Originally I planned to discuss some cool new features and improvements update 1.6 will introduce but seeing the discussions about the current state of the game and where it‘s headed, I thought it's more important to react to these instead.
Let me start by addressing the concerns about us focusing mostly on the Editor/platform instead of Exploration.
In the past years, we have spent a lot of time working on the Editor, the Workshop and the platform in general. During this time it was our primary focus, and this meant that - unfortunately - Exploration got less love than what we would have wanted. That is a fact, and we understand the disappointment of those who wanted us to improve Exploration in the first place. While we did make some Exploration improvements, these were not necessarily enough. We are also aware that some features are now actually might even be worse than they used to (probably the biggest issue is still maps being smaller).
All of this happened because of three reasons.
This year Ylands will be officially released in China (which is something that only a few dozen „western“ games achieve each year) and thanks to the support from our team here, now, months before the release, the platform there already contains hundreds of games. For Ylands, a project that we still plan to develop for many years to come, this is obviously very important.
The second reason is something we haven‘t talked about yet, but since some of you already started asking - and we are close enough to start discussing this as well; here we go. Often in the past, actually even years ago, when the Editor and platform was nothing like they are now, we kept being approached by teachers from various countries who were interested in using Ylands and its visual scripting and easy to pick-up systems, as tools to teach kids the basics of scripting & programming. At that time we didn‘t feel ready to provide such a solution, but now we got to a point where we can and want to; so this year we plan on introducing Ylands to schools as a learning tool. At first here, in the Czech Republic, followed by other countries. The Ylands version for schools will be pretty much the standard Ylands you know and love but stripped of some features (quite obviously monetization and some others). We have all the features we wanted to have but it took us long to get here.
So what‘s next?
Exploration.
We have already started focusing on Exploration with update 1.5 and that has brought a major change to the basic gameplay loop. Instead of playing many Exploration games, building your structures, ships only to lose them when you start another Exploration game, you now play in a large Exploration universe where you can keep your progress, explore any number of ylands - be it local games, games hosted on dedicated servers or locally hosted by other players.
In 1.6 we will continue with these improvements. We got rid of the barrier and will give you more power over your ylands. We are adding new ways to build with your friends and tools to prevent visitors to your ylands doing any harm. We are giving you better ways of building. We even made a lot of smaller improvements that you asked for (like introducing a rake, an object you can use to smooth terrain, etc.). Actually, there is so much cool Exploration-related stuff in 1.6 that for the first time we won‘t be able to introduce all of it in Dev Diaries before it comes out!
And the updates past 1.6? Again, a ton of cool Exploration features, fixes and improvements.
We are already planning something that will make the maps much, much bigger (the actual local maps where you move without loading). In 1.6 we, the devs, are already able to create special unique scenes in the Editor that then can be found in Exploration by players (think of Random Encounters, but entire islands). In the future, we will give the same power to you. That is how the Editor and Exploration will „click together“ and all the time and effort we put into Editor will be beneficial even for the only-Exploration players. Imagine Exploration with custom made worlds, that can be pretty much anything...
And that is, actually, the third reason why we focused so much on having a working Editor/platform first (if you look back in forum posts and Dev Diaries, you will find we dreamed this up this looooong time ago).
That is what the future of Ylands is.
I hope that this answers some of your questions (and maybe even concerns) about the future of Ylands and what role Exploration and the Editor play in it. I understand that this covers only parts of what your concerns are, and I will continue in the next Dev Diary with some other topics like server stability, our plans to get more players to play Exploration and anything else you ask for in the discussion below this post. Please note that with CM gone (we are already talking with some promising candidates) and finalizing features for 1.6 we may not be able to answer everything you ask right away and it may take some time / it will be answered in the next Dev Diary.
That‘s it for today, I will talk to you next Thursday so until then... stay healthy and classy, ylanders!
Dev Diary #165 - A different kind of scripting
Hey there, fellow ylanders.
