Aleš Ulm

Hi everyone! Just a few quick lines - I should be able to explain things in detail on Monday (if necessary). We, indeed, came up with this idea ( or, to be more precise, our CEO Marek Španěl has - so let me thank for your kind words on his behalf ) - or at least we are not aware of anyone else who is using the cloud save the way we intend to use it. As for allowance related questions - we're still finalizing this. I think we should be able to give you some answers in about two weeks.

Hey there, fellow ylanders! If nothing unexpected happens, this should be the last Dev Diary before update 0.8 is released. Things are once again super hectic in here (and because of that some of us may not be that active on forums as usual) so today I’m not going to talk about any details, instead I would like to give you some tips on what you can do with your time before you get your hands on “Meaningful Music” - namely some really nice games that some of you made and shared with the community through the Workshop. Most of them are still work in progress and contain bugs but they are already lot of fun. We check those regularly so I asked our designer @Rudy.cz to pick some he likes and tell you what to expect. Entombed https://ylands.net/asset/211 Find yourself trapped inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid accompanied by a strange cat statue, which is helping you find your way out. Overcome various traps, challenging puzzles and dangerous enemies and discover the story behind this mysterious place. Nice storytelling, clever use of game logics and attention to detail makes this one of the best scenarios currently at the Workshop. PROJECT LOST DHARMA https://ylands.net/asset/306 A lot of passion went to this game which places the player on an yland full of danger and discovery. Through this scenario players will visit several well-thought areas, each with its own challenges and mystery, culminating in the discovery of the true meaning of this enigmatic Project Dharma. Well built world with many original ideas makes this scenario worth a try. Remember that cool Dharma Initiative in "Lost"? Well, Ylands now has a mysterious Dharma of its own... so what are you waiting for? Scenario for the air crash https://ylands.net/asset/148 This short game does not actually provide a long story or any extra challenges, but it's a very cleverly designed "cinematic intro" explaining why you have found yourself lost on a deserted yland. Scavenger Hunt and Survival https://ylands.net/asset/115 Simple, but yet well-made game which adds to your usual survive-on-an-yland business a simple background story and a goal to strive to. Hospital. Scary game (BETA) https://ylands.net/asset/201 A very promising game, still very work-in-progress, but already showing huge potential. The hospital itself is well designed, nicely built and really scary just on its own. Hopefully you will have fun playing these, and before you know it, we’ll be back with the next Sneak Peek, in which we will discuss many cool features coming with the update 0.9. Until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Nice try! Seriously though - until the update is out anything can happen (some of us will keep testing it even beyond the usual QA during the weekend etc.).

To be honest we'd rather not to - it happened to us in the past that we actually had to remove (even though rather small) feature from a build we thought was ready for release or that a critical issue appeared and we had to postpone the release couple more days (that shouldn't happen but really anything is possible in software development). Also presenting it earlier would inevitably lead to discussions which we at this point have no time to pay attention to fully I hope that as a consolation you will accept tomorrows Dev Diary where I will talking about things we are planning for 0.9 and which I think will rather pretty interesting.

Hi guys, just a quick note - we decided to include two more MP fixes that weren't planned to be there and because of that we will have the build ready to be released sometime tomorrow... but since we have a rule that unless it's really necessary we don't release updates on Fridays (especially ones with rather important fixes and changes) so that everyone here is ready to react if something with the update goes wrong, the update will be out on Monday. I know we said we expected the update to be released late this week, but I think the delay is worth it. Thank you for your understanding

