Hey there, fellow ylanders.
The updates we've been releasing during Early Access keep getting bigger and bigger so it should come as no surprise that Update 0.11 named “Peak Performance” is going to be, once again, a huge pile of goodies. We've already talked about most of the features this update brings in the past Sneak Peeks, but there are still some things we haven't covered.
With the cool new visual scripting in place we’ve been working on a fun new multiplayer Ylands game we call Gold Rush. We’ll deploy that on our servers so that once you get 0.11 you just click a button (if you visit MP Lobby screen you surely won’t miss it), we find the best server for you with an empty player slot and take you there - this “auto-join” is also a new feature in 0.11. We’ve spent a lot of time testing it and we're having a blast playing...and hopefully you will too!
There are times in the game when we need to notify you about something and so far it was possible only through ingame warnings or a console - neither of which are ideal solutions. Starting with 0.11 we’re introducing a new system of notifications so whenever something important that needs your immediate attention happens (for example, if due to connectivity issues your Sharegame wouldn’t save properly) a cool looking notification pops up. For now we support only “critical” game events but in 0.12 we’ll add other kinds of notifications as well as a notification center where you’ll be able to conveniently go through all of them.
We’ve actually did mention this some time ago but since it’s an important change it makes sense to remind you so that this doesn’t catch you by surprise. Just like we decided to temporarily disable water simulation, in 0.11 we will be also disabling first person camera mode which was never fully supported by many game features and modes.
We know that many of you have been using the first person mode when performing specific tasks like building and precise object picking. You don’t have to worry, though, because in 0.11 we made sure all these areas are improved (by implementing a new building system, vicinity objects slots, and others) and we’re pretty sure you’re going to love those improvements. As for the first person view - we would definitely like it to return to the game at a later date.
We said several times that “Peak Performance” brings better performance and the game runs generally more smoothly, but I realized that so far we’ve never mentioned memory consumption. Up till 0.11 if you had a lot of building blocks in your scene the memory consumption could be extremely high. Truly massive scenes that used to consume over 10 gigabytes of RAM now take up only about on third of that. In other words - the memory this huge scene consumes is now quite close to what a newly started game with no buildings at all takes up. I'm pretty sure that some dark Programmer magic had to be involved but since this means we all can now create huge exciting worlds... I think I'll let it slide this time. ;)
That’s it for today. Have a great week, ylanders, and as always - stay classy!