WalkScape
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Hello, and welcome to another WalkScape development blog! This time, we're releasing another content update, while also introducing some fixes to issues people have been having - hopefully fixing some of them now for good! This devblog will be a shorter one than usually, focusing mainly on the new update.
maxchill's comment on the new content update
Hello, dear walkers, a word from maxchill here on intentions behind the changes Adventurers Guild Shop items, AG Chests, and Skill Chests. Let's start with AG shop items - Bert's Super-Skis and Seth's Swamp Compass. Their price has been reduced to 750 AG tokens, and their rarity dropped to Epic. We realised our oversight with their pricing upon adding them, and due to their regional nature decided to reduce their price significantly and also change the rarity. Amongst the changes we also added a price reduction to Cape of the Trailblazer to make it more accessible to low-medium steppers.
The loot of AG chest has been updated by adding gathering/agility skill memospheres and several useful consumables. They've been added to the coal/scrap loot section, so the new items shouldn't change the chances of getting the rare/epic gear items that many are after. Mainly the change is done to eliminate the coal/scrap only chests (they might still very rarely pop up) and make acquiring them a less frustrating experience.
Changes to Skill chests include two things. The minor one is that drop rates of memospheres has been increased and the chests now have chance to drop trinkets which are used for crafting amulets with Trinketry skill. The memosphere drop rate increase hopefully will make people get full stacks of them more reliably and able to consume them in larger quanitities for more satisfiying exp boost.
Intention of adding trinkets to skill chests is something that should be appealing to both new and experienced players. They will now serve as motivation to open chest stacks for those who have all the desired items from skill chests, and for new players it might become a new goal of crafting an amulet from their newfound trinket. Even when not farming trinkets directly, you will now be able to get few trinkets now and then from chests and interact with Trinketry amulet crafting which is quite exciting experience.
Also wanted to mention that finally we have added an item that's been submitted by one of our cult supporters to the game. Not going to tell you anything more, but we are dedicated to start adding the submitted items more regularly moving forward.
Changelogs on +482 update "Adventurers' Guild improvements"
Added
- Added rendering for Cult Leader item credits
- Added a new option into settings to see step counting source selection in the main activity view
- Added new translations made by community translators
- (Items) +1 Item
- (Loot Table) +1 Item added to an activity loot table
- (PFP Options) +1 New PFP Option for each body type with 2 variants
- (Shops) +1 New PFP Option added to NaC Shop
- (Loot Tables) +1 Item added to nearly all skill chests
- (Loot Tables) +11 Items added to the main table of AG chests
Changed
- (Loot Tables) Increased chances and quantities of memospheres in each skill chest
- (Loot Tables) Reduced chances of scrap in AG chests
- (Items) Item rarities changed to epic for Bert's Super-Skis and Seth's Swamp Compass
- (Shops) Cape of the Trailblazer price reduced to 2500 tokens
- (Shops) Bert's Super-Skis price reduced to 750 tokens
- (Shops) Seth's Swamp Compass price reduced to 750 tokens
Fixed
- A few fixes to step graphs, making them update more frequently from server-side, making them more responsive. Won't entirely fix them, but improves them quite a bit
- A lot of fixes to iOS changing to phone as a source when it shouldn't
- Fixed WalkPedia not using text tags
- Fixed mud pie causing infinity on actions required
- Fixed 0 and negative XP values showing properly
- (PFP Options) Several PFP Options being available at character creation that are supposed to be purchased
Next few steps
For the time being, while I tried improving the issues still happening with the steps graphs, they're still not always correct or updating immediately after opening the game. My focus in the next couple of weeks is to fix those and then move to work on some exciting features, while adding small bits of QoL whenever I have a bit of time to do that.
Myzozoz is currently working on server side improvements, which we're aiming to release in the next couple of weeks as well.
Content team, Weasel and maxchill, are already moving to work on some new exciting content additions!
Until next time
Okay, that's all for today!
As a reminder, anyone supporting the game will now always gain immediate access to the Closed Beta and the pricing changes have been made to Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee like stated before the Wave 4 started. Wave 4 also ended on last Sunday (8th of June).
We've also enabled annual support option on Patreon.
Keep walking, and stay hydrated everyone! ❤️
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Hello! A small development update here. We've just released +435 which adds some new QoL features and more. Also, this should fix the remaining issues found in Trinketry update. Our focus now shifts from post-update support to smart watch integration.
Here are some changelogs!
New feature: Skills in WalkPedia
This has been asked from us a lot, and I finally had the opportunity to add it. It doesn't have everything we would like it to have, but it most importantly now includes some cool stats about your progress in each skill, a small player guide to help you get started and you can see the unlocks for each skill.
- Statistics about how many steps you've contributed towards each skill, your total XP, etc.
- See all of the unlocks for each skill.
- Open skill pages straight from the Character view by tapping a skill there.
- A player guide that helps you to get started in each skill.
New feature: Text links to WalkPedia
This is a small WalkPedia related improvement, where now you can open pages in WalkPedia by tapping on the links inside texts. This includes stuff like requirements: if some requirement needs a certain item for instance, you can just tap on it and it opens the corresponding page in WalkPedia.
- WalkPedia links for activities, skills, items and locations inside the text.