Hey there, fellow ylanders! With the update 0.8 “Meaningful Music” arriving in roughly two weeks, it’s high time we told you some more details. Recent fixes First though, let me give you some info about important fixes, as usual. A few days ago we released a hotfix meant to fix the issues where players were getting disconnected (a lot). Even though there may still be some cases when that happens, the game seems to be more stable now in this regard (let us know if you still experience this issue). At the same time, we made some changes that have substantially lowered the lag experienced whenever a new player has joined a more complex MP game. This rather quick fix was done at the expense of those who are joining the game - it may now take them somewhat longer to join, but this is only a temporary state and will be eventually resolved as well. Initially, we planned to release another hotfix this week since we managed to fix another rather severe MP issue - actually one that could have been causing a lot of various problems. Before the hotfix was properly tested, we were finally able to reproduce yet another MP issue - one where players got stuck waiting to connect to an MP game. Since releasing the hotfixes creates some overhead, and with the next update coming out in about two weeks, we decided to release these fixes with the regular update instead. Upcoming features So back to “Meaningful Music”. Obviously, the biggest new feature is the dynamic music. We believe it will add a lot to the game atmosphere. To give you an example of what to expect - the combat music intensity is decided based on how much danger you’re in (based on your opponent's danger level), so you’ll be able to tell pretty quick if things get ugly and you should maybe consider performing a tactical withdrawal (sometimes known as “escape”) and live to fight another day. The adventurous tune played when sailing the seas; the subtle music heard when diving into the depths. Specific tracks played at sunrise and sunset... we’re pretty sure you won’t be disappointed. I’ve already mentioned new, free head models and hairstyles - and we’ll keep adding more. Also the hair now supports physics, which looks really nice. You will now be able to buy decorations (will talk about those in detail the next week), armor skins and we’re also introducing packs, which let you get several things at once at a discount price. We are already working on several large features for update 0.9 (that’s why there isn’t more to 0.8), but we will discuss these things with you once “Meaningful Music” is released to avoid potential confusion where some players might expect these features to arrive in two weeks' time. Wubba lubba dub dub! (Rick and much more one more time courtesy of @spyler.1989) Upcoming fixes As always there will be fixes present in the update. The one that I want to mention is MP map fix. The map should now work correctly both in SP and MP. To achieve that we had to rewrite the feature, which resulted in some changes. The map now looks a bit rougher (but is still nice enough) and it shows the initial world state, so if you, by some weird chance, manage to sink a whole yland in your world, it will be still present on the map. Your current location will get uncovered in every map currently present anywhere in your hotbar (regardless of whether it’s active or not). The feature is ready for note-taking which we plan to introduce in one of the future updates. And one important thing: the changes made to the map system will result in resetting your current maps (sorry, there’s no easy way of avoiding that). Please make sure that when 0.8 comes, you’re not located somewhere out there in the vast blue sea (if you need the map to navigate, you can take a screenshot of it for future reference). That’s it for today, and I will talk to you next Friday. Until then have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

@WijkagentAdrie MP gameplay goals: there's one very important MP-related feature that will be introduced in 0.9 - I will talk about it in a Dev Diary right after we release 0.8 and that's where I'd like to discuss our other plans for MP as well so I'd like to ask you to a wait a bit more (but you will get your answer) @mid endian There isn't really an easy way to answer that. The problem is that it's rather difficult to say what "feature complete" means - especially when it comes to open world sand box games (and even more so when those games are platforms at the same time). We have a list of features we want to implement and it will take literally years before most of those things get in the game - personally I think Ylands will never be "feature complete". I understand, though, that you're not asking about some future cool features but about some rather specific ones that you're missing right now. I can't tell if what comes out as Ylands 1.0 will contain everything you'd like to see there, but the Editor will be greatly enhanced and players will, indeed, be given more options to customize their games before we leave EA.

Yes, definitely (many players have asked for that). Before we leave EA we want players to be have some additional options to set whenever a new game is started - one of those will be PvE mode.

Hi, guys. We still have six months ahead of us and a lot can (and will) be done in that time. Also the last two months are planned pretty much for bug fixing only (*cough* cruch time *cough*). It's obvious though that we need to fix as many issues as possible much sooner than that. Most of the really annoying issues (if we, for a moment, ignore general performance, that needs a lot of love as well) are MP-related. I don't want sound like a broken record since I've said this before, but I have a high hopes for the dedicated MP programmer, who has started recently contributing with his share of fixes. To give you a hint on how serious we are about meeting that EA deadline - right now we're looking for four more programmers. After we release update 0.8 we would like to create a page here with the most-pressing issues currently in the game (both SP and MP). We've already talked about our smaller internal version of that list and issues we fixed so far but this one will be longer and always accessible for you all to see. That way we should be able to see how many really nasty issues remain to be fixed and how fast we're proceeding with fixing those. We know just as well as you that leaving EA will be a big step and we must not do it with game which is still buggy. That is just not going to happen. Let's take a look at the current state of the game three months from now and discuss it. That should be enough time for us to turn the things around substantially and prove that our schedule isn't unrealistic or, if we fail, to adjust our plans. Anyway - thanks for voicing your concerns in such civil and nice way. It's always a pleasure to take part in discussions like this one.

