walkscape

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevUpdate #20: Hotfix & Small Update +435 changelogs

Hello! A small development update here. We've just released +435 which adds some new QoL features and more. Also, this should fix the remaining issues found in Trinketry update. Our focus now shifts from post-update support to smart watch integration.

Here are some changelogs!

New feature: Skills in WalkPedia

This has been asked from us a lot, and I finally had the opportunity to add it. It doesn't have everything we would like it to have, but it most importantly now includes some cool stats about your progress in each skill, a small player guide to help you get started and you can see the unlocks for each skill.

Statistics about how many steps you've contributed towards each skill, your total XP, etc.
See all of the unlocks for each skill.
Open skill pages straight from the Character view by tapping a skill there.
A player guide that helps you to get started in each skill.

New feature: Text links to WalkPedia

This is a small WalkPedia related improvement, where now you can open pages in WalkPedia by tapping on the links inside texts. This includes stuff like requirements: if some requirement needs a certain item for instance, you can just tap on it and it opens the corresponding page in WalkPedia.

WalkPedia links for activities, skills, items and locations inside the text.
The links only support what is currently available in WalkPedia. More links will come later down the line.

Minor new features:

Service icons have been entirely re-designed and they now include a clear icon to show what tier they are.
Item keywords are now displayed both in the item view and WalkPedia item pages. You can now see which items count as light sources etc.

Changelogs

Added

Added 1 new activity
New translations from our community translators

Changed

Reworked antique market assessor loot table
Buffed several amulets
Nerfed old rings

Fixed

Fixed opening multiple instances of WalkPedia
Leaderboard filter changing now changes the text too
Fixed the alignment with hamburger menu icons
Fixed opening multiple instances of WalkPedia
Fixed sprite alignment on activity filters
Made inactive (requirements unmet) attributes easier to read
Fixed the rouding issue with Faction Reputation
Location view in WalkPedia where locations gets listed has been cleaned up a bit
Fixed the item equip listing being in Australian
Empty treasury will never show the red ! icon
Minimap should now always update when arriving to a location
Updated to a new version of Flutter, which should fix some rendering issues

That's all for today! Happy walking everyone

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #57: We won Best Mobile Game award and Trinketry has been released!

Hello everyone, and welcome to DevBlog #57! This devblog will be rather short, as we've just released a new update but we still have some exciting news to share.

Winning Best Mobile Game award

Okay, so let's get to the big thing!

Just the weekend after setting a deadline for Trinketry release, I got an email saying that we got nominated for recognition in Latvian Game Awards. This would be the first award that WalkScape could win, so naturally I wanted to go there. I spent a nice three days in Riga with maxchill and we participated in the game awards event. And we won!

I have to say, me and the entire team are very honored to get our first award for the game. This is a massive step (no pun intended) for us. The event was also lovely, and I really enjoyed my short stay in Latvia! Also, the trophy looks absolutely awesome!

Thanks for the organizers, and thanks to all of our players and supporters. The support & constant flow of feedback are a key to making a great game. I also did an interview with GamesRadar+, which turned out to be pretty great. If you want to read me talking about the game and some fundamentals behind it, you can read the article here!

Trinketry has been released

Since getting our devtools ready last devblog, now we've successfully released the new content update. We also released a hotfix yesterday, which fixed a few things:

0.3.0-beta+431 - 2025-03-19 Hotfix

Added

Added newest translations

Fixed

Fixed issues with Merfolk Dress and with some other pieces of content
Fixed character loading issues that affected some players
Updated to Flutter 3.29.2, which fixed the issues people were having on older Android devices (Android 9 or devices with old GPUs)

We will likely release at least one more hotfix later on to address a couple of other issues that were found. For instance, on some devices the menu to equip items is mirrored - this is something that we've identified already and we'll be fixing. Then, we'll start working on our next update!

I'm personally very pleased with the update and how it went. Because I also got a flu, this was the first production release where I wasn't there to help out with getting it out. We've made some good progress as a team that they managed to pull off the release and everything that goes to it without me needing to be present, and I can say I'm very proud that it went as smoothly as it did!

Until next time

Okay, that's all for today! I just got back today to work after being sick with the flu, and post-release there are not often that many things to share as we're mostly busy with fixing issues and moving forward to work on the next update. I hope you're all enjoying the update.

Stay hydrated, and keep walking!