After we‘ve talked about several Exploration improvements you will find in the next update 1.6, today we focus on something big that Creators will surely like (if you‘re interested in Exploration, don‘t worry, there‘s plenty more cool stuff in 1.6 we‘ve yet to talk about).
We‘ve seen a lot of amazing creations that pushed the limit of what is possible with visual scripting (and many time genuinely surprised us). Games like this make us, the whole platform, move forward, but it also showed more clearly what is not really surprising. Visual scripting is a great tool for learning, for making simple-to-medium complex games, but once the game complexity reaches a certain level, working with the visual script, navigating through it and in general making the code intuitive and easy to work with because really difficult.
That‘s why with 1.6 we‘re bringing you a beta version of non-visual scripting. You will be able to create text scripts, that can be attached to Entities and Game logic object in the editor and when the game runs this script will be executed in a similar way to the visual script.
The fact is that internally the visual script has always been a visualization of javascript-like language so now you will get the chance to bypass the visual scripting and type in the code directly. Instead of describing these features in many more paragraphs, we put together a short FAQ that will, hopefully, answer most of your questions. We are looking forward to discussing with you this topic more in the followup discussion.
Q: You said „beta version“ - what does it mean? A: This feature requires a lot of work based on a lot of feedback that we would like to get from you, the Creators. Therefore it is very likely that 1.7 may bring some changes and you will be required to go through your scripts and update them. Also, as always with a feature of such size, there may be bugs. The more feedback you provide, the better it will get.
Q: What language is it? What syntax can we expect? A: The syntax and commands (the „generic“ ones, not the ones specific to Ylands) is pretty much javascript (even its file extension is .js). However, it‘s not 100% javascript, since it does not support some features, so you can probably think of it as a javascript subset. You will find more about this in the online documentation.
Q: Is this meant to replace visual scripting? A: Absolutely not. For us, visual scripting remains the primary way of scripting and we will keep improving it in future.
Q: Can we use both scripting and visual scripting in one game? A: Sure!
Q: Will there be some sort of editor, IDE we will be able to use to edit the script? A: No, not at this time. With so many cool editors out there supporting .js syntax we‘d like to focus on other areas of the scripting/game - at least for the time being.
That‘s it for today - don‘t hesitate to ask about anything that remains unclear and I‘ll talk to you next week. Until then - stay healthy and classy, ylanders!
Here we are with yet another portion of 1.6 goodies and today we‘ll talk about both something for Creators and something nice you‘ll experience in the new Exploration.
So what is it that the Creators may like? Let‘s say that you are making a small cool action game where the goal is to score as many points as possible. That‘s great but what‘s the point in having such a game when you can‘t store the best scores and show it to players to make them try harder, to give them more incentive? So in 1.6 we plan to introduce something we call Global leaderboards. Regardless of how many instances of your game are running at the same time, they can all store and retrieve (and show) ... well... global leaderboards. :) We are looking forward to seeing players compete with each other and we might even have a competition in future about getting the highest score in selected games! Also, if you‘re a Creator, you really shouldn‘t miss the next Dev Diary where we‘re going to talk about something really great that we‘re going to introduce with 1.6 (hype intended).
Before I get to introduce a new Exploration feature, I would like to quickly address some questions from the last Dev Diary we posted. Firstly blueprints - in the new Exploration you will be able to use blueprint camera only on ylands where you have appropriate privileges. Our plans, however, are to do a big blueprint upgrade in 1.7 because we feel they hold a great potential we have only barely touched. We will be able to provide more information about this sometime after 1.6 is released. There has also been a question asked about setting specific Exploration ylands as PvP/PvE only. We looked into this and while we understand that this is an important setting to have we ran into some non-trivial issues when looking for ways to do this properly and so this will be in some form present in 1.7.
And the cool new 1.6 feature for today? Well, we have been working on a system that allows us to present you, the players, with much more than an yland when you sail to a new location. With 1.6 you will be able to come across specific locations, custom-made, non-generated scenes. What does it mean? Imagine you sail to an uncharted yland on the regional map and instead of the ylands you‘re used to you come across something very unique - like a small floating outpost. This can be pretty much anything and the great thing is that we can keep adding these „random encounter scenes“ without having to update the game. We believe this will enhance the greatly the exploration aspect of the game.
