Hey there, Ylanders!
We are now fully focusing on bringing you adventures set below the waves and we're already seeing some pretty cool stuff that we'll be showing you in the upcoming weeks. This is how it always is quite early in the development of an update - things are being designed, a detailed document made, prototypes created... so not quite something that can be presented to the player base (especially since some of these things often end up being removed from the update).
But what we're working on are not only things that you players will experience first hand. Today we would like to mention a tool/system that our programmers have been working on for some months now - Automated Testing. Ylands is already an incredibly complex project and adding any new feature, regardless of how carefully done, many times ends with something breaking someplace else in the code. Regardless of the hundreds of hours that QA puts in testing before every update is released, it is not humanly possible to test all the situations which may arise. And this is where Automated Testing comes in. Even though the system still needs a few months to be fully ready, it's already possible to create various tests and run them regularly to see if something didn't break.
Imagine this very simple test - a few objects are placed in the level and the character is told to pick them up and then we test if they are all in the character's inventory. This could be one of hundreds of tests that run automatically and report only when the test outcome isn't as expected. It could be anything - a problem with reaching the objects due to pathfinding, objects disappearing, problems with picking up objects, or with the inventory. If a problem is found, it is reported and QA can check it (for example see a recorded session to find what went wrong). This will hugely (probably starting somewhere before 1.10 is released) improve the game stability and the number of issues present.
(screenshot by YoHasLEGO)
Automated tests or not, the most important thing we have apart from our internal QA is ... you. You have reported hundreds of bugs and the absolute majority of these have been fixed. Your feedback matters and the game is now so much better because of all the time you have spent talking to us. For that, we are extremely grateful.
So this is it for today and we'll see you next week when we're gonna start talking about some juicy Exploration stuff.
Stay safe and classy!