Sneak Peek #60

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders.

The updates we've been releasing during Early Access keep getting bigger and bigger so it should come as no surprise that Update 0.11 named “Peak Performance” is going to be, once again, a huge pile of goodies.  We've already talked about most of the features this update brings in the past Sneak Peeks, but there are still some things we haven't covered.
 

With the cool new visual scripting in place we’ve been working on a fun new multiplayer Ylands game we call Gold Rush. We’ll deploy that on our servers so that once you get 0.11 you just click a button (if you visit MP Lobby screen you surely won’t miss it), we find the best server for you with an empty player slot and take you there - this “auto-join” is also a new feature in 0.11. We’ve spent a lot of time testing it and we're having a blast playing...and hopefully you will too!
 

There are times in the game when we need to notify you about something and so far it was possible only through ingame warnings or a console - neither of which are ideal solutions. Starting with 0.11 we’re introducing a new system of notifications so whenever something important that needs your immediate attention happens (for example, if due to connectivity issues your Sharegame wouldn’t save properly) a cool looking notification pops up. For now we support only “critical” game events but in 0.12 we’ll add other kinds of notifications as well as a notification center where you’ll be able to conveniently go through all of them.

 

It's good to have a grill ready when friends come to visit! (Grill & Pergola courtesy of @Chromedome2)

 

We’ve actually did mention this some time ago but since it’s an important change it makes sense to remind you so that this doesn’t catch you by surprise. Just like we decided to temporarily disable water simulation, in 0.11 we will be also disabling first person camera mode which was never fully supported by many game features and modes.
We know that many of you have been using the first person mode when performing specific tasks like building and precise object picking. You don’t have to worry, though, because in 0.11 we made sure all these areas are improved (by implementing a new building system, vicinity objects slots, and others) and we’re pretty sure you’re going to love those improvements. As for the first person view - we would definitely like it to return to the game at a later date.
 

We said several times that “Peak Performance” brings better performance and the game runs generally more smoothly, but I realized that so far we’ve never mentioned memory consumption. Up till 0.11 if you had a lot of building blocks in your scene the memory consumption could be extremely high. Truly massive scenes that used to consume over 10 gigabytes of RAM now take up only about on third of that. In other words - the memory this huge scene consumes is now quite close to what a newly started game with no buildings at all takes up. I'm pretty sure that some dark Programmer magic had to be involved but since this means we all can now create huge exciting worlds... I think I'll let it slide this time.

 

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

[Bryd - Bee 25]

This sounds sweet, you are all doing a great job!!! Now we just have to wait and see when the update arrives :-) Like a kid on christmas i want it now!!!!! 

[Indomitus 388]

The First Person camera is also very useful when digging tunnels and underground bases, and in tight spaces that cause problems for the regular camera, so hopefully it won't be gone for too long.

[Spyler.X 625]

Oh bad luck, I was working on some elements for the first person.
I'll have to leave them for later.

 

everything else sounds great

[Ane 1213]

41 minutes ago, Bryd - Bee__P1 said:

Like a kid on christmas i want it now!!!!! 

You won't have to wait till Christmas

[Bryd - Bee 25]

Sounds good :-)

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

1 hour ago, Indomitus said:

The First Person camera is also very useful when digging tunnels and underground bases, and in tight spaces that cause problems for the regular camera, so hopefully it won't be gone for too long.

Actually we've improved digging as well - while digging in 3rd person view still isn't as comfortable as in the first person view, it should be more precise and we'll be improving it even further.

[TheSparkPlug 128]

1 hour ago, Aleš Ulm said:

in 0.11 we will be also disabling first person camera mode which was never fully supported by many game features and modes.

Which 'features and modes' were they?  In my experience, most things worked better in first person mode.

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

Great! I am gonna try loading liberty city again

Do you think it will load? Its quite big  

The city cant load in game right now

 

 

[vildensky 1]

All sounds great  , the disabling of first person view does have me concerned.

[BigBoss87 68]

I particularly didn't like the idea of removing the the first person view...

I'm curious about the performance in FX processors, my game always has many  frame drops.

