Sneak Peek #49

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

 

Let’s start with the fixes - yesterday we released a hotfix addressing two issues. The first one was time slowing down after sleeping in MP (please note that there can still be a short time after waking up when times are slightly desynced among the clients). The second issue was a truly critical one, though. Some of you have noticed that at the end of one of our new tracks, someone (that someone being the composer/conductor) can be heard saying “super”. Let me assure those of you who wondered if they’d gone insane that it was really there - we located and fixed it.

We’ve already mentioned one of the features coming with the update 0.9 “Comfortable Cooperation” - our specific implementation of the cloud saving. We are still discussing a lot of its aspects, so I expect to tell you some more details in a week or two. In the meantime, we can take a look at some other features you can expect in this update.

 

Massive GUI Overhaul

Those that have been with us longer, know that we keep experimenting a lot with the GUI. Now that we’re tying the loose ends, making sure what’s in the game works and looks well... GUI isn't going to be an exception - especially since many of the GUI panels are closer to placeholders than to actual polished GUI elements. The main menu will change a lot - it will be visually nicer and easier to navigate. The in-game character panel that contains the inventory, crafting and such, will become a full-screen panel - the newly gained space will allow us to make some elements bigger, but we won’t stop there. The new look will be cleaner, slicker and look less like a spreadsheet table and more like a something very different from a spreadsheet table.
Even though the overhaul will bring a lot of good on its own, there were other even more significant reasons we had to do this. Namely, two features that resulted in some GUI-related changes.

 

Single Character Avatar

We realized that most players start all their games with one specific character, and that once they find an avatar they like, they tend to stick with it. Starting with 0.9 you will be able to set your avatar visuals in the main menu, and whenever you start a new game, this character will be used. Some games will add clothes or equipment to your character based on the role you pick to play, but the character visuals themselves won’t be affected. You will be able to change your avatar’s visuals any time, as many times as you see fit (for free, obviously ).

 

Having troubles with building nice structures? Feeling bad about leaving them behind when starting a new game? Stay tuned...

 

Workshop Integration

The second feature that made us do some GUI-related changes was a tighter Workshop integration with the game. We are already seeing some very interesting creations making their way to our Workshop, and we can only imagine what will happen when we introduce a vastly improved and more intuitive visual scripting in a few months. Because of that, we want players to be able to have a much easier access to those creations (both games and compositions), and so with 0.9 we’ll be waving bye-bye to subscribing to assets via the Workshop website. From that moment, you will be able to see ( and filter or search) even “Custom games” right in Ylands’ main menu. You’ll find one that you like, select it, hit play... and that’s it.

 

So these are some more cool features coming with 0.9 - but there’s still much more to tell. Have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

[V-Alfred 367]

39 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Because of that, we want players to be able to have a much easier access to those creations (both games and compositions), and so with 0.9 we’ll be waving bye-bye to subscribing to assets via the Workshop website.

I hope we have "Comment tab" with in each creation, so people can directly comment or give suggestion on it. Good luck and keep up the awesome work Devs!

[Vokurka 14]

I still love this game

[Eaglestorm13 2]

Ofc no Optimization still 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

1 hour ago, Eaglestorm13 said:

Ofc no Optimization still 

They don't reveal everything every post Eagle. Cut them some slack. 

[Stephenw1992 87]

1 hour ago, Eaglestorm13 said:

Ofc no Optimization still 

It's an alpha. you bought a game thats not yet released and is still being developed. it will be optimised when the devs are ready to and since theres a few aspects they're planning on changing it would be pointless fixing everything just to change it again and then go through a fix bugs again

[Vladislav G 1]

SHIPS!!! do something with  a ship's!!! it impossible many bugs with ships(((
 ...3 my medium ships in 4 days i build, bugged. i can't play so((

[BigBoss87 68]

Nice, looking foward to these GUI changes.

 

[Fight or Flight Gamer 4]

Thanks Devs sounds amazing! 

[Onedown 28]

8 hours ago, Stephenw1992 said:

It's an alpha. you bought a game thats not yet released and is still being developed.

While I agree it's still in development we as gamers have to stop telling the lie that a game in early access has not been released yet.  It's for sale.  It has been released to anyone who cares to buy it.  As soon as a game becomes available for sale it also becomes eligible for criticism.  We are consumers first voluntary testers second.  We have to respect each others right to criticize a product we paid for no matter what state of development it is in.  Game developers can easily run traditional beta's and have people sign non-disclosure agreements in exchange for testing and silence until the product is ready for market.  It's a slippery slope for sure and devs have to be on top of their game to be able to climb it.   Besides I'm fairly positive these forums exist for feedback that benefits the devs even if some of it is negative. 

[Eaglestorm13 2]

20 hours ago, RedEagle_MGN said:

They don't reveal everything every post Eagle. Cut them some slack. 

That will never happen seen to many games fail due to lack of good devs willing  to fix major isses.

[SyxtySyx 184]

On 4/6/2018 at 8:08 AM, V-Alfred said:

I hope we have "Comment tab" with in each creation, so people can directly comment or give suggestion on it. Good luck and keep up the awesome work Devs!

It would be nice to comment and give recognition to the creator of the comp or game. Especially if you post or upload video containing other people's works. It is best to credit their work.

