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 đ).
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!
Dev Diary #248 Take on Tik Tok
Hello, fellow Ylanders,
We have been conquering quite a few social media sites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitch... But one contender was missing. Well no more... We have launched our TikTok.
You can find funny Ylands-style takes on vines and memes, ridiculous bugs, or different builds/trailer videos. TikTok allows us to show you a bit different and perhaps a sillier page of our game. For example, you can find the "Hi, I'm Renata bliss your freestyle dance teacher" Ylands version there. We also prepared quick building videos for inspiration. Or just get immersed in a special version of our trailer from 2021. There's much more in store for our TikTok in the future. And I have to say that I'm having so much fun creating the videos. It is a space where you can let your imagination and humor go wild.
The short video format is easy to follow to see what's new and hilarious in our game. So don't forget to subscribe! And tell us what else would you like to see there?
Stay classy...
And see you on our TikTok! Anna - Community Manager
Dev Diary #247 Did you know that...
Hey there, fellow Ylanders!
Over the years Ylands has become a really large and sophisticated game. There are thousands of entities and recipes, dozens of features and game systems both big and small.
In fact, there are so many things in the game that quite often even people from the team stumble over something they didn't know because they weren't directly involved in the development of that feature.
"Hey, that's really cool! That's new, right? When did we add that?" "Well... Like three years ago?"
It's more than likely that there are things that you, players, don't know as well. To remedy that we've started posting cool and interesting bits about the game on our social channels (we'll talk more about those the next week).
Soooo, we're wondering if there's anything that you found out after playing the game for some time. Anything counts - interesting mechanics, weird and funny quirks, random facts, or simply things that surprised you or made you smile.
Until next time...
Stay classy!
1.10.0.3 Patch Changelog
Highlight đ Inability to save game caused by the usage of too many colors on the map.
Changelog [YLD-40397]Â Fixed:Â Inability to save game caused by the usage of too many colors on the map.
Dev Diary #246 Listen, Playlands, we need to talk
Hey there, fellow Ylanders! đ´
Unless you've stayed far away from Ylands for the last two years you know that the whole time we've been focusing on Adventure (aka Exploration). And because of that, we don't have enough time to work on another part of the game that keeps screaming for help - Playlands.
There were several reasons behind the creation of Playlands. Primarily it was meant to become a kind of social hub, where Ylands players would meet and just have some silly fun together in an optimized environment that allowed for a larger number to be present simultaneously. It helped us optimize the multiplayer code and gain a lot of experience while making the minigame in the Editor.
However, right now Playlands are pretty much dead. Partly due to their flawed design which makes it difficult for players to instantly play and enjoy any content, and partly because they're simply a remnant of times when Ylands was leaning more towards Roblox-kind of a platform game and those times are, fortunately, gone.
Could we make it work better, a more fun, intuitive and rewarding experience with what we learned since we introduced it? Possibly.
Is it worth it / do we want to? Not really. We believe that time is better spent improving Adventure and all that's related to it. Also, we have the powerful Editor and feel that making cool small games works better if they're part of the custom games ecosystem, instantly accessible by anyone willing to play them.
Long story short - in 1.11 we're removing Playlands. The minigames from it will eventually become available as separate custom games to play for anyone and so the love we put into them won't be wasted.
Playlands, however, are not just minigames. Players can gain points there which they use to select clothes they wear in other custom games. This functionality will be removed from Playlands and, later, made very likely part of the player's profile. In the meantime, we'll keep your avatars dressed as they were before the 1.11 releases.
Please note that if you're playing just the Adventure, the removal of Playlands will not affect you in any way.
Until next time...
Stay classy!
Dev Diary #245 Fun Energy Wanted!
Hey there, fellow Ylanders! đ´ There are some things that for a long time didn't work as we all would like them to and which we fixed. Then there are parts of the game that still need a massive amount of love. And today we'll talk about one.
The Energy. ⨠It does work. You can build generators and engines and link nodes and light up the darkness and... well, that's about it. There are indeed some cool things like logic gates (AND, OR, XOR and such) but that's not quite... fun.
When introduced Energy into the game we had big plans for various machines and things that would either help you do tasks better, faster or easier or things that would be simply fun to play with. And we would still like that. So what we need to do is get the Energy from "it works" to "it's so much fun to mess with".
Next year we're definitely going to do something about it and so it's high time we started thinking about it.
This is where you step in. Can you please let us know what you don't like about the Energy as it is right now (in addition to being able to hide the links :) )? What would you like to have us add to the game? Is there anything in other games you would like to see in Ylands?
Every idea is appreciated, so go nuts!
Until next week...
Stay Classy!Â
Dev Diary #244 May I or Mayor?
Hi fellow Ylanders, đ´
This week we want to tell you about one amazing virtual place called Streamerworld and the news that every citizen of its capital, Fraikiville, has been talking about lately. Streamerworld is our server, where we create and work together. You can easily join us by befriending AnnaYlands in Ylands. Our server is in the middle of Mayor elections and we want to tell you about the process and the campaigns. However we are currently in the middle of a battle with a very pesky bug on the server and are working our hardest to release a patch. That has put a strain on the elections and they have been postponed. The campaigns are still in progress tho.
