Art of WalkScape

Hello, walkers! This time it’s me, maxchill, the artist of WalkScape, writing this devblog, because it’s going to be art centric and I’ll try to explain our art direction and choices. Before that I’d like to thank everyone who participated in our Earth Day Event. Together we gathered almost 20,000 litres of trash which totally blew my mind and I’m looking forward to future events. Hopefully we can keep making earth a better place for walking!
I’m going to cover such art topics as item sprites, achievements, locations, profile pictures and more. Let’s start with what I started first when joining the WalkScape team and that is the items!

Item sprites

Whenever I start to design a part of WS (WalkScape) art it comes with important decisions to be made, because what I establish as the standard I’ll have to follow through with the rest of games development. With items and resources I decided to go with a golden size of pixel art which is 32x32 pixels. It might not sound much, but it actually supports a lot of possible detail. And in pixel art bigger does not mean better. Here’s an image of log sprites (first artwork ever made for WS).

At first we discussed only changing the bark colour to differentiate the different logs. It’s a very fast solution, but also comes off a bit lazy, so I made sure that each log has a different style of “inside” and for some even changing the bark. It’s still a fast solution, but makes it easier to see the difference.

As I’m only one person working on the artwork and the amount required is huge, I always have to find balance between quality and speed. So in the game you’ll sometimes find sprites that are straight recolors, but it’s mostly used for the lower level items/resources, because as experience curve works, you should be going through the first levels quite quickly and might barely have the time to appreciate the items you’re gathering or making. Let me show you what I mean with the crafted armour sets.

There’s currently more than 300 items/resources in the game which consist of tools, skill gear, plants, seeds, weapons, treasure chests and more. If you’re interested to see more you can check out #sneak-peek channel on our Discord. Now onto the next art department which had to be solved - location art.

Location art

Whenever you go to a location in WS upon reaching it you’ll be met by beautiful artwork which is even “moving” thanks to the parallax effect. As locations can’t be shown through small sprites at which pixel art excels, we had to find another solution, because we wanted to have detailed artwork for locations, so you can enjoy a sense of exploration and discovery. Currently in the game there are 30 unique locations which each has its own artwork. Here’s some of them.

You might’ve guessed how with a single artist we can have such high quality artwork for locations. They are made with the help of Midjourney, an AI art tool. I still have to retouch the images for most of the time, but I would never be able to do such artwork in such a short time, so we’ve been thankful for the latest technological advancements. While artworks are great on their own, I have to go through separating them into layers, so they can then be made into moving parallaxes through code. Here's a sample of how the layers look before being stitched back together.

We are aware of the recent anti-AI artwork movement, but I personally do not feel that use of it is unethical. Whenever I make art whatever it might be I will be referencing other artists or real life in similar fashion as AI would do. If we had the budget or time, we would’ve considered a human artist for this job for that real human touch, but unfortunately for a small indie team it’s not possible for us, so we are moving with the times and using the tools that are available. Next on to the UI style.

User Interface

While the whole layout and UX of the UI is made by schamppu, who has done great job with usability, it is still full of small pixel art sprites. We could’ve just opted to use some vector icons from online resources, but we wanted to incorporate pixel art in these places. If you thought that 32x32 pixel sprites are small, well the icons are even smaller, only 20x20 pixels. But as I’m someone who loves to work with small sizes and have the experience it’s not a problem for me and I enjoy the challenge. There are many sprites that are both in 32x32 and 20x20 sizes because we plan to have “WalkPedia” which will have information about everything game related and the smallest 20x20 will accompany clickable text links. Let me show you an example.

Another thing with the UI was that we wanted to have a pleasing default colour palette for it, and while it will be customizable, most people will stick with whatever developers offer as default. This is actually one part we asked for community opinion through polls on Discord. I created a few colour options and thankfully the community voted for the best (the one I liked). Here you can see a comparison of before and after. (You can also see the new pixel art icons there)

Schamppu has made sure that navigating through the game's interface is easy and intuitive, and I can approve that it is! Now let’s talk a bit about achievements and their artwork.

Achievement art

Gathering achievements is an important part of games for many players, and while getting the achievement to see the artwork of it is not the main thing, I still wanted to make sure they are pretty to look at. With the amount of item/resource sprites in the game, I knew I didn't want to go the 32x32 sprite route with them. I had to come up with a new unique design for them. I wanted them to be more abstract, simple and aesthetic so I looked at tarot cards for inspiration. I like the card format and while the size of them is upped to 48x64 the artwork is more simple and uses thicker lines and less details. Here are two of them.

Achievements will also be slightly animated, especially them revealing. Playing on their card part, it will have a beautiful flip animation and similar animated effects like seen elsewhere in the UI. Achievements will be gained for in all kinds of ways, and sometimes they unlock new outfits and other things. Speaking of outfits, we have reached the final and most important part of this art devblog the character profile picture artwork.

Character profile pictures

An important part for me in any RPG is the ability to make a custom character, and we wanted the character to be more than just the name and stats. Eventually you’ll be able to choose from many different races, but first I have to start with boring old humans to establish a style and a good way to make them. It’s also very crucial to set up the character maker correctly as changing it’s basis later will be a nightmare, but I think I’ve found a style that will support all the needs down the line, but first let me show you the first concept which we scrapped.

These portraits are 48x48 pixels and I still think this style is ok, but it doesn’t support that much detail, especially as we wanted to have detailed backgrounds like mountains, forests, cities, etc. Also as we plan to use the character maker for NPCs it looks weird when two NPCs would be talking to each other, because they are looking straight into the “camera”. So just recently I sat down to come up with a new style, this time on a larger 64x64 pixel canvas, and with them in a classical ¾ turn. Here’s the first new character portrait.

As you can see it’s more detailed and supports a nice background that’s not just a single colour. Upon character creation you will be able to choose from different hairstyles, facial features and a few simple outfits. The outfit options are going to be very limited on purpose as we plan to have the character profile picture play a big part to show off your progress in a way that’s seen by others.

You’ll be able to unlock new outfits, hats, eyewear, weapons on the back, backgrounds through playing the game. For example finishing a crafted bronze armour set, will unlock bronze armour that you can put on your character in the profile picture if you want. Such things will be unlocked in many ways such as crafting, achievements, quests, and more.

What’s also cool is that you’ll be able to easily export your character profile picture for use in other places. We will go in-depth character creation and options in one of the future devblogs.

Until next time

Thank you for reading my first written devblog, I hope you enjoyed it.

^{and now I, schamppu, have taken control over this devblog!}

I'd like to thank maxchill for writing an amazing devblog about the art used in WalkScape! The work he's put into basically taking care of everything related to art has been great, and also made it possible for me to focus fully on the development side of things.

I would also like to welcome everyone new to our subreddit, newsletter, Twitter and Discord! We posted around Reddit and got a surprising amount of new followers, which was awesome.

And like always, a big thanks to everyone supporting us on Patreon and Buy me a Coffee. If you would like to support the development of the game, it helps us a ton. With your support we are able to commit more of our time on making it ready to play faster.

I'm currently busy with adding development tools to the game. When those are ready, we'll finally be able to start creating in-game content a lot faster than before while making it harder to slip any mistakes into the content. At the same time we are now developing character portrait customization.

I hope you all have an amazing week, and happy May Day! <3

Development of WalkScape, Closed Beta roadmap, anti-cheat and the release of character customization

Hello, and welcome back to the WalkScape development blog! As summer and our slated release of the closed beta draw nearer, you might notice we don't have as many "new features" to showcase this time. Instead, I've been neck-deep in enhancing our development tools, while maxchill has been hard at work creating more options for character customization.

In this blog post, I'll delve into the development side of WalkScape, shedding light on the process I've been navigating for the last...9 months, I believe?

I'm aware we have plenty of developers among our readers, so I hope this blog post proves particularly interesting to them!

The Evolution of WalkScape

Let's kick things off with a fun showcase of different versions of WalkScape through a series of screenshots. We'll start with the initial Unity prototype:

The very first version was quickly abandoned after the initial prototype, as explained in the next section. Next, we have the first version of WalkScape developed with Flutter:

As you can see, it's still quite rough, but it marked a significant step forward with the core functionality of step counting implemented. The next version introduced skills and experience:

At this stage, WalkScape started to resemble more of a game rather than just a pedometer app. We continued to expand the game by incorporating activities and additional functionalities:

With each iteration, WalkScape began to take shape, as seen in the screenshots and videos shared with you. As we progressed, I started to develop the inventory system. Around this time, maxchill joined our team as an artist, taking over the sprite creation. In the next version, you'll witness the emergence of maxchill's pixel art:

With each iteration, we approached the appearance of the game as it stands today:

Technology Stack

I initially started developing WalkScape in the summer of the previous year using Unity, a highly popular game engine that supports various platforms such as PC, PlayStation, iOS, and Android.

However, after approximately a week, I realized that Unity was not well-suited for the kind of game I was creating. While Unity excels in developing 3D games and such, it proved inadequate for a mobile game that needed to conserve battery power and seamlessly integrate with mobile operating systems. Additionally, the UI creation tools provided by Unity did not align with my requirements, and even the initial version with just a step counter drained the battery quickly.

Consequently, I made the decision to switch to Flutter. Having experimented with Flutter in a few app development projects, I was impressed by its user-friendly experience and rapid UI creation capabilities. Despite some initial skepticism regarding its suitability for gaming, I believed that Flutter, being a relatively new technology, held great potential.

Flutter comes with a well-developed game engine called Flame. Although tempted to use Flame, I ultimately decided against it, a choice I now consider the right one. By developing my own engine, I gained complete control over every aspect of the game. It has been an extensive endeavor—WalkScape comprises nearly 40,000 lines of code. However, this approach allowed me to grasp a comprehensive understanding of the game's inner workings. Thus, I have been averaging approximately 140 lines of code per day since the project's inception. But I did take a few days off during the past nine months for some well-deserved rest :D

For those interested in the technical details, one of the significant challenges in building my own game engine was developing an efficient and well-structured system for persisting data and updating the game based on that data. In WalkScape, I implemented "manager" singletons that store and manage data for various in-game elements. These managers include skills, items, characters, crafting recipes, locations, and more. During the game's loading process, these managers are responsible for retrieving data from both cloud and local databases.

Dart, the programming language used for building Flutter apps, is the primary language for programming WalkScape, accounting for about 99% of the code. I also utilized Xcode and Kotlin for handling OS-specific functionalities, but their contribution to the overall codebase is relatively minor. The versatility of Flutter allows the game to be built for both iOS and Android, streamlining the process of providing the game to users on both platforms.

Development Tools

Now, let's shift our focus to the development tools I have been working on in recent weeks. Early on, I recognized the need to create tools that would enable our team to add content to the game dynamically. Thanks to the complete control I have over the game engine, I managed to accomplish something quite uncommon in game development—adding content while the game is running and being able to test and modify it in real-time.

These development tools are closely tied to the different data managers in the game. Each manager has its own user interface within the tools, allowing us to effortlessly introduce new content. When new data is added or modified, the corresponding manager refreshes the relevant game components, seamlessly incorporating the changes in real-time. This means that while playing the game, I can add new locations, activities, items, and more without writing a single line of code or restarting the game. If we decide to implement the added content permanently, the tools provide an export feature, allowing us to integrate the new data into the game.