- The links only support what is currently available in WalkPedia. More links will come later down the line.
Minor new features:
- Service icons have been entirely re-designed and they now include a clear icon to show what tier they are.
- Item keywords are now displayed both in the item view and WalkPedia item pages. You can now see which items count as light sources etc.
Changelogs
Added
- Added 1 new activity
- New translations from our community translators
Changed
- Reworked antique market assessor loot table
- Buffed several amulets
- Nerfed old rings
Fixed
- Fixed opening multiple instances of WalkPedia
- Leaderboard filter changing now changes the text too
- Fixed the alignment with hamburger menu icons
- Fixed opening multiple instances of WalkPedia
- Fixed sprite alignment on activity filters
- Made inactive (requirements unmet) attributes easier to read
- Fixed the rouding issue with Faction Reputation
- Location view in WalkPedia where locations gets listed has been cleaned up a bit
- Fixed the item equip listing being in Australian
- Empty treasury will never show the red ! icon
- Minimap should now always update when arriving to a location
- Updated to a new version of Flutter, which should fix some rendering issues
That's all for today! Happy walking everyone
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Hello everyone, and welcome to DevBlog #57! This devblog will be rather short, as we've just released a new update but we still have some exciting news to share.
Winning Best Mobile Game award
Okay, so let's get to the big thing!
Just the weekend after setting a deadline for Trinketry release, I got an email saying that we got nominated for recognition in Latvian Game Awards. This would be the first award that WalkScape could win, so naturally I wanted to go there. I spent a nice three days in Riga with maxchill and we participated in the game awards event. And we won!
I have to say, me and the entire team are very honored to get our first award for the game. This is a massive step (no pun intended) for us. The event was also lovely, and I really enjoyed my short stay in Latvia! Also, the trophy looks absolutely awesome!
Thanks for the organizers, and thanks to all of our players and supporters. The support & constant flow of feedback are a key to making a great game. I also did an interview with GamesRadar+, which turned out to be pretty great. If you want to read me talking about the game and some fundamentals behind it, you can read the article here!
Trinketry has been released
Since getting our devtools ready last devblog, now we've successfully released the new content update. We also released a hotfix yesterday, which fixed a few things:
0.3.0-beta+431 - 2025-03-19 Hotfix
Added
- Added newest translations
Fixed
- Fixed issues with Merfolk Dress and with some other pieces of content
- Fixed character loading issues that affected some players
- Updated to Flutter 3.29.2, which fixed the issues people were having on older Android devices (Android 9 or devices with old GPUs)
We will likely release at least one more hotfix later on to address a couple of other issues that were found. For instance, on some devices the menu to equip items is mirrored - this is something that we've identified already and we'll be fixing. Then, we'll start working on our next update!
I'm personally very pleased with the update and how it went. Because I also got a flu, this was the first production release where I wasn't there to help out with getting it out. We've made some good progress as a team that they managed to pull off the release and everything that goes to it without me needing to be present, and I can say I'm very proud that it went as smoothly as it did!
Until next time
Okay, that's all for today! I just got back today to work after being sick with the flu, and post-release there are not often that many things to share as we're mostly busy with fixing issues and moving forward to work on the next update. I hope you're all enjoying the update.
Stay hydrated, and keep walking!
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Hello!
I was asked to create one here on Lemmy as well, so here we go!
We already have our hands full with our other communities, so I can't promise that I'll be as active here, but I'll do the best I can. The best place to ask for any urgent help about the game and our most active community is on Discord.
Some useful links and information here:
Official website. Has links to Discord and to our newsletter among other things.
How to sign up for closed beta & FAQ. FAQ has actually some important questions answered, so I recommend to check it out!
How to support the game. This game is entirely community funded with no publisher or investors. Supporting us helps us to scale and make awesome stuff faster!
WalkScape Portal Community. This is our official Reddit-alternative to post bug reports and talk about the game.
Youtube introduction video where I explain the game.
Important! The current Closed Beta wave ends on October 6th. If you support the game before that, you'll gain access immediately. If you beta application gets accepted during the wave, you'll also gain access. Access to the game that has been granted at any point of Closed Beta will remain until Open Beta when everyone will gain access to the game.
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Hello, and welcome back to another WalkScape devblog!
Just this week on 26th we went live with the new update. There are still some issues with smart watches, graphs and when it comes to creating new characters on fresh accounts, and we'll be covering those here and will be doing another hotfix to address these soon. Also, there has been changes within Not a Cult team, that we'll be covering here as well.
Let's dive in!
Update +473 launched on 26th of May
We released a new update +473 just a few days ago, and you can find the full changelogs here!
There are still few issues that we caught on the production, that we're working to fix and we will need to do one more hotfix before we can move on to next things on our to-do.
Known issues
- New players & new characters have an issue where after reopening the game, the game throws an "failed to initialize" or "failed to load player". We are fixing this ASAP. Reinstalling the game might help in some cases, but we recommend to wait for a proper fix to the issue.
- We deployed a server side fix to the graphs. Now the new graphs are working better, but they update with a delay when it comes to background recorded steps. You can force refresh your graphs by reopening the game.
After we have fixed these issues and deployed the hotfix, we'll be moving on to some new exciting features & content to the game!
Roadmap updated
We have also updated the roadmap available on WalkScape website.