Who is a Mayor?
They are in charge of the ylands, helping devs catch bad guys and supporting the citizens. They have a main say in what to build on the most important spots. Mayor will sit in their office on the top of the main hill and will be able to decorate it to their liking. We will also bring this important person on stream sometimes and include them in many of our activities. Their term is now set for 6 months.
What do the campaigns look like?
Our candidates can use just about anything to run their campaign - a video, statue or a blog post. They are only limited by the length of the material, which was set to two minutes.
What about the elections?
They will take place on the next stream 19/10/2022 4PM CEST and will be anonymous.
Huge thank you to everyone who already participated in the campaigns and elections. It makes us immensely proud to see how creative our Community is. Last but not least, if you want to keep up with Fraikiville news, we can recommend this amazing TV Channel called Laurus Media that brings fresh reports from the spot.
Dev Diary #243 And what's in it for you, Adventurer?
Hey there, fellow Ylanders!
We love exploring and do our best so that exploration in Ylands is as fun and as rewarding as possible. The question is, though, is it rewarding enough?
We feel that there are still many things that can (and hopefully will) be eventually added to Ylands to make you want to go the distance and sail the unknown seas and so today we would like to tell you a bit more about our plans that go beyond 1.11, even things that, right now, are nothing more than just things we discuss.
I believe we've already mentioned it before - we plan for the Exploration Points (EP) to play a much more important role in the game. What we want to achieve, in a nutshell, is this: the more you explore, the more EP you get; getting more EP will allow you to have more nice things, more areas to uncover and it will make you better at certain things.
The first thing we've also already mentioned: we would like you to be able to learn various "bonus" recipes from specific trainers, instead of learning those at the Random Encounter sites, where you have no control over what you find there.
The second thing is quite obvious because we already have that in the game - if you want to experience something new, exciting and different, use the EP you gathered to open one of the Mystery ylands.
And the third thing is probably something that you may find most interesting and which can be, by far, the biggest incentive for you to go and explore. What we're currently thinking about is adding some sort of "skill tree" that would let you, with help of EP, unlock specific bonuses and perks. Imagine things like being able to sail faster, spend more time underwater, have a better chance at catching a rare fish, learn a very unique recipe and more. Right now, this is not much more than a discussed concept but it's quite likely that something like this will eventually appear in one of the future updates.
This is something we've discussed over the past few months and even though the actual way of how this is going to be implemented may change, in general, this is something that we really want to see become a part of the game.
That's it for today and we'll see you in a week. Until then ... stay classy!
Dev Diary #242 Are you too hot?
Hey there, fellow Ylanders!
For some time, the temperature system we have in Ylands has behaved differently than we expected it to and so we went ahead and gradually added fixes, tweaks and improvements to make the feature better. The most recent of those was brought in with Update 1.10: Ymproved Ylands. In this Dev Diary, we'll get into more detail about what this fix accomplished, as it may not be immediately apparent, but we believe it does improve the experience.
Firstly, we've gone through all the equipment and adjusted how much it helps against harsh temperatures both for land and underwater environment. We would love to hear from you - have you noticed any improvements?
The second thing we want to mention, is something that you may have already noticed. When you eat some food in-game, a special status icon appears next to your health indicator. This means that the food gave your character a boost either against cold or hot weather. You can tell which boost was given to you based on the type of icon that appears once you consume the food or drink.
For example, soup is now keeping you warm in cold environments and coconut drink is keeping you cool in warm environments!
Oh, and weâve also upped the temperature in the Arid biome so it's more in line with the character of the biome. Stay hydrated out there!
Thatâs it for today and weâll talk again next week. Until thenâŚstay classy, Ylanders!
Dev Diary #241 That One Recipe You're Missing
Hey there, fellow Ylanders!
Some time ago, we discussed the improvements to the crafting UI which should make the crafting easier and more user-friendly. Crafting, however, is not only about the interface, but also the actual recipes. And that's what we would like to talk about today.
For quite some time, all the recipes, both "core" and "extra" (let's call them "aesthetic"), have been available to players to open right from the start of the game. You picked a few objects, and BOOM, you could suddenly craft a hundred objects more. Not only was this massively overwhelming, but also getting those aesthetic recipes without any effort made them feel cheap and took away the joy of having those. So what we did was remove those from the commonly accessible recipes and players were able to learn those by exploring various Random Encounters.
In hindsight, we think that making the aesthetic recipes harder to get was a good decision, however, from the feedback we received, it is obvious that this system doesn't work well for those who are looking to find a specific recipe (or more of them).
Today, we would like to share with you an idea that we're currently discussing. We're thinking about introducing trainers, which would offer to teach you various aesthetic recipes in exchange for Exploration Points. Not only will players get the Points from discovering Random Encounters but, newly, also by completing dungeons (which are coming soon). In general, we believe this will make the system more intuitive, predictable and rewarding.
So, what do you think? Would you like to have an option to get recipes you need in exchange for something you gather by exploration or fighting?
That's it for today and we'll talk to you again in a week. Until then ... stay classy, Ylanders!
