New isometric art created by maxchill!

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #85!

In this devblog, we'll give an update on the two big features that we are working on now and explain why we've been quiet about their development. This is going to be a lengthier DevBlog, so be prepared! This can be considered as a response to the Reddit post that was posted.

Last week we released the refreshed World Map. It's the first feature our new developer Crushy has been working on, and we'll probably be updating it with few more things and doing some polish in the next couple weeks.

Also today is the Ascension Day which is another public holiday, so happy Ascension Day everyone! Feels like during this time of the year there are public holidays every other week in Finland :D

Why there haven't been updates on the big three features

Last year we noticed that when we talked about certain features or other additions that we were working at that time, some people misunderstood those as promises that those things would be released very soon. This is why we felt that for our own sanity we should only publicly announce new stuff when they're very close to being released. We have internal deadlines when it comes to aimed release of a feature/update and we adjust those weekly based on how the situation develops.

A lot of the time when we're in the early phase or mid-development of something new our priorities change over time. Then we might need to delay the thing or work on something else and then jump back to the thing that was the primary focus. Also being committed to something being released at a fixed and publicly announced deadline (especially if the thing was still in mid-development when we announced it) often lead to situations where we were too optimistic on when a thing would be ready and then we had to do overtime for multiple weeks. This wasn't very good for our health or especially for me as I was sometimes working 24/7 for couple of weeks straight.

We decided that we would change from that to only announcing release dates when we're very close to release so we can stick to those and we won't end up needing to overwork ourselves when eventually something doesn't go as planned.

This has especially been the case for what we've been working now for a long time: trading. Trading is being worked in three phases and the first phase was already completed (OTA, over-the-air content updates). Also, we have completed the work on OTA being able to also send art assets and other types of media but there's some client-side work that needs to be done until it's fully ready for production.

What we are working on right now

Right now, we're working on two of the so-called "Big Three Features" (which has also changed a bit as will be discussed in the next chapter of this post). As explained in detail in the previous chapter: don't take these as promises that they'll be released in couple of weeks from now. The big features take months to develop and it's very hard for us with a very limited development team to give any exact timelines on how long any of these take to release.

Myzozoz is currently working on the Phase 2 of trading, which is adding a Mailbox feature to the game. This is a new service type in the game where you can receive items from the server. Prior to trading, we are planning to use it a bit to for example send some complimentary items during server downtime. And maybe small birthday presents for you character whenever it's their birthday (which is the day you created the character).

But the main thing about the Mailbox feature is that it's the second foundational piece for enabling transactions, as with that you'll be able to receive items when trading with other players. In our current trading plan, Mailbox is also used as a bank-like storage where you'll put your items that you might want to trade with other people, and if a trade deal goes through, the items will be sent from your mailbox to another player. This also enables that you can do trading regardless of your character's current location in the world.

When it comes to me (schamppu), I'm currently primarily working on Bank rework. The aim with this is to massively improve the performance and UI of the banking interface. But as is often with me, I constantly get dragged to some small bugfixes and other stuff, so it's hard to say exactly when this will be ready.

Once the Bank rework is completed and released, I'm moving to work on the Quest system. Our initial goal with this is that I make the system fully work, and we'll ship it with one quest that will work as the new tutorial. After that, we'll be adding more quests to the game. All initial quests will be aimed to work as something that gives a good direction for players that struggle with how open-ended WalkScape is at the moment.

Crushy is currently working on doing post-release support for the new World Map, after which he'll be doing some trials in order to make the location maps more interactable. We're not sure yet if we'll be doing it right away as the time commitment or technology needs might be too big, which is why he'll start by doing some trials from which we can gather information about how much work there would be to actually making the location maps work like we've imagined.

Changes to the Open Beta plan

Finally, a big update on the Open Beta plan: we're considering adding in Combat after the Open Beta has launched. For those that are not aware, we've always considered that to release Open Beta we need to have the big three features completed (Trading, Quests, Combat).

We're already going to be stretched quite thin with the work on Quests and Trading, and both of these features will still take several months to be released. If after both of those are completed we'd still need to work on Combat, which is definitely at least going to take as long as Trading did to complete, we would still be very far away from Open Beta release.

This is why some months ago we internally started considering that:

• Quests are absolutely necessary in order to have direction and a good tutorial. It has to be there for Open Beta.
• We only have one server reset planned, which happens when we launch Open Beta. This is why Trading must be released in Closed Beta and be fully tested so we can fine tune the economy with this one chance that we have.

