New isometric art created by maxchill!

Welcome to DevBlog #87! This time we'll be covering how the progress is going on with Trading, what's been going on with the patch and changes that we'll be doing to Portal very soon.

Mailbox for Trading in testing

Alright, let's kick off (feels really cool to use this phrase now with the Fifa world cup going on :D) by looking into how the Trading system is progressing!

Myzozoz has just now wrapped up work with the Mailbox feature. We've now started testing this internally, and there is still some UI polish left to do so that the whole system feels and looks nice, but these shouldn't take much time. But the work overall on this has actually been quite a lot faster than we imagined. We're currently thinking that testing this feature thoroughly is going to take a week or two. But the feature is likely ready to ship to production in a few weeks.

This also wraps up the second phase of Trading work, and Myzozoz has already begun the work on the last (third) phase of implementing Trading. It's too early still to give any rough estimates on when that's ready to ship, but right now things are looking really good in this regard. We'll keep giving updates on how all of that work goes and sharing some screenshots once we have things to show!

Upcoming patch & why fixes has taken more time

The past two weeks have been really busy for me in personal life. Probably the biggest thing was that I moved to a new apartment last week, and the moving is still a bit work-in-progress as I haven't had time to unpack & clean up the old place yet. This has taken me time from work. I've already fixed a lot of the issues that people found from Gear Sets, and we're working to release these ASAP. If I wasn't busy with the moving, we would've likely been able to release these last week. But a lot of cool stuff also happened: we were interviewed by the Finnish Public Broadcast company (YLE), and they're working on a story about me. From what I've heard, this article might be released next week. The article is going to be in Finnish, but I think a lot of our Finnish players here might find it very interesting. And for non-Finnish speakers I think using browser translate feature might do a decent job so you'll be able to read it as well!

All of the moving related stuff should be done this week, and then I'll be able to return to the regular work schedule. I know a lot of people have been waiting us to patch these problems and I'd just like everyone to know that on normal circumstances I would've been able to ship them a lot quicker like we normally do. But sometimes life comes in the way, and this is why it's taken longer.

The patch also introduces some tweaks by Crushy to improve camera controls on the world map. We're aiming to release this patch ASAP!

Changes to Portal

One more announcement: we'll be doing some changes to WalkScape Portal very soon!

We're already stretched quite thin as a small team in terms of providing quick & good customer support. A lot of issues, feedback etc. gets posted on our Portal, but as we already have our hands full with the Discord, Reddit & our support email (support@walkscape.app), the stuff posted on Portal have often been neglected.

This is why we've decided that we'll consolidate our customer support a bit by removing the ability to post & comment from Portal. And instead we'll add a new button there that directs people to use the channels that we're able to monitor effectively.

The absolute best way to get any of your issues resolved quickly is to contact us via the support email (support@walkscape.app). When it comes to feedback, bug reports, or just getting help with the game our community is often the quickest way to get some help. Our Discord server is very active and we have dedicated channels there for feedback, bug reports and more! Another great place to report bugs, have community discussions and to provide feedback is our WalkScape subreddit.

I'm a bit sad that we have to close down the messaging capabilities of Portal, but as we had discussions about this it seemed the only option. We don't want people to end up posting there and expecting us to help through that, so it's just better for everyone that we direct people more effectively towards our support email and active social media channels so they can get better support a lot quicker.

Until next time

Another new location art by maxchill

Alright, that's all for today!

I'm very excited with all of the progress we've had on Trading, and it's been awesome to get things moving very quickly with it now that our OTA systems are mostly completed. And in personal life, I'm really happy to finally have a new apartment for myself. My last place was just 26 square meters and the new place is whopping 43 square meters! :D I can finally fit a couch in my place, which is going to be awesome.

Keep walking and stay hydrated everyone!