I just released my first fully free Android game: Wandering Alchemist (GPS walking game)
Edit: After a weekend of work, I just added achievements https://lemmy.zip/post/69007248
It took quite a while, but it's finally out. Fully free, no ads, no in-app purchases (besides a "Support the developer" option), no data collection and fully offline playable. All you need is your phone and GPS :)
I originally made the game to go on walks, unfortunately I sat even more in front of my PC to develop it. It is what it is. Hopefully it motivates some of you to get your steps in 💚
General idea of the game: Collect ingredients, brew them into potions and sell them to merchants. With the gold and reputation you get you can buy things and decorate your neighborhood. Other players see the same map and resources (so you can indirectly play together), but the game world fully belongs to you (singleplayer only).
General roadmap right now:
- Adding achievements
- Adding buildings you can improve over time (tavern to attract merchants and an ingredient tree you need to grow)
- More minigames and improving the existing ones
- And of course bugfixes, please let me know if you run into issues :)
For any questions and suggestions I'm always available!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vlyn.wanderingalchemistOpen linkView original on lemmy.zip
100 replies
I see a couple people asking for an F-Droid release which would be great, but would require the app to be open source. Just thought I'd let you know there's no obligation for you to open-source your app if you dont want to. If you'd rather keep it closed source that's okay too
Interesting concept and I wanted to try it. Downloaded from Aurora (because my phone is degooglized) and was kicked out of the game upon launch because google play isn't enabled.. Disappointing and I'd love to have it on F Droid too
Found it, Google injects by default an "Installer check" that blocks the app from running without Google Play.
I disabled it, try to get the newest version of the game (1.2.11) over Aurora and see if it runs :)
F Droid is a lot more messy, the game has to be 100% open source for it, which is not something I'm working on right now. I'd rather get it to iOS first.
What's the problem with 100% open-sourcing? Third party libraries?
Wow that automatic installer check is really shitty from Google, I wonder why I never saw outrage about that, it will close access to most apps in degoogled operating systems
Probably because most people with degoogled android get most of their apps over f-droid anyway. I have like 3 play store apps, and two of those are messengers
Ah, sorry, by default Google seems to inject some kind of Google Protection into new apps. You're the third person asking about F Droid, I'll have to take a look :)
I might need to do custom builds for that though (strip out Google plugins), I'll put it on my todo list.
+1 for f-droid pls :)
I have tried it. So far, I had to open the Google Maps app while the app is open so it will exit "Waiting for GPS." Maybe for it to trigger the location service. Also, I think the map will be friendlier if it can be rotated based on the compass or manual rotation by pinch. The current setup would be fine only if you are already familiar with the roads in the area. But, for a free app, I like that there is an alternative i can use for Pokemon Go or Ingress.
Darn, were you on the latest version? I did improve the GPS with update 1.2.10 (as it sometimes had trouble getting a location fix on resuming the game).
I did want to add rotation to the map, but unfortunately with the art style it's just not possible :-/ If I just had roads and flat terrain then sure, but with the procedural terrain you can't really rotate it. Or if you only rotate the street map and not the terrain it would look terrible (in my opinion) and not like an actual world map. Open to suggestions though!
Just for the record, another GPS game, "Resources", also never implemented a rotating map; possible for similar reasons.
I guess Google play hasn't served me the latest version yet. I will wait for it and try again. I am on version 1.2.11
Sorry, that's the latest, I fat fingered the version (:
Was this on just your very first app start (with the tutorial) or later on too? The first start needs a very good location fix, sub 50 meters (so indoors it's a bit tough), otherwise the tutorial spawns, you jump and it becomes a mess.
As soon as the tutorial is done all further game starts should be much faster, hopefully.
It was on my very first start. I tried closing then opening the app but it didn't fix the issue. I know opening Google Maps will fix this because this also happens on Pokemon Go when the GPS location is inaccurate. Opening Google Maps seems to trigger a better algorithm for GPS. Not sure if this is device specific though or due to power saving mode.
GPS can be fiddly unfortunately. But great that it works now, if you get any issues on the next few starts please let me know 💚
Looks cute. I like the art style.
Ya gonna open source it and put it on fdroid?
No plans yet, I might look into that in the future.
I'd rather focus on bringing it to iOS, having a few people who already asked for it. Not an Apple fan, so still thinking about getting an old used iPhone for testing..
You can probably emulate iOS in xcode but you are unlikely to build anything for it without MacOS and xcode. Yeah, lovely environment.
