Sneak Peek #47

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

We have entered the last stage before the release of 0.7 (which we plan to release later next week), and there’s a lot to be done, so this Sneak Peek will be rather short.

In the end, 0.7 will bring you over 100 medium-to-major bug fixes, countless smaller fixes, tweaks and improvements (and tons of new features as well). 

"Host unreachable" issue

One of the improvements is related to the critical “Host unreachable” issue, and that’s where we’re going to need your help. We’ve done some optimizations on our side, and it is possible that this by itself will improve the situation for many... but we won’t be sure until we receive your feedback after 0.7 is released. We’ve also made some changes to make it more obvious what’s going on when there is a connectivity problem - firstly, you should never see this generic message but something more specific.

There are two main points where an error can occur when connecting to a game.

1/ When attempting to establish a connection to a host

Due to whatever reasons (network configuration mostly), clients' packets may fail to reach host or vice versa. They are unable to communicate and connection cannot be established. This is indicated by the UNABLE TO ESTABLISH CONNECTION ERROR message.

2/ During an established connection

In step 1/ connection was successfully established but is later aborted for some reason. One cause is a timeout - i.e. peer does not respond for some specified period of time - this is indicated by the CONNECTION TIMED OUT error message.

The other causes are various errors that can occur in the network communication layer implemented in the game. These are denoted by NETWORK LAYER ERROR (#), where # stands for a numeric error code.

If you experience any of those, we would be grateful if you could post them in the bug section of our forum along with the game log.
 

Hmm, is it Ylands or Stardew Valley?  (Nice garden courtesy of @MegaChristalle )

Game performance

The second thing that I would like to mention is game performance. As you may know, we are optimizing the game to make it run better, and we’ve already made some important steps that will help us achieve a better and steadier frame rate. The performance problem has two main causes - firstly the fps drops/overall low fps can be caused, quite obviously, due to what’s going on in the game world - too many visible entities, new chunks of terrain getting loaded etc. The second thing, one which may cause the game to literally freeze every couple minutes for a second or two (or even more when the game world is large / has been changed a lot), is related to the game getting saved in regular intervals (autosave).

The latter is much easier to fix and we hope to have it rather soon (I will keep you updated on our progress). In the meantime, we’ve noticed that some of the players have tried to eliminate this lag by raising the autosave intervals in the ylands.ini file to very large values. It is true that this does help (if the lag is caused by the saving process), but before you do this bear in mind that it’s still Early Access, there are still more than enough bugs and if your game crashes with the autosaves basically disabled you can lose a lot of progress.  
 

Alright, no more talking and back to testing. I hope to see you the next week in our second video Dev Diary. Until then, ylanders, have a great time and stay classy! 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Wow nice! 100 fixes! 

[BigBoss87 68]

Cant wait for the update

[blfonsworth 10]

I am hopeful for an awesome expansion but I'm finding it hard to be too optimistic. My friend and myself were talking about the expansion yesterday and he mentioned the trade window.. I joked "It'll be cool but seeing how this is going so far I bet when you press the accept button on the trade both clients just crash" .. he chuckled and agreed ... it was about that time that the server froze for the 5th or 6th time and we both had to back out and re-join I just keep the control panel open and handy to press the restart button as needed. Knowing there is little to no hope for the map in 0.7 is also a bit disheartening  

 

How will the transition from 0.6 to 0.7 happen as far as the NPC's being spawned into games and server worlds that were generated in 0.6? Will we need to start all new world to allow for NPC's to spawn? I was thinking of a scenario where NPC's are added to existing games and end up spawning in the middle of your base because that's the coordinates the game put them at..

[Energritz_ 107]

Hopefully they work on both DS and client side by side, so neither misses out or gets left behind..

[mtcook01 5]

I think it's crazy cool that the developers are so accessible to the community.  I really like the feedback, updates and notices from actual developers.  I love this game and think it will be massively popular.  Thanks for all your hard work.

[Evilskrod 8]

Thank you so much! These fixes are 100% needed. Many servers become unplayable after a few hours and it's very disappointing to put tons of hours into a base and ship only to find that they are inoperable and you can no longer log in! I am so excited for the 0.7 update! Very happy to see quests added! NPC characters will make the islands so much more exciting! 

