Dev Diary #57

[Dev Diary #57]

@RedEagle_P1. I believe they do, but I can only speak for Ylands. This is actually a very complex problem and it depends on lot of factors (as I, a non-programmer, believe ) - the engine they're using, how is their world simulated, how does their MP work etc. Actually this would be quite easier for us if we adjusted (as in "made more simple") some of the games features but we decided against it.

[Dev Diary #57]

Making thunderstorms lethal: I can't promise it will be present in 0.12, but we do plan to make the game a bit more dangerous and one of the things we plan is for thunderstorms to sink small ships / rafts etc.

Optimizing buildings: you're right in guessing that those objects that will be internally "merged" together will be indivisible and destructible only as whole. However, it is perfectly fine (and it is actually how we'd like the creators to use it) for you to "merge" only some parts of buildings like walls, leaving some parts out - like all interactible elements but also things like windows so that those can be broken etc.

And since you mentioned groups - if you're looking for a better control over your creations in the Editor, I believe that our 2019 Roadmap that we'll talk about early next year has something you're gonna like.  

Is that a challenge?  

Well, wWe can always use something complex to test our new features  

[Dev Diary #57]

Hi there, fellow ylanders!

Well, what do you know - Christmas time is once again upon us. If you‘re among those who celebrate it, let us all wish that you spend this special time with your close ones (if you manage to survive the regular shopping Armageddon), eat, rest, eat some more, and play some games!

Since the team will take some much-needed rest from this weekend till the end of the year, you may find that your requests and questions on forums stay unanswered for a longer time - but we will still check it and will be ready to help you if something critical comes up.

But until the Ylands factory engines stop for maintenance, they‘re still going strong. One of the things we‘re working on these days is the long promised fix that should remedy the issues with ships. Saying this is a "fix“ is a little bit like saying that a nuclear plant is a slightly more sophisticated steam engine. A lot of things had to be changed, improved, or rewritten so that this issue (or group of issues) would be eliminated. Let me tell you a bit more about what‘s causing this, what we‘re doing about it and how it‘s going to affect the gameplay.

Basically what happens is that whenever you build on a ship‘s hull, we want the objects to have colliders so that your avatar can‘t walk through your cabin walls, tables and more. The problem is that Unity isn‘t such a big friend of the idea of hundreds of blocks, each with its own collider, placed on a moving platform. As you might have guessed, the same goes for cars, but there the situation is quite better because you usually don‘t create your cars out of hundreds of blocks.

The solution is to combine the colliders into few larger ones so that the general shape of the ship (or, more specifically, the part placed over the hull) would remain the same. That is not a trivial operation (especially when you need the number of resulting colliders to be as low as possible). But this is something that is a problem that programmers have been working on and have made a really nice progress so far. The second problem is that you don‘t want your ship to stay this way forever, because at some point you may want to remove a block here and there, replace it with something else etc. At that point the combined colliders need to be broken down back again into the original state.

And on top of that, this operation takes some time, it‘s not instant.

 

Have a classy Winter Break, everyone!

So what we‘re going to do about this is that we will provide you with a (single-click) way to "optimize“ your ship whenever you're done building it. Within the next few seconds, all the colliders will be optimized and you will be good to go and sail the sea with almost no impact to performance (which is currently easily dozens of fps). When you feel like building some more or changing what you built so far, you will be able to "de-optimize“ the ship, perform any changes necessary, and bake it again.

This "optimization“, however, won‘t be important only for ships and cars. The Unity engine has a limit as to how many colliders can be active in the scene, and it‘s 250 000. That may seem like a lot, but if you imagine a large city and think how many bricks (=colliders) one small wall has, you‘ll see that this limit can be reached pretty fast. So we will let you (in the Editor - unlike with ships and cars where you will be able to do this in Explore as well) optimize whole buildings, which will effectively fix this issue.

That however isn’t the only thing we’re fixing about ships – as you are well aware, ships have had their share of MP problems in the past, most notably the disagreements between the client and the server on where exactly a character should be. This would cause teleportation and, more often than not, unfortunate man overboard accidents. Starting with the next update, it should be smooth sailing from here on out, with the disagreements happening much less frequently, if at all. And finally, we’re making overall sailing improvements across the board – better ocean wave simulation, smooth wind intensity transitions between ylands, and different weather presets… There’s definitely a lot to look forward to!