The question some of you will very likely ask is - if you can make custom ylands and expose them to players in Exploration, can I do that as well? Can I create my own yland (city ... or anything else) in the Editor and then have it in Exploration? The short answer would be: not... yet . But we are getting there and it is something that definitely deserves it‘s own Dev Diary.
That‘s it for this week, I‘ll talk to you next Thursday and until then... stay healthy and classy, ylanders!
My Last (official) Post
tl;dr - Adam is leaving - Thank you all for everything 🤗
Hey there Ylanders!
So this is it. My last post 😊 As was mentioned (maybe too many times) already, I am leaving Ylands for new adventures, but I do so with a heavy heart. It's been nearly two years that I have spent with y'all and I don't know about you, but I had an absolute blast. Also, I have learnt a lot, which gave me the confidence to move on when the call came. So thank you for that and for all the fun we had in the process.
This game and this community are truly something special. With such an interesting mix of adventurers and creators, there is always something new to talk about, try out and figure out. Of course, the road hasn't been always easy, but I think Ylands is now on the way to becoming really great. With the recent updates to Exploration (which are really awesome and I think we all really enjoyed them, even on the recent streams 😃) and the competitions showing us all, what amazing feats are possible in the Editor, there is a bright future ahead of the game. And I for one am really looking forward to it.
And I am also proud of what we have managed as a community. When I started at Ylands, there was a bit of a disconnect, that I think we managed to bridge together, especially because of a ton of goodwill from you 🤗 And while it may not be readily apparent or immediately seen, all your feedback and bug reports were essential in the last two years and the way Exploration and other aspects of the game developed is in a huge part because of your ideas and requests, so thank you for that. I also think quite a lot of life was breathed into our Forums, Discussions and especially the Discord (https://discord.gg/KxQJJAY), which when I began was kinda quiet and now I am delighted, how much you guys chat there and share screenshots.
So thank you all again very much. Thank you for being so welcoming and kind. Thank you for all the private messages wishing me a bright future and I wish you all also the very best.
But most of all I wish you all to stay classy as you've always been Ylanders 😊
Adam "Major General" Snellgrove
P.S. Thank you Spyler and Christal for the beautiful artwork and all of you, that helped out to build the Major General a retirement home. And the Pub is fantastic too, thank you cfrox
Dev Diary #163 - Future of the Barrier
tl;dr - Not happy with the barrier - Rework of building and map protection - Removing the barrier - Adam leaving, Marci filling in
Hey there, fellow ylanders, it's Aleš here!
Today I would like to tell you a bit more about changes you can expect in 1.6's Exploration. We will talk about protecting what's yours and setting the game world rules to fit your idea of the perfect place.
Let's start by saying that we don't really like how the barrier works in the game right now and even though it has served its purpose for a long time we think we could make a better, cleaner, more intuitive solution. Let's first discuss what the barrier is actually good for and how can we make sure these things will still work well when it's gone. The main areas where the barrier came in handy were these:
it allowed players to create buildings they could easily dismantle for whatever the reason was
it protected your little piece of the world from damage caused by other players, but also it prohibited them from doing things like removing terrain and such
it protected your avatar against damage
Not only wasn't the barrier concept very intuitive to new players, but it had several shortcomings (that we always planned to fix, but never got to it). It couldn't be moved when placed. It wasn't big enough. And most importantly, you only had one. This last thing has become a major blocker now with the new Exploration which is actually centred around the idea of travelling among distant locations and even though you can have one home where you return and where you could have the barrier, we feel it's extremely limiting. So we are planning to introduce these features:
improved building via the new workstation (we already covered that here)
allowing yland owners to set the rules for their maps
The first feature we already covered (see here https://ylands.com/community/topic/29514-dev-diary-160-building-in-exploration/) We want to give you full control over your games and that's something that isn't possible with the barrier. As a result, the barrier will be removed from the game in 1.6 and in its stead game owners will be able to set up rules on what can different types of visitors do in this particular world. We believe you will find this extremely useful 😊
And then there's another thing I would like to mention. As you probably know, our Community manager Adam is leaving next week. We are currently looking very intensely for a replacement, but before we find one, Marci will try to take care of some of Adam's duties as best as he can. What does this mean? Since Marci has enough work as it is you can experience a bit longer response times on our side. Fortunately, there are already some awesome players who are a great help to us on the forums plus I will ask other devs to keep checking the forum (especially the bug forum). Hopefully, this state won't last too long.