Yes, you need a Mac for XCode (can't emulate that). Then you also need to pay Apple $99 a year, even if you just want to release a free app.
I could simulate an iPhone for testing, but for a GPS game this would be messy. Even on Android I'm still struggling a bit with getting GPS to work reliably. You pretty much need a real phone to test that :-/
Oh right, forgot the GPS, welp.
Xcode actually has pretty good gps emulation, you can set routes for it to walk.
What tech is this using? Is it a html5 game?
Oh, it's Godot.
I know you can simulate GPS, but it's way too clean and predictable. With a real phone you get much weirder behavior. Besides the whole permission topic on real devices.
One player complained about GPS jumping 100 meters away, but their Google Maps had the same issue. So I had to say "I can't do it better than Google Maps" :D
fantastic work
But I had to use Godot Mono (with C#). GDScript was way too slow. Especially for the procedural terrain generation.
Ah okay! I’ve been wanting to make this style of app using webxdc for a long time
If you can't afford or don't want to buy a used Mac for this, I recently set up MacOS 26 on a Thinkpad t480s I had lying around. Turns out if you just google specific laptop model + hackintosh, you'll easily find out if it's a well supported model for hackintosh.
However whether or not this would work on a brand new Apple account or you'd just get banned for suspicious activity, I have no idea. My account is old and I have an iPhone, so it wasn't as suspicious to them I think.
No worries there, I already got a MacBook Air recently (As I needed something portable + for work), so I have that covered. Just ordered a used iPhone SE 2020, that will still get the newest iOS version, so it should do well enough for a few tests :)
One other thought: I believe that it's possible to run macOS in a VM in Linux. The macOS license technically doesn't allow that, and I also don't know if that would be sufficient for running XCode or for publishing to the App Store. I've never tried any of that myself, but have heard that at least running it in a VM is possible.
You can also run Hackintosh if you have a AMD gpu or older Intel integrated graphics
Yes, that's another option.
have done game dev on ios.... man it's so much easier on android. objective c and the app store are gigantic pains in the ass. you'll probably also need to get a macbook or other apple device to build from.
Do you still have to use Objective C? They've been trying to get everyone to use Swift for nearly a decade now and Swift is a MUCH nicer language, but I have no idea about game dev in particular, since I've only done crappy little apps.
I'm outside the macos ecosystem. so probably?
Eh, did some research and it turns out you have no need for Objective C using any of the mainstream game engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot) and in general you only need it when working with old frameworks. I'd wager that pretty much anyone who started iOS dev in the last 5 years hasn't even touched objective C except when working on legacy apps.
I'm using Godot, so seemingly it could be as easy as export to XCode and build. Seemingly..
Let's see, still in the process of sourcing a cheap iPhone SE 2020 or 2022. Everyone I know uses Android, so I can't ask them if they have an old iPhone lying around (:
I wish ye luck! please do an after-action-review on how that goes, it's good information for fellow devs
Please make F-Droid version happens.
For now I removed the Google Play store protection, so you can download it over Aurora (Starting with version 1.2.11).
F-Droid won't happen for a while, as the game would need to be 100% open source for it, sorry!
Seconding the F-Droid request.
Also, the app is not available in Russia, is that by design?
In any case, good luck with it and thanks for sharing something like this!
Yes, sorry. I had to limit a handful of countries due to laws.
For example Japan forces you to register a business there.. similar to Vietnam. Russia has sanctions. And so on :-/
I see! This is understandable for a small indie dev.
But I'll always be happy to see other avenues for distribution :)
It's on Aurora now, so that should work :)
Aurora causes weird issues for me, and also the anonymous access seems to be no more for everyone, so doesn't help me in particular.
But I'm one user, and overall, having it on Aurora means a lot! Besides, having it there means someone eventually shares the .apk itself, and that's something I can certainly work with, even if I'll have to update manually.
Overall, a good development! :)
I honestly have no clue about APK sites, but some already picked up the latest version: https://apkcombo.com/wandering-alchemist/com.vlyn.wanderingalchemist/
I don't have a degoogled phone, so I can't test if it runs, sorry.
That's some very obscure place to take apks from, but ultimately it works, thanks :D
Love the harvesting minigames!
Lovely, have fun! 💚
This looks great! I'm downloading it on Aurora rn, but if an f-droid version comes out I'll be very excited!
Let me know if it actually works from Aurora. I had to strip out the Google protections so it doesn't crash on launch (:
So you just walk around irl and collect stuff that way?