We updated it to more accurately highlight what's been done in the past few months, and also to highlight the core remaining features until Open Beta launch. This change is to reflect that we'll also be moving our focus from smaller features to focus more on the big three missing features: Trading, Combat and Quests.
Changes in WalkScape team
After more than one and a half years since officially joining the team, Floursifter has decided to step back from his work on WalkScape. Dating back to days even before the game's first version was launched internally, he has worked tirelessly on testing, designing content and managing the community around the game, and countless other things behind the scenes. It goes without saying that his contributions and work on the game have been incredible, and we'll be missing having him on the development team.
Content design is being handed over to maxchill who has worked on it for a long time as well, and also our new addition to the team - Weasel. Weasel has already been helping us behind the scenes for quite a long time with testing, content design and new development tools of the game. I'll hand over the mic to him, so he can introduce himself to everyone who might not know him already from the community!
Weasel's greetings
Hello everyone,
I'm sure most of you know me by now, so I'll keep the intro short. I'm Weasel, and I started the game back in wave 1, playing it every day since. You might recognize me from cluttering your leaderboards or for jumpstarting the wiki. I've been active on Discord, helping others and enjoying conversations with our awesome community – it truly is one of the best!
I'm excited to announce I'll be playing a larger role with the NaC team, helping them implement new content they want created. I've spent countless hours getting to know their devtools and understanding how the game handles various situations. In fact, you've probably already seen some of the things I've helped work on. I also worked closely with Floursifter for a while, and it's sad to see them go with so many great ideas and nerfs left unfulfilled that I can't help implement. I hope my presence can make a positive difference in pushing the game forward and bringing more content your way.
I'll be around to answer questions and provide support when I can here. Remember, your feedback in Discord, Portal and Reddit is always considered by the Devs, so keep those flowing – it might even turn into something for me to work on! I have this great game and community to thank for giving me more reasons to keep walking. I think it's important to thank others when you can, so a special thanks to everyone who has helped on this project in any capacity (yes, even if you suggested immediately spending saved steps)!
Alright, back to stepping – ehh, who am I kidding, I was on the walkpad while typing this 😝
Stay Hydrated!
Until next time
That's all for today! It's actually a national holiday today (Ascencion Day), so I might be a bit slower replying to feedback & comments than usually.
Stay hydrated & keep walking everyone!
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Hello!
Super exciting times - once this post has gone live, Wave 4 is already on-going and all supporters will be granted access immediately, and we will slowly start accepting people who have applied to join the Closed Beta.
How to gain access:
If you want to gain access to the game immediately, you can support us on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee and then link your Patreon/BMAC account at WalkScape Portal to your account to start playing right away. More information on how to gain access to the beta is available at WalkScape's Help Page. You can also find information there how to apply to the beta access for free without supporting.
Wave 4 ends on 8th of June, 23:59 UTC+0
Wave 4 begins now, May 15th 12:00 UTC+0. Wave 4 closes on June 8th, 23:59 UTC+0.
Anyone supporting the game during or after the Wave 4 will always be given access to the game immediately!
In our previous previous development blog we announced changes that will come into effect after Wave 4. Just as a reminder:
- After Wave 4, new supporters will have changes to the pricing
- After Wave 4, all new supporters will always gain access to the game immediately
- There will be no changes to anyone who has already supported the game or supports the game during Wave 4
Here is a handy breakdown of the changes from our previous development blog:
0.3.0-beta+462 "Bogged Down" Update Changelogs
To celebrate opening the Wave 4, we're also shipping a new content update that adds hings that people have been waiting for a long time.
Added
- (Translations) Included new translations made by our community translators
- (Items) 15 new items
- (Locations) 4 new locations
- (Achievements) 1 new hard achievement
- (Activities) 6 new activities
- (Recipes) 6 new recipes
- (Factions) 1 new faction
- (Loot tables) 10 new loot tables
- (PFP Options) 2 new Profile Picture Options
Changed
- (Activity) 2 activities nerfed
- (Activity) 2 activity icons updated
- (Items) 2 items had attributes added
- (Loot tables) 1 loot tables changed
- (Location) 1 activity removed from a location
Fixed
- (Rewards progress) Removed merchant hat from Erdwiss lvl 5 Faction Reward
- (Services) Fixed Ruined Trinketry Bench red attribute text
- (Shops) Removed mistakenly added PFP option from NaC shop
There are also several minor additions and changes that are not listed in the changelogs.
During Wave 4
Our original plan was to release fixes to the steps graphs, 30K step achievement and to a few other issues. We're almost finished with the work, but there are still a couple things that are missing. We will be releasing another update as soon as possible that addresses these issues.
During Wave 4, we'll likely be quite busy with customer service, marketing and general community management. We do have plans to release a few new smaller game mechanics during the Wave 4 if possible, and ship out more content to the game. We'll also be fixing existing issues and improving issues found with iOS smart watch support.
Known issues
- The game crashes while using Apple Watch if the game is in the background. You can avoid this by not keeping the game in background, and instead just closing the game entirely.
- While using smart watches, the game often changes your step source device from a watch back to phone. This is a critical issue and can result in loss of steps, and we're working to fix it ASAP.
