Hello! Yet another devblog Thursday! Let’s get started.

Wave two launch

Let's start with the biggest news since the last devblog: wave two started last week and it's going great. We now have more than six times the player count of wave one playing the game. This has been excellent for testing whether our infrastructure can handle more load and peaks, which it seems to handle really well!

I would also like to welcome everyone new coming onboard. Thank you for joining the Closed Beta and showing interest in the game. I hope you've had some fun playing! We've also received a lot of feedback and bug reports, which is awesome.

Statistics since wave 2 launch

With the recent update, we began collecting some statistics on the server. Here is a compilation of achievements you all have made since the launch of wave two:

• Total steps: 129,751,089
• Total actions: 2,608,854
• Birch logs gained by the players: 442,941
• Copper ore gained by the player: 182,220
• Pine logs gained by the players: 121,371
• Shrimps cooked: 29,626
• Smithing chests: 1004
• Foraging chests: 1487
• Carpentry chests: 1507
• Agility chests: 1948
• Mining chests: 2631
• Birds nests: 3420
• Sunken chests: 48
• Cooking chests: 436
• Fishing chests: 473
• Crafting chests: 524
• Berries from chests: 133,237
• Shovelaxes from chests: 9
• Travelling actions: 447,343
• Birch trees cut: 441,395
• Copper ore mined: 180,381
• Forests foraged: 179,163
• Salt mined: 124,949
• Ships repaired: 1244
• Dumpsters dived: 651

Upcoming patch

As the first post-wave update, I'll deploy a fix to the bug that's causing some players to load their entire step history when the game loads. This bug was caused by Google Cloud backups and was so peculiar that it took me quite some time to figure out the underlying reason. For those asking for a more technical description: Google Cloud automatically backs up the files I'm using to keep track of your step count, and sometimes when it does this, it changes the decryption key for these files, causing the game to fail to read them. When the game failed to read these files, it entered a strange state where it thought your step count was zero, thus adding all of the steps you've ever taken to your character. Turning off the backups and adding some failsafes to loading solves this.

We will also be removing extra steps from players who have received steps due to this bug.

With this update, I have also reworked the Android pedometer from scratch. This was necessary to fix the need for having Google Fit installed on some devices where the pedometer was disabled due to no app actively using it. With this, I've also managed to fix the pedometer resetting on updates/phone restarts, so your steps on Android are no longer wiped if you restart the phone.

These are the most urgently needed fixes, but I plan to also optimize the long wait times when launching the game after this update, while implementing some other fixes as well. So, two patches are coming before I jump back into working on new stuff.

Huge thanks to everyone reporting the bugs! The whole idea of the closed beta is that we can fix these issues and try out things rapidly without risking the game's economy as the server gets a wipe when we move to open beta.

Feedback

We have also received a lot of feedback here on the subreddit and Portal!

First off, I want to state the obvious just to make it clear: I really appreciate all of the feedback, and I’m trying to read through everything that's being said about the game. Even though I don’t have the time to answer every post and participate in the conversation as much now that the subreddit has become much more active, I’m making notes.

There are two primary things I would like to address here:

Early game requires too much attention

This is a known issue. When players first start the game, it gives very little direction in terms of what to do, which can lead many people needing to have the phone out much more than they would like while they exercise.

Reading through the posts I can see that many veteran players usually jump on to say that this becomes a non-issue after playing the game for a few days. Which I agree with. The game starts out fast, like incrementals tend to do, but when you find what you want to do in the game you’ll find that the game usually asks for at least several thousand steps before you need to change things.

But it doesn’t mean that we should just ignore this issue, and after thinking about it I think it comes down mostly to the lack of early game tutorial or guidance. The game now doesn’t give any direction. The current tutorial implementation in general is a placeholder, as the thing we have planned works as a quest, but we don’t have a quest mechanic in the game yet.