Yes, pretty much. There are some harvest minigames for collecting.
You also find various events. With the ingredients you brew potions, sell them and then spend the money you earn :)
This is so cool and I immediately downloaded it. I look forward to trying it out and dontaing to you! I rather my money go to a donation than a store. Thanks for sharing and developing!
Thank you 💚
But please only donate if you're rich. Otherwise just enjoy the game and if you want give feedback :)
Times are hard enough for everyone, I made the game in my freetime and have a job, so no worries!
well, I don't have any interest in this game. but, since it's free with no data collection I'll try it, and give it 5 stars
Looks great, thank you for developing it and for releasing it for free without catches! I hope that you will eventually release it for iOS.
Have you posted this to Mastodon or any other social media yet? I hope that word will spread and make your game popular. :)
Just on Reddit, but it's a ghost town with zero interactions, lol.
I'm not really active on Twitter like sites, not my style unfortunately :-/
No problem, I understand. I'll see what I can do to spread the word.
You may want to consider cross-posting this to some other communities on Lemmy though, like [email protected] and perhaps [email protected] since this is a pretty interesting use of OSM data. Thanks again.
Will do, thank you!
Thank you!
Just read your comments about OSM data etc. Fantastic! Well done.
About to head on holiday to Europe, so have downloaded it and will play as I go.
Thank you!
Lovely. If you run out of street map as you travel, just hit the map button again. It will hopefully offer you the download for the new area :)
Great tip! Thank you
This is really cool! I'll def download it and send some support :)
Thanks 💚 Let me know what you think about it!
we shall watch your career with great interest
Interesting bro
By GPS enabled, does that mean this is like my fit bit and I can level up through masturbating rigorously? Asking for a friend.
it will be released as soon as you leave ukraine :D
tell putie. I'm sure he'll listen then.
Oh yeah, as if I'm personally marching on Kherson in full armor.
Dude, these kinds of attacks have lost ground a long time ago. Plenty of Russians do not support what's happening, many struggle themselves under drone strikes, quite a few actively resist. Or did you think large-scale attacks of Ukraine on some of the most crucial military objects happened without any help from Russians?
If you want to display your active civil stance, do it where you can. With US, Europe, Australia and more following Russia's footsteps, I'm sure you'll have ground for political action. Harassing Russians for the sake of being born in Russia is shortsighted and only serves to make you feel morally superior while doing nothing.
like russians in Ukraine lol
I do. Like here.
Look, I live in the US, I know it suuuucks having a leader you don't trust, who's actively fucking your country raw dog. Every time someone says "TRUMP SUCKS THE US IS TERRIBLE" I affirm the premise. If you don't support the shitbag, good luck with your revolution!
but as a game dev, I'd wouldn't publish my stuff in RU until that's done, and I don't blame anyone one iota if they aren't either.
So interestingly, my phone downloaded and is playing it fine. We went to search it up on my husband's phone, and his phone isn't supported? Which is wild to me, as my phone is older/generally the one that doesn't find apps!
Also maybe for the future, an idea! It's very odd to me I can't move the map at all. No swiveling around and looking, it's always just looking northish I suppose! Maybe I'm more use to games like Orna where you can swivel and move and look around the map though.
So far I do like it! I look forward to more!
Edit: Wait, forgot about the main topic, what phone does your husband have? There shouldn't be any restriction on Android version (if it's one of the newer ones), but maybe I really messed up somewhere.
Yes, the map only has zoom for now (pinch in and out). As it's a fantasy world I didn't want to provide too much "looking around" options, the only thing that has to do with the real world is the street maps, which is an optional download ^^'
A little bit concerned people will do stupid things like go into private property, if I give too much freedom there. But I'll think about adding a two finger move or something, the big question is just how to recenter again afterwards (button? There already is a double tap to reset zoom).
So I can say mine is a Galaxy A12 with Android 12 I think. I'll edit this is a few hours when he's awake and I can look at his phone!
I had a look at the topic, if his phone is from that era and was a budget phone, then maybe it doesn't have 64-bit support (32-bit only). Unfortunately I can't ship the game with 32-bit support :-/
But let me know the exact phone and I can tell you more!
So phone gained! Looks like a "Galaxy A13 5G" with Android 13?
Darn, it's 32-bit only, as I thought. Sorry :(
Wild mine is 64 bit and his isn't! Mine is a laggy crashy thing now and his is okie dokie. Well, unfortunate. We need to get new phones, but don't have the money, alas. Maybe for the holidays!