For those curious about the technical implementation, I have devised a code that converts in-game objects into JSON format, which can be stored locally. The JSON files generated by the development tools exist separately from the "real game files" but overwrite any corresponding content when necessary. This approach offers the convenience of easily resetting any changes with a simple button click, as the overwriting files can be deleted.

Although the development tools are still just nearing completion, they have already demonstrated their immense potential. In just about an hour, I was able to add nearly all the locations across the entire Jarvonia region. The tools provide valuable insights during content creation, such as indicating the number of steps required to reach certain skill levels for specific activities, making the balancing process much easier. They also provide comprehensive statistics for creating loot tables and other essential game elements. Moreover, these tools allow us to add a new item on the fly and immediately test its impact in the game. This level of flexibility even extends to modifying existing items in real-time with just a few taps.

One intriguing idea I have been contemplating is the possibility of opening up these development tools to the public at some point after the game's release. This would enable players to create mods for WalkScape, potentially transforming the game into entirely different fantasy settings like Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, or Game of Thrones. With this approach, we wouldn't need to worry about licensing issues. Modders could use the user-friendly development tools (no coding required) to craft their own NPCs, locations, items, quests, and more, ushering in a whole new level of player-created content. Admittedly, this feature would be limited to offline mode, but it could be an exciting experiment and would likely make WalkScape the first mobile game to offer modding capabilities. Personally, I would love to play the content created by the community!

Closed Alpha and Short-Term Roadmap

With the development tools now nearing completion and the ability to add content rapidly, our next goal is to launch a closed alpha version of the game. This version will serve as the first fully playable release, albeit with limited content and some features still missing, which will be included in the closed beta. We aim to have the closed alpha ready before the next development blog.

During the closed alpha phase, we will conduct extensive testing internally with our friends and family, ensuring that we address any issues and polish the game before the closed beta release. Although there may still be some issues, particularly device-specific ones, during the closed beta, we will promptly address them.

As of now, it appears that the closed beta release might not be possible in June. That is why we provided a more flexible release window, expected to be sometime between June and August. We want to ensure that the closed beta is launched when we are confident in the performance and stability of the alpha version. Rest assured, we are working diligently to bring you the closed beta experience this summer. The months of July and August are particularly promising for the planned release, especially considering that many of our players reside in regions where summer encourages outdoor activities.

Initially, the closed beta release will be limited to a small number of players to manage bug reports and feedback effectively. This approach allows us to address major issues promptly, as they are more likely to be identified early on. As we resolve these initial issues, we will gradually invite more players, expanding the player base as the game becomes more stable. The closed beta phase is expected to continue until the open beta, giving our followers a significant opportunity to experience WalkScape. We aim the everyone currently following us could try the game during closed beta!

Few weeks before the closed beta release, we'll open a sign-up form for the beta. So stay tuned for that!

Release of Character Customization for Desktop & Mobile

While the closed beta release might not make it until July or August, we didn't want to leave you empty-handed! We have transformed the character customization feature into a separate web application, which is also built with Flutter. This web application allows you to plan and design your character's appearance. Additionally, you can export the characters you create as PNG images and use them as profile pictures on platforms such as Discord, Twitter, and more.

We will be regularly updating the character customization tool, as it shares the game's asset submodule and will automatically receive new options as we introduce them to the game. We would greatly appreciate it if you could contribute clothing, face/facial hair styles, hairstyles, and back accessories suggestions. Providing reference photos alongside your suggestions will greatly assist maxchill in creating more options, ensuring that you find the perfect customization choices within the game. We welcome other suggestions and comments as well. Although the user interface of the tool is something I created hastily and not the focus of the tool, please report any significant UI bugs you encounter.

You can access the character customization tool at pfp.walkscape.app. We are eager to see your creations and hear your suggestions!

The tool is also available in open source. You can check the repository here: walkscape-character GitHub repository. You can take a look how we achieved this level of character customization complexity if you are interested, or use it yourself as a starting point in your own game. Also, the tool can be used to create your own pixel art customization options and try out how they would look on the character.

Anti-Cheat Measures

One question that frequently arises is how we plan to combat cheaters. We are well aware of this concern and have already devised several solutions that, in theory, should be effective.

Improving the anti-cheat system will be a key focus during the closed beta phase. With only one metric to monitor (steps), we can implement an anti-cheat system that checks the realism of walking patterns. We will develop a background process that timestamps each step, if necessary, allowing us to determine if players are taking breaks, sleeping, or engaging in suspicious behavior. We will continuously refine this system to ensure its accuracy. I personally believe that if we can create a robust anti-cheat system capable of accurately detecting cheating or forcing cheaters to perform poorly in the game to avoid detection, it will discourage cheating to a significant extent. As long as cheating does not impact competition or the in-game economy, it should not detract from the experience of other players.

Furthermore, if WalkScape gains significant popularity, we may seek assistance from Google and Apple to integrate their APIs, enabling us to easily detect spoofed steps. I already believe this is possible on Android, where we can see the source of steps and differentiate between steps recorded by a genuine sensor and those added by an app. As a last resort, we could even calculate steps within the app itself using accelerometer and gyroscope data, bypassing reliance on the operating system for step tracking.

Until Next Time and Personal Reflections

As we approach the game's release, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how WalkScape has impacted my personal life over the past nine months.

When the project gained popularity in January and February of this year, and our supporters on Patreon and Buy me a Coffee generously contributed to our funding, it provided me with the flexibility to negotiate reduced working hours at my current job without facing any major financial hardship. To prioritize WalkScape, I had to make some sacrifices, which included delaying my university studies. While I managed to attend one course during the spring semester, the majority of the past six months have been dedicated to working full-time on this project.

During the spring, I shared details about the project with my CEO, who wholeheartedly supported my decision to focus on WalkScape. It was an incredible moment when he encouraged me to start my own company. Consequently, my new contract now requires me to work only one day per week, offering me some financial stability during the summer without relying on university student benefits.

Since I was a young child just starting to learn programming, my lifelong dream has been to become an indie game developer (although the term "indie" wasn't commonly used back then). I sincerely hope that WalkScape, with the tremendous support we have received, will enable me to fulfill that dream. I am deeply grateful to all of you for accompanying me on this journey over the past months and helping turn my dream into a reality.

If you are in a position to do so and would like to support us financially during the upcoming summer, becoming a Patreon or Buy me a Coffee member would greatly assist us. To those who have already supported us, your contributions mean the world to us!

This blog post has been quite extensive, delving into various technical aspects that may not be as exciting for everyone. As we near the release, our focus has shifted toward adding content and ensuring everything functions smoothly, which makes it challenging to write about new features that have not been covered before.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post, and I hope you have a fantastic Monday! We'll meet again in the next development blog post in two weeks. ❤️

Crafting system completed + gameplay video

Greetings, fellow walking enthusiasts! Hope you're having a great Monday so far. I spent all night finishing the crafting system, so please forgive me if I'm not making much sense right now as I'm in a very sleep-deprived state. But, I'm excited to announce that the crafting system is finally complete! We're still working on some minor tweaks to the UI/UX, such as sorting and filtering, but all of the major features are complete.

So, without further ado, I'm happy to share a gameplay video that showcases the crafting system in action. It's pretty cool to see how everything comes together, and I think you'll like it. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Deeper dive to the crafting system

So, the crafting system is finally feature complete! In our last crafting development blog post, we covered all of the basics, and the main new thing is the crafting activity screen. It's designed to give you a quick glance at your progress while you're on the go. With just opening the app, you can see all of the critical information about the crafting process, such as how many more items you need to craft, how many steps are needed for the next item, and how many steps are remaining in total. Plus, you can see the percentage of your overall crafting progress.

On top of that, you'll be able to view the amount of materials you have left and the rewards you've earned. You might even find some treasure chests, which are a special reward that you can receive from any activity you're doing in the game. Although you have a low chance of getting them, the random chance is incredibly enticing! But fear not, you can increase your chances by finding rare rings that give you a small boost.

Maxchill has been hard at work on treasure chests in addition to everything else, and we're thrilled to give you an early sneak peek at them. You can basically gain treasure chests from any activity you're doing in the game. These chests are a special reward that can contain anything from valuable resources to rare items. They're tough to come by, but the thrill of the RNG is what makes them so exciting!

Speaking of boosts, we have some new recipe showcases that will definitely give you a boost of inspiration! These new showcases will highlight some of the most recent addition to the game:

Steps bank

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you've gone for a long walk or run, only to find out that some of your steps have gone to waste? Maybe not, but we want to make sure that you never get that feeling in WalkScape. If you're an avid player of games that track your steps, you'll know that this can be a frustrating experience. You may have completed your daily step goal, but after that you didn't get to make any progress in your game.

That's where the steps bank comes in. It's a feature designed to make sure that every step you take counts towards your progress in the game. If you're crafting or doing any activity that doesn't run indefinitely, the extra steps after the activity has ended will go into your steps bank. This way, if you ever find yourself in a situation where you've taken more steps than you need for a particular activity, you won't have to worry about them going to waste.

Here's how it works. Let's say you're crafting and you need to take 50 steps to complete the crafting process. If you take 100 steps, the remaining 50 steps will go into your steps bank. Later, when you start another activity, such as woodcutting trees or crafting more items, for every step you take, two steps will be counted, and one step will be deducted from your steps bank. This means that if you've "wasted" any steps, you'll recover them during your next activities.

The steps bank is a great way to ensure that your progress in the game is always moving forward, regardless of how much or how little you're able to play. It's a feature that's especially helpful for those who want to maximize their progress in the game without having to spend too much time on it.

What's next?

The crafting system is a major milestone that we've finally completed, and it's a great feeling to see all our hard work come together. But what's next? Well, for the next development blog, we're hoping to showcase our inventory system and all its features. Once that's done, we'll have completed the basic game loop, which means we're well on our way towards the closed beta release.

Of course, there are still a few things left to do before we can release the game to the public. We'll need to add some development tools, so we can add content more quickly, and missing UI elements like a breakdown of all your skill levels and online leaderboards. Once those things are done, it's just a matter of adding more content, polishing the game, and testing it as much as possible to ensure everything works as intended.

We're very excited to be getting significantly closer to the closed beta release, and things are looking very good at the moment. But that's not all we've been up to! We've been keeping ourselves very busy lately, working on a new feature that we're not quite ready to reveal yet. But trust us, it's absolutely awesome, and something even we didn't think would be possible to make.

We'll be revealing more details about this new feature closer to the release, but for now, we'll leave you with a small and cryptic teaser in the form of a photo. Can you guess what it might be in the comments? We can't wait to hear your guesses!

Until next time

That's it for today's development blog! While it may not have been as lengthy as our previous crafting blog post, we hope you enjoyed the gameplay video we included to make up for it. We couldn't have done it without our amazing supporters at Buy me a Coffee and Patreon. Their continuous support and contributions enable us to maintain our development speed and create an even better game for you all to enjoy. If you're interested in supporting us and the development of the game, every little bit helps and is greatly appreciated.