- Outlined sprites in the game look like melted plastic. This is a rendering issue on Flutter, you can solve it by going to game settings and toggling "render using shaders" off.
- Steps graphs are showing incorrect step counts. This is what we've been working to fix, and will be fixed ASAP.
- 30K step achievement is not registering steps. Related to the issue above, will be fixed ASAP.
- The minimap doesn't update properly or shows me being in the middle of the ocean. Restart the game or tap on the map, and it'll correct itself.
Until next time
That's all for today! I am very excited to see new players joining the game.
For all new players, if you're feeling lost - please join our very helpful official Discord Server. Our entire development team is also active there and answering questions, feedback and suggestions. Also, you can find help from:
- WalkScape Wiki, the most extensive resource to find help with the game and content. Includes guides.
- WalkScape Map, you can browse the full map of WalkScape from this tool and it links content straight to Wiki pages. Excellent resource for planning your walks.
And if you have issues with anything, contact us by sending e-mail to:
We'll reply to you as soon as possible. We don't reply to emails during weekends.
Welcome everyone, enjoy the new update, and it's exciting times ahead! Stay hydrated, and keep walking ❤️
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Hello!
Seems like our servers had an excellent May Day as well, and it decided early this morning that it's already 15th of May and gave access to 871 supporters.
We decided that it is not nice to take away the access now that the mistake has already happened, especially from our paying supporters. Everyone will keep their access that the server already granted, and to keep things fair we have modified the code so that it will grant access to anyone who has supported before 23:59 UTC+0 today, 2nd of May. If you support after this time, you will need to wait until the Wave 4 properly launches on 15th of May, at 12:00 UTC+0
FAQ
- Why do supporters after 2nd of May, 23:59 UTC+0 still need to wait?
If we opened the floodgates right now for more than the existing supporters, it would affect our ability to complete the work that's remaining to be done significantly. This could at worst lead into a delay for the Wave.
- What is missing from Wave 4?
This is important - the step graphs, 30k step achievement, and iOS smart watch support are still waiting to be fixed. Supporters who gained access earlier than was supposed to should expect that there are currently some issues. We are working to fix these ASAP.
- What caused this issue (technical explanation)?
We use extensive caching on the server to minimize the number of unnecessary database calls. We had cached both the start date and end date for wave separately, so these two values were not updated in sync. This caused the server first to update wave end date, but left the wave start date for a short moment as the previous value until the cache was refreshed. This resulted the server thinking that the wave is already open for a short moment.
Thanks for the patience, and have nice walking everyone! We are also aiming to release a hotfix addressing most glaring issues today with some new content to spice things up a bit.
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Hello! This time, we'll be announcing Wave 4 launch date and changes that will be happening after Wave 4 in regards to gaining Closed Beta access. Let's get started!
Wave 4 is starting on 15th of May 12:00 UTC+0
With the smart watch testing now underway, we found some critical issues & crashes, but for the most part it's been smoother than we expected. The only thing now remaining is fixing these issues, some polishing touches and fixing the inaccuracies in steps graphs.
We expect that we can have all of this done before 15th of May, so that's when we'll open the Wave 4 at 12:00 UTC+0.
The wave will close on 8th of June at 23:59 UTC+0.
Getting guaranteed access to Wave 4
If you want to gain guaranteed access to Wave 4 and start playing immediately when it has opened, you can support us which gives you immediate access. Any new supporters during the Wave 4 will also gain access immediately. We will be accepting people who have applied to the Closed Beta from WalkScape Portal throughout the wave as well.
Changes for new supporters after Wave 4
There will be changes to the benefits and pricing for supporting WalkScape that will come into effect for new supporters after Wave 4. Existing supporters will not be affected by any of these changes.
Changes to new supporters after Wave 4
- All supporters, at any tier, will always be granted immediate access to the Closed Beta without needing to wait until we accept more players.
- Walker price is increased from $3 a month to $4.50 a month.
- Serious Walker price is increased from $6 a month to $7.50 a month.
- One time purchase on Buy Me a Coffee will be increased from $3 to $4.50. One time Beer option will be removed.
Pricing and benefits will stay the same for all current supporters and for any supporter who starts supporting before the end of Wave 4.
Why these changes?
Let's start off by saying that the prices for the Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee have stayed the same since I was still developing this game just on my own all the way from early 2023. At that time, I wasn't thinking that these prices would eventually be something we would run a business with and pay wages to multiple people.
These changes don't come lightly or out of greed, and I want to make it clear. I've tried to apply for government grants (Business Finland) now for four times, because if we would've gotten a grant we wouldn't have needed to touch the pricing. Sadly, my applications for getting a grant for the company have been denied each time, main reason being that we don't have any investors backing the project. And we don't want investors, because that could risk the integrity of the game - investors could start seeking for quick returns, and pressure us to make changes that could ruin the game. We've been offered investments multiple times, but I've turned them down each time because I know that as long as I stay as the sole stakeholder, there will be no risk of enshittification.
With the money that we currently get from Patreon & Buy Me a Coffee, we've been able to pay the wages and all of the other expenses, but we are breaking even. In addition between waves, there are often cancelled or charged back subscriptions, which means our income decreases. Due to this, I often have to cut my own compensation between the Waves.
