Hey there, Ylanders!
We're starting this Dev Diary with the usual greeting, but this Diary will be a bit different, because we're celebrating the big number 200! 🥳🥳🥳
So this week, we'll be looking back a little bit, but also, we'll look at what lies just ahead of us too. It's a long one but it's also worth reading through!
The Ylands team has been hard at work since the very beginning, but especially the last few updates, we have stepped up the consistency and brought you many cool new features. Whether you've been with us since the start of the Ylands or you're a recent addition to our fantastic community, we want to remind you of some of these features.
A journey of discoveries
Let's venture into the past and have a look at updates 1.3 - Watery Water and 1.4 - Creative Call. These updates brought a lot of features to the Editor part of Ylands, which might not have been the most popular decision back then, but allows us to fully utilize the potential of Ylands in the most recent updates. With 1.4, maaaaaany new assets were also introduced, such as all of the Atlantean assets! Creators Club was also established! Are you a member?
In 1.5 we got the Editor and the platform into a state that we were happy with and we started Enhancing Exploration (yep, that was the name of the update!) and created one big Exploration world for your adventure to take place. This was the update, where editor features allowed us to start working on a better Exploration because every update from this point on would bring a huge new feature to Exploration.
With that said, it feels like 1.6 came out yesterday. And believe it or not, it's been over 7 months since Trading Territories. With this update we fixed many issues that Exploration had and which were heavily requested by the community, on our part, it was also a confirmation that we are serious about focusing on Exploration much more. Trading Territories also brought vendors into the game, which is particularly useful if you're planning big projects and want to get the necessary resources. Speaking of big projects, 1.6 made sure that Random Encounters make more sense and they became biome-specific.
Marvelous Mysteries, the 1.7 update, was jam packed full of new features, improvements and fixes (this Dev Diary is already long enough, so we're only gonna list a few of them). Yet another example of what wouldn't be possible without all the Editor features we have worked on in the past are Mystery Ylands. These yland-sized mysteries, puzzles, dungeons, stories or anything else you want to call them, are incredible creations that will draw you in and won't let go until you've solved them! With 1.7, our mobile players can also enjoy the wonders of Exploration and what's more, switching between mobile and PC is possible. And in case anyone is not sure if they want to commit to the Exploration DLC, we added a demo, which isn't time limited so adventurers can take as long as they need to decide! Not forgetting about our talented creators, we also continue improving Editor tools, this time it was Object Brush, which makes it easy to span a large number of objects over any terrain.
In between updates, we also added over 4500 unique entities to the game, ran Creator Competitions, streamed Ylands, answered your questions in various Q&A streams, gave out goodie packs, asked for your feedback, released several patches, showed you a bit of what goes on behind the scenes and well, released 200 Dev Diaries.
A perfect transition from what was to what will be is provided by Aleš Ulm, the Project Lead of Ylands: "Seeing how much we've improved the Exploration during this year makes me incredibly proud of our team. In a way, we're returning to a path that we left at some point and we are getting closer to the game we've always wanted to make with every passing day."
What lies ahead?
Next week is the week we'll finally get to share all the hard work with our players, who can look forward to larger maps, animal companions, Achievements and Titles, Exploration tutorial, mass pick up of items, multiplayer rework and oh so many more quality of life improvements that you, the players, have asked for. Oh, and a beautiful new main menu, it not only looks good but it is functional!
We're extremely excited about this update, not only because it symbolizes all that Ylands has achieved and how far we've come, but also because we believe you will love it as much as the CEO of Bohemia Interactive Marek Španěl, who beautifully summarized the journey and told us what he thinks about 1.8 - Awesome Achievements: "A small team of developers started a new project eight years ago that later turned into Ylands. Little could we imagine what an incredible journey it had started. Sometimes, it felt like we were reaching something extraordinary and unique. Sometimes we got utterly lost on the way, and everything looked bleak and hopeless. With update 1.8, I feel like we are getting close to the game's original vision. I think we are only a few more updates away until we can fully realize the nearly infinite potential of Ylands. Big kudos to the entire team for making it happen and the incredible community that stays with us. I hope you will enjoy update 1.8 as much as I do, and I am very much looking forward to what is beyond the horizon. Stay classy, Ylanders."
Looking beyond the horizon
Speaking of what is beyond the horizon, as we're nearing the release of 1.8, it would be appropriate to tease a little of what is to come in 1.9 and 1.10. All we're gonna say is that in 1.9 we will explore the ocean a bit more and give it some love and by 1.10 we will work on lore and everything we love about Ylands. Any guesses what that might be? 😉
What we can't forget to mention is to say thank you. Thank you to all of our players who have been with us since the start, thank you to our players who joined during major changes happening in the game, thank you to players who have joined more recently and stuck around and thank you to all future players who will bring a fresh new outlook to the world of Ylands. We can already see an uptake in new players and we hear your positive feedback on the changes we've been making, which makes us not only extremely happy but also very motivated to keep going and to keep bringing more amazing stuff to Ylands!
One big thank you also goes out to the team who's worked on Ylands. Without your hard work, there would be no Ylands, so thank you!
A lot was said, but as always, one more thing left to say in this Dev Diary and that is...
STAY CLASSY, YLANDERS!