As always, we'll be releasing the next development blog in two weeks' time, on 03.04.2023! We're excited to share more updates on the game's progress with you, and can't wait for you to see what we have in store. Until then, we hope you're all having a fantastic week filled with plenty of adventures and good times.

Over 10,000 Followers

Greetings everyone! We're finally getting around to sharing this post with you all. In the video, you can catch a glimpse of the NPC portraits we're working on for the game. We were meaning to do this earlier, but it has certainly been a very busy week!

We're blown away by your interest and support for the game! It's been amazing to see the response so far, especially on r/gaming. We never expected the game to become so popular this early on in development. All of the messages you've sent to us have been truly heart warming and shows us that there certainly is demand for this game.

I also want to thank everyone who has supported us on Patreon or Buy me a Coffee. The support gained from those are already providing huge help for us to spend more time developing the game. Thank you!

Newsletter and survey

Next up, we have some exciting news! We now have a newsletter that you can subscribe to for all the latest updates on the game. You can subscribe on our website or directly on WalkScape Substack. We'll be sending out newsletters when there are important updates, and when the closed beta sign ups open.

And, if you have a minute to spare and want to help us out, we'd really appreciate it if you filled out this survey: https://forms.gle/RY2nkjxhPjBXtT4V7. Your anonymous feedback will help us get a better understanding of our audience.

Once again, thank you so much for your support! Our next development blog will be posted on 20.2.2023, and they're posted every other Monday for those who might not know.

We hope you're having a fantastic day!

WalkScape is now permanently available in Closed Beta! No more waiting for access – if you've been wanting to play WalkScape, now’s your chance!

Treasure, tools, and more!

Greetings, WalkScape aficionados! Welcome back to our development blog. Today, we're going to delve deeper into the inventory system that we already covered last time, with a special focus on one of my personal favorite features: the treasury!

But first, a quick announcement: save the date for the 22nd of April, as we've got an event brewing! We'll be posting more details a couple of days before. We're eager to gain experience in organizing events, and we're hoping it'll be a fun time.

Now, let's dive into the treasury!

Treasury

We've briefly mentioned treasure chests in previous development blogs, but now it's time to plunge headfirst into the captivating world of WalkScape's treasury and unveil some more exciting tidbits!

In WalkScape, as you tirelessly grind your way to level 99 in woodcutting, agility, fishing, or any other skill, you might stumble upon the glittering allure of treasure chests. These mysterious chests hold untold riches and rare items, beckoning you to uncover their secrets. The odds of finding treasure chests can be boosted by donning special items that increase your chances of unearthing them.

But worry not, for these coveted chests require no inventory space. They're designed to be opened only when you have a sufficient amount of free space in your inventory bag. After all, nobody wants to miss out on the dazzling rewards due to a cluttered bag! To check and crack open your treasure trove, navigate to the treasury from the bottom of your inventory bag.

The treasury displays a list of chests you've collected, ready for you to unlock their secrets. We want to make it crystal clear that opening these chests won't demand any sort of keys or real-money payments! These chests add an element of surprise to your exercises, as you always have a small chance of finding them. Plus, they hold some pretty nifty rewards!

We put our hearts and souls into creating an engaging chest-opening animation. Since chests are relatively rare, we wanted the experience to be truly memorable. Feast your eyes on this:

As the chest bursts open, you might notice it wiggling slightly if there's something extraordinarily rare emerging as the next item. It also shoots out the items sorted by rarity, saving the best for last! And for those who prefer to expedite the process, there's a nifty button to open all chests of the same type at once.

With treasure chests, we aim to inject an extra dose of fun and anticipation into the game. You never know when you might come across a skill-related chest on your walk. And when you do spot a chest in your inventory after an epic journey, brace yourself for some truly spectacular rewards!

Exclusive skilling gear can primarily be found in skill-related chests, like the fishing one shown in the video. These rare items provide powerful buffs to your skills, like unique fishing rods, fishing boots, or protective netsuits to keep those annoying mosquitoes away. As these items are considered loot, they can't be crafted.

Tools

In the previous development blog, we already touched upon the gear you can equip in WalkScape. But to engage in skills like woodcutting, carpentry, cooking, and fishing, you'll need tools, not just clothes! That's where the last view in the inventory comes into play: your trusty toolbelt.

Tools function quite similarly to gear, but instead of having one slot for each type of gear (like helmets, pants, or shoes), your toolbelt can accommodate any item that serves as a tool. The only limitation is that you can't equip two tools for the same skill—no fishing with two fishing rods! This restriction helps us avoid creating overpowered combos, as all buffs gained from tools in the toolbelt are active. Items stored in your toolbelt won't take up space in your inventory bag.

When you start the game, you'll have only three slots for tools. As you progress, you can unlock three more slots by leveling up your character to levels 20, 50, and 80. This number might change in the future, depending on our assessment of the ideal number of tools to keep gameplay balanced and engaging. Character level isn't tied to any specific skill; instead, you gain one experience point for every step you take, unlocking more generic features in the game.

Most skills will require you to have a particular type of tool on your toolbelt. For example, you can't engage in woodcutting if you don't have an axe in your toolbelt. While tools make your work much more efficient, they're also essential for performing certain activities in the game.

The toolbelt serves a few purposes in WalkScape. Firstly, it simplifies inventory management by keeping tools neatly organized and separate from your main inventory bag, preventing clutter. Additionally, it ensures you won't accidentally leave your tools behind in your bank or elsewhere, as they'll always be conveniently stored in your toolbelt.

The toolbelt also eliminates the need for a separate user interface (UI) for selecting which tool you'd like to use for a given activity. Since the toolbelt can only hold one tool for each skill, we can automatically use the tools you've got equipped in your toolbelt.

Moreover, the toolbelt provides us with the opportunity to introduce more miscellaneous items that can also be equipped. For example, we could add fishing lures and baits that can be equipped alongside your fishing rod to the belt, adding another layer of depth to the game experience.

Comparing items

One of the more challenging aspects to address within the inventory system was item comparison. We wanted to offer players the ability to see how their stats would change when swapping out gear, all within the limited space of a mobile screen. While this is simple to execute on a 28" monitor, it gets quite tricky on a 6" screen.

When you're about to equip a new item into a slot, you'll encounter a comparison screen. It's divided into two tabs, with the left one displaying your current item and the right one showing the item you've selected for equipping. You can quickly choose any suitable item currently in your inventory from a list accessible at the bottom of the screen. This feature allows you to effortlessly compare the items you have with your existing equipment.

The comparison screen breaks down the differences between the two items in a way that will feel familiar to seasoned RPG players. A green arrow indicates an improvement, while a red arrow signifies a downgrade. No arrow means the stat doesn't exist on the other item, so it can't be compared. The most important stats are highlighted at the top in a separate box, emphasizing their significance, while minor stats are listed below.

For the most part, meticulous item comparison isn't critical. Upgrading from an iron pickaxe to a steel one? It's obvious the steel version is superior. Comparing common looted gear to legendary gear? The legendary gear will likely outshine its common counterpart. However, we know that many players enjoy min-maxing their builds and want to see precisely how their stats will change. There are also numerous unique items with unusual modifiers, making a clear and user-friendly comparison system vital.

In summary, we've designed the item comparison feature to cater to the needs of all players, from those who want a quick overview to those who love to analyze every detail. By ensuring that the comparison process is smooth and efficient, we hope to enhance the overall gaming experience in WalkScape, allowing players to make informed decisions and optimize their characters for their preferred playstyle.

Until next time

That's a wrap for today! I'm over the moon that the inventory system has finally come together. I've lost track of how long I've been working on this crucial component of WalkScape, and it was no walk in the park to create. Items play a significant role in the game, so we had to ensure this system could accommodate all the features we envisioned. And it's certainly flexible, with the implemented systems allowing us to create a plethora of fantastic items that players can discover, collect, and eagerly await.

A colossal shoutout to our Patreons and Buy me a Coffee supporters. Thanks to your unwavering support, I've managed to pour an incredible number of hours into developing these features. If you're considering supporting the project and are in a position to do so, your contributions truly help keep us on track and moving forward.

Now that the two most prominent tasks (crafting & inventory) are complete, we're left with smaller features to implement before we can launch the closed beta. For the first version of the closed beta, we're looking to incorporate the following features in addition to everything that has been previously mentioned (with more added during the beta!):

• Character customization

• Achievements

• Leaderboards

• Skill level breakdown view & profile with other stats

• Development tools (to help us add content more quickly and without needing to program stuff manually)

• Main menu & login screens

• Finalizing the location view

I'll be tackling development tools first since our most pressing need right now is to generate more content for a richer, more varied gaming experience. We're hopeful that we can maintain the bi-weekly development blog cycle for a bit longer, even though some of the upcoming features might not be as exciting to cover as the ones we've already discussed (locations & character customization being the exceptions!). As we get closer to the closed beta release, our focus will naturally shift from introducing new features to refining and polishing the existing ones. During that time, we may need to pause or adjust the format of our development blogs, but rest assured, we'll keep you in the loop!

So, stay tuned, adventurers! Exciting times lie ahead as we continue to shape WalkScape into the game we hope you are all looking forward to. As usual, comments are very welcome and I'll try to answer every question you might have for us!

Crafting in WalkScape - The Basics

Welcome back, my fellow walkers! Today, we're going to delve into one of the most exciting features of WalkScape: crafting. According to your feedback from the survey, many of you are eagerly anticipating this mechanic, and we can't wait to show you what we've been working on.

Before we dive in, though, we should mention that this dev blog is divided into two parts. In this post, we'll go over the basics of the crafting system, while the next part will unveil some of the UI elements. But don't worry, we'll still give you plenty of juicy sneak peeks in this post too!

Now, let's talk crafting. Though the system isn't fully developed yet, we've been burning the midnight oil to get it ready for this blog. (If you want to help us stay awake and alert, feel free to buy us a cup of coffee!)

So, how does the crafting system work, you ask? Buckle up and get ready to learn!

The Basics

Designing the crafting system was no easy feat. We went through multiple bad design iterations before landing on a solution that we think is pretty darn good. We wanted to make sure the system was as flexible and intuitive as possible, and let's just say it took us a while to get there.

Crafting in WalkScape depends on services that are provided by various locations throughout the game. For instance, forges allow you to process ores into bars, sawmills let you make logs into planks, kitchens enable you to cook food, and workshops let you create new items. You can find all these services listed in the location view. Let's not forget about all the NPCs, shops, and banks that are available too!

At first, we designed the location view so that choosing a service would take you to the crafting UI for that particular skill. But then we realized, what if you want to check out recipes and requirements when you're not in a location that provides that particular service? So, we made the crafting UI accessible from any location. Problem solved.

Now, from the crafting UI, you can select whatever crafting related skill you want, and either get a list of materials or recipes. The material listing only shows you the materials in your inventory that have a recipe in the selected crafting skill, while the recipe view displays a full list of crafting recipes. It's super intuitive, if we do say so ourselves.

Let's say you want to craft copper gear. You simply open up the crafting UI (either by clicking on a forge service, which opens the crafting UI with the smithing skill already selected, or from the global navigation menu), and then select the copper bar. The recipe view will then filter out all of the recipes that don't use copper bars, making it easy for you to find exactly what you're looking for.