At the same time, if you ever encounter an issue that you consider critical or anything that requires our immediate attention, don't hesitate and PM me directly on our game forums. I will do my best to reply as soon as I can.
That's it for today, we will talk to you again next Thursday and so until then... stay healthy and classy, ylanders!
Dev Diary #162 - Goodie Pack #3
Hey there Ylanders!
Some of you might have noticed some cool new stuff arriving in Ylands this Tuesday and you'd be absolutely right! The Goodie Pack #3 is out and it is full of cool new assets to play around with.
First of we have the inclusion of a new culture in Ylands, the Inuits. These descendants of the Thule people inhabit the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada and Alaska and are experts of living in the most dangerous and life-threatening environments. They have a rich and old culture and while we did our best to emulate it, we in no way claim to be absolute experts 😅 But we have added some Inuit clothes attire, that will be of great help to Arctic explorers planning on making their base in the land of ice 😊 There are also a few Inuit idols, that you can use to decorate your arctic home and give homage to the people of the Great White North.
But there is more to aid your expedition, including the newly added expedition gear, knitted cap and research equipment. You can also use new Plastic pillar blocks and add a Metal door to the mix to complete the Expedition Research Station.
Beware though, because new dangers will inhabit the snowy biomes too, including a number of new animals. We have the fearsome Wolverine and dangerous Snow Tiger to contend with, while you'll also be able to come upon the Reindeer (if it flies, please call Santa but also send us logs 😂). These should make the colder biomes a bit more diverse 😁 In the Editor, you can also youse the mighty Jötunn straight from Norse mythology and in update 1.6 they will be making appearances in Exploration as well in new Random Encounters, so watch out 😊
And finally something more for the Eastern biome the beautiful Junk Ship, which we talked about at length last week. It is a cheap option to get your Exploring underway and to blend into the Eastern biomes well. But for even the earlier early game or for just short trips on a map we have also added the trusty kayak, which should fill the space between a raft and a small boat.
There were also a slew of bug fixes, which should make life in Experimental Exploration a little bit easier 😁 So check out the changelog to find out more about these and as always if you find a bug, please let us know and if you have any feedback, please let us know since we are still actively gathering issues from the new Exploration and taking them on board to make the experience as good as possible 🤗
And so until next time, stay classy Ylanders.
Goodie Pack #3
Highlights
Polar assets - Whether you are a bold Explorer planning to visit arctic regions or a Creator making a game from icy lands, you will love this update. And if the cold isn't your cup of tea - give a try to the brand new Junk ship!