Thanks.

[bojo2736 1016]

Memory consumption improvement, excellent news.  First person? Sigh.

Is better inventory use going to be in the works at some point?   We need a weapon and tool belt.    Weapons and tools take up so many spots.  And you can't really cut down on what you need to carry.

Also, what is the deal with bark?  At one of the recent updates, we went from having bark and birch bark, to having bark, oak bark, birch bark.  And they all only stack 50. The rest of the things you get off of trees stack 200.  Given that the bark has very limited uses that I know about, why is it handled so differently.  Birch bark for white pigment, fair enough.  Why is oak bark different?  Does it have a separate use?

 

[Chromedome2 34]

12 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

in 0.11 we will be also disabling first person camera mode which was never fully supported by many game features and modes.

Well, it looks like I won't be returning to Ylands anytime soon after the 0.11 update because I only play in first person mode and I only go into third person mode when I am having trouble placing Blueprints! Thanks, Bohemia... You could've asked us anything if it was something you needed to know.

[Chromedome2 34]

10 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Actually we've improved digging as well - while digging in 3rd person view still isn't as comfortable as in the first person view, it should be more precise and we'll be improving it even further.

Why don't you try living and working with something constantly obstructing your view and always up in your face so that you can't get rid of it... No sir, there'll be no manufacturing of consent here!

[iamSleepl3ss 12]

@Chromedome2 They assured us that the new building system will help us with that leisure, so we should wait and see before panicking, maybe it's great?

As for me, I really want to see this new combat system they talked about! 

[Chromedome2 34]

49 minutes ago, iamSleepl3ss said:

As for me, I really want to see this new combat system they talked about! 

I'm a builder/content creator, I couldn't care less about the survival aspect of the game or PVP either! 

[StoutCrusher 37]

The file size has me excited. Can we say Town Builds! 

As for the 1st Person, I use it a lot. @Aleš Ulm says 3rd Person is improved and 1st Person will be back when they fix it. So, I have a wait and see attitude on this before making the claim of the game being broken. I have noticed crashes and frame drops when toggling between 1st and 3rd Person, maybe that's why the fix. Trying to grab the log next to a tree without grabbing more bark will be a challenge. Not to mention using the Hammer to remove something without hitting an unwanted item. The localized inventory does sound interesting, but how does it work? For that, I have no idea until I try it for myself.

[bojo2736 1016]

Super excited for the memory support. 

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

7 hours ago, StoutCrusher said:

The file size has me excited. Can we say Town Builds! 

As for the 1st Person, I use it a lot. @Aleš Ulm says 3rd Person is improved and 1st Person will be back when they fix it. So, I have a wait and see attitude on this before making the claim of the game being broken. I have noticed crashes and frame drops when toggling between 1st and 3rd Person, maybe that's why the fix. Trying to grab the log next to a tree without grabbing more bark will be a challenge. Not to mention using the Hammer to remove something without hitting an unwanted item. The localized inventory does sound interesting, but how does it work? For that, I have no idea until I try it for myself.

Wait, where do you see the size of this update?

[Indomitus 388]

23 hours ago, Chromedome2 said:

I'm a builder/content creator, I couldn't care less about the survival aspect of the game or PVP either! 

As a builder/content creator, the combat system is pretty much front and center for most of what I have planned.

 

5 hours ago, RedEagle_P1. said:

Wait, where do you see the size of this update?

I think StoutCrusher is referring to what Ales said about the game file sizes being smaller thanks to some of the improvements.

[StoutCrusher 37]

@RedEagle_P1. I was referring to the game save file size being smaller. 

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Since you seem to be interested in this topic, let me elaborate a bit about  the 1st camera removal.  The first and foremost issue that I personally see is that it isn't really a good thing when you are "forced" to switch between two camera modes because some actions simply can't be done properly in one of the two modes. Ideally we would like to have a game that  players can play both in 1st or 3rd person mode without being "forced" to switching between because of poor camera mode implementation. Unfortunately, we don't have enough time to make both camera modes  perfect (or at least good enough) and because we know that absolute majority of our players play in 3rd person mode most of the time, we are focusing on that mode. And the current 1st person camera mode implementation is simply too bugged to be left in.