And that‘s it for today! Have a classy Winter Break!

[Dev Diary #56]

Oh, I forgot about one more thing - we're received some games from our community to check why are they still running very slow. So far the main culprits have always been (just as we expected) ships. Even if you have one ship in your scene - even if doesn't move, if it's SP, it can slow the game down easily by several dozen fps. This is something that will be fixed in 0.12 and I will talk about it in the next Dev Diary. If your game doesn't perform well enough even without ships, please send them to me via PM, we're always ready to check the out. Thanks again!

[Dev Diary #56]

FPS cam will be back, it was removed for fixing until 0.12.

Now that is not entirely accurate . It will take much longer for us to bring fully working and polished 1st person back (a LOT of things will have to be (re)created - pretty much every avatar animation will have to be changed, combat will have to heavily adjusted etc.). As we said when we removed it - we don't have enough resources (people/time) to do this before 1.0 so it will definitely come at a later date (just like the water simulation).

It's true, though, that for 0.12 we are planning something related to this, but I would like to address this in one of the first January Dev Diaries.

[Dev Diary #56]

I am guessing the person in charge of the Ylands development team is a rabid raccoon with a magic 8 ball
Now that would be a fun (although somewhat unpredictable) boss to have  

Seriously, though, we've not yet reached 1.0 (we still have few months ahead of us) but we will be fixing and improving things even beyond that. I understand that removing 1st person view wasn't a popular move, but switching to it because there may be some issues with 3rd person view during combat isn't really a solution. If there are issues present, we'll find them and fix them. If you like the game and want to help us with that, you can report those issues or create a post with feedback.

As for the Tencent Ylands version: players are indeed required to have WeGame client installed (which is similar to Steam).

You don't have to worry about them having access to something present in the video that the Steam version doesn't have - in the trailer they are showing how they see the future Ylands games, it's a vision of things to come. We really like what they've created and who knows what Ylands games / Explore worlds will look like in the next few years?  

[Dev Diary #56]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

For a long time we have tried to separate general topics and those that covered upcoming features into two specific types of posts - Dev Diaries and Sneak Peeks. Lately the difference has started to become less and less apparent, so we believe it’s time to continue with just Dev Diaries that will, from now on, contain everything we want to tell you at that point. In other words: the name will always be Dev Diary from now on, regardless of the actual content. 

Now let’s move over to more important things - actually to VERY important things. This Tuesday, Ylands has been released in China as a part of Tencent’s Early Access programme. Below you can see the release video. Tencent's artists created an epic vision of what Ylands can become and we'll do our best to get there.  (big grin) 

Jokes aside, this is a big moment for us. Getting to this point was anything but easy, but if we succeed in China, Ylands will get yet another boost that Steam players will benefit from - the team can grow even larger, issues are reported and reproduced faster and the game will become more "visible". It may sound like a cliche but we truly are extremely excited about this. It’s a great satisfaction to watch the first Chinese streamers play Ylands - even though we have no idea at all what they’re talking about, it’s obvious they’re having a good time playing the game (and so are we while reading texts shown in their channels "translated" by Google Translator - so unless Skynet is going to eradicate humankind with poorly translated jokes, the AI will have to evolve a bit more before it becomes an actual threat  (smile)  ).

 

Chinese Ylands Early Access trailer (link leads to Tencent's online video player)

And last but not least - Ane and Marci (in other words our "Ylands Community and Marketing Department") have started posting more interesting content through our social channels, from time to time we are releasing short Instagram stories where various Ylands devs talk about what they’re working on right now, and there’s some other interesting content being posted as well. If you want to know more about us and about what we do, don’t forget to check those once in a while!

Speaking about being more informed - next week I would like to let you know what’s causing all those darn issues related to ships, and what are we currently doing to fix it.

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!

[Dev Diary #55]

Thanks. We've already noticed some people reporting losing control over their ships - we're looking into it.

Speaking of how well games run - the optimizations we made were aimed at visual side of things (basically rendering a lot of things is now much faster). There are still some things that can slow down games quite significantly - especially having ships in your world (even those that are not moving / in SP ). Many of those things will be fixed in 0.12. 