So how I'm planning to address this in the future is:

• Offer two options in the tutorial quest: one that clearly states it’s fitting for those players who want to interact less with the game during their walk, meaning it gives objectives that take much longer to achieve. And then another one, which goes over stuff faster but requires more active interaction with the game while you walk. This in my mind would quickly show the players who currently feel like there’s way too much interaction in the early game how to play it in a way that they’re probably looking for. While also giving the option for those who don’t mind it to get exploring the world faster.
• Quality of life. We have identified that traveling is usually the thing that mostly causes you needing to check the game quickly after starting a walk. Most players seem to be okay with it, but this could be vastly improved by introducing the planned travel+1 queue. So for instance, you can set to start crafting or doing an activity immediately after arrival. Also, optional notifications when you’ve arrived or your activity has ended would help with this.
• Just brainstorming, but perhaps a 1+travel queue too. So if you want to first fill out your inventory with materials or do a certain activity for X actions and then travel somewhere, that could also be a possibility.

With these in place, I feel like the problems recognized during early game would be improved so that it’s not causing issues. But before that, I recommend the players who feel like it’s an issue to keep playing for a little longer, as it truly gets a lot easier when you reach a certain point in the game.

Active gameplay components

This has been mentioned in a recent development blog already, but I just want to remind everyone that the current game is still very early in its development. We only have the core mechanics in and have now spent time perfecting those and getting feedback, but the game is still missing a lot. Just to remind you what we’re planning for the game:

• Friends and party system. Add your friends to have your own personalized leaderboards, and make a party with your closest friends to compete and collaborate with them on a leaderboard that resets periodically. Also, see where your friends are and what they’re doing on the world map.
• World events. Things will pop up on the world map for a certain amount of time, that require players to collaborate together to complete. Basically, world bosses that work like activities, which you complete together by putting your legs to work.
• Guilds. Form a guild or join one, with some guild-specific stuff to contribute towards.
• Trading. Currently designed to work like Grand Exchange, where you can set your items for sale and buy things from others. Direct trading between players in the same location also planned if our servers can handle it.
• Quests. Just like in any RPG, with side quests and each realm of the game having their own main quest lines.
• Farming and player housing. The NPC building assets are already designed for being used in player housing. Farming will work as something that has a real-world time component to it, offering something to play with at home.
• Combat. Inspired by old school JRPGs, so with a turn-based system. You’ll gather combat points from any walking you do that you can spend when at home or while sitting on a train to have a few fights.
• And more. Dungeons, skilling bosses, realm reputation system, more skills, magic, WalkPedia, and so on.

Completing these additional features is not a small feat, especially as our biggest bottleneck at the moment is that I’m still the only developer working on the game. With the increased Patreon and Buy me a Coffee income, I’m hoping we could now hire another one - which naturally would help us a lot to get the work done significantly faster.

If you haven’t supported the development yet, but enjoy the game, supporting the effort financially helps us to scale things up. We're determined to keep it independent and thus haven’t taken any investors on board, so everything is run solely through funding coming from the community.

Poll

Right now, I'm facing a prioritization challenge, and I'd like to get the community's opinion.

On one hand, we have a bunch of Quality of Life (QoL) improvements and general polish that has been suggested to us recently. I'm eager to complete these before working on new features, so people can have a more enjoyable experience with the current set of features. These would include the travel+1 queue.

On the other hand, I feel like I might be getting sidetracked again from working on the features that should've been added a month ago (achievements and consumables).

So, long story short, this devblog is going live with a poll. If you'd prefer more QoL improvements before features, we'll get that done first, or features before QoL.

We have Maxchill and Floursifter working on new content updates regardless, so this shouldn't affect our schedule for adding more content to the game.

Poll is available on this Reddit post

Until next time

Alright, that’s all for today!

Once again, my thanks go to everyone involved in the community and helping with testing and feedback. It has been truly awesome to see how much the game and the community have grown in the last week. I think we’re off to a great start here with the game, and in the upcoming months, the game will elevate to become one of the best fitness games available.

And the wave two is open until March, 31st. So if you haven’t got an invite yet, remember that it’s not too late to apply or get access by supporting through Patreon or Buy me a Coffee.

Have a Thursday everyone! And as always: stay hydrated, and keep walking ❤️