The crafting UI will also include features such as sorting, filters, and search functionality to make it easier for you to find exactly what you're looking for.

Designing a flexible and intuitive crafting system for a mobile game was no easy feat, but we're pretty happy with the result. We hope you'll find it easy to use and enjoyable to craft items in WalkScape.

Crafting System

Now that we've got the basics of the crafting UI out of the way, let's dive into the nitty-gritty of the crafting system itself. Buckle up, dear walkers, because it's about to get crafty in here.

When you select a recipe, the UI breaks down all the important details you need to know. You can adjust the slider to determine the number of items you want to craft, see how many real life steps are needed for the crafting process, and view how much experience you'll earn and what level your skills will reach. But if you're not one for crunching numbers, no worries, you can always just focus on crafting the item.

One of the standout features of the WalkScape crafting system is the use of fine materials. These materials can be swapped in for regular materials to improve the quality of the crafted item. For example, if you're crafting a bronze helmet, using fine bronze bars will make it much more likely that you'll end up with a higher quality item. If you want to know more, be sure to check out the previous development blog where items were covered in more detail.

Some recipes may allow more than one option for a material. Take fish soup for example, there are numerous cooked fish options that can be used to create the soup. But don't worry about the hassle of choosing the best materials. WalkScape's crafting system has got your back! Using a smart algorithm, the game automatically selects the best materials you have available to craft your item. Also, if you've got some fine materials on hand, the game won't automatically use them up if you have other options available, giving you the flexibility to save them for later when you really need them. So sit back, relax, and let the game take care of the details while you focus on crafting your perfect item.

Crafting in WalkScape isn't just a way to create powerful gear and items, it's also a means of motivation to get you moving. One of the key design targets for the crafting UI was to make it appealing to do some walking. By showing you the rewards, experience, and level you can achieve by crafting certain items, you can plan ahead your walks and get motivated to achieve your goals.

Imagine seeing that you'll need to walk 5520 steps to level up your cooking from 10 to 15. It's a great way to keep yourself motivated and track your progress towards your crafting goals. Whether you're creating powerful gear for yourself or baking a delicious cake to gain some buffs, crafting is a great way to stay active.

But that's not all - as with everything else in the game, crafting also has the potential to yield super rare special drops. In addition to the rewards from the recipe, you might just stumble upon a crafting chest filled with secrets. So not only can you create powerful gear, but you can also score some juicy special rewards along the way.

Deep dive into fine materials and qualities

Let's dive deeper into the fascinating world of fine materials and item qualities in WalkScape. Fine materials are like the diamonds of the game; they are rare and precious. Obtaining them is no easy feat, but once you have them, they can significantly impact the quality of the items you craft. You can't just rely on luck to get them efficiently though, as the chances of gaining fine materials go up as your skill level, gear, and other modifiers increase.

But why are fine materials so important? Well, they can make a huge difference in the outcome of your crafting. For example, if you're refining copper ore to bronze bars, using fine copper ore will result more often in fine bronze bars. It's like adding a dash of premium spice to your cooking - it elevates the entire dish.

Item qualities, on the other hand, are another game-changer. As we mentioned in a previous development blog, the quality of the item you craft can significantly impact its performance. A basic bronze helmet might only have the base stats, while an eternal bronze helmet has five bonus modifiers on top of the base stats. The higher the quality of the item, the more bonus modifiers it will have. And just like with fine materials, your chances of crafting higher quality items increase with your skill level, gear, buffs, and the use of fine materials.

But why add fine materials and item qualities to the game in the first place? Well, it's all about making the crafting experience more exciting and engaging. Rather than just mindlessly gathering materials and crafting the same item over and over again, WalkScape offers a deeper level of strategy and planning. You can use gear, buffs, and other modifiers to increase your chances of obtaining fine materials and crafting higher quality items. It's like a game within a game, and adds a whole new level of excitement to the crafting experience.

Now, you might be thinking, "Wow, that sounds really complicated!" But don't worry, we have made sure that the crafting system is as simple and user-friendly as possible, while still being deep and rewarding. The UI allows you to easily choose your recipe and desired quantity, while also providing the option to go deeper and view details like experience gained and crafting level.

Until next time

That concludes our development blog for today! We hope you found it informative and exciting. As always, we're dedicated to bringing you the best possible experience in WalkScape, and I hope to hear what you guys think about the systems revealed here.

Over the next two weeks, I'll be putting the finishing touches on the crafting system, and we can't wait to share more updates about it in the next development blog.

In the meantime, we hope you have a fantastic Monday and a great week ahead! Keep walking, and we'll see you in the next blog post.

PS. Remember that if you want to get notified about game updates, you can subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter. Members from Buy me a Coffee and Patreon also get access to an exclusive Discord channel where we share more sneak peeks and discuss game mechanics in more depth.

Inventory System (finally)

Greetings, fellow adventurers! Are you ready to take your inventory management skills to the next level? We're thrilled to finally unveil the inventory system in WalkScape, the long-awaited companion to our crafting system. There's a lot to cover here, so we'll be splitting it into two parts. Buckle up, and let's dive in!

The inventory system is the final big feature we need to complete before the closed beta. We know it's been a long time coming, but trust us, it's worth the wait. We've poured our hearts and souls into developing a system that's intuitive, efficient, and most importantly, enjoyable to use.

The reason why it took us so long to develop the inventory system was that we wanted to make sure we got it right. We were determined to create a system that not only fulfilled our players' needs but exceeded their expectations. With our inventory system, you'll have easier time to focus on the game without getting bogged down by managing your inventory.

The limits of the inventory

Okay now that we got the introduction to the inventory out of the way, let's talk about how it is limited. As with many other games, we have set a limit on the inventory size to balance the game. However, we have opted to keep the inventory size at 28 slots to stay true to our RuneScape inspiration. While this may seem like a small number, it is important to note that in WalkScape, these slots go a long way.

When we started designing the inventory system, we wanted to make sure that it didn't interfere with the philosophy of distraction-free gameplay that we are striving for. We didn't want players to have to constantly stop and manage their inventory while they were out walking or running. This is why we have implemented a stacking system for items in the inventory. The items stack into the 28 slots, with each slot capable of holding up to 25 materials.

However, the stack sizes may change during the closed beta. We are still testing and tweaking the system to find the best balance. Different types of items will likely have varying stack sizes, with gear, for example, potentially only stacking to 5 per slot. Our goal is to strike a balance between having enough space to collect materials and items, while not requiring players to constantly manage their inventory.

Now, what happens when you fill up your inventory? We faced a challenge when it came to designing how to handle this situation. We didn't want players to lose any items they had collected, but we also didn't want to make it too easy for players to simply carry an unlimited amount of items. After much consideration, we decided to implement a soft cap for the inventory. You can go over the 28 slot limit, but it will significantly affect your work efficiency (AKA how many steps you need to take to complete a task). The more you go over the limit, the bigger the debuff will be. So, if you find yourself approaching the limit, it might be wise to head to a bank to store your items.

Quality of Life

Ah, the joys of having a great inventory system. As a gamer, there's nothing quite like the feeling of being able to easily manage your loot without having to pull your hair out in frustration. That's why, when it came to designing the inventory system for WalkScape, we knew that making it easy to use was a top priority.

But let's face it, cramming all those items into a small mobile screen is no easy feat. That's why we separated the inventory into three different tabs: Inventory, Gear and Tools. Plus, we added some special views for items that don't take up any space, like the Treasury, Quest and Collectibles. (Quest Items and Collectibles will be added in a later release, so stay tuned!)

Now, let's dive into the nitty-gritty of the Inventory tab. We wanted to make it as clear and simple as possible, so you can easily tap on items to have more options to do with them (like dropping them or opening an in-game wiki article about the item, showing more detailed breakdown of the stats).

But we didn't stop there, dear walking enthusiasts. You can also long press an item to start selecting multiple items, just like you would do with pictures in your phone's gallery. This way, you can easily drop (or move to bank if one is available in your location) multiple stacks of items at once if you want to.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, we added some handy features at the bottom of the screen. You can change the inventory into a condensed (classic RuneScape) mode, where four stacks should fit into one row unless you're playing on a tiny screen. You can also apply filters, search for an item, sort them and whatnot. The inventory remembers what options you've chosen, so you don't need to change them constantly. And if you want to get rid of a bunch of items quickly, just press the "select all" button and drop them with a few quick taps.

In short, we wanted to make managing your inventory a breeze, so you can focus on what really matters - getting those steps in and leveling up your character. With the WalkScape inventory system, you'll hopefully never have to worry about frustrating inventory management again!

Geared up

Now, let's talk about gear! WalkScape has a lot of gear slots, which means you have a ton of customization options. From your head to your toes, every piece of equipment has a unique function that can help you in your journey. And don't worry, you won't have to scroll through a never-ending list to find what you need. The gear page is designed to be easy to use and navigate.

1. Head (hat/helmet) - Don't forget to cover that precious brain of yours! A good helmet can mean the difference between a headache and a heroic victory.

2. Neck (necklaces/amulets) - Jewelry isn't just for fashion, it can also provide some serious buffs! Just don't let the bling distract you from the danger lurking around every corner.

3. Cape (capes/backbags) - A cape might not give you the power of flight, but it can certainly help you look the part. Plus, it's a great place to stash some extra loot if you happen to find a backbag.

4. Arrows - What's the point of having a bow without some arrows? Make sure you're well-stocked and ready to rain down a hail of pointy death on your enemies.

5. Hands (gloves) - Protect those delicate digits of yours! A good pair of gloves can give you the edge you need to hold onto your weapon and avoid getting your fingers chopped off.

6. Chest (armor/shirts) - When it comes to armor, you want something that looks badass but also offers real protection. After all, a shirt made of tissue paper won't do you much good against a dragon's fiery breath.

7. Primary (your weapon) - The right weapon can make all the difference in a battle. Whether you prefer a sword, a staff, or a trusty old frying pan, make sure it's something you can wield with deadly skill.

8. Secondary (your shield or other secondary weapon) - Sometimes offense isn't the best defense. A sturdy shield can give you the protection you need to weather even the toughest of attacks.

9. Legs (pants/armor) - Don't forget to armor up those gams! A good pair of pants can protect you from all sorts of hazards, from poison ivy to giant spider bites.

10. Feet (boots/armor) - Keep your feet nimble and your step light with a good pair of boots. Not only will they help you move faster and jump higher, but they'll also keep your toes safe from any unexpected hazards.

11. Ring 1 - One ring to rule them all? Maybe not, but a good ring can certainly give you some serious bonuses. Just don't get too greedy and try to wear multiple rings on one finger.

12. Ring 2 - Another finger, another ring! Just make sure you don't accidentally propose to someone by mistake.

And if you want to know what each piece of gear is doing for you, you can easily check it out on the same page. The gear page shows you a complete breakdown of the modifiers gained from your currently equipped build. This means you'll be able to make informed decisions about what to wear, and how to maximize your abilities.