Unfortunately sandbox games are quite difficult to test and it is possible that we may overlook something when fixing things - if you want to make sure your game runs as fast as possible in 1.0, the best thing to do is to send us the game so that we can take a look at what is slowing it down (that goes for everyone - we're appreciate a lot when players help us this way). It goes without saying that your game will be safe with us. Whoever has a game with unreasonably low fps (considered the PC it's running on)  feel free to PM me if you have anything we can take look at. Thanks.

[Dev Diary #55]

Alright! As for 2) - do you think you could provide us with some of the scene that runs slow? We should be able to find rather fast what is the cause of that (many times it's actually not something obvious like a high number of building blocks etc.).

[Dev Diary #55]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

Today I would like to address one specific concern that some players seem to have.

You’ve probably already noticed that we're getting closer to Ylands 1.0 and thus the updates contain more and more fixes, optimizations, and improvements - and yes, at the same time we decided to temporarily disable some features even though it wasn’t easy. The good news is, however, that the game runs faster and looks better, and once we do some MP-related improvements, we believe we will be quite close to the full release.

With sandbox games it’s quite common during this stage for players to grow concerned about the fact that feature X or Y may not be added before the game is “released”. To feel that the game, if it stays this way, is missing something essential.

Let me assure all of you that we still intend to put a lot of effort into the game before we leave Early Access and we believe you will be happy with what will be added / improved before that time. That being said, we understand these concerns.

We’ve said that for us everything begins with Ylands 1.0. We have some very cool things in store for you in 2019 - both features you asked for and features that you didn’t know you wanted until you laid your hands on them. We’re planning to add some very original features and fresh ideas in Ylands - something we wanted to do for a long, long time now (with sharegames being such a unique feature and an indication of many of the cool things to come!).

  Are you ready for some treasure hunting? ( Pirates vs Indians! game made by @Igor Quintero)
 

To make sure these are not just vague promises, we will present you with a post-Early Access roadmap for 2019 sometime next year. You will see that if anything, the pace of adding new exciting things will accelerate. That we definitely are not interested only in expanding the Editor and Visual Scripting, but that Explore will get a ton of love as well. We hope that not only will this help you better understand where we’re headed and diminish those concerns, but that we will be able to cooperate with you better than before.

I’ve been saying this for several years now, so someone can possibly say that it’s getting a tiny bit old, but since it has remained true the whole time and nothing has changed since that, I feel there’s no harm in repeating this:

We’re just getting started

 

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!

[What are you playing this weekend?]

If I have the time I'll spend some of it playing West of Loathing or South Park: Fractured But Whole  

[Dev Diary #54]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

On Wednesday we released a small patch: 0.11.1. In this patch we have addressed some of the issues you reported right after you played “Peak Performance”, and made some improvements as well.

First of all, I'm happy to tell you that this update brings many new music tracks to the game, while vastly improving some of the existing ones as well!

Secondly, just like other similar games where multiplayer plays a major role, in the Home menu section it's now possible to rent a server (or a server “slot” to be more exact) where you can upload your game. This comes as an addition to options like hosting the game yourself or turning the games into “Sharegames” (which are, under most circumstances, hosted by us for free). Renting a dedicated server slot will provide you with a very secure and reliable service with the server located in a datacenter closest to your area. We believe that many of you may find this convenient, and what’s more - since these servers share the code with what we make available to players, any improvements we make to these servers will be available to those running their own dedicated servers. Those interested in renting a server may find more information at this FAQ.

So that's what happened this week, now let's talk a bit about the future, shall we?

We have started working on several features for 0.12 even before 0.11 was released, and we plan to keep you updated very thoroughly until it’s released. Let me just name some of the planned changes and improvements.

• multiplayer optimizations (especially related to ships)
• main menu overhaul (based on player feedback) with a slew of new features such as a better, more logical and more accessible structure, quick game finder, and much more
• ingame user interface overhaul
• radial menu overhaul
• improved hints
• improvements based on your feedback related to the removal of the first person camera (we will discuss this again quite soon)
• many camera-related improvements and fixes
• and, as always, many fixes. 0.11 brought a huge number of fixes and I think it's safe to say that 0.12 will be even bigger in this regard

For some time now we were quite focused on the Editor and Visual Scripting. While we will keep bringing new features to the Editor with every single update in the future, we feel it’s time we made some improvements to the Explore mode and the base game mechanics as well. Basically we are working on something that should give you some direction, goal - to make what one could call the “end-game” more interesting. How much of this will be present in 0.12 I can’t tell right now, but I'm pretty sure there will be something for you to notice.