[Kathryn Davidson 1]

I am very happy that you are addressing major issues people have with "Host unreachable."  As for the gameplay, by far my worst gameplay issues I hope you address soon are as follows: 

1. Birds knocking over or stopping ships.  I had a ship that was unable to move because a seagull landed on it and couldn't find its way off. I tried to help it  by removing the sides of my boat, but it just stayed in a corner trying to fly away. And the ship was unable to move.  I finally went into editor, but since my ship was not on the original island, I could not find it to fix.  I had to abandon the beautiful ship.

2. Items being unable to be accessed in storage.  It seems that every five minutes I have to exit and re-enter the game just to be able to get ahold of some seeds in my inventory.  Or the panels I just spent a lot of time making.  It takes forever to reload a game, especially the more you play it.  So having to reload after a short amount of gameplay so you can use the items you have gathered/made is infuriating.

[Gillingham 0]

Will the multiplayer map issue be addressed in the fixes?

[Crystal_indy 4]

I never found myself so anxious about a game update before. Thanks in advance, Team Y.

(btw, if your dutch office needs an official tester, let me know  lol. Salary will probably be Ane her cookies...)

[Crystal_indy 4]

6 hours ago, Kathryn Davidson said:

something about issues...

1. Were you able to kill the bird though and collect it's goodies?

2. Does that happen in your inventory or in the crafting menu? Do you have is when looking in chests? And are you loading in single- or multiplayer?

[Quadnick 2]

I am really excited for the bug/stability fixes as that has been my main issue with this game. Another thing I hope you address soon is the editor. As Kathryn Davidson mentioned, once you leave your starting island you must retrace your steps to find your ship, which most of the time is impossible. In my case, I was only only one island over so I just had to face the direction to find it. I used the editor many times to fix issues with my ship that could not be done in survival and every time I went in-game to check the progress, which most of the time did not save or saved with weird bugs like duplicated blocks or only partial saves, I would have to journey to that island once again in the editor due to being reset back onto the starting island.

Being able to teleport to a specific player would be amazing.

Also, when using the paint tool, it takes some doing to get back to the selection tool since just trying to click it does not work. I have to click on some random object to spawn in and then press escape to get it off of my cursor; selecting the tool works then.

After selecting and placing objects the cursor is not functional, nothing can be selected, without first right clicking until the window pops up on screen.

As for in-game bugs:

There is one bug in particular I really hope is addressed in the 0.7 update, and that is non-host players being tossed around, or even off of a ship the host built. I have tested with multiple people and all require sitting in a chair for safety while sailing.

I am hopeful too, with what you have mentioned about connection issue fixes, that the animals will no longer lag for non-host players. My poor friend dies in almost every animal encounter due to what seems like his swings not registering or doing damage on the animal. This was another issue I tested with multiple parties to rule out connection issues unrelated to the game.

I would also like to be able to add to a stack that resides in a chest. As it stands right meow, when placing a stack of 5 logs from my inventory onto another stack of 5 logs within a chest, the 5 logs are placed into a separate square. It requires pulling out the objects, stacking them in the player inventory, then placing them back into the chest. It is not a huge problem, more of a quality-of-life fix. 

Usable crows nests would be nice.

I would love to be able to paint the anchors, the silver looking bands that wrap around the mast, to go with my bronze theme, and also two tone options on the bow and stern pieces. As of right now if the bow or stern is painted brown, the middle part will be your color of choice, while the trim is a slightly darker shade.

The addition of a corner triangle shaped block is sorely missed. It would help smooth the sharp edges when placing an angled block against another block. Basically the bottom red block in this picture:

There is a good chance that some, even all, of these have already been addressed in the new update, but I thought I would share, regardless. I have been wanting to mention this for a while and, well, better late than never, I guess.

All that being said, I was very surprised how much I got hooked on this game. I look forward to future improvements and I am very glad y'all are so dedicated to it. 

[V-Alfred 367]

@Quadnick you should post that triangle blocks suggestion in Suggestion Sub-Forum, I'm totally agree for that also please applied to the roof blocks.. 

[DK208 5]

I am playing with multiplayer and Terrible lag.
And the key chain disappeared from the item you have.
I can not open all doors and CHEST.

Map display disappears every time in multiplayer.

I want letters etc to write letters for communication with friends.