Aleš Ulm

Hi, since the game is still in early alpha there are, indeed, some performance issues present. Quite soon we plan to start another round of optimizations - hopefully those will result in smoother gaming experience. At this point our bottleneck is not the video card (as long as you're not playing in some really high resolution), but CPU.

Hi, actually this one is a little bit tricky now - what Myrik wrote is true, but unfortunately while games started in Explore and Create scenarios mode can be opened and edited in the Editor, you are not able to change how players spawn there etc. (We are looking into solving this). Right now, if you'd want to create a game where there would be only one Creator Cube you have two options: 1) create a new Game in the editor, put one the Creator Cube in the scene and open the game for others once you've claimed it 2) create a new Game in the editor, create two player roles - one could be something like "Creator" and other "Survivor" etc. Edit what each role starts with - you will want the Creator to start with the Creator Cube. If you need any more help with this, let us know!

You are welcome

Hi, it's nice to see people come back after some time to check what's new! When you start a new Exploration mode game we create quite a large map for you with around a dozen of various ylands - some are covered with jungles, some with ice etc. It is not only the fauna and flora what makes them different - they contain various resources, cave systems (some even really deep caves with rare Ylandium crystals - those however are populated by very powerful mutated animals so you'd better first move high enough in the tech-tree to get you some nice weapons or armor). In order to get to other ylands you'll need to build a ship, boat or at least a raft (currently other ylands are not visible from long distances so you can follow birds flying over the sea that can lead you to another piece of dry land). Exploration is basically the showcase mode of the game - then there are some less sophisticated games created within the Ylands editor and the editor itself. On the ylands (and also in the sea as well - indicated by floating debris) you can find "Points of interest", randomly generated places with structures, loot or even puzzles and riddles. As for the future of Exploration mode: we are working on improved AI and NPCs (both friendly and hostile), which will make the Exploration mode even more fun. Also a sort of a story mode is in the works, that will lead you through several maps to Exploration game ending.

Hi, thanks a lot for the feedback - we have already found the issue and believe that we were able to fix it. Your game has probably been already patched. Unfortunately this won't help you with games that you've already opened and re-saved (this happens automatically). In order to fix your saved games you can do two things - wait for another game update which should be available within a day or so - that will let you use special command in console that we hope will fix your problem. Or, you can use the copy of your game that was created once the update got downloaded. Some one will step in soon to tell you the exact way how to do that. Ales

Ha! I see what you did there, Community Manager!! (No worries, I stole it from a movie myself )