 

Ready to go exploring? (Spanish galleon courtesy of  @amoreno1able)

 

Also, we are planning some changes for 2019 related to how we inform you about everything. So far we've tried to make sure that some features in the games come as a surprise to you. This "secrecy" has often resulted in you, the players, being pleasantly surprised by some of the changes, but at the same time it has opened doors to possible misunderstandings. While there are still some things that we will keep secret (like some features related to the new world that is in the works), we would like to be more open about the development. As a part of that, we would eventually like to provide those interested with access to updates some time before we release them (this will be very important, especially for the creators who will be able to check their creations and provide us with feedback in time).

And finally I would like to let you know that earlier this week we have fully refunded every player who has ever bought any decorations. If you're one of them, all the coyns you spent on decorations have been added to your balance.

 

That’s it for today. Have a great week, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!

 

[Dev Diary #53]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

This week we have finally released the update 0.11 “Peak Performance”. It is by far the largest update that we’ve done so far.

We’ve been working on the optimizations for quite a long time and are very happy with the results. In massive scenes with tens of thousands of objects we’ve seen FPS rise well over ten times. In newly generated games without lots of structures (like Explore), the FPS gain is lower but still noticeable. The important thing is, though, that the optimizations aren’t only about getting higher FPS - we managed to make the game run smoother in general, and we are far from being done!

We have made some serious under-the-hood changes and improvements, so it's quite likely that we also broke some things. This is why we'd like to ask you to report any bugs, anomalies, or flying sharks you experience. As we've said, this is just a step (an important one) towards improving the game and further fixes, changes and performance gains for custom ships and multiplayer modes are coming with update 0.12.

With the new optimizations Ylands runs faster and smoother - anyone fancy a race?

 

While we are very happy about the features present in this update, there are things we could have done better. The most obvious error is that we were unable to communicate properly to our players how some of the new or updated features were supposed to work , which made it difficult to use those. We could have been clearer with telling what the intended behavior is and what issues need to be reported and fixed. Because of the sheer size of the update, we focused almost entirely on getting things done and didn’t put enough effort into making sure the changes to existing systems were documented and explained well enough - for which I apologize.
We’ve discussed how we need to improve this - we will take some steps to fix this for 0.12 and will do a much better job in the future. I will talk about the steps we intend to take soon in one of the Dev Diaries.

We’ve been analyzing all the feedback you’re providing us with and will release several fixes and improvements in the upcoming small update 0.11.1, which - if everything goes right - should be released in a week or so. In this update we also plan to let you enable the first person camera via console command (as an experimental, unsupported feature). At the same time we will be actively working on a better solution to this problem.

Another thing that you’ve been asking about is the termination of the official Explore / Create servers. This was a decision born out of necessity, yet could have been communicated much better. As most of you know, these servers were not moderated by us, filled with griefers and people who were actively looking for ways of spoiling the fun for others. Even though we’ve introduced several features and fixes that helped with some of the issues, many others remained. For many new players these servers are one of the first places they go when they start playing. The fact that those were our official servers made it look like this is something we consider fine. After getting quite a lot of feedback on this we’ve decided to terminate those servers until we come up with fixes for several specific issues. When we do, we will restart those servers - we consider them to be a very important experience, especially for the new players. It goes without saying that even those running their own dedicated servers will benefit from those fixes and improvements. So the bottom line is: this is a temporary answer to a problem we are facing, and we are doing our best to solve it - so yes, the official servers WILL come back in the future.

That’s it for today. Have a great weekend, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!

[0.11: Peak Performance (19/11/2018)]

3 minutes ago, TheSparkPlug said:

Curiously, you haven't addressed the opening points in the post you quoted regarding communication.

Lots of new features were introduced in this update but none of them have ever been explained properly.

I've had to learn from other players about the ability to see nearby pickable items in our inventory. No one seems to know how to use the new hammer. I have no idea how to use the new fighting mechanics. The ctrl-mousewheel seems a poor replacement for the G/H and ctrl-WASD features we had before - yet you guys think its wonderful so I assume we're all missing something.

It would be nice if each update was accompanied by a detailed post explaining how any new features worked, and how we're meant to use them.

 

On a side note, I dont think you need a few days to process the feedback. It's pretty unanimous. 