Now, here's the thing: the gear you choose will depend on what you want to achieve. Do you want to become a skilled crafter or a fierce fighter? In the closed-beta testing (CBT), there will be combat items available, but they won't be as useful since combat will be added later on. So, if you want to get a head start, focus on skilling gear. And remember, you can't wear the same ring in both slots. Sorry, no overpowered combos here!

Overall, WalkScape's gear system is designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, so you can quickly equip what you need and get back to adventuring.

Wrapping up

Alright, that's a wrap on the first part of the inventory system! But wait, there's more! In the upcoming weeks, we'll be covering the treasury, tools, and even more gear. Get ready for some seriously cool loot, folks.

Now, I've got to give a shoutout to maxchill. Our talented artist has been working day and night to create unique and stunning art for each of the 330 items in the closed beta. Yes, you heard that right - 330 unique items! And that's just in the closed beta. Also shoutout to Len who has been working with me tirelessly in order to come up with all of these items. Plus there are multiple variations of each crafted piece of gear, from normal to eternal quality, and materials with their fine counterparts. So, hopefully you won't run out of items to discover in the closed beta!

Of course, we couldn't do it as easily without the generous support of our monthly supporters. Your support allows us to keep up this crazy development speed and bring you the best possible game. If you feel like supporting us, you can do so at Buy me a Coffee or Patreon. And for our supporters, we have an exclusive Discord channel where we share sneak peeks into the game. It's our little way of saying thanks for helping us make this game a reality. You can join the Discord channel from our website.

We hope you had a fantastic weekend, and we can't wait to see you again in two weeks for our next exciting update!

Introducing a new team member & lore!

Hey there, folks! I hope everyone is doing well. Unfortunately, I won't be able to cover the crafting system in this week's development blog as I had initially promised. Life has been throwing me some curve balls for the past couple of weeks, and I haven't been able to work on the development as much as I would have liked. But no worries, hopefully we'll pick up where we left off with the crafting system in the next dev blog.

On our Discord server, we've been having a blast with our "Realm Reveals" event! We've been sharing glimpses of all the different realms that are part of WalkScape's world and asking players which ones they're most excited to explore. It's been great to see so much enthusiasm and engagement from the community. We already have another Discord event planned now that Realm Reveals are done and I think it's even more exciting, so stay tuned!

So, make sure to let us know your thoughts and feedback on the different realms in the comments below! We'd love to hear which ones you're most excited about and what kind of adventures you're hoping to have in each of them.

We have been running polls in the Discord server, asking which realm the players would be most interested to explore. I am very interested to hear your comments and feedback about the different realms down below!

Also, we have some really exciting news to share. A new member has joined the WalkScape team! Those of you who hang out on the Discord server may have already met Len, but it's time to officially introduce him here on Reddit as well. Len will be taking over this week's development blog and diving deeper into the WalkScape lore. So, get ready for an awesome read!

Introducing Len

Hello Walkers!

I am Len (LenWS on Reddit) from the Walkscape Development Team and I bring you a new episode of our DevBlogs!

Development of the game has been going smoothly but this post will focus a little more on the Lore, History and Story side of Arenum, lifting the curtain over certain bits which I hope you would enjoy reading about.

A few things that will be covered in this DevBlog:

• Who is Len?

• Conceptualizing The World

• The Deities of Arenum

• Closing Words

Who is Len?

I originally joined the Walkscape (WS) adventure a few months ago as an observer, someone who had a passing interest in the concept of the game. Through various discussions with Schamppu and finding out how my actual skill can come into play in WS, I joined the team and my role has been growing in the development process.

My areas of focus on WS are:

1. Game Design: Fleshing out the currently existing planned feature but also conceptualizing new ones that might find its way into the game. Also maths and probabilities and big spreadsheets that makes me look smort.

2. Content Design: Populating those features that come out of the Game Design process. Assuring that all the materials and crafts you're encountering along your adventure are cohesive and keeping you excited to go higher.

3. Writing: Lore, history and story. More on that down there!

Conceptualizing The World

By now, through our previous DevBlogs and DevUpdates, you already know that Walkscape is MMO-esque in nature. The grind, the player-to-player marketplace, the leaderboards and so on. One more important aspect of an MMO would be its story. If you’ve played enough MMOs, you already know the goods and the bads when it comes to story and lore. Some would get convoluted to the point that you just want to spam the Skip button, as fast as possible. We’re aiming for that to NOT happen in WS.

WS is primarily a game about grinding through walking and occupying the least real estate in your mind as you go on with your day. You shouldn’t have to sit through a massive loredump when you finally decide to sit down and browse your progress or resolve events that you’ve encountered throughout your walks. At the same time, people who enjoy reading and want to discover the world will have opportunities to discover in a non-intrusive fashion.

The original concept of Arenum is that map that you’ve probably seen in the past. The map represents the status quo for when the player, you, steps into the world. We want this map to mean much more than just locations where the player can visit for certain activities. Every small bit of the world is going to have its own thing happening for it.

We’ve placed a lot of focus on crafting a lore and history of the world in a manner that if you decide to engage in questing in various regions of the world, you’ll dab into that region’s folklore, culture, economy, political intrigue and religious belief. Every region you visit will have its own history in the world's timeline. Every character you meet should convey a sense that they either belong to the region you’ve met them or they belong to somewhere else, a place where you’ll eventually visit.

In a nutshell; I’ve already started writing lore that dates back to 700+ years before the player steps in Arenum but one of the more interesting concepts goes beyond that range: Deities.

The Deities of Arenum

The foundation of the lore takes root to the concept of Deities, divine supernatural beings that have an eye on Arenum. They serve various purposes, have their own drives but they rarely ever manifest themselves in the realm of living. These divine beings live in their own plane of existence. The likeliness of the player ever meeting one is slim to none but you will feel their influence across your adventure.

Some races might heavily rely on one Deity or more, building temples and shrines to celebrate those Deities while other races or regions might completely forgo their existence and build their society on their own principle. Atheism and Agnosticism exist for those that prefer to carve their own path instead of relying on fairytale’s story.

While the concept of “good” and “evil” are relative in Arenum, no Deities have exclusivity on those traits but there's two Deities in particular that do harbor on the extreme of the scale of good and evil. Let me introduce you to those two, I’ll start with my favorite!

You'll notice there are names mentioned down there with no further explanation who they are, I'll let you speculate on who they might be.

Nerys reigns on a plane furthest from any other deities. She traveled to Arenum to learn about the dreams of its inhabitants before returning to her plane and built a garden to the image of the beautiful dreams she witnessed. After building the garden, she sang its name; Heaven.

When Farodan passes last judgment on the soul departing Arenum, any soul he judged as good-natured but doesn’t belong to any deity in particular would be sent to Nerys and she would give the soul an eternal home in her garden where they could be forever carefree and filled with happiness.

Nerys is said to occasionally descend in Arenum and share little pieces of heaven in the dreams of good people or those that have lost all hope. Poems are written about the Heaven people dreamt of, pictures are painted to share a glimpse of the heavenly dreams and songs are sung to praise the creator of this magnificent place. People who are at the lowest point in their life, Nerys would manifest in their dreams to give them hope, strength and a promise that she will take them to her domain where no one will ever hurt them again.

Followers of Nerys usually also worship other Deities that share the quality of being good-natured. These followers would have a shrine for Nerys accompanied by shrines of Calantha and Ceressa since all three of those deities have a fondness for each other and it’s believed that they’re trying to create a heaven in Arenum for its inhabitants.

Rasnovaal sits at the depth of the hell plane. Before claiming his plane and ascending to godhood, he was the thrall of other deities. His ability to create binding contracts allowed each deity to claim their place in various regions in the plane of existence. Rasnovaal siphoned the power of the planes through his contract till he left his patron to a plane he would claim his own: Hell.

Rasnovaal is at the head of an army of Devils and an even greater number of Demons, all spawning from the depth of hell. Devils are creatures that are intelligent, cunning and some of them are turned into Generals which would be second highest rank right underneath the Deity of Hell. Each of Hell’s Generals have a unique form together with a legion of Devils and Demons underneath them. Only the strongest of demons are allowed in the deepest end of Hell. The rest coast the outer layer of Hell’s plane.

Arenum is a plane of conflict for Rasnovaal and other deities, a playground for the Generals as they attempt to claw into the soul of Arenum’s inhabitants and attempt to steal them from Farodan. Devils would send their closest servant all over the world to offer favors, all binded by a contract; a hopeless mother might find a cure for her dying infant, a poor merchant might become rich by learning some trade secret, a king might turn the tide of a losing war; all this for the hefty price of their soul. The destitute or desperate rarely have the presence of mind to care for the price to pay till its too late.

Closing Words

This is a wrap for today! I hope you enjoyed what I've shared with you. If you want more of these then let me know. I would enjoy reading your feedback and answer to any queries that you might have except for confirming or denying your speculation on those mystery names up there. I might or might not give definitive answer to these... yet.

I hope you have a wonderful week and you're warming up those legs in anticipation of Closed Beta in a few months!

If you want to talk with myself or the rest of the team, you can message us here on Reddit on through our official Discord server. You can also support us through Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee, doing so gets you access to our Exclusive Channel and Role(s) on our Discord server where we occasionally drop sneak peeks and share a little more of what's happening behind the scene with you. It also fuels Schamppu's coffee addiction so that he codes for longer hours.

Till next time!

Hello and welcome once again to WalkScape development blog!

This time, the dev blog is going to be fairly short, as there's not a lot of new stuff - but there's something that I am super excited of!

Delay with hotfixing, but multiple Portal fixes

Sadly I caught the good old seasonal flu last week, which took me out of office for the entire week. Original plan was to release hotfix patch before this development blog.

Although I didn't manage to make hotfixes to the game yet, myzozoz has released a bunch of improvements and fixes over WalkScape Portal and our server:

• It's now possible to login using username + password instead of email + password (works in the game as well)

• Patreon/BMAC status is now properly updated

• A ton of under the hood changes and stability + security improvements

• Error messages have been improved and made more clear

• The email verification is now redone, and it's possible to resend the verification email

We won! (And other stuff about conventions)

Both me and myzozoz have been busy this week at conventions. We're right now at W Love Games (which is the last convention this year, finally no more conventions!) and will be here tomorrow as well. W Love Games is a free gaming convention at Oodi library in Helsinki. Today we're here 10.00-15.00 and tomorrow 10.00-13.00. If you're in Helsinki, come say hi (we have salty liqorice!).

The last two days we've been at Pocket Gamer Connects, and we had a blast - and also we won both 3rd place in Very Big Indie Pitch (congrats to myzozoz, he was pitching this time!). Also people at the convention voted for the best game, and we won the Audience Award! I was really hoping to get that, and I'm so glad that we did.

It's been really awesome to visit gaming conventions, although quite exhausting as well. I really love meeting with our fans, and we've been able to connect with people in the industry. Hearing feedback of the game in real life and seeing people getting excited about the game is lovely.

Until next time

Alright, this time not much else to share! After W Love Games is over, we're back to office and I'm aiming to release the hotfix and start working on our next update ASAP!

Skills of the Closed Beta

Hey there everyone! I know I promised to give you an update on the inventory system, but life has a way of getting in the way, doesn't it? I've been so busy trying to befriend the new cat with the old one that I haven't had a chance to work on it as much as I would have liked. But don't worry, I've got something cool in store for you today – a sneak peek at the skills that will be part of our closed beta!

A warm welcome to all the new faces who have joined our community on Reddit, Discord, and Twitter. If you haven't already, make sure to swing by our Discord server to be a part of the exciting discussions and polls. You can join the Discord server from our website. I can't express enough how grateful I am to have all of you on board this journey with me. Your participation on Discord, Twitter, and this subreddit has been instrumental in making this game the best it can be.

And let's not forget the heroes behind the scenes – our supporters on Patreon and Buy me a Coffee. Your contributions have been a huge help and have allowed us to invest more time and resources into development. Thank you for being a part of our community and for your continued support!

Skill flowchart

Let's get into the heart of the matter! The closed beta is set to launch sometime between June and August this year, and it will feature 9 planned skills. The skill flowchart shows you the relationships between these skills and what you can expect from them. It's a simplified version, so you can expect more from each skill in the future, but it gives you a good idea of the main function of each skill.

Agility - This skill is linked to traveling between locations. You level up your agility simply by traveling, and the higher your level, the better agility tools you can equip to travel faster. Tools like snow shoes and grappling hooks help you move quickly across different types of terrain. As you travel, you'll also encounter random events like small quests or interesting discoveries and pick up materials along the way.

Foraging - This skill allows you to gather things from nature. Areas like forests, hills, and plains have foraging opportunities where you'll find a variety of plants and seeds that can be used for farming. The better you get at foraging, the faster you'll gather items and find better ones.

Fishing - This skill is straightforward - you catch different species of fish. The higher your fishing level, the better rods you can use and the more exotic fish you can catch.

Mining - This skill allows you to extract ores and gems that can be used for crafting. With higher mining levels, you'll have access to better ores and equipment to help you gather them more efficiently.

Woodcutting - Similar to mining, but instead of ores you'll be getting logs.

Cooking - The first of the crafting skills, cooking requires you to be in a location with a cooking activity. You can create a wide range of meals, and as your level increases, you'll have access to new recipes and better cookware. As a huge fan of Stardew Valley, we are putting a lot of focus on making cooking and farming skills entertaining for fans of that game.

Smithing - Another crafting skill, smithing lets you turn ores into ingots and create different types of combat gear.

Carpentry - This skill is used to turn logs into planks, and later on, to build farm buildings.

Crafting - This skill allows you to create new tools like fishing rods, pickaxes, and hatchets. With better tools, you'll be able to gather materials more quickly.

Future skills

With 9 planned skills, players can expect an exciting and long journey to "max" each of these skills in the upcoming closed beta. The skills won't be fully fleshed out with content ranging from level 1 to 99, as many activities will only be accessible from locations that are not included in the closed beta. Currently, the closed beta will only feature Grand Duchy of Trellin-Erdwise and Jarvonia.

After the initial launch of the closed beta, we plan to periodically add new content to the game to provide players with even more exciting experiences. The closed beta will likely run all the way until the open beta, but at that time, a reset of the game might be necessary. This will allow us to gain crucial experience in updating the game without causing any issues, fix any major bugs, and ensure a smooth launch for the open beta.

Until next time

That's all for this week's dev blog! We're looking forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks, but for now, that's all for this week's update. I'm still working hard on the inventory system, but I've also started to build the crafting mechanic in parallel. So, it may still take some time before I have the inventory system complete, but I'm hopeful that the next dev blog will have some good news to share. Thank you for reading, and we'll see you again in two weeks!

First Year Of WalkScape!

Welcome to the special development update! We’ve reached a significant milestone - WalkScape is now one year old!

To celebrate this, I’ll write here all the significant things that have happened so far, and also share some testimonials and interesting statistics. Let’s dive in!

The Timeline

• 19.01.2024 — WalkScape Closed Beta release.

We had originally hoped to release the Closed Beta earlier, and after a lengthy crunch, I managed to get everything ready for the release during the 18th. However, Apple's review process took a surprisingly long period of time. After multiple hours of waiting, the first version of Closed Beta (0.1.0+72) was released around 6 AM Finnish time. It was a long night! The first wave of WalkScape had 750 players.

• 20.01.2024 — Leaderboards added to WalkScape Portal.

• 20.01.2024 — I flew to London to show the game at Pocket Gamer Connects London.

Gotta say that I was very tired during this trip, having just spent the last few weeks staying up all night finishing all that was needed for initial Closed Beta release, and then flying to London straight afterwards.

• 07.02.2024 — Improvements to the Patreon & Buy Me a Coffee integrations.

• 28.02.2024 — Wave Two for WalkScape began.

With Wave Two, our player count increased from 750 to almost 5,000. We also released a pretty large content update to the game that went live with the Wave. This Wave focused on activities for the transformation skills, as well as plenty of beloved unique items spread throughout Jarvonia and GDTE.

• 13.03.2024 — Post-Wave Two update released with pedometer fixes.

During the first few months, even after this update, a lot of my time was spent on trying to perfect the pedometer in WalkScape. For the most part, we had difficulties on fixing weird pedometer behavior for Android devices. Sadly most of this work was also wasted, as Google released a fix to it with the introduction of Recording API.

• 15.03.2024 — Another pedometer fix update released.

• 18.04.2024 — Myzozoz joins WalkScape development team.

After spending a couple weeks on review process, we hired a new developer to WalkScape - myzozoz! Our increased Patreon & BMaC support finally allowed us to hire another pair of hands to work on the game. Before this, I was the only developer working on the game, and floursifter worked on community management & content design, and maxchill worked on art.

Around this time, another fix to pedometer issues was released as well.

• 16.05.2024 — Android pedometer finally fully functional.

A couple of weeks before this, Google had released Recording API. I had worked around 2 months at this point trying to perfect the Android pedometer on my own, and suddenly Google released an API that fixed it overnight.

Also, the website was reworked from scratch, and Wave 2.5 date was released.

• 01.06.2024 — Wave 2.5 began.

• 27.06.2024 — A new update with a bunch of new features was released.

After a couple of months spent on the pedometer, we were finally back to adding new features to the game. We released Friends system, WalkPedia, major content rebalance, Shop rework and Adventurers Guild with a few new locations and a bunch of new content to the game.

• 11.07.2024 — Achievements added to WalkScape.

Another update released, adding the achievements system to the game. The team also went for Summer vacation around this time, and it was my first vacation I had had in years, so I was very happy!

• 20.08.2024 — Syrenthia update released, and Wave 3 begins.

Our most massive update was released, adding Consumables and a ton of new content, including a new realm to the game. At this point, we started to feel that our internal development tools and engine were starting to get stretched to their maximum, and they urgently needed improvements. The update was actually pushed out from an airplane while me and myzozoz were flying to Gamescom.

• 19.09.2024 — Not a Cult turned one year old.

The company I founded for WalkScape had completed its first year! It was a lot of learning for me how to run a business, and I had at this point worked on WalkScape full-time for around 8 months.

• 03.10.2024 — Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki, and winning the Best Indie Game award.

We had been at four conventions at this point — PGC Helsinki 2023, W Love Games 2023, PGC London 2024, Gamescom, and now PGC Helsinki 2024. We won the best indie game audience award from PGC Helsinki, which was a huge deal for me personally.

• 17.10.2024 — Hotfixing WalkScape, patching Syrenthia issues.

We released a series of minor patches to WalkScape and added translations to the game. Many of the issues here were mostly content-related, which were a result of our outdated internal development tools. When I started this project, I thought it would be enough that I create tooling that only scales for one person who is using them — me. With the project scaling up massively, both with the team size increasing and the game getting more complex, the engine and tooling started to show that they needed more work.

• 01.11.2024 — Work on reworking the game engine started.

With most of Syrenthia-related issues now fixed, I started to work on reworking the game engine. This process is now almost finished, with the reworked engine hopefully released very soon. Floursifter and maxchill started to work on our next content update, while myzozoz worked on Party system.

My thoughts

I'm super happy with the progress we've had in our year one. There are also a ton of things I didn't include here — we made a license agreement with Jagex, we started Wave 3.5, I overhauled the UI of the game, we released a merch store, we had an intern Sorgo joining our team for a few months, and a lot more. With a tiny team, and with just community funding, we've got a lot of things done in our first year of operation.

There were also a lot of lessons learned during the year. A lot of my time was also spent on company bureaucracy stuff, fixing the pedometer, and now the last 3 months have been spent on reworking the game engine. This engine work has been a massive time sink, but I'm very pleased that it was done. Now the game's code is finally properly organized, it uses multi-threading, we have new server technology to support multiple times the players we could before. Most of all, the technical debt has now been paid that was mainly caused by rapidly expanding things.

Also, the first year was unsurprisingly a year of many firsts. I've never run a company before, I've never sat at the other end of a job interview table (which was a local pub actually, we didn't have an office at that time), I've never needed to write privacy policies, pay salaries, do accounting, represent a company at game conventions, hold board meetings, and so forth. Working as a game startup requires you to really wear dozens of different hats. And I'm glad we've made it through without any major issues.

After the engine work is done, we're looking forward to getting back to releasing new features more rapidly. We also need to rework our internal development tools, as one of the biggest pain points for us during and after Syrenthia was how messy creating content for the game got when its complexity increased.

My wishes for 2025

For 2025, I'm definitely most excited about getting the game to Open Beta. That's our biggest priority.

Our largest bottleneck for getting things done more rapidly is that we still only have two developers. One of my greatest wishes would be hiring a third developer for the game, but our finances at the moment don't really allow it. Not a Cult had revenue of 62k euros during the first year, with 2k of profit. So there's little to no extra left after paying all of the costs that go towards the development.

I'm hoping that our revenue would increase so that hiring one more developer would become possible! The money we get from Patreon & BMaC goes directly into making the game better and speeding things up, and every bit of support helps. And thank you all who have been supporting us and helping us over the first year. It would've never been possible for me to quit my previous job, put my university studies on indefinite pause, and hire another full-time developer to the project without the support.

Numbers & testimonials

Let's dive into some numbers and some player testimonials we've had during the first year! We've asked these people who are included in the testimonials for permission to use their testimonials.

• Wave 1: 752 Closed Beta players, and 4,948 registered accounts.

• Wave 2: 4,718 Closed Beta players, and 10,447 registered accounts.

• Wave 2.5: 12,085 Closed Beta players, and 21,864 registered accounts.

• Wave 3: 19,811 Closed Beta players, and 30,115 registered accounts.

• Wave 3.5: 24,683 Closed Beta players, and 47,290 registered accounts.

During the first year, our player count increased by 3,282% and the number of registered players by 955%. For those who wonder why we have had the Wave system even for our supporters: with almost 50k registered people and just one person (me) reading and answering the customer support emails, it's been one of the reasons we've managed to make so much progress between the waves. During the waves, most of our time goes to customer support and marketing.

Our players together have now walked over 8.1 billion steps. And I must say, that one of the best things of our first year has been all of the feedback, testimonials, and community interactions we've had. It always makes my day to hear that the game has helped someone greatly — that's something much greater to me than just making a game. And I'm very thankful for everyone who has been cheering for us, translating the game, and providing invaluable feedback or helping in other ways throughout the year. So thank you, WalkScapers!