Hi there, fellow ylanders. In this post, instead of telling you what cool features are coming your way as we usually do, I plan to... well, to tell you what cool features are coming your way - in the next few months. And I also want to give you an update about the state of the game. Ylands is heading Steam, where we plan to arrive this summer as an Early Access game. This gives us several months to polish and optimize the game so that we enter Steam at the best possible shape. It‘s important to understand that going to Steam doesn't mean we're close to Ylands being "finished" - quite on the contrary! We‘re only just getting started - the team has once again grown in size and we have plans for several years to come, even after leaving Early Access (some of which are truly magnificent, but obviously first we need to make sure the core features are in great shape). We think of the Steam release as a starting point where the true fun will begin Speaking of going to Steam - it goes without saying that whoever has already bought the game or will buy it before we get there will receive a free Steam copy of the game. If you happen to go to PAX East to Boston find us there and we can talk about what is to come! Right now we are nearing the end of what I would call Stage 0. We have put enough content and features in the game and tested various approaches, so at this moment we have a pretty clear idea of where we want to go and how to get there. Because of all the experiments and iterations and putting new content in the game real fast, there are many features that are fun to play with but are not used to their full extent and which implementations leave a lot to be desired. We have a long list of what needs to be fixed and improved - and this moment is where we begin to tie the loose ends and start focusing more on quality than quantity. Things that we believe require our immediate attention: * Multiplayer - For a long time we had troubles with connecting players together. In 0.21 (Dangerous Depths) we finally managed to overcome these issues and players could finally start playing multiplayer mode. And also, as expected, we are now getting enough feedback on multiplayer related bugs. Solving these and bringing you a perfect multiplayer experience is really important to us - that‘s why 0.23 will be, to a large extent, about fixing these bugs. * Ships - Ships are fun but who says they can't be more fun? We are making them into physical entities and adding a lot of visual goodies as well. On the other hand, in the upcoming update you can expect to run into some issues due to their newly acquired physical simulations. Also, some of the nastiest bugs we know of in multiplayer mode are related to ships - we are aware of those and are working on a fix (which, however, won't make it into 0.22, but will be present in the aforementioned 0.23 as well). * AI - AI for animals at completely destructible terraformable ylands is not an easy task but for some time now we've been working on a better system, and we hope to bring you results in one of the future updates. Once we‘re happy with basic animal AI, you can expect NPCs and humanoid enemies. * Optimization - We are not limiting players in any way, so it is not really possible for us to ensure that everything they create with the Scenario editor will run greatly, but it is fair to say that Ylands is still quite performance hungry (our bottleneck right now lies with CPU) and we are already addressing that. We are already working on additional optimizations that we will be releasing over the next few updates. A new scenario to share with you is coming along nicely! But this doesn't mean that we've given up on bringing you new and interesting content and features - actually there are still several large ones you will get to see in the game before we hit Steam in summer. I will mention just two - a special community hub through which you will be able to share both structures and whole scenarios, and also something that will motivate you even more to play the Explore scenario and possibly even win it. Once again I would like to thank of all of you who are helping us with the development. Let me assure you that once thousands of new players start pouring in, not only you won‘t be forgotten, but that we actually have something very cool in store for you all! So take care, ylanders, and stay classy

Well, apart from a lot of physics-related issues for us to solve it means, for example, that if you run your ship into another one something visually cool happens. Characters can now walk on ships even when they are moving. Ship's movement looks much better and more natural... Soon you will be able see for yourself! (But as I said, although we are trying to fix everything possible, this is a bit tricky, so there will probably be some minor issues still present in single player ship handling. In MP, unfortunately, the ships are single most bugged bit of the game - you can expect a massive number of fixes coming with 0.23)

No, we are working on our own system that suits our needs better. At first everything will be done through a specific website - a community hub of Ylands content creators and later we will let the players do the same thing right from within the game without having to leave it.

Hi guys and thanks for your feedback! Just as I said in some other thread - with this update we've introduced some new MP code and we were aware that the MP won't be perfect right off the bat (at this point we need to get as much feedback as possible so you posting stuff like this is of incredible value to us ) - on the other hand we understand that these can be very annoying or even make the game unplayable so we're ready to fix these issues real fast - you can expect the MP to become more stable soon (as in real soon, not months ). Thanks again for helping us make Ylands a great game!

Hi @KomankoZ! Thank you for the feedback. This update is, in a sense, the very first one to introduce some new MP code and issues were expected (the game is still in early alpha after all :)) - we have already started gathering the feedback and fixing the bugs. Achieving great MP experience is extremely important to us and so we can promise that the situation will get noticeably better over the course of next few weeks. If you'd want to help us even more you could post a list of the issues you encountered with indication which you consider to be the most critical/annoying. Thanks!

Thanks for narrowing the issue down for us! We were able to reproduce it and hopefully fixed the issue. We plan to release this fix along with some other ones later this week (your game will be updated automatically). We will tell you when that happens - it would be really great if you could then confirm the issue has been fixed for you. Thanks again for your help!

We are sorry to hear that you can't check the new content! Could you please provide us with the complete log file found in \Program Files\Ylands\Game\Ylands_Data so that we can look into that asap? Thanks!

Places: There are at least few new ones in every update Next update: let's say that you guys are going to have a lot of fun with that one - plus you won't have to wait for it as long as you have for the Caves

Hi there, fellow ylanders! The Christmas presents have been unpacked (we hope you got all you wished for!) and so the next big thing is ... the New Year 2017! What's going on in our offices with just two days remaining in 2016? Well, not much since the team has taken couple days off to get some well deserved rest :). So let us wish you all the best in 2017: May you achieve victories both big and small... and when occasionally things won't go exactly your way, remember what Neil Gaiman said... I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something. You stay classy, ylanders, and we'll see you in 2017!

