Dev Diary #249 Make nice things easier

[anna_svecova 375]

Hey there, fellow Ylanders!

Many of you have been spending countless hours not just fighting or exploring, but also building. You've built houses small and large, elaborate ships for your avatars to live in, and much more. And when the update 1.11 lands, in addition to capturing those you will be newly able to share them with others. That way, even if some may not have the skills or ideas, they may still be able to build such great creations as well (although they still need to get all the resources, obviously 😉).

Since you can now create in the Editor elaborate Blueprints that players can build in Adventure, we're adding something that will help to create even more spectacular content. 

Something we call... Custom Toolbox.

If you build your houses, ships, cars, and everything else directly in the game, this probably won't interest you that much. But if you're one of those that are going to use the power of the Editor to, for example, build a Blueprint of a magnificent mansion to act as your base (or pretty much anything else, for that matter (smile) ), you should read on. 

So, what is it?

The Custom Toolbox is a tool with which editor-side scripting should cover all those specific issues players can have like selecting objects based on their color, changing position and rotation for every stone axe in the game, and replacing all wooden beams with different wooden beams...you get the idea. But maybe you are a scripting guru and want to take a shot at a tool that generates pictures based on imported .xls data? Spheres, circles, and weirdly bent walls? Or dig tunnels under a path? We've got you covered! These tools, once scripted, can then be shared with other players, who can use them without any scripting knowledge - by simply selecting the parameters. Each tool comes with its own Custom UI editor, which can help with giving instructions to the user or may add a couple of handy buttons and inputs to use.

How do you like it? Will you give it a try?

Let us know and we'll talk to you again in a week. Until then... stay classy!

[zarwil 393]

Wow, this is really cool and something I've been wanting for ages, I just thought it would be too elaborate to ever be added to the game

I suppose this would make it a lot easier to create a brick wall (for instance) with slight variations in color, position and rotation. I do wonder though how you intend to tackle the general complexity that builds have reached for a while now. Entity welds ofc take longer to compile the less each item has in common with others, so if you build a huge structure where every wall is made of brick, and each brick has its own unique position, rotation and color, that seems like worst-case scenario for the weld process. And all of that aside, (unless I've missed something...) there is still poor general multiplayer performance with ships which needs improvement. With the ability to create blueprints straight from the editor now, I suspect lots of people will create very item-dense and complex ships moving forwards.

[Mello1223 591]

Amazing!!! 🤩

[m.malik2007 4]

Agreed Upon it.

Appreciated for this New Tool.