This has been all good so far, but as everyone has probably noticed, things have gotten increasingly expensive in the last couple years. That hasn't just made it sometimes a struggle to have enough money in personal life to get by, but all of the bills our company pays have also increased.
Our goals with the changes
The goals we aim to achieve with these changes are:
- Gaining immediate access by supporting outside of a wave could stabilize our finances when there is no on-going wave.
- If we could turn a profit each month, we can start saving this money for Open Beta release. We expect that Open Beta launch will burn a lot of money (server scaling, transitioning from Patreon/BMAC to subscription model, marketing, etc.).
- If we could increase revenue significantly (from current $12k-ish per month to around $17k a month, after taxes, currency exchanges & platform fees) we could hire one more developer.
I want to stay fully transparent about anything related to these changes, and any future changes as well if there will be some. I will answer any comments, questions, suggestions or feedback you might have on this in the comments!
Until next time
That's all for today! I will answer any questions, feedback and suggestions in the comments and on our Discord server.
I want to also thank all of our current supporters, beta testers and members in the community for being patient with us. It's been a long road to Wave 4, and finally we're so close to it! I hope everyone new will enjoy the game.
Keep walking, and stay hydrated everyone!
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Welcome to another WalkScape devblog! This time, we'll dive into our current progress towards Wave 4 and changes to character customization. Myzozoz has also now worked one full year at Not a Cult, so we also hear from him!
Let's get started!
Wave 4 update
Our initial goal was to have everything needed for Wave 4 update ready around end of the month. While it still seems like we might be able to hit this deadline that we had, we've realized that we want to have the iOS smartwatch support tested not just internally, but in the Closed Beta before starting the wave.
Now that the feature itself is completed, we struggle to properly test it and have feedback on it through internal testing (our internal testers mostly have Android phones, and those on iOS don't all have smart watches). At the office, we only have an Apple Watch and a Garmin. Due to this limitation, our current expectation is that the feature is not stable and will have issues when initially released, which is why we want to release and fix any issues it might have in Closed Beta with our current testers before opening the new wave.
We're aiming to ship the iOS smart watch feature to Closed Beta next week, and we would appreciate any of our current Closed Beta players with iPhones and watches to give it a try and provide us feedback and bug reports. The more detailed feedback and bug reports we can get, the quicker we can work to fix anything weird there might be with this feature, and then begin Wave 4 once it's stable.
The reason why this is important is that a lot of people joining the upcoming wave are specifically interested in iOS smart watch support, and I feel that it would be a really bad experience for new players if this feature wasn't working like it should. This is why I think it's necessary that we ship it, have a round of feedback from our current Closed Beta players, fix & improve it, and then open the wave. If we shipped this at the same time as we opened the new wave, we could easily get overwhelmed as we're often very busy during waves with customer support, marketing, and fixing other issues & scaling our server infrastructure.
New timeline for Wave 4
It's still a bit difficult to lock in a specific date for Wave 4, but this should become much easier once we have iOS smart watch support released and get feedback. Two things are certain however:
- Wave 4 will begin in May
- We will have the release date announcement in the next devblog on May 1st.
I know a lot of people were anticipating for the date announcement here, but with the iOS smart watch feature's stability being uncertain until we test it with current Closed Beta players, we'll need some additional time to make sure it works.
One year of myzozoz
Hey everybody! It has now been a full year since I joined the team at Not a Cult and many many things have happened in that time. We went to a bunch of conventions, won some prizes, spent a lot of late evenings working on the game or just sharing ideas and of course released a bunch of updates for you to play. I just wanted to say a quick hi to everybody and thank you for this past year, hopefully the first of many to come. I typically don't maintain a large online presence (just more of an IRL type of guy), but don't worry, I'm having loads of fun working on the game and reading your comments on Discord, Reddit and the forums. Just keep playing the game and we'll keep on working on it. -myzozoz
Two upcoming art changes
Hello everyone, Maxchill here today with an update about two upcoming changes in our game's art. Both of these changes involve moving away from the use of AI-generated art. Currently, you encounter such art in two places: location views and character profile backgrounds.
The current location art will be replaced with isometric pixel art scenes. These will no longer be static images but will become interactive. For example, if a player wants to perform a mining or foraging activity at a location, they will be able to interact with it directly on the isometric scene. I believe this will add another layer of immersion and depth to the game world.
This change will make the overall look of WalkScape more cohesive and thoughtfully designed. We also plan to utilize the isometric location views for more features in the future, such as combat, farming, quests, and so on. The second change is a direct consequence of the first. Without the AI-generated location screens, we can no longer have the dynamic profile backgrounds that changed based on the character's current location. While I know this was a liked feature by many (myself included), we have tried to replace it with something equally cool. Two new profile character image layers will become available to players: background and ornament. First, players will be able to choose from various backgrounds, both basic and unlockable. These will range from simple color gradients to unlockable faction banners and even country flags. In the future, we may even include custom made guild banners.
The ornament layer will be optional, allowing players to display more of their unlocked rewards if they wish to. These will primarily come from activities and crafting, essentially providing another way to showcase your character's progress and achievements to others when they inspect your profile or view leaderboards. These changes will not be included in the next immediate update, but they will be released as soon as they are ready. We anticipate that the background/ornament profile picture feature will likely be released first, followed by the location view overhaul sometime later.
