TL;DR
Our Creative Director answers player concerns
- What to do in Ylands?
- Maps are small
- Can't find resources
- Game is crashing
- How can we play with friends?
Hey there, fellow ylanders! It's Aleš here, the Creative Director of Ylands.
Ylands 1.0 is out and even though we're already working on update 1.1 and planning many others that you will see in 2020 this feels like a good moment to slow down and address concerns that you voice the most.
We don't know what to do in Ylands
Right now there are three things you can do in Ylands.
Play Exploration (if you bought the DLC or if you are an Early Accesser), which is a survival game that is still being improved and enhanced.
Play other games - basically embrace Ylands as a platform. While Exploration has been around for some years the platform is fairly new and it will take weeks (and possibly even a few months) before the newly come creators get a full grasp of what it can do and interesting games start to appear in a higher number. The same goes for Playlands. We have bigger plans with it but we'll start by continuously adding more and more games. We are even planning to find a way how you, the creators, could have your minigames become a part of Playlands.
And finally, you can Create in the Editor or Sandbox. The Editor is more aimed at game creation with a huge amount of options, including visual scripting, while Sandbox is pretty much a playground in which you can build, experiment and more. We have already registered quite a few new creators, which makes us very happy and we are looking forward to your creations. If you need help with anything, don't hesitate to ask our new Content Specialist TG.
Exploration maps are small. We want bigger maps with more ylands. We want to be able to explore more.
We understand that this is a crucial issue. After all, it's called "Exploration". The reason why we had to shrink the map is purely technical. It doesn't have anything to do with the mobile platform since it doesn't include Exploration anyway, but we are already working on a way to give you a much bigger world to explore. We will be able to tell you more early next year.
We struggle when finding various resources
We hear you. We have gathered enough feedback and you will see some improvements in the next update 1.1.
The game is crashing, there are some problems with servers.
Unfortunately, the ultimate test for a multiplayer game is its release. A lot of never-before-seen stress-related issues surface and have to be dealt with. And that's exactly what we're doing right now. We've already released the first hotfix and are working on fixes that will appear in 1.1 that will be released in early 2020.
You've taken our private dedicated servers. We can't play anymore with our friends ... or can we?
The removal of private dedicated servers has caused a lot of accusations and wild rumours. Let's go over what it means and what it doesn't 🙂
Players can no longer host Ylands on their own dedicated servers. In other words, you can't have Ylands server running on your own hardware. But there are still many other ways how you can play with your friends and some of those come completely free.
If you don't want to spend any money you can host the game locally. That means that you will run Ylands on your own PC (not as a dedicated server but as a common game) and let other players join you. This obviously has one major disadvantage - other players can join your world only as long as your game is running.
If you want to do this but at the same time let your friends enter your world even when you're offline, you can use a feature we call sharegames. By using sharegames, your world can be dynamically hosted by any of your friends that are currently online. This way you can all play in the same persistent world.
The paid option is to rent a server from us and start your game there.
And in early 2020 we want to give you the option to be able to rent your own server from a certified third party server provider. That way you will be able to have full access to the hardware and decided yourself how and what is run there.
I hope this answers some of your most asked questions. We will be monitoring everything you tell us and do another dev diary just like this one soon.
And also we are entering the Holiday Season and so I'd like to wish you all a peaceful few weeks 🎄 The next Dev Diary will be next year the 9th of January, so see you then.
In the meantime - stay classy, ylanders!