Wow... just ... WOW! Thanks for sharing that with us!

Hey there, fellow ylanders! Today I want to tell you something about what you can expect before we leave the Early Access stage (which should be around late August this year). Speaking of leaving EA - we’ve said this on several occasions already but since lately I’ve seen some players asking about this there’s no harm in repeating it. When we leave EA and Ylands becomes Ylands 1.0, we will keep working on the game in the same way we do right now. We won’t be starting any new project instead, and if there are any changes to the team, it will only grow in size. Everyone on the team understands we’re in this for at least several more years. Long story short - Ylands is not going anywhere anytime soon :). Upcoming hotfix There’s also one more thing to address before I move to our plans - with 0.7 a lot of players complained about getting disconnected fairly often with the game showing Network Layer Error message. We had a rather hard time reproducing that because in the end, it showed that this isn’t really a MP-specific issue but something related to certain situations happening in the game (this bug has been there for a long time but only now became “more active”). We were able to find a possible cause thanks to you providing us with your save games. We managed to fix it so that with the saves you provided it doesn’t happen anymore. If after the patch is released (which is planned to happen this Monday 5th) you still experience this issue, let us know - we’ve also added some more detailed debugging to this section just in case. Also with this patch, we’ll release an optimization for the situations where new players are connecting to MP games. The lag that the players are already playing on that server experienced so far should now (especially in large, heavily adjusted maps or maps with lots of buildings) be dramatically lower. On the other hand, it may now take slightly longer for the players to join large MP games, which we find acceptable. Our plans Update 0.8 is near and as you already know you can expect some new and awesome dynamically changing music (like the combat music escalating based on how much danger you’re in). There will be some new decorations to be purchased but just like we said, we will always bring cool free things as well, so those of you who would like to change the appearance of their character will get the chance with some brand new character heads and hairstyles. Also, we want to deliver the fixed MP map. There’s more to 0.8, but we’ll get to that at some point. After 0.8 there will be three more updates - including Ylands 1.0 - before we leave EA (so yes, even though we wanted to have 0.9 followed by 1.0, the final version will be preceded by 0.10 ). Some of the most important features you will find in these updates will be: Blueprints * These are similar to Compositions, but they are just a plan on how to build things... available in the Explore game. We will be talking more about blueprints in detail before 0.9 is released (we’re still deciding on some of the functionality, so we won’t be able to answer most of the questions about those yet), but in general it’s safe to say that in Explore you will have some blueprints we prepared for you right from the start, you will be able to find more, and more importantly, you will be able to create those yourself. If you build a nice house, you will be able to create a blueprint of it, and it will be stored with your account just for you to use. When you start a new Explore game (or will want to build another one just like that in your current game), you will place a “ghost” of the building in the world, and then you’ll keep bringing ingredients needed to build it. You will see it become real block by block as you provide more and more wood, stones, metal and other ingredients. Scripting improvements * The Editor is getting more and more powerful with almost every update, but the truth is that setting up something interactive is still much more complicated (and difficult to find) than it should be. The new visual scripting will be vastly different, extremely easy to use and flexible. If you want a taste of what is to come, the general direction we’re taking can be seen when you check Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu - don’t let the kids friendly look fool you ). Please note that we are talking only about the general concept of visual scripting - our implementation will be more flexible and powerful. Dedicated servers * In our DS beta forum section we’ve started gathering the feedback you now provide after having used DS for some time. Soon we’ll look at it and start discussing it with you to decide what features we still need to add (and which are more important than others). New world * We would like to release a whole new world along with Ylands 1.0. We wanted to release it sooner, but after some experiments, we decided we needed more time and that we want it to be much more than just more objects and another land to explore. We’re going to introduce some new interesting gameplay elements and we need more time for this. Also you’ve been asking for a boss fight, so you’ll get one - and we want it to be far more than just fighting some scaled, differently textures monster you’ve seen thousand times before. There are many existing features we will be improving or that we are improving now - we'll talk about those eventually, but for now, let me mention some planned to be released in 0.9 (so one after the upcoming one) which we’re working on right now. Combat * It’s time to make the combat fun, to make it possible to actually hit what you want to hit, to reward those who have skill while even those not skilled enough would still be able to enjoy it. With tons of new animations the combat will look great, and with the new controls, it will play better. If everything goes as planned, you will be able to experience a reworked focusing when fighting already in the upcoming 0.8 with the rest coming in 0.9. We will be listening very carefully to your feedback. Horse riding * Riding a horse isn't really as fun as it should be. The controls are not very intuitive and quite different from most of the other games. This will change. We’ve reworked all the animations and made the controls better. We’re sure you’ll love the result. Little something to help you relax (Living nature courtesy of @spyler.1989) Delayed features On the other hand, there are features that we were planning to add or expand, and we have delayed them because we feel right now other things are more important. For example, at this point, we wanted to have at least some offline version of the game available, but with the monetization present in the game there are some things programming-wise that need to be taken care of before we can do that and to be perfectly honest, the programmers who will eventually work on this are mostly fixing MP bugs. While we do remember we said we would also like to have an offline version in the near future, you’ll just have to wait some more before it comes. The same goes for things like enhancements planned for the protection barrier (letting friendly players build inside of it, using them with cars and ships...). Simply put, there are more important things at hand to be fixed or added. Please note that delaying these doesn't mean we won’t be doing anything related to those features - for example in 0.8 we address griefers annoying players by planting things inside their barriers or ships being destructible whne inside etc. We understand that many of you would love to see that one feature which you think is crucial implemented/fixed/improved as soon possible, and you may be wondering why, for example, we’re making a horse riding more fun when it already is in the game the game and it “kind of works”. The reason is that before we leave EA, we want to tie as many lose ends as possible. We want to make sure that what’s in the game is fun to play with and works as expected. What goes without saying is bug fixing. I know we’re repeating ourselves but whenever new features or feature improvements are mentioned I want you to know that fixing the bugs for us is a nonstop process and things will get better with every update (or a hotfix ). When you take a look where we were half a year ago, you’ll see we’ve made a really big progress. We believe that in the next roughly six months we’ll make an even bigger jump in quality than that. We hope you’ll stay with us to witness that and thank you for your help and staying classy. That’s it for this Dev Diary, and we’ll see you the next Friday!