Until next time
That's all for today! I hope you enjoyed this devblog, and we're certainly getting a lot closer to the start of Wave 4. Let's hope that things will go smoothly with testing & fixing the iOS smart watch feature so we can start the next wave as soon as possible.
Stay hydrated and keep walking!
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Hello! This time the devblog is posted a bit later than usual - I just got the first draft of smart watch related UI finished, which I wanted to showcase on this devblog! We would really appreciate any feedback on the UI.
First look into smart watches
Okay, so let's start with an overview of smart watch support!
We've now built the necessary functionality to support smart watches on iOS, and during this past week we've also done a lot more testing to see if there are ways to make it better on iOS. Sadly, it does come with some hard limitations that we can't change - but these shouldn't have too big of an impact in WalkScape.
Now we're in the process of making the UI for selecting your step source device as clear as possible. Each option comes with its own caveats, so we're trying to let the user know what to expect while choosing the step source device.
Above you can see how choosing Phone looks like. For all of our existing players, nothing new here - but for a lot of people starting out the game, it they expect that practically what Apple Health, Google Fit, Garmin or whatever other app they use should correlate directly with what they would see in WalkScape. I'm hoping that this UI, as it will be shown to everyone first time opening WalkScape, clarifies that there is just one source for your steps at a time. Apple Health, Google Fit and other fitness applications all use different methods for calculating step totals for each day - some even use GPS to approximate steps.
Apple Watch
Apple Watch comes with some functionality that other watch manufacturers might not have access to, like updating Apple Health step data in the background. I want to make it clear that we are not advocating for Apple Watches or any other products, but I felt like it's best from user experience stand point that this is listed as its own option. It's the most common watch people use on iOS and the way it functions is same for everyone.
Just to make this a bit more complicated from development standpoint, a recent European Commission ruling might change this. TLDR is that EU is forcing Apple to open their APIs so third party manufacturers can make their watches work as smoothly as Apple Watches on their platform. Apparently Apple might refuse to make this change for US customers, so we might need to have two implementations on how watch support works on iOS... what I've learned is that smart watch support itself isn't complicated at all, but the platforms like to make this really crappy for developers by having all kinds of arbitrary limitations.
One of these limitations that we couldn't find our way around is that there is not way to get live steps data from Apple Watch to WalkScape, as it's reliant on when the watch syncs the steps Apple Health. We didn't find any conclusive answer to when that is. There are several triggers that usually make it happen though:
- When you unlock your phone, Apple Watch often syncs the steps.
- If you open Apple Health, Apple Watch often syncs the steps.
- If you background WalkScape and reopen it, Apple Watch might sync the steps. This didn't feel that reliable.
- If you've been away from your phone for a while and come back to it's bluetooth range, Apple Watch often syncs the steps.
For majority of our players, this isn't really a problem - the way Apple Watch syncs the steps works really nicely as WalkScape doesn't need to be opened often, and when it's opened these triggers should mean that the step count is updated. What I am a little bit afraid of is that when new players come in Wave 4 who choose to use smart watch for input, their expectation is that when they start walking stuff in the game would update. With Apple Watch, this sadly isn't possible and that's why I've tried to make it as clear as possible in device selection UI that this is the case.
Other watches
Using other watches is a bit more complicated. We don't have access to more than a couple of watches, and for instance Garmin (very popular within WalkScape community) will not automatically sync its steps to Apple Health. You will need to install their software (Garmin Connect), and when you have some steps on your watch, you need to open their application and sync your steps to Apple Health manually, and then those will count in WalkScape. I assume this applies to other 3rd party watch manufacturers on iOS as well.
Not really optimal from user experience standpoint, but there's no way around this limitation either.
Permission management & Android support
I've also applied a fresh coat of paint on the permission prompts after you've chosen your step source device. We're still in process for making the listing and connection to your watch as smooth as possible after you press on the "Connect to Apple Health" button. I'm hoping this is a bit more clear for new players than the old one. If you choose Phone as your input device, you don't need to connect to Apple Health.
When it comes to supporting Android devices, we have both good news and bad news. Let's start with the good ones:
- Health Connect seems to be finally fixed. Previous issues we encountered seem all been fixed, so now supporting smart watches on Android should be possible.
And then, the bad news:
- Even though it's now possible based on our testing, building it would take time, and we really want to launch Wave 4 as soon as possible. So likely not going to make it in time for Wave 4.
- Android 16 will include an update to Health Connect, and is releasing around May/June. On surface, it seems like there shouldn't be anything that would affect the way we would use it, but with Google you never know - it might complicate our efforts, or might not affect us at all. More info on that is available here.
Until next time
I hope that this devblog didn't sound too much like a rant. I might be a bit annoyed with how silly some of these limitations are when it comes to simply reading step data from smart watches.
But the great news are that the support for smart watches on iOS has taken some big leaps in its development, and we're hoping to have it ready very soon and then fix the inconsistencies with steps graph. After these two things, we should be mostly ready to begin Wave 4.
Stay hydrated and keep walking everyone!
PS. as an extra, here are the results from our poll we did previously on smart watches:
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Hello and welcome to a big new update! We would like some early feedback as we've now started redesigning the UI how people would like this change. I think it's very intuitive.
