Dev Diary #5 - State of the Game

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hi there, fellow ylanders.

In this post, instead of telling you what cool features are coming your way as we usually do, I plan to... well, to tell you what cool features are coming your way - in the next few months. And I also want to give you an update about the state of the game.

Ylands is heading Steam, where we plan to arrive this summer as an Early Access game. This gives us several months to polish and optimize the game so that we enter Steam at the best possible shape. It‘s important to understand that going to Steam doesn't mean we're close to Ylands being "finished" - quite on the contrary! We‘re only just getting started - the team has once again grown in size and we have plans for several years to come, even after leaving Early Access (some of which are truly magnificent, but obviously first we need to make sure the core features are in great shape). We think of the Steam release as a starting point where the true fun will begin

Speaking of going to Steam - it goes without saying that whoever has already bought the game or will buy it before we get there will receive a free Steam copy of the game.

 

If you happen to go to PAX East to Boston find us there and we can talk about what is to come!

 

Right now we are nearing the end of what I would call Stage 0. We have put enough content and features in the game and tested various approaches, so at this moment we have a pretty clear idea of where we want to go and how to get there. Because of all the experiments and iterations and putting new content in the game real fast, there are many features that are fun to play with but are not used to their full extent and which implementations leave a lot to be desired.

We have a long list of what needs to be fixed and improved - and this moment is where we begin to tie the loose ends and start focusing more on quality than quantity.

Things that we believe require our immediate attention:

* Multiplayer
- For a long time we had troubles with connecting players together. In 0.21 (Dangerous Depths) we finally managed to overcome these issues and players could finally start playing multiplayer mode. And also, as expected, we are now getting enough feedback on multiplayer related bugs. Solving these and bringing you a perfect multiplayer experience is really important to us - that‘s why 0.23 will be, to a large extent, about fixing these bugs.

* Ships
- Ships are fun but who says they can't be more fun? We are making them into physical entities and adding a lot of visual goodies as well. On the other hand, in the upcoming update you can expect to run into some issues due to their newly acquired physical simulations. Also, some of the nastiest bugs we know of in multiplayer mode are related to ships - we are aware of those and are working on a fix (which, however, won't make it into 0.22, but will be present in the aforementioned 0.23 as well).

* AI
- AI for animals at completely destructible terraformable ylands is not an easy task but for some time now we've been working on a better system, and we hope to bring you results in one of the future updates. Once we‘re happy with basic animal AI, you can expect NPCs and humanoid enemies.

* Optimization
- We are not limiting players in any way, so it is not really possible for us to ensure that everything they create with the Scenario editor will run greatly, but it is fair to say that Ylands is still quite performance hungry (our bottleneck right now lies with CPU) and we are already addressing that. We are already working on additional optimizations that we will be releasing over the next few updates.

 

A new scenario to share with you is coming along nicely!

 

But this doesn't mean that we've given up on bringing you new and interesting content and features - actually there are still several large ones you will get to see in the game before we hit Steam in summer. I will mention just two - a special community hub through which you will be able to share both structures and whole scenarios, and also something that will motivate you even more to play the Explore scenario and possibly even win it.

Once again I would like to thank of all of you who are helping us with the development. Let me assure you that once thousands of new players start pouring in, not only you won‘t be forgotten, but that we actually have something very cool in store for you all!

So take care, ylanders, and stay classy

[starwarss 6]

Will we have a Ylands workshop on steam to make some mods for the game ?

[Miguel Preguisa 443]

14 minutes ago, Aleš Ulm said:

* Ships

- ...We are making them into physical entities...

What does this mean?

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

No, we are working on our own system that suits our needs better. At first everything will be done through a specific website - a community hub of Ylands content creators and later we will let the players do the same thing right from within the game without having to leave it.

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

2 minutes ago, Miguel Preguisa said:

What does this mean?

Well, apart from a lot of physics-related issues for us to solve it means, for example, that if you run your ship into another one something visually cool happens. Characters can now walk on ships even when they are moving. Ship's movement looks much better and more natural... Soon you will be able see for yourself! (But as I said, although we are trying to fix everything possible, this is a bit tricky, so there will probably be some minor issues still present in single player ship handling. In MP, unfortunately,  the ships are single most bugged bit of the game - you can expect a massive number of fixes coming with 0.23)

[CoolPrius 14]

This sounds awesome guys! This game is shaping up to be something special.