walkscape

joined 9 months ago
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maxchill is finished with the isometric art version of Kallaheim!

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.

Can you spot something different?

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!

 

Hello everyone!

We are now releasing version +473, and the game will be in maintenance approximately today (26th of May) from 15:00 UTC+0 to 16:00 UTC+0.

Important note: Due to changes in the steps graphs, you steps from pre-engine rework are no longer visible in the new steps graphs. Any steps you've gained since are still visible.

Here are the full changelogs:

0.3.0-beta+473 - 2025-05-26 (Smart watch improvements & content)

Added

  • Added in character page a stat for highest 24hr steps
  • Added WalkPedia buttons to activities
  • Added WalkPedia buttons to items
  • Added that the skill button at top left next to PFP opens current activity in WalkPedia
  • Added English (US), Estonian, Czech, Russian, Japanese, Thai, Lithuanian, Norwegian and Slovak languages
  • Added a black overlay while loading steps, so you won't be spoiled of what you got from crafting etc. before seeing the "while you were away" popup
  • Tapping on the reward items on crafting view now shows you the item details
  • (PFP Options) - 2 New PFP Options
  • (Activities) 1 New Movement Activity
  • (Buildings) 5 New Buildings
  • (Characters) 5 New NPCs
  • (Locations) 1 New Location
  • (Reward Progress) 2 Halfling Faction Rep cosmetics added, visual texts added for certain Rep unlocks
  • (Routes) 2 New Routes
  • (Shops) 5 New Shops
  • (Items) 2 New Items

Changed

  • Changed the phrasing of 30k achievement, as it is now different
  • (Locations) 1 Activity Added to existing Location
  • (Locations) 4 Shops Added to existing Locations
  • (Locations) 1 Wardrobe Added to HC
  • (Shops) 1 New Item Added to a Shop
  • (Shops) 3 Item Price Changes (AG Cosmetics price reduction, Trailblazer price reduction)
  • (PFP Options) 2 New PFP Option Variants (Party Gown, Wizard Hat)

Fixed

  • Steps graphs should now be functional and working
  • 30K achievement is now working again
  • Fatal errors happening on iOS when using Apple Watch are now fixed
  • The game shouldn't change your step source device back to phone from a watch randomly anymore
  • Fixed minimap bug where it sometimes showed that you're in middle of the ocean
  • Fixed sprite rendering outlines, now should be near pixel perfect always
  • Fixed sprite alignment on activity listing
  • Fixed items in bank sometimes being listed with 0 quantity if you returned items to a job board
  • (Services) Fixed one HC Sawmill attribute having incorrect rep requirement
  • (Locations) Fixed WW PFP background
  • (Job Boards) Fixed some HC jobs to ask for intended hatchets
  • (Job Boards) Fixed some HC jobs giving wrong rep
  • (Loot Tables) Fixed attributes that roll for 0 coins by making the min now 1
  • (Recipes) Upcycle Trash now gives 1 wood scrap to prevent WalkPedia breaking
 

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

Another new location image from maxchill!

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 ❤️

 

We have now released the Smart Watch Hotfix #1 on both iOS and Android. Happy walking everyone, and remember to stay hydrated!

Changelogs

Added

  • (Achievements) New normal achievement
  • (Items) New Chest item
  • (PFP Options) New pfp option
  • (PFP Options) Added 4 new supporter profile picture options (we are aware epic beards break free of some)
  • (PFP Options) Added 2 brand new face options to each human type
  • (PFP Options) Added 10 existing face options to each human type that came from the opposite type
  • (Shops) Added 4 new pfp options to NaC shop
  • (Reward Progress) Added 3 faction rewards
  • Updated translations

Changed

  • (Items) Coloration of Raw anglerfish sprite
  • (Items) Coloration of Anglerfish mask sprite
  • (Items) Sun Stone crafted item keywords
  • (Loot Tables) Changed exisiting chest table

Fixed

  • Added a temporary warning to I Just Felt Like Running achievement
  • Fix to Apple Watches crashing the game on background. Please report if the crashes are still happening or this fixed the issue.
  • Fixed changing leaderboards
  • Another fix to force update minimap on game start
  • Fixed the incorrect localization key for Condense Inventory
  • Fixed the faction icon in faction view
  • Fixed the incorrectly scaled text icon in character preview
  • Fixed the incorrectly scaled text icon in leaderboards location text
  • (PFP Options) Fixed dragon leather armor group
  • (Achievements) Fixed Tutorial Complete pfp reward claiming
[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

iOS already supports these, and from what we've heard Garmin works pretty well for step tracking. Android support for watches is coming later.

 

My mood today

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.

 

New location art by maxchill for Casbrant's Field

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

Changes coming into effect 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!

 

Hello!

Let's begin by saying that this feature has been quite a lot of work to make due to all of the uncertainities and how difficult it has been for us to test. Now we're finally releasing this, and we expect there to be issues. We need your help to properly test out this feature properly, by gathering as many bugs and feedback as possible before we can open Wave 4.

