to be shown to the general public Please bear in mind that some minor things are still being tweaked so the demo does not represent 100% of what's going to be in the update. In general the maximum car speed is yet to be finalized (based on some MP tests that will be performed while we're at GC; especially cars with just one engine are now rather slow on the racing track - this speed, though, is fine out in the open where due to many obstacles going real fast is not possible anyway ) and proper sounds still need to be put in place.

Hey there, fellow Ylanders! Today we have two important announcements to make. Some of you have probably noticed that Ylands has been released under the Bohemia Incubator label. Let me explain what does it stand for. Bohemia Incubator was introduced as a label under which experimental projects will be born. In addition to our critically acclaimed franchises, we want to keep trying to find new experiences. Something that may even look and feel miles away from what our other games are like but shares the common vision of all our games. Games that are always about creativity, about learning and exploring. Some of the projects end up in early stages because they don’t have what we’re looking for, while others make it far enough so that they are first publicly announced and later released. Ylands is one of the Incubator games. It started with just an idea and for many months we were just experimenting, trying to see what would work and what wouldn’t. At some point, the early prototype actually became fun to play and it was getting obvious that it holds a promise of a possibly interesting game. Now here we are, some three years later. A little bit over a year ago we began a specific stage where we made the early version of the game available throughout our store. We were looking for early adopters, players who would help us shape the game, to find the right direction. And you, who are reading this right now, have answered our call. Those who are with us for a long time know that during this stage many things have changed rather dramatically. And most of that based on your very own feedback. Right now we know exactly what kind of a game Ylands is and we’re planning to expand it both as a platform that lets players make their own games and as a game about exploration. We have a Steam launch date, where we will spend several months in Early Access mostly tweaking the multiplayer experience and issues that will arise from a larger number of people playing the game at once. We’ve matured. We’ve graduated from the Incubator and are now leaving the label as an experiment that became a game. You see that label Project Argo has? We're about to join the club Even though this is mostly a symbolic moment (which, however, feels very important to us) there will be some things happening that we were already planning to do and for which this moment is very fitting. I’ve already told you we’re working on the Steam version of the game and that the current players will get the Steam keys. The moment when this will happen is quite near now (you will be receiving your keys via email and there will be a specific post about this before it happens). The new information is that in a few days we plan to stop selling the non-Steam Ylands version on our online store, meaning that from that moment till November 2017, when Ylands becomes officially available for purchase on Steam, there will be no way to acquire additional copies of the game (with exception of media). For obvious reasons, it is not an easy decision for us to make, but we feel it’s the right thing to do because of several reasons: * since we’re going to Steam anyway we’d rather stop working on/supporting the non-Steam version sooner than later and concentrate more on polishing the Steam version (which we hope you, the current players - soon to be early Steam adopters - will help us with) * continuing selling the non-Steam version through our store when we know that it will be discontinued soon and players will have to move to Steam anyway seems rather unfair and misleading * we don’t have a huge number of players right now, but more than enough for us to work with for the upcoming months so that we enter Steam in a great shape – which right now is our primary goal So yes, for some time you will become the exclusive group of people, the only ones with the access to the game who can brag about it to your friends, who will have to wait before the game comes out on Steam :). Jokes aside though - we value the fact that you are here with us - many of you for a really long time. It’s something we won’t forget. When we get to Steam we will show to every single one of you that we appreciate your help with making Ylands a better game - and we’re talking about way more than just giving you some commemorative ingame item. If you wonder what changes you will experience during this stage (before we come to Steam) – except for you playing the game on Steam pretty much everything will remain the same. You will be getting at least the same amount of support and you will even get a whole new update with NPCs. Come visit us at Gamescom 2017 held at Cologne, Germany, 22. - 26.08.2017 Speaking of coming to Steam – since we’re now ready to tell the world that Ylands will become publicly available through Steam in November, what better place to do so than a huge gaming event – Gamescom 2017? We’ve been to Unite, to PAX, to E3 – but so far only with just a handful of computers and few individuals. Well, times are changing :). At Gamescom we’ll have a great big booth with lots of computers for you to play the latest game build. To make sure that everything runs as smooth as possible and that all your questions are answered, there will be most of the Ylands team present. And if you want to check what’s going on with other Bohemia games, you will find them there as well! It’s going to be BIG and we’re super excited about it! We’re looking forward to both meeting some of you in person as well as to many discussions with you about game features in the upcoming months, and believe that together we’ll make sure our Steam entry is a success. And that's all for now. I'll see you in the next Dev Diary and in the meantime - as always - have a great time and stay classy!