I downloaded the game and got my city's street map added. Now I really want to test it... hopefully the dense smoke goes away before summer ends 😢
Looks awesome, I look forward to trying it!
I've never been one to do mobile app type things, and with the Pokemon Go stuff that came out, I'm massively hesitant to. I understand this is offline, but it requires GPS. Is that just for the game locally on the device? I see no ads. Do you collect any data? I love this idea, I'm just honestly hesitant because of the current situation of these kinds of games.
It's fully offline, so no worries there. The GPS is just for your game to know where you are while playing. No ads, no data collected (besides what Google generally collects over the Play Store).
In theory there is one network connection to Cloudflare: I offer a street map download for all across the world. So for example if you're in Austria like me it looks up which map file you need (simple .json catalog), then offers you to download the map file once (57 MB for Austria). But I don't track anything there either.
Zero interest in handling player data, I'm in the EU, GDPR is a bitch :)
Thank you for taking the time to address my paranoia. :D
I've downloaded the game and going to try it out. First off, I absolutely LOVE the art style. So pretty.
Thank you for creating this and sharing it with us here. :)
Thank you for giving it a try 💚
Honestly I was a bit afraid no one is going to play it (:
This looks awesome! Downloaded. I already play Walkscape, which is like RuneScape but works by counting steps. This will be a fun addition.
Is it playable while traveling? I don't know if it's a waste to put down stuff in places to which I'll never return.
Fully playable while traveling.
Stuff you put down is just decoration (so skip that for places you don't revisit) and currently two functional buildings (garden to plant ingredients, market stall to sell potions for less gold).
When traveling over 12 km/h it doesn't count for walk distance (companion rewards, daily missions, ..) but it's fully playable otherwise :)
I seemed not to have ingredients near me at first, and I got stuck with no clue what to do. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game to get the instructions to come up again, and made two potions. Is there a way to get back to the help/tutorial?
Not for the very first tutorial (without resetting your app), all other tutorials can be pulled up again.
The tutorial should give you enough resources to brew your first potion and sell it. Then you'll have to go for a walk to find more stuff :)
There's plenty around, if you're not in a city just walk your usual route and interact with what you find. There's some easter eggs too. In a city with blocks you might be able to use the markers to track down resources, but it's not necessary to play like that.
Downloaded and gave it 5 Stars
Thank you 💚
Congratulations and good luck!
I’m always looking for a walking game, unfortunately I’m stuck on iOS. Do you use OpenStreetMap for your map data? I’d love to add your game to our wiki if so.
I still need to get a used iPhone to look into iOS releases (:
Map data is from OpenStreetMap, then heavily cut down and compressed so people don't have to download so much.
Copped!
Interesting. I'll see how well my phone likes it.
I'm very bad at both the dragging water to the pot and keeping the fire going it seems! Oh well.
The water dragging might just be bad design, there are some tricks to it, but I'm not fully happy with the minigame.
For the fire, big movements :)
Ahhh like swipe very hard left and right for fire? Okie dokie.
I downloaded the street map and I recognize the streets but what's the yellow lines next to them. If those are sidewalks is confused. But I am in New Jersey, land of screwed up sidewalks.
Gray are actual roads, yellowish are paths. Could be foot paths, hiking trails and so on. It's based on OpenStreetMap.
On big roads it might also show the sidewalks as yellow I guess, probably depends on country :)
I’m on iOS so cannot try it out. Wishing you the best and looking forward to playing it on iPhone if you manage to get to that! Can you tell us more about the assets you’re using? I’m curious how you managed to get a cohesive look. Did you draw everything yourself? (Tip: look into adding ground shadows!)
Thank you :)
Ground shadows for which part?
There's procedural terrain (fully code generated) for the map. And then there's the decorations/buildings you can place (low poly assets).
Originally I wanted to generate all art by code, like your character could pick clothing, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, ... but I just couldn't get it to look good enough (unfortunately, I thought it would be really cool).
I'm a software developer, not an artist. I can do design work and draw a little, but not good enough. So I used a local image generation model on my GPU, generating each asset dozens of times and then reworking the best one in GIMP until satisfied.
For the light effects I drew a greyscale map on another layer, which then gets added to the asset at night (colored in with the color the player picked).
I'd love to hire an artist to redraw everything in a better style, but that's simply not in my budget. Maybe if the game actually makes some money, which is unlikely ^^'
@Vlyn Just downloaded this, definitely checking it out on my next walk :catjam: