Location art by maxchill!

Hello!

This time, we'll be covering what's currently going on with the servers and also giving a progress update on our next release.

Let's dive in!

Current server issues

We're currently encountering issues with our server provider, Hetzner. We assume that the problem lies in their systems, as the problems started when they began their maintenance on load balancers, which is still on-going.

I have contacted them, and it's the issue requires some more investigation. Also, myzozoz is currently on a short vacation, which makes investigating this issue a bit more difficult as he's our main server guy.

Currently, the servers are stable - but connecting can sometimes take a lengthy time. We'll try to fix this as soon as we can.

You can also check Hetzner's status on their maintenance here. Our servers are located on FSN1, which is still under maintenance.

And a city location art by maxchill!

Progress on next update

Due to the small chaos caused by servers and everything else that's been going on this week, our original plans for the release of next update is delayed a bit. Last week I was also busy upgrading our development tools for the game, which took some time away from working on this update.

The work on the next update continues, and we'll try to get it out as soon as possible. We're trying to cram in more bug fixes that would ship with the World Map update that's the main thing and already finished.

The world map is likely going to be expanded a bit more later. Currently the main improvements are that it should be much more performant, you can see your friends on the map, routes look much better and cleaner and that it provides more information to the players. We aim to expand on the information that it provides later as well!

The next update will also include some small content additions. We've already started the design for our next content update which I'm hoping we'll finish soon!

Getting rid of all AI-stuff in next update

Our next update will also finally get rid of all the remaining AI-art in the game. Maxchill has been working hard to replace every single location with the new isometric art that we've been showing off in these devblogs.

The work isn't yet 100% complete, but we'll already switch the few remaining ones to use a "work in progress" isometric art location. These should get replaced with proper ones in a month or two. The remaining locations are the most work intensive, as most of them are the city locations found in GDTE.

Even though it was quite a process for maxchill to create all of the locations in isometric pixel art, I personally think it's awesome that the game will finally be completely free of AI art.

Shoutout to Herbert

Last time we also listed a bunch of 3rd party web tools that the community has made to the game, but we didn't include a shoutout to Herbert - our Discord bot made by ParadoxBoxx.

Herbert currently is in charge of moderating verification so that spam bots don't get through to our Discord. And Herbert lets you use a bunch of different commands, like:

• /set_flair to set yourself a flair that shows your in game stat, like steps, total level etc. on Discord server.
• /flex to share your WalkScape character on the Discord server. Naturally to flex your levels and steps! :D

We have a dedicated #flex channel on Discord to show off. Herber also updates a #census channel where you can see how many players are in each location.

There are also some other features that are coming to Herbert very soon, so stay tuned for more!

If you haven't joined our Discord, you can do so from this invite link

Until next time

That's all for today!

I'm hoping in next devblog we've got some more exciting news to share! And I'm trying hard to get the server stuff fixed ASAP.

See you again in two weeks, keep walking and stay hydrated!

And another location art piece!