Sneak Peek #45

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

With 0.7 getting closer, I’d like to use this opportunity and tell you more about what is planned beyond that update. But first, as usual, let us discuss some of the issues you’ve reported.

Issues

You might have noticed that a couple of days ago we released a patch containing a fix for the game freezing/crashing when constructing an energy grid in a specific way, an issue that sometimes prevented players from placing objects on ships and a really nasty one that could result in the game not getting saved (and players losing some of their progress because of it). We’ve already fixed other issues as well, but those were not considered critical enough to require an immediate patch. Speaking of patching - you’ve probably also noticed that when we release a patch, our dedicated servers get reset. We understand that this is quite unfortunate (especially if the patches are released more often) and so we’re working on a system that, once finished, will let us deploy patches while retaining the current progress on DS.

Also, we have concluded our analysis of "Host unreachable", one of the high-profile critical issues. Even though there can be many causes behind this that we don't have control over, we indeed found a situation where players can get this message and be unable to connect to an MP game. Good news is that it is something that is fixable, but it may take some time. What is going to happen now is this: in 0.7, if this situation happens, you will see a specific error message. If you see it, you'll know that we're to blame and that it's something that you would be getting no matter what port you have opened etc. It's quite obvious, though, that you're more interested in getting a fix than just an indication. We have already started working on it and chances are that in 0.7 you'll find yourself in this situation less often. The complete fix will be released as soon as possible and we'll keep you posted on the progress. This is a very high priority for us.

Finally, some light has been shed into the dreaded "Host unreachable" issue  (Lighthouse courtesy of @SyxtySyx)

Features and changes planned in 0.8 or later

We find the current combat system state unsatisfactory. Firstly, at this moment, it’s not much more than a mouse button mashing. Also, it’s quite imprecise - many times you hit anything but the thing you try to aim at. It’s not our intention to have a sophisticated combat you’re used to from action games, but we feel it should be at least a bit more rewarding for those who show some skill, and that you need to feel more in control when fighting. We hope that some of this you will be able to experience in the update 0.8.

We are also doing major changes to how horse riding works. The controls are getting much better, and so are the animations and transitions. It will once again be possible to shoot while riding a horse like it had been before the character controller was introduced.

With the new character controller and animations first, we focused mainly on third person camera view. It’s high time that the first person view received some love as well. The most important thing is that players need to see what they’re holding in their hands, getting proper visual feedback of what they do.

The last thing I’m going to mention (there’s more than just these) is a whole new world we’re creating for you. It will take a few more months before you get your hands on that, but we believe it will be totally worth it, adding dozens of hours of interesting gameplay. We will be releasing more information as the release gets closer, but right now it’s important to let you know that the reason why we’re (mostly) not releasing new building blocks and items for the game is because we are putting them aside to be released along with that update.

That’s it for this week. Next Friday we’ll return to the upcoming 0.7 and tell you more about some of its features. Until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

OOooo I look forward to it! 

[BigBoss87 68]

Thank you

Keep the good work guys!

[GewoonJaap 0]

Ooh....I just started on the current world, but verry nice that there will be a new one when im close to finishing the current one.

I'm mostly looking forward to a better combat system and an improvement on horse riding!

Keep up the good work!

[Florda 0]

I'm totally fine with a new world update no matter the consequence as I build pretty simple things so far, but i do wonder if it's known what would happen to old worlds?  I'm not wanting to ask for details you don't want to divulge, just wondering if you knew about this yet?

[kimbuck 746]

 A  brave  new  world .... hmmmmmmmmmmm

[SypherFox 1]

Really wonderful, but what about you focous on [Offical] Servers? i have restarted on 3 different Servers because of all the bugs. fix the Servers before you bring us new items.

8 days ago i started on MP EU Offical 11. everything was going fine till i bumped another ship with my ship. then the Server droped to 2fps... so me and my friend left the Server. loged back in the next day, and Server had been reset and 4 days building gone. so we wnet to MP EU Offical 8, well after 2 days building there, ship helm stoped working, we could not drive our ship. raft and small boats worked fine.

Now yesterday morning at 6am my time i started on MP EU Offical 2, played all day with only bug, the Server locked lag bug when ppl loged outo the Server, So that bug all day. at almost midnight i loged out, had crafted a Propeller pack. used it for 4 hours b4 i loged out, then now today, been playing till 30 minuits ago. the reason i stoped is because my friend loged in and my PPack is now gone. jsut poof off my back and is no where to be found.  Oh and almost forgot, i did die yesterday on EU2, and instead of spawning on the Island we picked for our set up, i respawned on the start Island. it was a Long raft ride back to base.