That said, it is real easy to "steal/borrow" peoples creations and disguise them as your own. On the other hand, a whole lot of generous creators simply put out ideas begging for you to improve on their work to advance the overall understanding of the game mechanics... now i'm starting to ramble. there you have my 2.5 cents.  

[SyxtySyx 184]

On 4/6/2018 at 9:22 AM, Eaglestorm13 said:

Ofc no Optimization still 

You don't read much of this forum do you? If you would, spend some time reading the countless posts that the Dev team have posted about optimization, how, why and when, you might have some answers instead of a foul attitude.

get it? I made a pun... Eagle  foul-fowl awe never mind.

[Eaglestorm13 2]

1 hour ago, SyxtySyx said:

You don't read much of this forum do you? If you would, spend some time reading the countless posts that the Dev team have posted about optimization, how, why and when, you might have some answers instead of a foul attitude.

get it? I made a pun... Eagle  foul-fowl awe never mind.

All i see is that its not important and that they will not fix it anytime soon so feel free to show me these post form the dev that show when and  how this will be fixed

 

1 hour ago, SyxtySyx said:

You don't read much of this forum do you? If you would, spend some time reading the countless posts that the Dev team have posted about optimization, how, why and when, you might have some answers instead of a foul attitude.

get it? I made a pun... Eagle  foul-fowl awe never mind.

 

[kimbuck 746]

Optimization?  Its not practical  when building a  car to start  supercharging the   engine and  adjusting  fuel management  when  you still have to get the  wheels  and steering installed!

Once they get the  wheels  on  ylands  turning smoothly  they will put  more devs into optimization. As Ales explained, everyone doe not  work on one thing ...theres several teams  working on multiple  issues.

Patience,  young grasshoppers! 

[bojo2736 1016]

It is hugely better in regards to optimization, for lack of a better term, since 0.8.  It was nearly unplayable for me, it was crashing my system multiple times per day, it was lagging, timing out, just awful.  Since the upgrade, that stuff is much better.

[kimbuck 746]

i can  accept  criticism ..looks like others     dont..

[Vilos Cohaagen 16]

I was a professional games developer for 15 years, ran my own studio of 28 developers, worked for a number more and have released several games on Steam and other platforms so I am confident when I say optimisation is something you try to do as you go along a bit, but honestly most of it has to take place towards the end when you remove debug code and prepare the code base for release and do a general performance overview. It is just not practical to dedicate too much time to optimisation during primary development as you are often rewriting entire chunks of code so optimising them would be a waste of everyone's time and effort. Besides you have to optimise towards a specific goal and platform and again that requires the game to be essentially feature complete to do so. You might not like it, and that's fine, but there are good reason a team doesn't spend to much time optimising. Development takes a keen eye, patience and time. I hope that helps.

[tortmancomith 3]

good god please what ever you do do not make this new modding scene another creation club. I was immediately pummeled with paid store entering my game and had 53 hours of the buggiest gaming i have ever done. The engine itself simply dies trying to use the mods now mind you there arent alot of them. most likely reason i can see is the game runs like garbage. early access or not if it runs terrible you wont want to go to a workshop and download more stuff to add to the game. Alpha= add feature make your promise a reality. Beta= break it any way you can fix bugs as they come. besides pets and a few other features that you will  need allot coffee for their roadmap doesn't have any the community wanted fixed. Without working toward optimization in the future your left with garbage. don't tell me it cant be done just say we don't bloody well feel like it. The comment about a supercharger is funny to me being a mechanic you dyno the engine way before you build a body on a car. If you don't you have a shinny care with awesome wheels and a engine that wont run or snaps a connecting rod in the first ten minutes. that being said lets fix the sound in the game while it looks awful on you tube. All major you tubers have abandoned this game mid ship. wonder if their contract ended or the game just ran like garbage and wasn't worth another look until the devs do something about it. I vote the latter. by the way you web page crashed while writing my first comment made me laugh uncontrollably proving my point. i posted 53 bugs in 53 hours on the comprehencive bug list section {which isnt updated to reflect more than 3-4 bugs}  that's conservative since their were way more than that fix one ill add another to my list when my list is gone ill consider your job done.

[bojo2736 1016]

Are we playing the same game?  AFAIK, there isn't any modding at this point.  The monetization is about as unobtrusive as it could possibly be and still exist (it doesn't work for me, but I'm confident it will at some point.) Yes there are bugs, but the last update and hotfix solved a huge amount of them.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Let me just quickly comment on one topic that has been brought up - the fact that the game is in the Early Access stage means that we are aware of the bugs it has and optimizations that need to be done. It doesn't, though, in any way at all, mean that players don't have the right to / shouldn't criticize.

We are very well aware that you didn't get the game for free and so not only you have every right to say what you think and point out what you don't like - we do expect you to say it. Actually, given how toxic some other game communities are, we are extremely pleased and grateful that the absolute majority of the criticism is constructive and civil. So please keep letting us know what you think and stay classy!  

[YadNiMonde 191]

@Aleš Ulm About Characters i would really love that there would be an option with a full color picker choice to have extraordinary skins if we want to, i want to have my classic Blue avatar like i have everywhere i can, please consider giving us the full color picker for skins, hairs, eyes and everything, like we have for any thing we can paint, since you already have that.

[kimbuck 746]

also ...with the  implementation  of  0.9    will we  all have to start a new game to see the  improvements/additions?