Tip of the day
The base chance to find most Chests is 1/250, which you can increase with better gear and tools.
Devupdates/2024
From Walkscape Walkthrough
In 2024, DevUpdates #12–16 explained the design of saved steps and plans for optional gameplay between walks, while covering Closed Beta Wave 2, content expansion, and major pedometer reliability improvements. They also explored ambient sound and music design, accessibility, and funding constraints. The year’s updates culminated in version 0.2.0, introducing achievements, the Adventurer's Guild, item abilities, character customisation, and an early WalkPedia, alongside equipment changes and quality of life improvements.
Posted on July 9, 2024.
- Announced version 0.2.0, the achievements update, as WalkScape's largest update so far.
- Maintenance was scheduled for July 10 at 16:00 UTC, with an estimated duration of one hour.
- Included a changelog covering major new systems, content rebalancing, performance improvements, and bug fixes.
Major additions
- Achievements introduced Achievement Points (AP), milestone rewards, and AP leaderboards. Collectibles also awarded one AP each.
- Added an Adventurer's Guild outpost requiring 20 AP, where specific items could be exchanged for reward tokens. Its deposit box allowed banking items without withdrawing them.
- Introduced item abilities with cooldowns.
- Added barbers, clothing shops, and wardrobes for character customisation. Purchased clothing remained permanently available, with free outfit changes at wardrobes.
- Introduced an early version of WalkPedia to track discovered content, activity history, personal drop rates, and item sources and quantities.
- Other additions included shop buyback, typo-tolerant searching, a friends leaderboard, and new activities and collectibles.
Equipment changes
- Replaced the arrow slot with a back slot, converted existing primary and secondary items into tools, and moved many capes to the back slot.
- Affected equipment would be unequipped during the update, potentially causing overencumbrance or reduced efficiency.
Known issues and follow-up
- WalkPedia remained incomplete, and missing historical tracking could distort displayed statistics, particularly chest drop rates.
- Some appearance variants could not be selected through wardrobes or barbers.
- Further fixes and WalkPedia improvements were planned before the developer's July 16–22 holiday, during which updates and hotfixes were unlikely.
Posted on March 14, 2024.
- Shared a sound and music demo by PitStop Productions and requested community feedback.
- The intended style was ambient and cosy. Initial feedback to the company asked for lighter, less intrusive UI sounds.
Sound design and controls
- Proposed asking players whether to enable audio on first launch, with separate volume controls for different sound types.
- A gradual fade-in when opening the game was suggested to avoid sudden loud audio and allow time to mute it.
- UI sounds were considered important for accessibility, providing audible feedback for players with vision difficulties.
- Each realm was intended to have several music tracks, helping distinguish places such as Jarvonia and GDTE.
- Sound was also expected to become more useful with future features such as combat.
Funding and implementation
- Audio production costs were significant, so commissioning smaller packs was being considered to spread the expense over time.
- A later submitter comment confirmed that sound and music had not yet been implemented because they remained unaffordable.
Posted on March 13, 2024.
- Announced a patch centred on Android pedometer reliability, alongside loading improvements, quality of life changes, and bug fixes.
- Included a changelog detailing the update.
Pedometer and step handling
- Reworked the Android pedometer to function without Google Fit, prevent it from falling asleep, and preserve tracking through phone restarts.
- Fixed a bug that incorrectly awarded large amounts of steps and added better rollback tools to correct affected characters.
- Improved background step processing and error handling, with additional fixes for iOS step readings and loading delays.
- Testing had shown promising results on the available Android models, although the scale of the changes meant further issues were possible.
Update transition
- Maintenance was planned for March 14, 2024, around 20:00 UTC.
- Changes to local saving and pedometer data made old step records incompatible with the update on both Android and iOS.
- Players were asked to open the game before maintenance to claim outstanding steps. Unclaimed steps and steps taken during maintenance would not carry over.
Quality of life
- Added crafting filters, back buttons throughout menus, location descriptions, and more notification and step-popup options.
- Improved loading times, system font-size support, interface consistency, and localisation preparation.
Posted on February 28, 2024.
- Wave 2 was scheduled to open at 14:00 UTC on February 28, 2024.
- Included a changelog covering a substantial content expansion, performance improvements, and bug fixes.
Wave 2 access
- The supporter cutoff was March 31, 2024, with Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee supporters who began supporting before that date eligible for Wave 2.
- Hundreds of beta applicants had also been invited, with further invitations dependent on server capacity and testing needs.
- Supporters and applicants admitted after the cutoff would enter through Wave 3.
Content and systems
- Added 25 activities, more than doubling the game's activity count, alongside new equipment, collectibles, crafting recipes, and additional world content.
- Character history logging and partial achievement tracking were implemented, providing the groundwork for completing the achievement system.
- Activities involving multiple skills could now award chests for each relevant skill.
- Fixes addressed travel, crafting, saved steps, loot rolls, tutorial rewards, and interface issues.
Step tracking limitations
- WalkScape supported only the phone's internal pedometer, so smartwatch totals could differ from in-game steps.
- Some Android devices stopped recording steps because system or application settings allowed the pedometer to fall asleep.
- A submitter comment clarified that Google Fit was not a step-data source for WalkScape; it could help keep the pedometer awake on affected devices while a proper fix was investigated.
Next priorities
- Immediate work would focus on critical issues, followed by completing achievements and preparing more GDTE content.
- The Portal gained notices for server problems and downtime.
- Stabilisation and server development had taken longer than expected, prompting a more cautious approach to future release estimates.
Posted on February 1, 2024.
- Explained the design of saved steps and plans for optional gameplay between walks in response to community feedback.
Saved steps
- Saved steps preserve excess steps after an activity finishes, reducing the need to check the game at exactly the right moment.
- Consuming saved steps requires further walking to maintain the connection between exercise and character progress, while encouraging players to keep walking.
- Instant spending was rejected because it would shift gameplay toward collecting energy during walks and optimising its use afterwards, weakening progress feedback during exercise.
- The saved steps cap was likely to increase because players were walking more than the pre-release survey had suggested.
Planned active gameplay
- Optional features were planned before or shortly after Open Beta to provide things to do while resting.
- Turn-based PvE and PvP combat would use walking to train combat skills, while combat itself would level classes. Combat Points earned through walking were being considered to limit continuous fighting.
- Quests and random encounters would allow reading and decisions to be handled later, without interrupting walks.
- Player trading, housing, and Farming were planned to offer further activities between walks. Farming would include real-time timers, with a submitter comment explicitly rejecting crop-rotting mechanics that punish missed check-ins.
- Friends, guilds, and an in-game Portal were planned, with sharing photographs from walks also being considered.
Quality of life and Wave 2
- Broad activity queues were considered too complex, but automatically starting an activity after travel was planned, with crafting queues a possible later addition.
- Completion notifications, clearer UI, expanded tutorials, inventory sorting, and a location list were being worked on or planned. Bank sorting and tabs were intended for later.
- Bug fixes and quality of life improvements were the priority before Wave 2, tentatively expected within a couple of weeks.
- Patreon linking on the Portal was fixed, with Buy Me a Coffee migration to the new system planned for the same week.