@A3_Melle Don't worry about it - I'll meet you in Netherlands sooner or later and with Ane and most of the team around I'm pretty sure you'll be in good hands even when I'm gone @WijkagentAdrie Cool! Do find me there so that we can chat

@A3_Melle Don't worry - I believe at some point in the future we'll go and pay our Dutch office buddies a visit and when we're in the Netherlands, we'll definitely make time to meet you as well ( Plus as much as I consider Gamescom an important event, I think that being on fire department duty kind of beats that )

Yes! Unfortunately, I have to leave a bit earlier - on 25th - but most of the team will be there the whole time. Everyone stationed at Ylands part of Bohemia Interactive booth will be a 100% pure Yland dev :), at least 10 of us - programmers, artists, internal QA, CM, designers... We will be easily recognizable by our Ylands t-shirts :). If you get the chance - do come visit us - we'd love to see and chat with you (and obviously you'll be leaving with some nice Ylands merchandise ). This goes for everyone here - if any of you guys manage to stop by, please talk to us, tell us you're already a Ylander so that we can thank you personally and take a good care of you! And if Cologne is out of your reach - don't worry, in future, you'll get to talk to us at other events as well

Thanks a lot, everyone! @Hurricane43 Bohemia Interactive will be a pre-Gamescom live stream with one segment dedicated to Ylands (where two other devs and I will talk about the game and answer questions ). It starts on next Thursday 17.8.2017 at 18:00 CEST / (Ylands bit is supposed to start around 18:45 CEST. Will post info about this event on Monday or so.

Hey there, fellow ylanders! This Dev Diary will be a bit difficult - it’s always fun to tell you good news and announce cool new features, but there are also times when less exciting news have to be told, and when such time comes it's best to just tell things as they are. And the thing is that originally we planned on releasing the Rainy Roads sometime next week. We have fixed as many issues as possible in the given time. The new weather system is working great. We are building both cool and weird vehicles and driving them (we’ve actually done that for many weeks now), and final tests are about to be finished... but despite this all, we decided to step back, delay the update release further and take some more time working on the cars. We kept adjusting the controls and cars' behavior heavily for weeks now - there was a new build with major changes every few days and we believed we were “almost there.” Right now we have a solid version that is fully working - but many of us who have tested this week's "final" iteration feel that the controls and cars' behavior still deserve further tuning. That even though these cars, just as the update name suggests, are meant mostly for roads (specific off-road cars will be added in the future), driving them in rougher terrain could work better. Honestly - if this happened 6 months ago we would have probably just released it anyway. The game is still early alpha and it wouldn’t be the first time we released something knowing that it required more improvements in the future. Right now, however, when we plan to enter Steam and the team is getting bigger, we need to start tying loose ends instead of creating new ones. We need to stop thinking of the game as of something that can handle anything we throw at it just because there’s “alpha” written next to it. It goes without saying that I take the full responsibility and apologize for us feeding the expectations that the update “is almost out of the door” when talking to you here on forums. We genuinely believed that the final tuning would be way easier to do and some of the issues that still make the controls less than ideal required just a small fixes, that everything would click and fall in place to create a very good experience like it did in the past - and we were wrong. Lesson learned. Just another day for our test drivers... Exactly because of this, we're not going to give you any new ETA, because we’re not going to do the same mistake twice - but we’ll be telling you about our progress regularly and as long as necessary. Right now we just know that we decided not to release it next week, we'll take a good look at it and see how it can be improved. As a side note - this doesn’t affect other features or updates. Only a few people will keep working on tweaking cars as the rest of the team continues working on other features and fixes, so delaying this update some more doesn’t really mean delaying the subsequent ones. Also speaking of delays and time estimates - since I’ve already pointed out this elephant in the room, let’s talk about him some more. We want to give you as much information about our plans as possible. We'd like you to have at least a rough idea when some features and updates are coming in the game so that you don’t have to keep asking on the forums every single week. The problem is that we’re treading an unknown territory here - a totally open sandbox world with fully destructible terrain, lots of simulations going on, seamlessly switching between single and multiplayer and using 3rd party game engine, various unexpected issues appear all the time. Also sometimes even when a feature has already been implemented and we test it we find it’s really missing something and we decide to improve it - and even small changes and additions take time (especially since everything needs to work properly in MP which doesn’t just “happen” by implementing it in SP and requires a lot of work). Because of that we decided to hold back a bit when talking about estimates and deadlines - we don’t really want to go full “it’s done when it’s done”, but at the same time, we need to avoid situations like this one. So if at some point you ask about a future update ETA and receive an answer that’s rather vague - it’s not because we don’t care. It’s because we do and because I honestly don’t feel like writing another post like this anytime soon :). Thank you for your understanding and as always we're ready to answer any questions you might have below this post. I will see you in the next Dev Diary. Until then - have a great summer and stay classy!