So on that note, Please fix the Servers and make them playable before you make new Content.

 

1 - 28 - 2018,  Trying to log into Offical EU 2 since 11am it is now 12 noon, and after 4 trys all i get is a the blue loading Screen and it is stuck at 100% and not going into the Server.

Please fix the Servers!

Edited January 28, 2018 by SypherFox
new info

[vengz 4]

Pls dont wipe servers everytime, we build to much things and after 1 update everything will be gone...

[Whane The Whip 99]

Thanks for the sneak peak and for announcing the date.

On 1/26/2018 at 8:07 AM, Aleš Ulm said:

You might have noticed that a couple of days ago we released a patch containing a fix for the game freezing/crashing when constructing an energy grid

...and a lot of freezing on a DS at other times too, with few indications why. It does appear that the 0.6.3 fixed freezing of the DS when someone logs in is still persisting to some degree. It also looks like there is some freezing going on when an attempted/failed login occurs. Freezing happens a lot on DS servers and since 0.6.3 it seems that there has been a overall decrease in performance, just watching a unmanned boat in the water struggle to move with the motion of waves is one indicator.

On 1/26/2018 at 8:07 AM, Aleš Ulm said:

Speaking of patching - you’ve probably also noticed that when we release a patch, our dedicated servers get reset.

Since 0.6.3, my DS has been running without a reset. Is this bad? What are the issues that arise as a result of running the same save state of a DS after a patch? Performance issues?

One thing that I have noticed, is that after 11 days of the server running, the time needed to login has increased and tends to get stuck at 100% during the final "recalling buildings" prompting a second attempt to login which then just causes more freezing for the others. The freezing did seem to end when I launched the DS, but it seems to be back again.

I've not really noticed anything beyond the usual performance issues after a patch. I didn't see anything in the DS Beta Guide v4 about it. Maybe this is common knowledge to reset the server after a patch or just a precaution? Are there any drawbacks using a world originally generated with a previous version of Ylands but used with the current version?

On 1/26/2018 at 8:07 AM, Aleš Ulm said:

We are also doing major changes to how horse riding works.

Speaking of horses... did they ever get fixed? They are KOS on my DS due to bugs associated with them like the container bug. Just yesterday someone managed to find and tame one and was spamming to mount it, and it was invisible.

What about corpse removal? We need a system that enables us to choose between remove corpse and player data, or just remove corpse because I've noticed that when I shut down the server to remove player corpses in the editor, if forces the player to a new character if s/he happens to login in again. This is a problem on my DS because users don't have item drops on death, but they will lose their items if I remove their corpse because they wont get a "respawn" option - so either player data is tied to that corpse, or the game wont trigger a "respawn" option if the corpse has been removed (or both).

Edited January 27, 2018 by Whane The Whip

[SyxtySyx 184]

Thanks Aleš Ulm for featuring my lighthouse on this Sneek Peek. I'm honored 

[kimbuck 746]

Regarding  corpse  removal ...  would it be  possible  to equip oneself  with a coffin and then load the corpse  into it   ..like you can do  with a  chest/container?   then   either  dump them at sea  or have  a  key  combination  you can press to  remove them  from the   game.   ??

[handofthesly 211]

1 hour ago, kimbuck said:

Regarding  corpse  removal ...  would it be  possible  to equip oneself  with a coffin and then load the corpse  into it   ..like you can do  with a  chest/container?   then   either  dump them at sea  or have  a  key  combination  you can press to  remove them  from the   game.   ??

I was thinking the same thing with the coffins, use them to transport and bury bodies in a more civil manner 

[ComR 57]

Dear Aleš Ulm , 

Thank you for very good news, but please, try to find solution for constant crashes of Ylands (probably DirecX 11.1 issue, memory leak or Radeon problems).... Many people cannot play Ylands at all after certain moments in the game. I think this is important issue... 

Please, make sure game will work on DX 11.0 - not DX 11.1 only. Many of us have Win7 and do not want Win10.