Hi, the new combat system will come in 0.9, in 0.8 we would like to introduce just a part of it (even though it's very important one) - better focusing. We are fully aware of people who don't want to play PVP and we plan to provide options when a new game is created to set that up (right now we don't know what update this will be in, but it definitely should be available before we leave Early Access)

The map fix will come with 0.8 (which is not that far away) - I will be talking more about that in tomorrow's Dev Diary.

Thanks for the info (this isn't a final state, we'll keep improving it). Also were working on yet another MP hotfix that might help with the problem you're mentioning with having do something several times before it gets executed.

Guys, the hotfix is out. Please let us know things are better now - if not, if you're still getting disconnected, please post your logs - we are logging some additional information so even if there were other causes, it should be easier for us to locate and fix them. Also, later this week we would like to release another hotfix - it doesn't have anything to do with players getting disconnected, but it should fix a rather wide spectrum of other MP issues.

Hi there, fellow ylanders! With 0.7 "Cheerful Characters" released, this feels like a good moment to summarize where we are right now. As we've said before we plan to leave the Early Access in the late summer this year. Compared with other games that went through EA (especially other open world games) this is a rather short time but we feel the pressure is necessary to make sure we get to a fun, stable and bug-free game as soon as possible. The development will continue very actively even after that - with the team constantly growing very likely at even a greater pace. So what is the situation now when we're past 1/4 mark into our EA schedule? Single-player When it comes to a single-player mode we've already fixed several hundred bugs, but most importantly we've managed to fix most of the critical ones that caused players to lose their progress or prevented them from playing. There are still some really ugly ones that need to be fixed and some that we've never experienced before still appear from time to time but compared with where we stood few months ago the situation is way better and with every new update more and more additional issues get fixed. There's, however, one group of issues that we've failed to address so far - the game crashes/freezes at some older AMD/ATI video cards. We've been unable to pinpoint the exact cause of this since it's very likely caused by something on Unity engine/ video driver level. We just want to let the affected users know that in no way we've given up on them - actually, we're about to send this to AMD which, hopefully, will be able to provide some help. Optimizations Then there are the optimizations - something that always takes a long time (at least once you've done everything that can be adjusted rather easily) and even though you still don't see any major improvements, it doesn't mean we're not doing anything about it. As some of you who are familiar with software development probably know, making large-scale internal changes takes a lot of time and effort, but it will bear fruits eventually. The first noticeable thing to come out of this will be the absence of the visible lag caused by autosaving. We've come a long way from times when only empty log cabins could be built, haven't we? (Victorian house courtesy of @Damemarianne) Multi-player The main reason for us to enter Early Access was to get enough feedback on MP and MP-related issues which is something that can't be done with a small number of players. Even though there's still enough time before we plan to leave EA, it's obvious that we would like to have MP fixed as soon as possible so that instead of fixing critical issues we could start focusing on making MP more fun. The truth is that there are still far too many issues present, many of which are very frustrating. But there's also some good news. With the changes we made in 0.7 we're now getting more detailed info and what's more - the dedicated MP programmer we hired some time ago has familiarized himself with the game code and is already working on some of the solutions. Speaking of issues: I would like to ask you (many of you are already doing for which we are really grateful ) that if you encounter a bug - especially a serious one - and decide to let us know, be sure to include your log files (if it's in MP ideally both host's and client's one). Some issues take a really long time to get fixed