As you can see here, there's only one menu in the game. If you haven't logged into the game before, you first login through the terminal as well. Character creation and customization options are visualized in ASCII art if you make a new character.
spoiler
happy april fools everyone
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Hello and welcome to Devblog #56! We have some great and exciting announcements to make this time.
Just in the last devblog two weeks ago, we announced my development focus shifting towards Devtools 2.0 in order to start shipping new content more rapidly. Now we have the first content update completed and in internal testing - so let's dive in!
10th skill to WalkScape: Trinketry
With the help of the new Devtools 2.0, we've managed to add a 10th skill to WalkScape and a bunch of other new content. So without further ado, let's introduce Trinketry!
In the picture above, Trinketry is shown as the process of making rings and amulets. In the game, players can find both trinkets and rough gems that can be crafted into rings and amulets using the Trinketry skill. Along with these materials, players will also need gold and silver bars to create many of the rings and amulets. We had a lot of fun (= trouble) trying to come up with a name for the skill. The description actually includes three of our other candidates: gemology, gemistry and jewelcrafting. We chose Trinketry as that name was both unique and flexible, as the skill isn't always just about gems and jewellery. You can craft flower necklaces for instance!
The rings and amulets crafted in WalkScape come in the well known system of different qualities, ranging all the way to Eternal. Some of these items are very powerful and can be especially useful in the game, especially at higher qualities. I personally expect that when trading is added, high quality trinkets would be very high in value, as crafting some of them is rather difficult.
Trinketry also introduces a new service known as Trinketry Benches. These benches are found mostly in GDTE and mark the beginning of our content development for this region. From the beginning, there will be four unique Trinketry Benches available, some of which come with their own unique quirks.
In GDTE, players will also come across a new faction called Erdwise, which brings new jobs and rewards to the game. Furthermore, new activities have been included to give players more opportunities for exciting gameplay.
Floursifter's designer notes
Trinketry was one of the three skills I designed post-Syrenthia, and I'm so excited that it is in the game! It was the best candidate to develop as we built and tested the new Devtools environment, which has progressed very rapidly in the last two weeks. Devtools 2.0 has truly revolutionized my relationship with content development. In the past weeks, we’ve gone from sending files back and forth to each other on discord for version control and no operational devtools, to having full version control and many devtools in a workable state! It was particularly useful to spend a lot of time rapidly prototyping and deploying the new devtools live with schamppu over the last two weeks, as he was able to watch me develop content and see where the pain points were in real time.
In terms of Trinketry, although this was the easiest skill for me to implement, it is quite difficult to level up. There were many considerations in the design process:
- The existing landscape of looted rings and necklaces
- How to effectively integrate other pre-existing content and the other skills
- Clear themes on what materials are useful in different parts of the skill
Players should have some decent ideas of the final design from the spoiler. It’ll be really fun to see WalkScapers rush to level up, compete on the leaderboard, and discover new content. And, if you enjoyed crafting one perfect tool before, I know you will really enjoy crafting two perfect rings!
We’re trying some new technology out, and would appreciate special attention and any bug reports on the following:
- Several items in WalkScape were transformed into different items. I tried to preserve your progress where possible, so if you have gems, gold ore, or certain rings and necklaces, please don’t panic if these are now new items. Any items that were changed away from being gear (like some existing jewelry) should delete themselves from your gear sets when you login.
- There are some new attributes in the game, and I’m hoping these provide some nice competition with current attributes for chasing certain content in the game.
Release schedule and details
While the content update is now ready, it will spend at least another week in testing while we make sure all of the features work (the new leaderboard for the skill still has a few issues, for instance, that we need to iron out). We'll be pushing it out when we're confident that it's ready for public release. So, while we will not be setting a release date, I can say that it will be released in the next two weeks - before the next devblog!
We will post a development update a day before its release, so people can fully prepare for when it goes live. It'll be rather interesting to see how a new skill being added works in the game - I'm especially interested to see how people will be competing in the brand new leaderboard.
My secondary goal while is to add a few small quality of life tweaks into the game while the internal testing is going on, so that's another thing to look forward to in this update! We've already fixed some bugs and made a few improvements, and I'm hoping to have a some time to add a couple more things that have been asked for.
Devtools 2.0 progress
It's clear that we've been working hard on getting everything up and running again for content delivery, and I'm pleased to say that we've not only made progress on developing content, but we've also successfully got Devtools 2.0 into a state where they're now functional. While there are still some features that need to be added to fully maximize the potential of the new devtools, I believe that we have made an good start in a short amount of time. Considering that the devtools were not working at all two weeks ago and now we have both the tools ready and a new update, it's been really smooth and fast development so far!
Moving forward, we are excited about the prospect of being able to release new content more quickly. This milestone has given us momentum and drive to continue improving and expanding our content delivery. Thank you for your patience and support!
Here are things that are still missing from our Devtools 2.0 until we consider them to be completed:
- Cloud sync, so when multiple people work on content at the same time, the changes are reflected to everyone simultaneously. We're currently using Git to synchronise changes which works okay, but isn't a tool that is familiar for floursifter and maxchill.
- Content branching, so we can create branches of content updates internally to test out things without changing the "main content".