Testing details

  • If you find any exploits report them to the development team. Report these bugs either via Discord by direct messaging developers there, or via our contact email address: contact@walkscape.app. Players who find exploits and abuse those will be banned, but if you report your findings you'll be fine, as long as you don't try to intentionally abuse the exploits. In extreme cases, we might rollback your character to a previous backup.
  • When reporting issues to us, please tell us as many details as possible. What wearable are you using, what applications are you using to sync your steps to Apple Health (in cases when you're using something else than Apple Watch), what steps did you take to encounter the issue. The more in-depth you're with the details, the easier it will be for us to replicate your issue and fix it.
  • Feedback is also much appreciated. If you feel something could be better, be it UI, texts or whatever, please give us feedback. Best place to file in feedback is on our Discord server's #wearables forum channel, as then other people can also easily chime in to discuss the feedback. If you don't see the channel, you probably haven't picked up the beta role. You can do that from #roles channel.
  • If you're reporting bugs or other issues regarding the steps, please include screenshots of your Apple Health step data entries. This can be found from Apple Health > Steps > Data Sources and Access > (choose your device) > (choose date) > Screenshot of the entries, or of a single sample that might've had an issue.

What we are looking for

  • We're also looking for as much information as possible on how the wearable support works on different devices and wearables. Initially, all wearables and health sync apps are allowed. Based on the information we get, we will later on transition to a whitelist system, as we've already found that some wearables and apps report their data in a format that isn't specific enough for having robust anti-cheat.
  • If you find that your wearable or apps you're using are having issues working with WalkScape properly, please report this to us as well. Also, if something works really well, we would love to hear that too. This will help us to have a good understanding about what works and what doesn't, and will help us in the future to provide good customer support for users that use wearables.
  • For reporting these, we have opened a new forum channel on Discord called #wearables. Please report your findings there.#

When are we releasing this

  • The game will go maintenance as soon as the reviews on Apple TestFlight and Google Play are done. We can't know exactly when they'll finish the reviews, but it can be anything from 1 hour to 24 hours. On average, it's lately been around 2 hours.
  • Maintenance is expected to take 1-2 hours.

Changelogs for #457

Added

  • New achievements
  • New PFP option
  • New recipe
  • New keyword
  • New items
  • Wearable support on iOS
  • New, improved language selection UI
  • New translations from Weblate
  • Languages with grammatical gender can now choose their preferred grammatical gender. This affects languages such as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
  • Reworked the in-game settings. In-game settings have been reset to default values due to these changes.

Changed

  • Adjusted cut opal value
  • Adjusted a chest loot table

Fixed

  • Fixed some background errors that were happening when changing PFP color options
  • Fixed some background errors that happened when starting crafting actions
  • Fixed some background errors on iOS when launching the game
  • Fixed a bunch of small issues that happened in the background while using a fresh account & install

Thank you

Thank you, and thanks for the patience! I'm hoping this testing goes well, and we can get as much feedback and bugs reported as possible, so starting next week we can fix as many of them as possible.

As long as all critical issues are fixed, the only thing at this point that is missing before launching Wave 4 is fixing the inconsistencies in steps graph. We're hoping to fix after smart watch support related issues are resolved.

Happy walking everyone!

 

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.

How locations and character backgrounds currently look in the game

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.

Mockup on what we're going for

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.

How the new backgrounds would look like

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!

 

Some new building art from maxchill!

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

Choosing the source device gives you information about how the chosen option will function

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

This is how the info texts look for choosing 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

This is how the info looks for choosing Other watch

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

After choosing the source device, you will be prompted for the appropriate permissions.

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

Another new building from maxchill - what could these be?

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:

 

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.

New WalkScape UI

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.

spoilerhappy april fools everyone

 

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

Walkpedia skill pages include a guide section where you can see some short info on how to start leveling up skills

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.

Walkpedia now includes skill pages for each skill where you can see some useful information about the skills and their progression

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.

You can now tap on the links to open up their related pages in WalkPedia

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.

Item keywords are now visible, making it easier to know what's needed for which requirement

Service icons have been reworked, and they include a small icon at top right signifying their tier (basic, advanced)

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

[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This is device dependent bug, so we missed it. Seems to happen on Nothing Phones and maybe some others. We will be fixing it soon!

[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago
 

Another location art from maxchill! This one shouldn't be hard to guess, many of you have spent a long time in here.

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!

We won the award for Best Mobile Game 2024! Don't mind the background of the very budget friendly hotel where I was staying :D

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!

And yet another location art from maxchill!

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!

[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

Eric from the community (and a bunch of others) have been making some videos on how to get started. One I'd recommend for beginners is the Ultimate Beginners Guide video.

Also, if you feel stuck you can try https://wiki.walkscape.app/ and https://map.walkscape.app/

Thank you so much! When we get the quest system into the game, giving some direction to the players will be much easier.

[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Thanks! And actually yes, I've played most of the old school Avernum games :D I'm a huge fan of the original Fallout games, and Avernum kinda hit the same spot for me when I was a kid.

[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki convention, I actually participated in the "Ethics of F2P" round table talk. One other participant told that they did an A/B test on their players where if they wanted to quit the game, they'll be shown a cute pet who'll tell them that it'll be very sad if the player leaves. A/B test prove that it boosted retention. Mobile games are quite dystopian really, and all of it these days tend to be data driven, not people designing actually good games or pieces of art like (which I consider games to be).

[–] walkscape@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Thank you so much for the post! It's always awesome to hear people are enjoying the game <3

For the bonus question, I'd like to answer that although more of a running game, "Zombies, Run!" has probably been the best that I've played. I played it when it came out years ago, and it helped me to pick up running. But I really don't like Niantic-style GPS based games myself, which is what made me start this project. Also, all of those tend to have very predatory monetization too, which I really don't like.

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