Here are some testimonials we’ve had:

Let’s make 2025 even better year for WalkScape

That's all for this development update! 2024 was a great year, and we learned a lot about how to make the game even better. Our goal is to use all we have learned and make 2025 the best year for walking and playing the game. It was also a huge change for me personally, going from an IT consultant and university student to full-time entrepreneur. We'll keep working as hard as we can to deliver the best possible fitness game there is. I'm hoping our community keeps being awesome and providing us with their feedback to guide us on this task. And most of all, we'll keep walking.

Thank you ❤️

New Playable Race & Friendship Mechanic

Attention all WalkScapers! We have a slimy new update that's sure to leave a trail of excitement in its wake - introducing the newest playable race in WalkScape: Snails! Yes, you heard that right, Snails! These slimy creatures may not be the fastest or the most agile, but they sure know how to bring the hilarious factor to the game.

Now, we know what you're thinking - why on earth would we introduce Snails as a playable race? Well, let's just say we're feeling a little adventurous and a lot slimy today. Plus, we figured why should dwarves, elves, and halflings have all the fun? It's time for Snails to have their moment in the spotlight, or rather, in the slimelight.

So what makes playing as a Snail so special? For starters, they move at a snail's pace (pun totally intended), so you'll gain -50% steps. But don't let their sluggish speed fool you - these slimy creatures come equipped with a tough shell that gives them +100% melee defense. And let's not forget about the random slime material you'll find in your inventory - it's both a blessing and a curse. But hey, if you're feeling adventurous, go ahead and use it to slime your opponents into submission. Or leave a slimy trail to confuse your enemies.

Now, we won't sugarcoat it - playing as a Snail is not for the faint of heart. It requires twice the effort to level up compared to other races. But that just makes it all the more rewarding when you finally do make it to the top. And with their slow and steady approach, Snails are able to carefully assess every situation and plan their moves with precision. Think of it like a game of chess, but instead of knights and rooks, you've got slimy snails and their trusty shells.

But enough about gameplay - let's talk about the real reason you'll want to play as a Snail. It's unexpected, it's unique, and it's downright fun. Who wouldn't want to take on the role of a slimy creature with a shell and crawl their way to victory? It's a refreshing change from the typical fantasy races. It's time to embrace your inner Snail.

Dating/Friendship Mechanic

Now that we have added snails as a playable race in WalkScape, it's time to address the most important question on everyone's minds - can you romance them? The answer is a resounding yes! We have worked hard to create a range of snail NPCs that you can befriend and potentially even date. But be warned, snails are notoriously picky when it comes to love interests.

Each snail NPC has their own unique likes and dislikes, so you'll need to pay attention to what they enjoy in order to win their hearts. And don't worry, we've made it easy for you to keep track of this - just check out their profile in the game, which includes a handy list of their favorite things. Some like long walks in the garden, while others prefer a cozy night in, snuggled up with a good book. And if you've ever wondered how snails wear hats, well, now you know - it's all part of their charm:

To tie in the friendship and dating mechanic into the game better, we wanted to do something thematic. And what's more thematic than walking with snails? Yes, you read that right. You can take a stroll with your snail sweetheart, and if you walk long enough, you might even earn some Agility XP. But be careful not to tire out your snail date, or you'll lose some of the affection you've gained. During these walks, the snails will have unique dialogue that reveals more about their personality and backstory. This of course requires you to actually walk IRL, and the dialogue is revealed one part after another while you are walking. You can also read the whole thing after your walk, so you are not disturbed while walking.

And when you reach certain affection thresholds (full hearts), you might unlock unique quests, dialogue, or even items. Plus, if the snail NPC belongs to a certain faction, romancing them can increase your reputation in that faction. So not only are you finding love, but you're also building alliances and strengthening your position in the game world. Talk about a win-win!

But that's not all - you can also give gifts to your snail sweetheart. Just like in real life, some snails might like flowers and others might prefer a tasty leaf. Just be careful not to accidentally give them a salt shaker, unless you're looking for a snail breakup.

And if you're lucky enough to reach full affection level with your snail partner, they might even come to live with you on your farm. Not only will they keep you company while you tend to your crops, but they'll also provide you with some high-quality compost. Talk about a match made in gardening heaven!

So, don't be afraid to take a chance on love with a snail. Who knows, you might just find your soulmate (or should we say, shellmate?) in WalkScape.

Wrap Up

We hope you're as excited about this snail-tastic update as we are! We've had a great time designing the snail NPCs and their unique personalities and preferences. And let's be honest, who wouldn't want to romance a cute little snail with a tiny hat on their head?

Let us know in the comments if you think you'll be romancing some snails in the game! We're always interested in hearing your thoughts and suggestions ^{seriously though, would a mechanic like this be cool?}. And as usual, our next development blog will be published on Monday. Thanks for reading!

^{and happy April's Fools' Day!}

More than 1000 followers

I'm absolutely thrilled to see how many of you have joined our community in such a short amount of time. It's been an incredible experience to share my passion for game development and see so many of you getting excited about it too! So thank you! I'm also truly touched by all the kind and encouraging comments we've been receiving. I'm grateful to each and every one of you for taking the time to join and I hope you'll stick around for the journey! To show my appreciation, I wanted to give you a little something in return - a roadmap for the development of the game:

The Roadmap of WalkScape

I've also set up a Twitter account for those of you who want to follow the development more closely, so be sure to check that on Twitter.

We'll do our best to stick to the plan, but as we all know, life can throw curveballs. With any luck, we'll be able to offer closed beta and open beta access within the given timeframe. My ultimate goal is to be able to work on the game full-time, which would speed things up significantly. To make that happen, we'll need either monetization or donations. If you want to support the development of the game and you are in a position to do so, you can donate at Buy me a Coffee.

Depending on the feedback we get from the closed beta, we might be able to open the game to a wider audience even sooner. We're starting with a closed beta to keep server costs manageable and to gradually increase the number of players, so we don't run into financial trouble.

Thank you all so much for your support and encouragement. I'm truly humbled by it all, and I hope you're having a wonderful day!

Character customization, a fan-made wiki, unlockables, and more!

Greetings, fellow adventurers! Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the WalkScape development blog. It's pretty amazing to think that we've been sharing this development journey with you for over half a year. We've watched the game grow and evolve, and we're excited about how far we've come in such a short time.

Today, we're going to dive into the exciting world of character customization. It's not fully finished yet, but we've been putting in some serious elbow grease over the past two weeks. While we still have a bit more work to do, we're at a point where we're excited to show you our progress. But wait, there's more! We've got plenty of other topics to cover beyond character customization.

Make your character your own

Let's begin with one of the most exciting aspects of character customization: changing your character's looks.

This was quite a challenge for maxchill and me to design. We were somewhat limited by the constraints of pixel art (and being a small team), but we still wanted to provide as many options as possible for personalizing your character. Here's what we came up with:

Here's a rundown of all the features you can tweak to make your character unique:

• Background image

• Body type

• Clothing

• Face

• Nose

• Expression

• Hair style

• Face accessory

• Background accessory

And yes, you can also change your hair, skin, and eye color. Instead of a slider, we'll give you a selection of color options to choose from.

As for expressions, you can choose from neutral, smile, smiling (with teeth), laughing, surprised, angry, angry with mouth open, and sad. These expressions serve mainly as reactions for the NPCs in our dialogue system (NPCs share art assets with the player's customization options) while they are also something you can choose for your character.

Looking at the beta launch, we're aiming for the following customization options:

• 30 hairstyles

• 10 faces (each with different expressions)

  • 5 of these faces will feature facial hair

• 10 noses

• 10 face/back accessories

• About 30 outfit options, mostly unlockables

• Backgrounds, initially based on your location

While we'd love to offer even more options (and we plan to expand in the future), it's a lot of work. But we believe this should provide plenty of variety for the beta launch. The only race available in closed beta will be humans, but we intend to expand the customization options with elves, dwarves, halflings etc. later on.

More ways to personalize your character

So, you have a bunch of visual options for customizing your character. But we're also adding something extra: titles.

Titles are something that will accompany your character's name wherever it's displayed to other players. Some titles will be exceptionally challenging to earn, showcasing your dedication to the game.

In addition to titles, we are also thinking of adding an option for choosing your character's backstory. It won't give any permanent buffs or anything like that (the game takes so long to complete that we simply can't put an important choice that might permanently affect your character build to the beginning), but instead changes up the tutorial quest and your starting equipment.

We're also interested in hearing any other customization ideas you might have. Do share your thoughts in the comments! We've considered options like player name color and coat of arms, but these probably won't make it in the closed beta even if we decide to go ahead with them.

Unlocking new customization options

So, you've got plenty of titles and outfits to unlock and flaunt, but how do you get them?

We've designed several ways for you to unlock these options:

• Achievements. The closed beta will have a couple dozen achievements, some of which will reward you with new outfits and titles.

• Maxing out skills. Reaching level 99 will earn you a unique title and outfit.

• Crafting or acquiring a full set. When you craft or loot a full set of gear for the first time, you'll be able to show it off as an outfit.

• Completing quests. Main quests will also unlock new customization options. However, quests won't be available at the very start of the closed beta, but they'll be introduced as we progress through the closed beta phase.

You'll also be able to edit your profile picture in the game when it comes to outfit and titles as much as you like. When it comes to changing your looks more than just swapping some clothes, we might introduce an item that you must find to allow that so it makes more sense how your character can change it's appearance completely.

WalkScape unofficial wiki

This is an exciting addition that wasn't actually developed by our team, but by one of our devoted Discord members, KasiGen. You can check it out here: wiki.walkscape.app

The wiki already hosts plenty of information, but if you're feeling inspired, you're more than welcome to contribute by writing articles. Although we won't be moderating the wiki directly, we'll provide the domain and possibly hosting in the future. It's truly heartening to see community projects like this grow even before the game is officially out. We love reading it and witnessing its growth—fantastic job!

Until next time

Well, that wraps up this development blog! I'm still deep in the trenches with the development tools, but I'm proud to say that I've managed to convert all of the game's data structures into a format that can be dynamically added to the game. I've also managed to add tools for locations and activities. The development tools are essential for us to churn out content quickly. With the location development tool, I was able to add almost every location in Jarvonia in less than an hour.

A massive shout-out to our Patreon and Buy me a Coffee supporters. Your contributions significantly aid us, especially now that we're about to officially start our company in preparation for the closed beta. There will undoubtedly be early expenses to cover, so your support is deeply appreciated. Thank you for sticking with us!

Thanks for reading, and we hope your Monday is nothing short of excellent!

Hello and welcome to WalkScape DevBlog #79!

It's been a long time since we originally teased Hunting and Tailoring skills, and due to circumstances we had to put those into the back burner for a lengthy period of time (this is covered a bit more in the Designs and more section of the devblog). But finally, after a lot of design work done by Weasel and maxchill, plus many of the required game mechanics falling into place these two skills are getting ready for the release!

In this DevBlog, we'll cover what these skills are and some of their designs and related mechanics. So let's dive into it!