All The Best,

Bartosz

[SypherFox 1]

Many of us have Win7 and do not want Win10. Had win10, it killed a $200 SSD.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

"fix the Servers before you bring us new items": I understand that what you're experiencing is frustrating but you should know that all the new features and items are made by artists and gameplay programmers who are not primarily working on DS/MP, which is handled by other guys (and, unfortunately, you can't just reassign programmers dynamically - not everyone has enough experience with that particular system to be able to contribute and it usually takes weeks before they become familiar enough with the code to start fixing/improving). We hired someone to help us with this at the end of 2017 (and keep hiring) so I'm positive that things will get better. If you feel like giving us a hand with this, please report your issues in the bug section of this forum. Even if you report something we are already aware of it helps us to see what are the most annoying/frequently occurring issues and assign priority to those based on your reports. You might also like to hear that once 0.7 is deployed our public DS servers progress should be reset less often.

Questions related to DS that players are running: I would suggest discussing this in the DS forum section - people there (both our admin and other players) are more suited to answer those. However, as for your DS needing a reset - patches don't require you to reset your DS. The fact that we do it with ours has to do with the way we're deploying those patches (and that will change soon).

Corpses: yeah, that's an interesting issue We'll discuss that - thanks!

W7/W10: don't worry - we have no plans of making Ylands run on Windows 10 only

[ComR 57]

Dear Aleš Ulm , 

Is this possible you would consider bringing back removed models (bones, paint kit, drying rack) and animations to the game, as mods or DLS? I'm sorry I'm asking you directly, but Ylands forum is full of people asking and you and your friends do not have to read it all - I'm sure. I understand why you removed skeletons, gutting and dying animations (however I cannot understand removing bones and dinosaur fossils or Samurai armour??), but that way you removed half of Ylands atmosphere and I'm sure most "children" (I don't think 5 y.o. toddlers will be ever playing Ylands) saw much worse things in Toys Ur Us. You left killing in Ylands (please, do not LEGO Ylands!! - but, even in LEGO you have bones, skeletons and you can kill everybody and everything). Gutting was saaad... death animations were not repulsive. hey should make you sad - I think. It should be possible to kill anybody and gut humans for leather and meat too, why not?  After all we are playing game yyy.. roughly based on Roninson Crusoe, right? No?! Take a look at books in the game!  Are you planning to remove Robinson Crusoe book too, because of the 18+ content in the book?

You can make death animations as they were, but in cartoon style (after all Ylands is cartoon style, right?) - do you remember Spy vs Spy or Merry Melodies? I'm sure you do! Ghost leaving bodies and acting funny, leaving you meat and hide, but with cartoonish animation.  Try it. It will be better than dissappearing animals leaving you meat and hide.

In short - please, consider DLS or MOD but, please, give us back beautiful animations we had before Steam release. You removed skeletons and bones from the game - ok, but, please, leave models and animations for modders. I think it's very important. I was so happy to collect fossils, skulls and bones to make my own dungeons or museums... I was so happy to find or build samurai armour and katana!!! I was waiting for update where you could collect whole skeletons to use these as something to make your own museum. "Trophies" are not the same. Please, ask people - that "black magic" and skeletons were VERY important to make Ylands more immersive and really interesting... It's different if you dig the same graves now. Before you could "feel" shivers finding "bandit hat" on a skeleton just digged out... 

I know, you want to fit to childish, idiotic laws of some countries to fit "for everyone" label. But, well, you cannot make everyone happy. So, if you decided to remove "mild gore" - at last make an option for 18+. After all There is much killing in Ylands and it's ok (including sharks - which are harmless and piguins... you can kill?), but bones are not ok? Please, consider "gore" version (yes, I'm exaggerating) - with old animations, even without gutting (yeah, it was sad, but if you want to eat meat - it should be sad... So, people should feel bad).

Please, ask psychologist if you want to be "politically correct". 

 

Damn....

All The Best,

Bartosz

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

I think there are actually several different things mixed up together in your post so let me go over those one by one

* bones and skeletons, as we stated earlier, had indeed been removed because of specific cultural aspects of some countries but we are planning to return those once we implement system to handle game assets differently in game versions meant for various markets (unfortunately there's more to it than just disabling models under some circumstances).

* paint kit became sort of obsolete with the introduction of painting system (it is true that it could be used to craft some painting which is not possible now, but that will very likely change)

* drying rack was removed after we analyzed how many steps it took to craft some objects and as a result decided to remove some of the workstations that felt unnecessary and/or were used to craft single specific thing only.