Fixes - many of them addressing the most critical issues experienced when playing the new experimental Exploration
New assets
New creature: Jötunn New creature: Wolverine New creature variant: Reindeer New creature variant: Snow tiger
Plastic pillar blocks (4) Snow blocks (26) Metal door Inuit hat Inuit parka Expedition gear Knitted cap Santa armour boots Frost armour Research equipment (3) Ice formations (5) Inuit idols (5)
Junk Ship Junk sails Junk hull Kayak
Additions / Tweaks
[YLD-28117] Tweaked: Unsummmoning ship with a padlock on the helm will now remove the padlock from the helm
Fixes
[YLD-28023] Fix: / Tweak: Exploration player data (character, ship) are now saved during the exploration session, instead of just at the end which should prevent players from losing a significant amount of their progress. The approximate time between player saves updates corresponds to the game save period - 10min by default. [YLD-27976] Fixed: In some cases, you were not able to control a ship with engines after you unsummoned it and summoned it in one game [YLD-26776] Fixed: A wrong count was shown when crafting planks [YLD-28123] Fixed: You were able to claim ownership of an unknown but padlocked ship [YLD-28285] Fixed: Objects or project table couldn't be placed near ship blueprints [YLD-28286] Fixed: Items disappearing twice from the inventory when dropped on the ship [YLD-27934] Fixed: If a sleep request was pending in multiplayer, the UI icon would stay on even after joining another server [YLD-26388] Fixed: Heavy FPS drop on mobile devices when aiming with guns [YLD-28176] Fixed: Dig action event was triggered twice on a pickaxe which breaks visual scripting [YLD-28284] Fixed: It is not possible to place some animals from Hotbar if switching to them from any weapon [YLD-27380] Fixed: Profile screen displays incorrect name when opening the profile popup for the first time [YLD-28530] Fixed: Rented servers: When the Workshop is down, trying to host a game from it results in the game data corruption. [YLD-28430] Fixed: Keybinds not loading correctly after restarting the game [YLD-28434] Fixed: When you click the Message button in the Social screen, it redirects you to the chat screen, but with the wrong user selected [YLD-28016] Fixed: Blueprint Camera shines the flash all the time, not only when actually shooting [YLD-28038] Fixed: CTD: Crash when you try split stack of items inside inventory container to already a full stack of items [YLD-27259][YLD-28309][YLD-28325] Fixed: 3D Game Logic icons should are sometimes nor properly rotated
[YLD-28327] Fixed: Editor: Editing particles on equipment in the Player role does not work correctly [YLD-28165] Fixed: Editor: Changing scenario description does not work [YLD-28115] Fixed: Editor: Unique items are mergeable with non-unique ones of the same type in some cases [YLD-28032] Fixed: Editor: NPC with a weapon with a particle in hand in Entity template breaks Object properties window [YLD-27218] Fixed: Editor: 3D GameLogic icons have the horizon visible through them
[YLD-28177] Fixed: VS: Script tiles sometimes overlap each other
Dev Diary #161 - New Ship Type
[previewyoutube="NmEn1yUteeE;full"] tl;dr - New Ship - The Junk Ship - It's many uses - A change in the team
Hey there Ylanders!
Today I have two pieces of news to share with you. First, let's begin with some new cool content, that will be arriving in the next Goodie Pack: The Junk Ship!
This has been quite exciting for us because we weren't sure we'll manage to finish the development on this beauty on time, but because of some really hard work by our team, it will appear in the next mini-update. This new ship will bring countless new possibilities to your builds and a missing Eastern feel to our growing navy 🤩 The first Junk Ships appeared during the Han dynasty in the 2nd century and were an integral part of river and sea voyages throughout history up until today in and around China and her neighbours. The supposedly largest Junk Ship ever built was that of Admiral Zheng He. It had nine masts, was 130 metres long and 55 metres wide 🤯
While our junk ships won't resemble those of the legendary Zheng He, they will be pretty easy to build and will be as fast as a small wooden ship, making it a great vessel to start your adventures on 😁 Also it is an absolute must when travelling to the Eastern Biome regions as it will fit right in 😀
And the second piece of news is a bit bittersweet because after nearly two years having fun with all of you and working on one of the most exciting projects I will be leaving Ylands in three weeks time. It really was a great honour and wonderful experience to start my gaming industry career with you all and I couldn't have asked for a more chill and classy group of individuals 🤗 But as with every great story, there comes an end and it is time for me to sail off to my next adventure. We are already searching for someone fun to replace me and take care of you all and this is by no means a goodbye from me. I'll still be here for three weeks, so this is not my last Dev Diary and we'll have time to chat some more. And even after I leave, I will always take an interest what's happening on my favourite Exploration and Creative platform 😊 But in no sense is my leaving because of any dissatisfaction with the community or Ylands, quite the opposite I have really enjoyed every second of it chatting with you, seeing Ylands grow and improve while making silly videos and getting to know you all during our Streams 🙃 Just a new adventure called and me being the adventuring type I had to heed that call. So again, thank you all for your kindness, creativity and classiness and I'll see you around.