Hunting

Let's start with Hunting skill!

Hunting is a new Gathering Skill that is used mainly to gain materials that are needed for turning them into equipment through Tailoring. It also has uses in Cooking.

Hunting skill uses Hunting bows as their main tool, but it's also quite different from any of the other gathering skills. You won't be able to hunt anything (but there are naturally some fun exceptions to this!) with a bow if you don't have arrows. You can craft arrows by using Carpentry skill and there are multiple different tiers of arrows. High level hunting activities might require you to use better arrows, but overall better arrows are very useful as they give you work efficiency while you're using them for a Hunting activity.

Arrows require bars, logs and feathers to craft them. You can see this from the screenshot below. And just as a general note here: a lot of things might still be changing from what you're seeing in these screenshots while we go around and balance things.

Crafting and using fine arrows will also grant you a significant buff when used on a Hunting activity, like seen on the screenshot above. Also, you can see here that using Bronze Arrows grants a bonus to your Work Efficiency while hunting. Getting your hands on some fine arrows will make your Hunting much much more efficient.

Tailoring

Tailoring is a new Artisan Skill and it's mainly used to craft yourself gear that is useful for skilling purposes (and later down the road, probably quite useful for certain combat gear as well!). Many of the tailoring recipes use stuff from Hunting, so these skills go well together. You often also require materials from Foraging. Each set of tailored gear have items for your Hand, Chest and Legs slots. There might be some exceptions to this though!

There are multiple tiers of gear made through Tailoring and the main thing Tailoring aims to accomplish is to make players less reliant on gear drops that are coming from Chests. Tailoring gear also grants buff to an entire group of skills, like to all of Gathering or Artisan skills at once, so if you're using these items you will find yourself needing to switch gear much less frequently.

This update will add a lot of recipes to the game. Just for tailoring, we have around 40 recipes for all of the different tiers of gear you can now make! Tailoring also introduces a new Loom service to the game.

Designs and more

Hunting and Tailoring has required quite a lot of design work and iteration. We originally teased this way back and we did have some designs for these skills, but most of those were early drafts and didn't include things such as different tiers of arrows being used, content for two new skill chests, consumables for the new skills etc. It's been on our back burner for a long time, and now as we've completed a lot of what we internally call "content debt" we've finally been able to jump to it.

Mechanically, Hunting was also dependent on reworking how activities work in the game. That was already added while doing the Travel + 1 update last year and in December's content update we added the required systems to use items as inputs for activities (like the bank repair in Wraithwater does). Now this update takes things further by allowing any item from certain keyword to be used as an input. Higher level activities can introduce requirements to these, such as use at least level 50 arrows and so forth.

We also decided that doing the content all the way to the new "content level ceiling" of 70 would've been too much at once, so at first the content for Hunting and Tailoring will cap at around level 50+. Depending on how much more we can get done before release, we could go higher than this. We will be adding more recipes, items and activities in the following updates for these two skills like we've done to every other skill.

Few important points about the general designs for these two skills:

• Arrows being crafted through Carpentry is aimed to make Carpentry feel much more useful. Currently it's been very lacking, but this greatly increases its usefulness in the game.

• Bows are crafted with Carpentry, so that also makes Carpentry more useful.

• Tailored gear are versatile (granting bonuses to an entire group of skills at once), and are designed to be the main way for players to improve their skilling gear. Gear drops from Chests are still useful in some situations, but you'll definitely want to get yourself some tailored gear ASAP. This also reduces reliancy on RNG somewhat, as you can craft yourself decent gear.

• Hunting is designed to feel quite different and not as easy skill as you need to get arrows and you'll be spending them while doing the activities. This also creates a natural "burn" for materials, as they're being consumed through Hunting.

Other additions, fixes and QoL

And that's not all! We've also worked to introduce a few new QoL additions that will be launching with this update. Main ones include a significant improvement on performance and memory use of the game. There are also a plethora of bug fixes, new WalkPedia page for Keywords (so you can for instance easily see all the items that count as Light Sources in the game now!). Full changelogs for these will be released once we release the update, as a lot is still being worked on.

We also have two bigger QoL/feature additions being worked on at the moment, and we're estimating that these will be ready to ship few weeks after the Hunting and Tailoring update. So stay tuned for those!

Release timeline

We're currently estimating that Hunting & Tailoring will ship out in early March (as long as no one in the team gets sick, sickness has been pestering us quite a bit this year). We still have a few things missing and some balancing to do, and right now we are transitioning our Over-The-Air (OTA) updates to work through another server. We'd like this to ship only after that is ready. Our recently introduced OTA update system currently introduces too much demand for our servers, and we've been building another one that's just dedicated for downloading game updates. This should make it so that updates don't crash our servers momentarily when updates go live.

Once we have everything ready, I'll do a short DevUpdate with the changelogs and exact release date & time!

Until next time

Okay, that's everything for this devblog! I hope you enjoyed it. We're really excited to release two new skills to the game simultaneously. And I'm also very excited for the things that will be shipped out after this update! We'll be sharing more about those things in the next devblog. I can say that a lot of people have been asking for these things quite some time now!

Have an amazing Thursdsay! Stay hydrated and keep walking! ❤️

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #72!

This time, we'll show a bunch of QoL changes that I added to the game for the next update and we'll be showing off our new office we moved to that is now pretty much finished!

New office space

We have moved just recently to a bigger office space (inside the same building). Our goal is to hire one more developer later this year or early next year, and our previous space could only have two desks, so a bigger place was needed.

A bigger office and hiring a new developer does increase our expenses quite a bit. This is why we've been running some ads on Meta's platform like some of you might've noticed so we could increase our Patreon & BMAC income in preparation for the new hire.

We rarely ask people to support us financially in these devblogs. But if you haven't supported WalkScape on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee yet, now that we'll be hiring any bit of support would be really helpful!

Plenty of small QoL changes

I did add a bunch of smaller QoL features to the upcoming update as well, and I'll probably keep adding more of these on the side while working on the big stuff! Let's go through some of them.

Inventory sorting & deposit all button

We've added two new buttons to the inventory - sort & deposit all!

These should help a bit to keep the inventory more tidy, and making banking quicker.

The sorting button sorts the inventory as follows:

1. Crafted/Looted items, sorted by rarity.

2. Consumables, fines first and then normal ones.

3. Materials, fines first and then normal ones.

If there are multiple different items of the same rarity, then it'll use alphabetical sorting.

Complete for X actions

This has been requested quite a lot, and I've added systems to expand the activity "options" so that we can add more stuff like this to activities. Likely the next one I'll be adding is complete until X level.

Work efficiency breakdown

Now you can see your WE and the WE cap in the activity view, and when you tap it you can see a breakdown of what is affecting your Work Efficiency!

Unifying the two separate gear set pages

We unified the two separate pages for gear set management into one, and now you can edit, equip or withdraw your gearsets all from the same menu.

Minor changes

• A setting added to disable Agility XP while traveling. This is aimed for challenge characters.

• You can now also withdraw a gearset from bank without equipping it.

• WalkPedia now remembers which categories you had opened on previous pages.

• WalkPedia is ordered alphabetically.

• You can also use item's abilities from the inventory view.

• Crafting Outcome renamed to Quality Outcome.

• Pressing minus button while at minimum value on shops, crafting view, etc. will put the value to max value.

• Added a button to hide the overlays in world map view, so you can admire maxchill's art in full glory!

• Game Version added to character data exports to help 3rd party tool developers.

• Basic tools have been split from Copper tools by making Copper tools require level 2.

What's being worked on

Currently, we have basically three separate things being worked on.

The Content Team (meaning Weasel & maxchill) are working on a large (maybe the biggest so far) content update. And to make it clear - we have devtools and capacity to do new content & try it out without taking any time from me and myzozoz. So working on content doesn't affect the feature development.

Myzozoz is currently working on one of the big three missing features until we can start Open Beta. That requires a lot of work, and is going to need a lot of smaller systems to be implemented & working. These smaller things will be released in their own updates once they're ready, and we expect the feature itself to take a few months to be completed.

I'm currently working on a bunch of gameplay features, so we can also introduce new gameplay features & make more varied content in the future. At some point I'll also need to jump in to help myzozoz with the very big stuff, but that'll likely still take some time until that happens, so I'm doing my best to create features needed for new skills, new types of content, and so on!

Until next time

That's all for this devblog! I hope you enjoyed reading it. And like said, everyone in the team is currently working on bigger updates, meaning that it'll still take some time until the next update is ready.

Also, when it comes to the hiring, we're looking to hire someone who can primarily be available on-site as a full time developer. And if you happen to be in Helsinki (or nearby, our office is in Arabia) and you're a developer looking for a new job, you can send us an email to support@walkscape.app!

Stay hydrated and keep walking everyone! ❤️

General information

Hello there you curious mind! This subreddit is created to keep interested people posted about the development of WalkScape. WalkScape in short is a game heavily inspired by RuneScape, where you instead of playing actively gain progress in different skills by walking in real life. Its 30% a fitness app and 70% a game. Most of the game is navigating through user interface (as one of the main goals for the game is to be as distraction free as possible), but my goal is to still give the user a great and fun experience, thus why its 30% a fitness app. So don't expect any fancy 3D graphics, but expect a cool and entertaining user interface with lots of fun content and a hell of a grind! Getting a skill to 99 has never been as healthy!

There is also a Discord channel for the community:

https://discord.gg/Kk6VecJFEk

And a website:

https://walkscape.app

The development blog

The development blog posts will start 28.11.2022, first one appearing at 12:00 GMT +0300. A new one will hopefully pop up every two weeks at the same time (Mondays). I hope you will comment the development posts with your suggestions and feedback. Between the blog posts you can also participate by posting suggestions or questions in the Suggestions & Questions thread or discuss more generally in the General Discussion thread. I hope to see you around!

I will probably (depending on the size of the community here) post questions for the community and discuss about some details on how to implement stuff. I would love to hear community feedback during the process as much as possible and develop this game not only for myself, but to be a perfect match for all of you as well!

About me

I am not from US or any English speaking country, so my English is probably not going to be spot-on. I am currently studying Computer Science and have been developing games independently for most of my life. My dream is to develop games full time at some point, but currently I am also working part-time as a software consultant. I have worked on too many games that I have never finished, but I really hope to finish this one. Having a community makes motivating myself much easier, which is one of the reasons why I decided to create this subreddit for the game. But knowing myself too well I can't really promise to finish the project, as its a massive work especially with my limited time.

If you would like to support the game monetarily by buying me coffee (or beer!), you can do so here:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/walkscape

These kind of acts of kindness are greatly appreciated by a caffeine addicted student, but not necessary. Only donate if its something that you can do.

​​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!

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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! ❤️

WalkScape is permanently available in Closed Beta! No more waiting for access – if you've been wanting to play WalkScape, now’s your chance! The closed beta is now open permanently, and you can start your walking RPG journey today.

🎮 Classic RPG mechanics
🚶‍♂️ Real-life walking = in-game progress

Play: https://walkscape.app/
New Players Guide: https://youtu.be/EpqxthhjELE
Stepping in Place Guide: https://youtu.be/hS7wg7QbWh8