There's nothing curious about that - I haven't yet addressed some other points as well .

But so that it doesn't seem like I'm avoiding this specific topic - yes, I agree that many changes were  poorly communicated. I apologize for this - delivering this update was extremely difficult and we focused almost entirely on getting things done and communication suffered because of this. We'll make sure we will do a better job with 0.12 and every update after that.

[0.11: Peak Performance (19/11/2018)]

Also please note that while some of the features may seem like we only adjusted how things are controlled etc., there have been some massive changes done under the hood (some related even to things that will come at later stage) so very likely there are things that will need additional fixing even though we put a lot of testing into this update (much more than with any other before). Doing major changes to a sandbox game is quite tricky  - but even though it hurts (and can, quite obviously, be unpopular) it is something that just needs to be done before 1.0 while still in EA. Once the game is released we won't be able to perform internal changes on this scale (or it will be extremely difficult).

So if you encounter any issues please report them and they will get fixed. Also do tell us what you like or don't like - although for the sake of discussion it would be better to maybe start separate topics ("How building needs to be fixed / improved" etc.) because things get always quite confusing when talking about various issues in one thread  Thanks.
 

[0.11: Peak Performance (19/11/2018)]

19 hours ago, bb cakes_P1 said:

@Aleš Ulm are you listening to other opinions? 

I read about the new improved features coming. No idea at all how to use them. 

I try combat mode. I see changes in animations. But I have no idea how to access any animations. To be fair, no one would join me so I was trying to fight predator animals.

New improved 3rd person camera? Looks the same  to me. I can't see any way to access the promised ability to see past my own head. 

For me the grid snapping in build is an improvement. But then I was never able to succsessfully used G,and H. I have always had the slingshotting block syndrome.

Picking up multiple items. I had no idea to open up my inventory and look there. Why would I? 

And I see no performance improvement on my MP dedicated server. With 6 players on, I was reduced to 4 fps at one point.

There are weird visual glitches happening. Whole blocks of sea simply not loading in. Yes, I can still sail and swim, but it looks awful.

As you move / run from one area of the island and new land appears, I turn into a bald head as trees and plants load in individually.

My ship is behaving weirdly.  As I was stopping to talk to a nearby player, I came to a stop, attempted to flip the anchor lever. My avatar went off the edge of the boat and I landed in the water ON THE OTHER SIDE of the island.

The build system is so different, it's hard to know if it is working as intended, or just completely broken. My best friends in the game are thinking of moving on, and it makes me sad.

Don't just tell us that change takes time.  Between the three of us, @kimbuck @MyPa553ng3r_P1and myself, we have close to 7000 hours combined. Don't be so dismissive. We are not stupid. If we can't figure out how to use the whizbang features, it is because BI did a crap job of explaining them.

Don't be defensive and dismissive when we give the feedback you claim to want.

I've been on these forums for close to five years asking for players' feedback and if you take some time and go through its history you'll find that we've always listened and actually most of what players had been unhappy about was fixed or improved (with some features completely reworked) - so yes, we do want your feedback and we do listen to other opinions  

I honestly don't think I was being defensive - actually I think that when you read a message posted 14 hours after an update has been released saying that that things are super wrong and that several players have decided not to play the game anymore and others are planning to  the next logical step just has to be figuring out if it's really because of the update.

Also I just made a point that it takes time to get used to new things which was meant for every single player who visits this thread, sees the things in the similar way as the original poster and reads my reply. You may think that it's something that goes without saying but having released over 30 updates so far I can tell you that it's not that obvious to everyone and actually for pretty much every major change we released we always got some immediate "it's much worse than before" reactions so I think reminding players that these things take time never hurts. I think it's awesome that you and your friends have sunk so much time into the game and you without any doubts know the game inside out but to translate what I said into "I think you're stupid" is maybe going a bit too far.  

As for the issues you've pointed out - what we need right now is few days to process all the feedback and then we'll get back to you. I would like to mention one specific thing right away, though, the fact that you get very low fps in MP doesn't have anything to do with the actual game performance, it's due to MP issues (if you have some ships in the map it's very likely because of them - there are some other things that can cause this, though) which we promised to fix in 0.12.

[0.11: Peak Performance (19/11/2018)]

20 minutes ago, kimbuck said:

Unfortunately,   although there are lots of  fixes and new stuff,   there are  too many frustrating  issues ..especially with the building changes  and such.   I  wasted   a  whole  day struggling with the  fiddly  building mechanics  and with the absence of 1st person  i had  great difficulty. 

Leveling  land and   filling in  depressions with soil  is not working properly .. the   iron   hammer is more effective  at   demolition than the demolition  hammer, and  several old   glitches   ie   with horse riding,   invisible  ships etc   seemed to have returned.

Some  others have  been chatting to me  expressing their  dismay, and  it looks like their activities  / interest  in Ylands  has  declined. I  am beginning to  feel the same way . What is more   depressing is that  some other dedicated  players   think its  their fault   that  players are not  continuing and  dropping out due to frustration.

So far i have seen  6  friends  stop  participating,   and there's now  another 2  who are considering just "being there" as  only admins  etc   and leaving the  game to the new generation who  prefer  combat, pets,  shiny things  etc.  instead of   creating / building.- --which  was the   games  initial forte and attracted   a generation   who used their  brains  instead of  brawn.

Sadly, its now a case of playing  the game less and   enjoying it more...

I understand that any change can be difficult to adjust to and I also understand that people are different and what feels right to one can feel wrong to someone else. However, just like with every other change it is necessary to give it some time to evaluate its impact. For example we had only very positive feedback on the new building mode but it's possible that to those who were used to "old" style of placing/building the new system will feel just less intuitive or plain wrong (and it's actually something we always expect). At this point the update has been out only few hours so I would  be actually surprised if those who build hundreds or thousands of blocks would have already got used to the new system.  

Also are you really talking specifically about this update? Because as I said it's been out just few hours (I think around 14 ) and you have already noticed decline in interest / activity among your friends, with 6 not playing the game anymore and other considering being just admins? This happened in the 14 hours since this update has been released? Or are you talking about the the state of the game in general? I'm asking because so far we've been getting mostly very positive feedback on this update...

[Dev Diary #52]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

I bring good news - the waiting for Update 0.11 is pretty much over and we believe that this will be the last Dev Diary before it’s released. We are now fully committed to doing the last few tests and wrapping up everything so today’s diary will be rather short.

 

Let's summarize the main features of Peak Performance:

• Large performance improvements, especially in scenes with many objects
• Combat 2.0 - new combat engine where you can not only combo light attacks and heavy attacks (different for each weapon type) together but can also dodge and parry attacks
• Building 2.0 - improved object placement and snapping allow for a more streamlined, easier and better building experience
• Vicinity looting - a fast and intuitive way of picking/dropping items around you
• Improved character faces
• Improved digging
• Quick and intuitive way of accessing Workshop Compositions directly from the Editor
• Numerous Visual Scripting improvements
• Two new pets
• You can now colorize vegetation
• You get to see nearby ylands on your compass
• There is a new notification system in place
• New loading screens
• New and improved music tracks
• Water rendering improvements
• Shadow rendering improvements
• Direct / indirect light model improvements

 

Mastering the art of blocking and dodging has been proven to have a positive impact on life expectancy

At the same time we have disabled the water simulation and first person camera mode temporarily (see previous Dev Diaries for further explanation) but they will return eventually. We’ve made a lot of changes in 0.11 to make sure that in many situations switching to first person camera is no longer necessary and further improvements are planned so that the 3rd person camera view works better in tight spaces. Please note that the current first person camera will soon become available as an experimental, unsupported feature accessible via console command.

There’s actually much more in 0.11 - there’s around 300 fixes and improvements (and those are only the issues that players might be interested in knowing / which are not too technical - in fact the number of all fixes and improvements in 0.11 is close to 1500). We are super excited about this update since it is the biggest one we've ever released, choke full of goodies and you are going to be able to play with ALL of them very very soon!

That’s it for today. Have a great week, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!

[Petition to re-add first person view]

Ouch, for some reason only my second post appeared in here - what I said in the first one was (in a nutshell, I'm not gonna type the whole thing again   ) that lot of you think of 1st and 3rd person as something mutually exclusive when actually one of the possibility for 3rd person mode when used in tight spaces is to become sort of 1st person view - the camera would simply move where the character head is with it becoming transparent so you'll actually get the best of both world in one mode. This is definitely one of the improvements we want to try (actually the vent system will be a good place to test this) - I feel this needed to be said because you guys seem to think that when we talk about 3rd person camera it means the kind of camera that's pretty much useless in tight spots  

[Petition to re-add first person view]

Based on you feedback we discussed the idea about having first person camera available as an "experimental" mode accessible via console and we will be adding it some time after 0.11. Please note that it being "experimental" means there will be no support for it - there may be visual glitches, controls issues etc present. When we start working on a new 1st person camera in the future, it will be done from the scratch, not by improving / fixing this obsolete code.

[Petition to re-add first person view]

I'm not sure how 3rd person can manage to do what first person did in tight spaces or within structures for selecting and block placement.

The new building mode makes building better in 3rd person view in the new building mode - you can control how close to you the object you're placing is, which helps a lot. Please note that I'm far from saying that building in tight spots in 3rd person camera in 0.11 is just as good as it was in 1st person view - but it's been improved a lot and we will improve it even more in 0.12. You don't really have to think of 3rd and 1st person camera as two mode which are "incompatible" - for example I can imagine that under some circumstances (like building in tight spots you mentioned) the 3rd person camera can actually move pretty much inside character's head, resulting in a view very similar to one you have with 1st person camera. 

 

[Sneak Peek #60]

Guys, I totally understand that you're worried that without the first person camera some things may be difficult (if not impossible)  to achieve but I think you should give us a benefit of the doubt and wait till 0.11 comes out. You mention things like problematic building and combat in 3rd person mode - both of which have been reworked and are now much better in 0.11. The update is coming out very soon, so be sure to give it a try and let us know how do you feel about those new systems so that we can improve then even further.  

Machinimas: we see this as something extremely important. Adding some editing video editing tools in future is a must - but I hope we will be able to add at least some small improvements to free camera before 1.0 to make it more useful.

[Sneak Peek #60]

55 minutes ago, TheSparkPlug said:

No. No you don't. It's your living. You do it to make money.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that, so no need to lie

Well, what can I say? You see right through us all. We all do it simply to make money. All the programmers who could easily make 2-3 times more money in banks or large multinational companies (I personally know people who actually left positions with way higher salaries because they wanted to do what they love - make games), all the developers who do crunches and work long weekends. I guess it's finally time for us all to come clean - it's not at all about passion and loving games, it's just the money  

[Sneak Peek #60]

You are right - many players play most of the time playing in 3rd person mode and switch to 1st person only when needed. That's exactly the problem though - if you're building something and feel like your avatar gets in the way then a better solution than switching over to the 1st person mode is for us to make 3rd camera work better. I would ask you to give the new building mode present in 0.11 a try - I think you will find it much more convenient than before. 

I also agree that first person camera view is better suited for some situation (especially in "cinematic" moments like the one you mention) and that's exactly the reason why we're removing it only temporarily. 

We definitely can't leave 1st person camera in its current state fully accessible when we get to 1.0 - while some of the players might be fine with it being broken, imagine someone (let's say a former Minecraft player) who is used to playing the game in 1st person mode. They start Ylands, switch to 1st person mode... and pretty much immediately see that many actions are simply not possible to do there. That is quite obviously broken. We can't in good conscience call a game polished and fixed with this present - and currently it's too much work to make it perfect (especially since we need to do this with 3rd person camera first).

The idea of letting players access some sort of "experimental" 1st person camera mode via console is something we will definitely discuss. It's too soon to say if it something like that will happen but we'll weigh pros and cons and let you know. But what's most important - please understand that we do Ylands for you, the players. Many of you know that we take your feedback very seriously (I've been talking to you this way for five years now ), so I can assure you that when we decide to do something like disable an existing feature, it's not a sudden decision and we understand that it will result in some frustration. That's exactly why we're telling you that this is not permanent  

[Sneak Peek #60]

12 hours ago, TheSparkPlug said:

So, it will be a lot less temporary than you were leading us to believe!

I'm not sure what you mean by that - I don't see anything that we said which could be  considered misleading in any way. We simply said that we are disabling the 1st person camera mode just like we did with the water simulation (which we explained earlier) and that it would eventually return. As soon as we saw players had questions about this topic / that it was important to them, we immediately elaborated on that. I'd say we try to be as transparent about this as possible  

@Chromedome2 As for not believing us that most players play the game in 3rd person view - I respect your opinion, but our decision was based on data we're getting from anonymous ingame analytics which is a very precise way of telling what players' habits are.