Hello - it's DevBlog Thursday! We have some news and updates about the development process as always, plus some awesome work by the community to share. Let's get started!

Important: If you're interested in joining the WalkScape team, scroll to the bottom of this post.

WalkScape map

WalkScape map tool can help you plan out your walks really nicely

First off, falarikae from our community has done some fantastic work in the last two weeks, creating a helpful world map tool for WalkScape. I'm providing hosting for the tool, and it's open source, so anyone can work with it as they please.

Check it out here: https://map.walkscape.app

The map includes filters for different types of in-game services and activities. Plus, you can use it to link certain locations to other players, like so:

https://map.walkscape.app/?l=disenchanted_forest

This should make it easier to assist new players. We will naturally have filters and search available in the game’s world map too, later on.

If you'd like to contribute to the project or create something cool with what's currently done, you can head over to the project's repository:

https://github.com/Schamppu/walkscape-map

Android pedometer

I recently deployed a new way to count steps on Android devices and introduced multiple hotfixes to the game.

First off, developing a universally working pedometer for Android is quite a challenge. While the new way we're doing step counting fixed a few of the biggest issues (the need for having Google Fit or some other fitness app installed, and the pedometer resetting to zero when the device is rebooted), it also introduced some new issues. Mainly:

• Android 12 devices especially need to give the game Unrestricted battery permission and uncheck "Pause app activity if unused" (or similar permission).
• Especially on Google Pixels, the battery consumption went a lot higher.

In the Android world, it's really challenging to make sure the game works on every device and reasonably recent Android version. I just yesterday bought myself a Pixel 7 device to be able to more easily test how things work, as that model especially can replicate the issues our players are having. Working on the Android pedometer is a long process for me to get it perfected, and currently, it works for the majority of devices really well, but still has some flaws that I will need to fix before I can say it's done.

While it's impossible for me to have devices to try out every model out there, I have some good ideas on how to improve things from here. Just to underline, my goals are:

• The game would work on every A10 device with a pedometer, and possibly even A9 in some cases.
• The game can function on its own without needing to rely on other apps like Google Fit, so you don't need to sacrifice your privacy by needing to download some third-party app.
• The battery usage while the game is closed stays low.
• The game would work with minimum setup, so that as few extra permissions as possible are necessary.
• If possible, get rid of the foreground process entirely, so the sticky notification would be gone.

As of now, we check all of these except for the last one on the majority of Android devices. But there is still work to be done to get it to work the way I want, and I'm hoping to find the tricks to do it. Sadly, there exists very little documentation on how these things work, as most developers just tend to use Google Fit or HealthConnect data. So it's a lot of trial & error to find out what works. For this reason, I'm asking for some patience.

Right now, I am working and testing pedometer improvements in small increments, but my main focus is to add new features to the game.

New features

Achievements feature is hopefully soon completed!

Finally! I've been so busy with fixing things, improving our infrastructure, and adding QoL that I haven't had enough time to work on new features. But now, adding new things to the game has become my number one priority.

I have already continued the work on achievements, and I'm looking to push out an update with achievements within a couple of weeks. I'm also working on consumables and introducing a lot of new content with the consumables.

After achievements and consumables are finally completed and added to the game, I will be moving on to adding Friends, Parties, and trading to the game. Trading will likely spend a good while in our internal testing before being stable enough to be sent out, and that's why I want to get it working ASAP so we can start internal testing.

Hiring

Our biggest bottleneck in terms of development hasn't changed. I'm still the only developer, and the added overhead of handling all kinds of business and community management made me realize a long time ago that we need to bring another full-time developer on board. Now, with the increased support from Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee, hiring a second developer has become a realistic thing to do.

Finding a developer with the interest and passion to work on this game is quite time-consuming, and that's why I'm also reaching out to the community. Here, it's much more likely we might find someone who already enjoys the game.

We're looking for a developer with at least the following skills:

• Two years of experience with Dart & Flutter
• One year of experience with React.js
• Good communication skills
• Game development experience, preferably professional

And I consider the following traits as a plus:

• Located in a similar timezone to me and maxchill, so around UTC+2
• Passionate about the game

I'm mostly interested in hiring someone full-time, but part-time is also possible. The work will, for now, be completely work-from-home.

If you're interested, feel free to send your stuff to contact@walkscape.app or apply via LinkedIn (or both!):

LinkedIn job post

We have received a lot of applicants through LinkedIn, so I recommend reaching out via email to avoid getting buried.

Until next time

That's all for today! I hope you enjoyed the development blog, and we have a lot of exciting things coming out soon. As seen from the poll, the majority of players are currently looking forward to new features over QoL improvements, so I'll be mostly working on expanding the game. Some smaller QoL things and bug fixes are likely to be added in each update though.

Have a wonderful Thursday everyone, and see you again in two weeks. Stay hydrated, and keep walking! ❤️