There are simply too many 1st person camera glitches and "weird" moments that we won't be able to fix in time. Most of the time you don't see what you're holding in your hands (even with the "old" combat most of the times you couldn't see your weapon when attacking the enemy). It can happen far too often that some animation is playing that you can't see and you're left clueless as to why you can't all of a sudden switch active items or move (for example you may be suddenly prevented from shooting - you're not seeing that your character is currently reloading etc.). These (and many more) issues are something that we can't release in a stable and polished build 1.0. To get rid of these we will very likely have to create a specific duplicate set of all the existing animations that will be better suited for 1st person view and that's definitely something we don't have time for right now.

As for the new combat (which is yet another reason for 1st person camera removal, albeit not the most important one) -  some of you may not care about the new combat and from their point of view this may feel like a bad decision but the new combat is very important. If you like Explore, you may want to know that we have been waiting months (actually almost a year) with some features that will make Explore much more interesting and rewarding. For that we need a better combat and a better AI (pathfinding) - the first we are about to release, the latter is being worked on very intensively. If you're a creator the new combat might interest you because it opens door for many cool types of games. 

@StoutCrusher Just to be clear and avoid possible confusion - the game can now have much smaller memory consumption (how much RAM it takes). This doesn't say anything about the file size  (that being said - we would like to reduce this as well  )

[bojo2736 1016]

Thanks for the further explanation.  I look forward to changes.  

[TheSparkPlug 128]

2 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

These (and many more) issues are something that we can't release in a stable and polished build 1.0.

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

[RedEagle_P1. 905]

3 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Since you seem to be interested in this topic, let me elaborate a bit about  the 1st camera removal.  The first and foremost issue that I personally see is that it isn't really a good thing when you are "forced" to switch between two camera modes because some actions simply can't be done properly in one of the two modes. Ideally we would like to have a game that  players can play both in 1st or 3rd person mode without being "forced" to switching between because of poor camera mode implementation. Unfortunately, we don't have enough time to make both camera modes  perfect (or at least good enough) and because we know that absolute majority of our players play in 3rd person mode most of the time, we are focusing on that mode. And the current 1st person camera mode implementation is simply too bugged to be left in.

There are simply too many 1st person camera glitches and "weird" moments that we won't be able to fix in time. Most of the time you don't see what you're holding in your hands (even with the "old" combat most of the times you couldn't see your weapon when attacking the enemy). It can happen far too often that some animation is playing that you can't see and you're left clueless as to why you can't all of a sudden switch active items or move (for example you may be suddenly prevented from shooting - you're not seeing that your character is currently reloading etc.). These (and many more) issues are something that we can't release in a stable and polished build 1.0. To get rid of these we will very likely have to create a specific duplicate set of all the existing animations that will be better suited for 1st person view and that's definitely something we don't have time for right now.

As for the new combat (which is yet another reason for 1st person camera removal, albeit not the most important one) -  some of you may not care about the new combat and from their point of view this may feel like a bad decision but the new combat is very important. If you like Explore, you may want to know that we have been waiting months (actually almost a year) with some features that will make Explore much more interesting and rewarding. For that we need a better combat and a better AI (pathfinding) - the first we are about to release, the latter is being worked on very intensively. If you're a creator the new combat might interest you because it opens door for many cool types of games. 

@StoutCrusher Just to be clear and avoid possible confusion - the game can now have much smaller memory consumption (how much RAM it takes). This doesn't say anything about the file size  (that being said - we would like to reduce this as well  )

As someone who's really passionate about building buildings and making city role-play games I can say that using third person inside buildings is extremely challenging. I understand that you don't want to support two modes unless you make them perfect and you don't have the time to make them both perfect. Other games have dealt with this by creating a command that would allow people to use first person regardless of it being imperfect.

I would love to see something similar in that regard. It's an absolute game-changer and definite necessity for certain types of games and four anything with small interior spaces.