7th Q&A with Aleš

ocnoglittle · October 23, 2021

Hi everyone! In case you missed the 7th Q&A, here are the links:

Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1182006596

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbY1qXrRAmA

(Subtitles will be available for the YouTube version. Please let me know if you need help getting them in your language.)

Summary:

Editor

1. From Mello: Will the entity pivot change in the future or will it stay the same?
* Every once in a while we find an entity with the pivot in the wrong position and we fix it. That shouldn’t affect the already-placed entities. It shouldn’t happen very often.

2. From Mello: Will there be half-blocks and quarter-blocks in the future?
* Not in the foreseeable future. We have been seeing problems with builds that are tens of thousands of blocks. We don’t want to give people smaller blocks and make the problem worse.
Never say never, though. In 1.8, we are introducing a new way to occlude blocks to optimize such big builds.

3. Can you provide the creators with a list of all the blocks and their sizes?
* That is a cool idea. I don’t see why not.

4. Will we get objects that are affected by physics (apart from ships) or a tile in the editor that allows it to be?
* We know we don’t support physics like this very much and we know we should at some point. Implementing physics like this in a meaningful way would be quite difficult. I think it would happen at some point. It would be at least a year or so in the future.

5. From Spirit: In the editor, you are able to select multiple blocks based on their type. Could you be able to select multiple blocks based on their color?
* Anything is possible, really. Given enough time. This is an interesting idea. You might be able to change it using a color palate. We will discuss it with the designers.

Exploration

6. From Fazeshyft: Will block snapping be fixed to where we can renovate or modify existing buildings or ruins in the wild? As the system is, this is not possible.
* You mean that when you come across Random Encounters, they are built off-grid so you can’t attach anything to them. This is a known issue and we know we need to fix it. I will have to ask about the status of this fix and we will let you know on the forums.

(From donitakun98: Do you have in mind to introduce animal breeding? I mean, to prevent their extinction
* bobo1098337: animal breeding is already in the game)

7. From HappyCam: Will it be possible to eat while sitting down?
* This is also a known issue and we are working on it. If it is easy, we will implement it in 1.9. A few days ago, we discussed allowing NPCs to sit and lay down, as well.

8. From yaourtax: additional to the eating animation, will animations will be allowed on editor on sitting? cause there is the "upper body animation" but you cannot use it while sitting
* I need to ask our animators about this.

9. I cannot dig at the edge between water and land, to let water flow in. Will this be possible in the future?
* In Editor, Creators can regenerate the water to fill in empty spaces. The water will also fill the caves, but we found a workaround. First, fill in the cave with snow and then regenerate the water. You can then remove just the snow.
In Exploration, this is more difficult. Doing anything with water takes a lot of time because of the simulation. We discussed this with programmers and we will try to only work with the edge of the water to fix this. There is no ETA at this time.

10. Are you planning to have larger ships and more realistic ships?
* When 1.9 comes out, you are in for a treat. I don’t want to hype, but… too late. It will have improvements to ships, things on the water, and new hulls and ship parts.

11. From Chyna Rose-Myste: Will there be glowing paint in Exploration?
* This is something we discussed yesterday. We wanted a material that glows in the dark. It might be part of 1.9. In 1.8, we fixed torches in caves. It was previously affected by the time of day outside of the cave, but we fixed that and made it brighter. It will only affect the ones carried by the character. In 1.9, we will work on the rest of the torches.

12. From Seito: Can we turn off freecamera for our personal island?
* Our designers hate it for Exploration. It is too overpowered. We could remove it, but that might not be the ideal solution. We might change it so that it only moves a small radius around the player.

13. Can we have a lunchbox?
* If you mean a container for food, I don’t see why now. Creating new containers is easy. I don’t see why we can’t include it in 1.9.

General

14. From LadyWhyNot: Can we change the manager of an existing clan?
* I think it is obvious that this feature isn’t finished. At some point, we will do a large update for it.
In the meantime, we can provide smaller fixes such as this.

15. Will you ask YouTubers like Keralis to play the game again? A lot of us enjoyed watching him play and he would like the infinite explore mode. After all, the game could use the advertising.
* (Someone has insider information…) That would be nice.

16. From txmadhatter: Are you going to add dragons, submarines, and planes?
* We never released something called flowing islands. All this needs is better AI. We also need to make our enemies shoot. We would need dragons to attack from a distance and shoot fire. I don’t want to promise anything, but hopefully, we can add one thing to 1.9. A new type of AI (not an NPC and not dragons) will be added. If everything goes as planned, we can add more sophisticated creatures.

17. Where are you with controller support?
* Personally, I would love to have it in 1.9, but we need to discuss and do some analysis. It is definitely a priority.

18. Even if it is in the far future, will Ylands ever be on consoles?
* I don’t see why not. It is made with Unity, so it isn’t easy but it is doable. We want to first fix what is broken in the game before we move on to consoles.

19. From mello1223: I recently subscribed to a creator club, are you planning to change your subscription reward in the near future? Should I wait until I renew my subscription, or do I not have to wait?
* That is a good question. We waited for a new community manager and a new brand manager so now we need to discuss where to go with this. We will have more information before the end of the year.

20. From jchobs: Question we spoke already about scripting implemented in exploration. But for an easy "fix" could we have animators and animating tiles? for example make moving bridges, garage doors etc? Maybe a sub-editor tool only for exploration where ylands just give the required tiles to make that happen
* This would require moving part of the Editor to Exploration and that doesn’t make too much sense to us right now. In the foreseeable future, we will be releasing a roadmap. It will include our plans for Creators making maps that will be included in Exploration. This is a topic for another discussion that could take hours. Obviously, it wouldn’t be placed directly in the game you play. It would need to follow rules. We will do it and do it right. You got a little taste of it in the creator’s competition. We are also making some Mystery Islands for you to experience.

Some missed questions:
From Jarda: do we get a propeller cap in 1.8, the one in the video where Adam changes into Nikki?

From Fazeshyft: Is there any consideration to rework the PC UI to be more intuitive or efficient than the current mobile game layout?

From Yaourtax: will there be a rework on other light sources?

Previous Q&As:

https://ylands.com/community/topic/30413-6th-q-and-a-with-ales/

https://ylands.com/community/topic/30356-5th-qa-with-aleš/

https://ylands.com/community/topic/30317-dev-diary-174-stream-qa/

https://ylands.com/community/topic/30295-4th-qa-with-aleš/

https://ylands.com/community/topic/30138-3rd-qa-with-aleš/

https://ylands.com/community/topic/30025-2nd-qa-with-aleš/

https://ylands.com/community/topic/29785-qa-with-aleš-next-tuesday/?do=findComment&comment=101186