So until next time, stay classy Ylanders.
Dev Diary #160 - Building in Exploration
tl;dr - Continuing work on Exploration - Feedback very important to us - Easier building mechanics - Nerf propeller pack - A lot more to talk about in coming weeks
Hey there, fellow ylanders, it's me, Aleš! 😊
I'm very happy to say that based on the way you react to the new Exploration we feel that we're moving in the right direction. We are fully aware of the new issues you're facing and we have already fixed quite a lot of those so when update 1.5.1 is released (which should be in early February), hopefully, your experience will get even better. But as we said before, 1.5 was just a beginning so please let me share with you some of the plans we have for Exploration in 1.6. Before I do that, however, I would like to mention that we are now listening to your feedback even more closely than ever so in addition to "new" features, we will be fixing and tweaking a lot of things you keep reporting. I believe very strongly that when 1.6 hits your devices, you will see that what we said about creating the new Exploration together weren't just empty phrases.
Today I would like to let you know about something we plan to do about building (actually we have quite larger plans for 1.6 when it comes to building, but we are not yet far enough with these to make them public (smile) ). Many times the building in Exploration simply sucks. When you compare it with the editor, it's so much more difficult to build anything sophisticated. Your avatar gets in the way, you can't get to places that are too narrow or too high... and so you often wish that you could just fly freely around and place things. And that's exactly what we plan to give you in 1.6.
Our plan is to introduce a new simple (re)movable workstation in 1.6 that when used will let you fly around it within a certain radius with a free camera view and build with ease. Obviously, you have to be careful around your surroundings because that will leave your Avatar exposed but I think that it always is a good idea to get rid of any predators around you before you start building a house anyway. We believe that this will result in building things in a much more intuitive and user-friendly way.
And since we're talking about flying around - we are fully aware that the propeller pack is now quite overpowered (especially since your enemies can't often get to you) and so we're doing some changes to address that. We won't be removing it because it's a lot of fun but we will adjust the way it works so that by crafting it will make your life easier and more fun, but won't result in you being immune to every danger.
There's so much more to tell you about and I'm looking forward to talking about the new Exploration in the upcoming weeks. Until then - stay healthy and classy, ylanders!
Dev Diary #159 - Ylands Creators Competition Winners
[previewyoutube="aSYdJTrrgO4;full"]
Salutations Ylanders!
So it's finally here! The first-ever Ylands Creators Competition Winners Announcement! 🤩
And first of all, let me stress, ALL entrants were great. There were loads of truly fantastic games and we really really enjoyed playing them. But there can only by a certain amount of winners, so here we go:
Best Game Award
1st place - ☆TINY SEA☆ (Spyler & Christal) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8712
2nd place - NEXT GENERATION (Mello1223) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8739
4th place - Lochford Horror 3 (Euphe) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8605
5th place - Police Pursuit (P1 Gaming) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8931
Special Category Award
Best action game - ☆TINY SEA☆ (Spyler & Christal) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8712
Best RPG game - Rigale (Cernunos) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8622
Best puzzle game - NEXT GENERATION (Mello1223) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8739
Best narrative game - Lochford Horror 3 (Euphe) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8605
Best composition - Santa's Workshop (HanniNanni & Dr Hase) https://play.ylands.com/asset/8733
Congratulations to all winners, but if you haven't won in this round, do not fear, because VERY SOON a new season of the Ylands Creators Competition will begin 🤩 And if it's just half as awesome as this one, it's going to be...AWESOME 🎉
So try out the games of the winners but also all the other games that were made for this fantastic competition and till next time, stay classy Ylanders 😊
P.S. Join us tomorrow on https://www.twitch.tv/ylands at 16:00 CET to play the winning games and more with me 😁 And don't hesitate to jump into Ylands to join in the fun while we're at it. I'd appreciate it 😅