It is true that 5 year old toddlers won't be playing Ylands - but a lot of older kids already do (not only we're receiving a lot of feedback from parents but it has become apparent at conventions like Gamescom) and we're actually very excited about that. 

Ylands has always meant to be a family-friendly game (that's why we currently have a provisional PEGI 7+ rating), that is very important to us. So this really has nothing to do with being "politically correct". It has to do with a vision we have for "vanilla" Ylands - and where we think it doesn't fit this vision, we change it. We believe, though, that it can still be even dark and full of suspense (some parts of the upcoming new world will hopefully prove that) even without having to see animals die or being able to gut them  

That being said, our plans are to eventually introduce a parental lock which by default won't let kids access mods/games containing mods so once we introduce modding support modders will be able to come up even with things suited for more adult audience.

[gandjay 1]

A whole new world....... *music*

[Knoble 3]

On 1/26/2018 at 11:07 AM, Aleš Ulm said:

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

With 0.7 getting closer, I’d like to use this opportunity and tell you more about what is planned beyond that update. But first, as usual, let us discuss some of the issues you’ve reported.

Issues

You might have noticed that a couple of days ago we released a patch containing a fix for the game freezing/crashing when constructing an energy grid in a specific way, an issue that sometimes prevented players from placing objects on ships and a really nasty one that could result in the game not getting saved (and players losing some of their progress because of it). We’ve already fixed other issues as well, but those were not considered critical enough to require an immediate patch. Speaking of patching - you’ve probably also noticed that when we release a patch, our dedicated servers get reset. We understand that this is quite unfortunate (especially if the patches are released more often) and so we’re working on a system that, once finished, will let us deploy patches while retaining the current progress on DS.

Also, we have concluded our analysis of "Host unreachable", one of the high-profile critical issues. Even though there can be many causes behind this that we don't have control over, we indeed found a situation where players can get this message and be unable to connect to an MP game. Good news is that it is something that is fixable, but it may take some time. What is going to happen now is this: in 0.7, if this situation happens, you will see a specific error message. If you see it, you'll know that we're to blame and that it's something that you would be getting no matter what port you have opened etc. It's quite obvious, though, that you're more interested in getting a fix than just an indication. We have already started working on it and chances are that in 0.7 you'll find yourself in this situation less often. The complete fix will be released as soon as possible and we'll keep you posted on the progress. This is a very high priority for us.

Finally, some light has been shed into the dreaded "Host unreachable" issue  (Lighthouse courtesy of @SyxtySyx)

Features and changes planned in 0.8 or later

We find the current combat system state unsatisfactory. Firstly, at this moment, it’s not much more than a mouse button mashing. Also, it’s quite imprecise - many times you hit anything but the thing you try to aim at. It’s not our intention to have a sophisticated combat you’re used to from action games, but we feel it should be at least a bit more rewarding for those who show some skill, and that you need to feel more in control when fighting. We hope that some of this you will be able to experience in the update 0.8.

We are also doing major changes to how horse riding works. The controls are getting much better, and so are the animations and transitions. It will once again be possible to shoot while riding a horse like it had been before the character controller was introduced.

With the new character controller and animations first, we focused mainly on third person camera view. It’s high time that the first person view received some love as well. The most important thing is that players need to see what they’re holding in their hands, getting proper visual feedback of what they do.

The last thing I’m going to mention (there’s more than just these) is a whole new world we’re creating for you. It will take a few more months before you get your hands on that, but we believe it will be totally worth it, adding dozens of hours of interesting gameplay. We will be releasing more information as the release gets closer, but right now it’s important to let you know that the reason why we’re (mostly) not releasing new building blocks and items for the game is because we are putting them aside to be released along with that update.

That’s it for this week. Next Friday we’ll return to the upcoming 0.7 and tell you more about some of its features. Until then you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

Thanks for the info, it will be good to see more substantial fixes in the future.
But I would like to say that its a sad day in the gaming community, when game companies put out games (even early access) in the state of Ylands. The targeting system (Fail), The building system (Fail), 1st person view (Fail); But the item mall, up and running. I understand the need to generate revenue, But at what cost? Screw the gaming community and lets grab as much money as we can before they move onto the next broken game. Instead of putting out a quality product, and generating a loyal community following. When will this madness end?  I apologize if I have offeneded anyone; I have to remember this is the same company that put out "DayZ" Which for a long time had no Zombies...