EXPERIMENTAL Build - Awesome Achievements!

[Nikki Severin 1148]

Hey there Ylanders!

Before the update gets here (soon! ?), as always, we have the experimental build for you to take a sneak peek into the upcoming update. 

Available to every Steam user, the Experimental branch offers you guys a chance to:

• test upcoming features & changes
• test your games & scripts
• report any bugs & provide early feedback

But first, a couple of things to be aware of:

How to try the Experimental Build

• BACK UP YOUR GAME DATA (see below)
• go your Steam library right-click Ylands
• select Properties, click the "Betas" tab and enter "ExperimentalIWillBackUpMySaves" as the password (excluding the double quotes)
• this will unlock the "i_will_back_up_my_saves" branch
• after selecting the branch and confirming it, Steam will begin downloading the new experimental branch

Important information

Now is a good time to very strongly urge everyone trying the experimental branch to back up all your game data (saves, scenarios, etc.). You can do that by:

• browsing to "<steam installation folder>/userdata/<your steam id>"
• copying the whole "298610" folder.

Keep in mind that the experimental environment uses a completely new user database, meaning that the game will require either playing as a guest or creating a new BI account (available through a link in the game) and then creating a new Ylands character.

If you leave your saves folder intact, you will be able to load your older saves and scenarios with these caveats:

• loading older saves will create a new character for you
• editing scenarios will result in the scenario having more contributors - the user from the live version and the user from the experimental version

For these reasons, we very heavily WARN AGAINST using any data created/modified in the experimental branch in the live version. Also keep in mind that since experimental and live environments are completely separate, you won't be able to see your friends playing the live version in the Social tab.

With that out of the way...onto the good stuff!

Please note: not all features that will be released in the full release are available in the Experimental build. There are also no Mystery Ylands




 

HIGHLIGHTS
(once again, this is not the full list of new and improved features that will be released in 1.8!)

Main menu overhaul
The new menu is on its way to your monitors and displays! We wanted to showcase all the fun that can be enjoyed in Ylands. Let us know what you think about it.

Larger maps
Because of some serious technical issues, we had to generate ylands with a max size of 3x3 km in the past. Nobody was really satisfied with this limitation. It took us a tremendous amount of hard work, but finally, we can see the results. Ylands may have up to 8x8 km. To make the experience of exploring the vast lands of Ylands more exciting, we have also added more space between the individual ylands. Now you can enjoy the almost never-ending ocean horizon.

Mass pickup action
Sometimes, the clickfest when picking up things is just a bit too much. From now on, you can collect all the chopped wood by one long RMB hold. And not just wood, it works on all the items of the same name lying close to your avatar. But if you enjoy clicking on every piece of item you want to pick up you're still welcome to do it your way!

Multiplayer game flow polish
We admit it right away. Inviting friends to multiplayer games was kind of witchcraft. Especially if you wanted to play Exploration together. Now it's much easier, takes you fewer mouse clicks and works right away! Let us know if there is still anything we can improve.

Random default avatar
It's a small change but a welcome one. All the new avatars have completely randomized looks.

Quality of life gameplay improvements
Have you struggled to claim your ship? Or was it hard to find out which ship on the sea is actually yours? Have you been confused within the workstations tabs or have you asked yourself, why is this particular item being held by your avatar hands and another is not? Yeah, we were there too. That's why we checked every detail in the game and made sure that everything was in the right place and the game is consistent on every level. 

Crafting improvements and fixes
As mentioned several times on this page, we focus on the details, like the color difference between the recipe and item in the Hotbar, which should be more intense. There are some other user-friendly changes. 

General UI polish
46 tasks were created with a detailed description of what should work better in terms of our UI. We haven't changed it much at a first glance, but it works much smoother now. We also add some tips to the loading screens, just to be sure that you haven't forgotten about the mass pickup action we added to this update. 

...aaaaaaaaaand more  

[Igor Q. 519]

Question regarding the map size limitation, why exactly is there a size limitation? Isn't it simple enough to use a system similiar to Minecraft or GTA where you only load chunks within a certain radius of the player and use a simple fog FX? Realistically the only large items you'd need to load past 500m would be large structures and trees (and even trees can be downgraded to simple rectangles when exceeding a distance beyond 2km.)

 

Also, thank you so much for the mass pick up system. This is incredibly useful, especially early game exploration. Will it be possible to disable it for multiplayer? I can see certain abuse cases happening with it..

 

[Nikki Severin 1148]

Hey! So the size limitation is primarily so that we have ylands and not just land  

Also, that is how the system works, it only loads the terrain around you up to a certain distance  

And happy you're enjoying the mass pick up, it's pretty handy, right? 

[elitefirneral 4]

This is somehow amazing. I am attracted to this game.

I like this game also. This game is my 4th game that I am playing right now.

[Igor Q. 519]

2 hours ago, Nikki Severin said:

And happy you're enjoying the mass pick up, it's pretty handy, right? 

Definitely better than getting carpal tunnel