Thanks, Michal! Merry Christmas and shiny happy New Year to yourself and everyone else in here too

Hi there, fellow ylanders! The Christmas time is upon us but that's not stopping us from working on cool new stuff that you will get to enjoy in January. Some of you might have already noticed that the next update is named Dangerous Depths. So far we've introduced jungles and deserts, arctic regions, high mountains and deep seas, but something felt missing... Yes, in January we will let you venture deeper than you've ever been. You will be able to explore cave complexes and if there's at least a drop of dwarf blood running through your veins you will probably even build your home there. If you do, though, make sure you don't go too deep. It's true the rumors say that great things can be found in the depths but when we tried to find someone who actually went there and returned, we could not find anyone. Weird... But we will keep asking and bring you more news as soon as we have it. In the meantime you stay classy, ylanders, and have a wonderful time!

Hi Barsian, thanks for your files. We were able to reproduce the bug and fix it. Unfortunately we were unable to fully restore the content of your saved game. What does this mean? The world as you explored it is still there. Your character, his clothing and inventory should be fine. However a certain area in the game, specific terrain block sized 96x96m where you were when this happened has been stripped of all the entities you placed there. Since you were probably at your "base" when this happened, I can imagine you lost a lot of things you built in the world. Based on this error we are actually adding a new feature in the game that should prevent potential problems like this in the future, but obviously for you this comes a bit too late. I am really sorry about this - although we're still in early alpha stage we are doing our best to prevent any potential bugs that could cause progress loss but some of those,unfortunately, get discovered only when some player experiences them. Due to what we just did this thing should happen way less often. Ales

Hi blancket! I'm sorry for rather late reply but we had to discuss your suggestion (smaller painting radius) first - we've put it on our todo list but unfortunately this isn't something that would be easy to implement right now. As for the spawn point: as longer as there is no existing player role (player role game logic object) in the level. it should be enough to place a spawn point to wherever you want the player to start in the level. If you create player roles you need to specify where players who choose this player role when starting the game will spawn. If you need more detailed explanation, feel free to ask

Hi blancket! We know that this would actually make one cool feature but unfortunately it is not an easy one to implement - there are lot of things that have some degree of interactivity (chairs, bushes that can be harvested etc. etc. - the list is actually super long ) and scaling those would result in breaking some of the features. There are objects (like the mushrooms you mentioned) where this would be easier but letting players scaling only specific (rather small and not very clearly defined) group of objects doesn't feel right either. But this is definitely something we will be look into in the future. On a different, but slightly related note - I've noticed that you are missing better object filtering in the Editor and as a result we will be adding that to update 0.21 (it will work in a similar way to inventory/creator cube catalog). I was wondering if there's anything more you think could be improved in the Editor so that you could build objects there? Feel free to point out anything you feel is wrong/not working as expected or hit us with any wish you might have when it comes to Editor features (it's almost Christmas time, after all :)) - and anyone else potentially reading this please feel free to step in as well!

That looks truly amazing - my hat's off to you, sir

1) a 2) - we'll look into that that, thanks! 3) Just to make sure - you're using the map to tell where the north (and therefore also east) is and the sun doesn't rise where you'd expect? Is the difference big? At times the sun actually rises somewhat north or south of the true east - but any other place does indeed sound like a bug and in that case checking your your savegame (found under Documents/Ylands/SaveGames) could help us find and fix the potential issue.

In order to craft a mast with a sail (it's a single object) you need any kind of rope sewing kit cloth log/massive log (based on what size of the mast you want to craft) EDIT :you actually need more than one piece of cloth and rope in order to make that - but as soon as you have at least one of each ingredients in the inventory (or had at some point) the formula will appear in your crafting panel along with the exact numbers

You know who else would love to see flying ships being added into the game? ...and who are we to argue with Serenity's crew, right? Obviously we'll have to look into this at some point in the future

Thanks for letting us know! I understand that this can be very frustrating and we will definitely do something about it. The solution will most likely be released with an update later this month.