Combat is a massive thing to work on and we can launch Open Beta without it. If Open Beta release is successful and the company could grow that would allow us to have more people working on it. Our biggest bottleneck (in addition to there being just three developers) for Combat is that we have only one artist (maxchill), and the planned Combat will require a lot of art assets. For this reason it would also make more sense that Combat is going to happen after Open Beta is released.

But we do recognize that without Combat in Open Beta WalkScape would be missing the "couch content" that we consider essential for having the full experience of the game. We're considering options such as including a Farming skill that would provide something you can manage while not walking or something else instead. So there would be at least something for the Open Beta that isn't Combat but scratches the same itch and is more realistic for us to complete in a reasonable time frame.

We would like to hear people's thoughts on this topic! After Open Beta we have planned our current development server with its rapid updates to become more accessible to larger amount of people. We would be using that to test Combat and any new massive features thoroughly before they're released to production. This would make it so that even if Combat is going to be worked on after the Open Beta launches we will have the opportunity to make sure it's not going to introduce exploits or critical bugs.

Another new isometric art piece by maxchill

Clarification on server reset and Closed Beta progress

Another thing that we want to clarify here now is that there will be some cosmetic rewards for everyone who has participated in WalkScape Closed Beta. We've talked about these quite often, but I think it's good to have them clarified here publicly.

Also to note: Quests and Trading will take some time to be released, so don't take this as "they'll be released in couple of weeks" as we explained in the first chapter. Once they are released there will still be some time until we do the server reset and move to Open Beta. Mainly this is to do the following:

• Final polishing, optimization, Quality of Life additions to make the game run and feel better.
• Minor feature additions to support the core gameplay loop.
• Setting up much more scalable server infrastructure, so we're prepared for rapidly growing player count.
• Content additions to fill in any blank spots and doing as much balancing as required for the economy to work as intended and that content balancing in general is great.
• All kinds of other preparations that go into moving to Open Beta, which take some time.

The rewards & other things that we promise to deliver for all Closed Beta testers

• We will do a copy of the entire Closed Beta server. Once we add the Offline mode of the game, you will be able to play with your Closed Beta characters on Offline mode. This will take some time to happen after the Open Beta. It's too early to give any estimates how soon after the Open Beta we'll be releasing the Offline mode for the game.
• Your in-game profile will be showing your total steps across all of your characters that you gained during Closed Beta.
• Your title based on what tier of Patreon/BMAC you used to support the Closed Beta development if you've supported us.
• We might publish a copy of the Closed Beta leaderboard and have it available on our website. You can at any time go back and see how well you did during the Closed Beta.

These are the main rewards we are committed to do for everyone who has participated in the Closed Beta. We might add more down the line but we're committed that the rewards include nothing that affects the gameplay. They'll be cosmetic or like with characters carrying over to Offline mode being restricted to not affect the online server.

We'll publish a more complete list of all rewards with more details once we're closer to the actual release of Open Beta.

3rd party API is now available

Link to the API documentation: https://tools-api.dev.walkscape.app/docs/

A message from falarikae, who has been an incredible help to us by creating an API for people interested in making 3rd party tools for WalkScape. Here's the message from falarikae:

Walkscape Data API - now open to community developers

The Walkscape Gear Tool has always been running on top of an API that directly reads Walkscape's assets and localizations and serves them as a JSON API. Starting today, it's open to anyone in the community who wants to build something on top of it - so you can finally stop scraping the wiki.

What's in it: items, skills, recipes, locations, achievements, activities, shops, loot tables, pets, rewards, and a bunch more. Basically all the static game content, queryable by id, searchable by field, and available in every locale the game is shipped in. Some data is still missing (things the gear tool doesn't use), but I can work on adding more in the future.

What it's good for: planners, calculators, Discord bots, anything that needs to know what's in the game. It's read-only and exposes no player data. Unreleased content is filtered out, so you won't accidentally spoil upcoming features.

How to get in: Send a message in the Walkscape Data API-thread on the main Walkscape Discord server. There's a dedicated thread there with full instructions, examples, and a place to ask questions or request endpoints.

Fair use: free for community tools. Please credit Walkscape/Not A Cult, and reach out before doing anything commercial with it.

Happy building.

-fala

Until next time

Alright, that's all for today! It's a lengthy post, and there's a lot to consider here. We would love to hear your thoughts on the mentioned topics and have an active discussion about these with the community. With that, we think we can do the best final decision on where to go from here.

Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoyed the devblog! See you again in two weeks.

Keep walking and stay hydrated everyone!