- Over the air updates. We had this before the engine update, but as it changed so many things it isn't in the game anymore. This is most significant to players, especially as we plan it to include art assets. Then you should be able to get content updates and fixes delivered without needing to update the game from Play Store/AppStore.
- Development QoL, a bunch of smaller things that will help floursifter and maxchill to organize and work on content more easily. One major missing thing is metadata for content (for instance: when things have been edited and by who, is the content a draft or in testing, and so on).
- Automated changelogs. Currently it's hard for us to track what changes have been made in each content update and write those out in the announcements, and with Devtools 2.0 the idea is that the tools would write changelogs automatically based on what has been changed.
Plans before Wave 4
A lot of you are also anticipating for the next Wave, and we're well aware of this!
Before we release Wave 4, there are a few important things we need to address. One key priority is integrating watch support for iOS, a request we've heard loud and clear from both past Wave updates and our player community. Ensuring that step graphs are accurate is another critical issue that needs fixing before we can move forward with the next Wave. It's essential for new players to have a nice initial experience, and inaccurate graphs would be a big obstacle to that.
The to-do list includes:
Must have
- Watch integration for iOS. iOS is our main priority, but while developing it I will do some testing for the Android side to see its current viability. This feature has been on hold now while we worked on Devtools 2.0 and the new content update, but we get back to it after the release of this content update.
- Steps graphs fixed. Steps graphs are now broken and rather complex to correct as steps are being synced between the server and the client very differently compared to how this was in the past, and with smart watches making sure the graphs are correct will be even more complicated.
- Any remaining major bugs or issues fixed. Currently there are not that many, but we're anticipating that Flutter team would release a fix to older GPUs and Android versions so the game would work again for those who have older devices.
Nice to have
- One smaller content update in addition to upcoming Trinketry update.
- Introducing a few more QoL additions to the game to make the overall experience better.
As seen here, the list isn't very long by any means. We anticipate that finishing up our work with watch support for iOS will take some time, and it's hard to estimate exactly how long it will take, as we saw there were a lot of quirks that come with the integration.
We will be working as hard as we can to get these remaining things done and launch the next Wave!
Until next time
That's all for today, and it's going to be very exciting to have a new skill introduced to the game along with a plethora of other content. I hope people find the new skill both fun and useful - it's quite a big introduction with more than 70 new items added to the game.
Stay hydrated and keep walking! ❤️
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9
DevBlog #55: DevTools 2.0 work continues and critical issues from engine rework fixed!
(lemmy.world)
Hello, and welcome back to the WalkScape DevBlog!
Over the past two weeks, we’ve been primarily focused on fixing critical issues that arose from the WalkScape engine rework, while I’ve been working on what we’re calling DevTools 2.0. Let’s dive in!
Hotfixes
After the engine update, we deployed a total of three hotfixes to address the most critical issues that were identified:
With these updates, we resolved all of the most apparent and critical issues, including the traveling bug, WalkPedia issues, crafting issues, and rendering issues on PowerVR devices, among others. The game should now be stable again. We will still implement at least one or two more of these hotfixes, but the release schedule for those is not as urgent. My focus is now on developing DevTools 2.0 so we can introduce new content updates to the game as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience. The engine update was substantial, and I'm glad that all of the critical issues that were introduced were things we could address quickly.
For those interested, the traveling bug was quite absurd: it was caused by your character's profile picture (PFP). When the game was loading and you were traveling, whenever you arrived at a new location, the game would update your PFP. I had made an error there, where this part of the code inadvertently replaced your game state with the state before loading steps.
Android 9, Android 10 and older Android GPU issues
One new issue was introduced in the new Flutter version, which is something that has broken the game to some players entirely and is not something we can fix.
People with older Android devices (A9, A10 era) have been experiencing crashes or major rendering issues. I’ve been doing my best to inform the Flutter team about this and push for a fix. You can check the issue I've reported here. It's already under their radar and something they seem to be working on, so no need to comment on that issue unless you've got some information that might help them!
The Flutter team has marked it as P1 priority, their second-highest priority level. I’m quite optimistic that this means they’ll release a fix in the coming weeks, but naturally, I can’t make any promises on their behalf. Once they do, we’ll incorporate it into the game.
DevTools 2.0 progress
Now that the game is stable again, I’ve shifted my focus to DevTools 2.0, while myzozoz continues working on fixing the remaining bugs and issues.
DevTools 2.0 has been mentioned quite a bit in our past dev blogs and communications. It’s basically our name for an improved internal toolset to help with content creation and development.
Working on these tools will take a significant portion of my time in the coming weeks. Our plan is to build DevTools 2.0 as quickly as possible so floursifter and maxchill can start working on our next content update. The more advanced features will come later—our top priority right now is just getting the tools ready so we can start delivering new content ASAP.
It’s still a bit too early to give an estimate on when the next content update will be ready, but all my effort is going into making sure we get it out as soon as possible.
Until next time
That's all for today! I hope you enjoyed the update. I can't say enough how excited I am to finally focus on DevTools 2.0 and what it will bring for all of you. Once it’s ready, content updates and feature development will run as separate pipelines. This should allow us to release content much more frequently than before.
Stay hydrated and keep walking, everyone! 💙
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I thought I got lucky here, but actually thinking about it with a .3% chance, I was right on par.
(sh.itjust.works)
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