because they happen "randomly" and we have a hard time reproducing those. If you provide us with the log files there's a good chance we can find something that will help us identify the issue - very often the actual fixing takes only a little time. Dedicated servers Many of you have been running Ylands DS for some time now so during the next week we would like to start discussing with you what changes or improvements you'd like to see in the future DS. If you would like to test DS and are not part of the testing group, let us know via a private message. Gameplaye features As for gameplay features - the ones we're working on right now are mostly enhancements/overhauls of the existing ones (like the combat or the MP map) or ones that address some of the gameplay shortcoming you have been reporting (like no easy way of storing/moving your creations from Explore game to a new one etc.). Actually, the next Dev Diary will be about our updated plans for the features coming to Ylands in the next few months so be sure to drop in, read it and let us know what you think! And that's all for today. Have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Hi, I've read through your post and it seems to me that you're somewhat upset Ylands has never been a brutal game and never will be. It's true that we have removed animations of animals dying, but nothing more is really planned. We've removed skeletons and some bones, but had nothing to do with Pegi (and those will actually return to game at some point). But that's about it. Nothing more that would make the game more "soft" is currently planned so if you like the game now, I'm sure you will like it in the future as well (actually very likely much more once all the annoying issues are fixed and we deliver what we have planned). Don't get me wrong - we love the Ylands community and we honestly believe that they are one the friendliest game communities and we listen to you a lot (I would say that now around 1/2 of the features we add are based on players' feedback) but we have a vision of the game we want to make and we intend to stick with it. Ylands will always be more about creativity and exploration than violence (that being said we will be adding some darker places in the upcoming new world, scarier monsters etc.). Actually, Ylands started as idea of an creative game that we could play with our kids. If you have a problem with a specific part of game we can surely discuss that but making a general, angry post like this doesn't really help anything. As for changing our boss - that's probably not going to happen anytime soon since we see eye to eye with him on Ylands' future

Alright! I'm told our programmers have gone through that section already (and have received some additional info/save games - thanks for you help, everyone). Hopefully we'll have some more info for you soon.

Actually, if you feel like helping us out a bit we would love to see your log files created after you get disconnected (if you have access to host logs it would be great to have that one as well). Thanks!!

Hi, sorry about the delayed answer! Yes, we know about that and we're already looking into it. Actually we noticed this at the end of the last week but at that time we had no idea this issue was so widespread. I'm still waiting for our programmers to give me some more detailed info on what is going on and why. It goes without saying that this is the absolute priority for us right now. Also you don't have to worry about the potential fix being released with 0.8 - in the past we have released hotfixes for issues that way less serious than this.

At first I thought it could be caused by the firewall or antivirus but since you tried turning them off and it didn't help I'm at loss as to what could be causing it. Can you try reinstalling the game completely? (uninstall and install it again) Just as Velocifer said this could happen from time to time but it's usually something that doesn't last long and gets fixed by itself. This is the first time we see it as an permanent issue...

Can you please post screenshot? We think it might be related to an issue where when you have enough of one ingredient (dust, most likely) but not in one stack (in two or more) it gets wrongly detected as not having enough when trying to craft the item.

Thanks for the logs and feedback! We'll look into it

Yes, there's indeed an issue where items present in more than one stack are not detected. This is already fixed and will be either released as a part of some hotfix or with update 0.8

@Crystal_indy That's a good point, we'll do something about it Thanks!