@silentghoust Yes, some MP/dedicated fixes are coming with the upcoming update - we're quite excited about new "diagnostics" system that will send us any problems dedicated servers encounter right away so that should help us locate and fix even the remaining issues rather quickly.

Now that is something pretty cool Thanks!

@WijkagentAdrie Sorry for the late reply! :) The steering wheel block comes always with both the seat and the steering wheel. There are several variants - some are made in the way that they complement other pre-made car-specific blocks because of the side/back walls they contain, but there will be also ones that consisting only of the seat with the steering wheel.

That seat can be seen, for example, in the rightmost car in the picture. On its right side (I guess it's made in Britain ) there's a variant of driver's seat with a steering wheel - and right next to it, there's a simple passenger seat so yes, you're more than welcome to take your friends for a ride! Before anyone asks, though - currently it's not possible for the driver nor passengers to shoot from the car. That may be added in the future, but not in this update.

@WijkagentAdrie It's a driver seat - that's actually a new asset, 2x2 tiles object containing steering wheel and a seat. @John - Ylanders Players creating cars like those is definitely something we look forward to very much

Thanks, guys - it's always nice to see how classy you ylanders are @WijkagentAdrie Yes, adding more than one engine does make your car go faster (but only to a certain point - once the maximum speed for that vehicle (car but also ship) has been reached, adding more engines doesn't make any difference). Every engine has its own fuel, so when one runs out of it, the others keep going usually resulting just in slowing down). The weight is not taken into account, but as with the ships, there's an imaginary box on the chassis which limits you so that you don't build something huge. @Dirtyefenhairy You're right - we are aware of existing MP issues (as well as the fact that the game needs further optimizing). We're doing our best so that those issues are fixed before we officially enter Steam Early Access in November. Two updates are planned before that (0.5 and 0.6) - many existing issues should be fixed in those.

Good question because making jumps with cars is actually one of the things we think should work better than it does in the current iteration (so yes, we believe the cars should be able to jump :)). As for loops - it is not possible at this moment. As to whether it will become possible at some point - that depends on how much additional work we're going to put into cars.

PS: Also, we kind of put discussing the monetization plans on hold because of finalizing this update - with most of the features in places and tested I believe I will finally find time later next week to return to that. I will continue working on that FAQ so that our plans are explained in detail and our discussion may continue. Thank you for your patience!