Youtube introduction video where I explain the game.

Comments2

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

Welcome to WalkScape's Lemmy community!

Hello!

I was asked to create one here on Lemmy as well, so here we go!

We already have our hands full with our other communities, so I can't promise that I'll be as active here, but I'll do the best I can. The best place to ask for any urgent help about the game and our most active community is on Discord.

Some useful links and information here:

Official website. Has links to Discord and to our newsletter among other things.

How to sign up for closed beta & FAQ. FAQ has actually some important questions answered, so I recommend to check it out!

How to support the game. This game is entirely community funded with no publisher or investors. Supporting us helps us to scale and make awesome stuff faster!

WalkScape Portal Community. This is our official Reddit-alternative to post bug reports and talk about the game.

Important! The current Closed Beta wave ends on October 6th. If you support the game before that, you'll gain access immediately. If you beta application gets accepted during the wave, you'll also gain access. Access to the game that has been granted at any point of Closed Beta will remain until Open Beta when everyone will gain access to the game.

Comments10

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #87: Mailbox for trading in testing, upcoming patch & changes to Portal

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 ([email protected]), 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 ([email protected]). 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

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!

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #86: Changelogs for today's update, Small Step Big Cape challenge

Welcome to DevBlog #86!

Today we're releasing a new update to the game that includes various bug fixes and introduces some new Quality of Life features to the game. This devblog mainly will include changelogs for that and also a shoutout to our community member J who is doing a fiendly wager for the so-called "Small Step Big Cape Club". Let's dive in!

Changelogs for update +657

Important: The update is releasing today, as soon as the App Store reviews are done!

Added

Removed all of the remaining AI assets from the game, reducing the application size by 31mb
Collectibles now show up as the first items under action completed and have special styling
You can now deposit only some items from a selected inventory slot
Added a loading spinner to WalkPedia and made it open the page faster
(World Map) Added more realms
(Keywords) 2 new keywords and 2 new search keywords (one is "weight medium" keyword which stacks at 100)
(Locations) ISO art added for Halfling Campgrounds, Halfmaw Hideout, Bog Bottom, Bog Top, Old Arena Ruins, Red Coast and Bilgemont Port

Changed

(World Map) Re-enabled location search (we fixed it :D)
(World Map) Made location icons visible from further away
Double action no longer uses consumables on the extra action
Gear set equipping behavior changed - empty slots are now not unequipped. Instead the character keeps whatever is already equipped in a slot if you are equipping a set with empty slots
When withdrawing gear sets from bank, the withdraw option no longer withdraws items that you already have in your inventory
Withdrawing gear sets also checks for items you have equipped and does not withdraw items that you have already equipped
Import & equip button now also closes the gear set page
Ordering of gear changed in gear sets to follow the same order as gear view uses
(Locations) Blackspell Port renamed to Blackspell Harbour and icon updated
(Keywords) "Light" and "Ultra Light" keywords changed to stack at 1000 and 10 000
(Locations) Noiseless Pass has been taken over by Trellin for the GDTE - rejoice
(Locations) "Snowy" location keyword applied to Disenchanted Forest, Azurazera, Kallaheim, Frusenholm, Barbantok, Centaham, Port Skildar, Coldington, Sanguine Hills, Nomad Woods, Casbrant Fields, Norsack Plains, Frostbite Mountain, Noiseless Pass, Fort Of Permafrost, Beach Of Woes, Winter Waves Glacier, Horn Of Respite, Black Eye Peak, Winter's End, Nurturing Nook Springs, and Pit Of Pittance
(Items) Birch skis keywords for regional and Jarvonia search removed in place of snowy search
(Items) Birch skis attributes for while in Jarvonia realm changed to while in a snowy location
(Items) Pine skis keywords for regional and Jarvonia search removed in place of snowy search
(Items) Pine skis attributes for while in Jarvonia realm changed to while in a snowy location
(Items) Oak skis keywords for regional and Jarvonia search removed in place of snowy search
(Items) Oak skis attributes for while in Jarvonia realm changed to while in a snowy location
(Items) Bert's super skis keywords for regional and Jarvonia search removed in place of snowy search
(Items) Bert's super skis attributes for while in Jarvonia realm changed to while in a snowy location
(Items) Ectoplasm scraps now have hide and medium weight keywords
(Pets) Changed camel to use location keywords for "desert" for XP/attribute requirements in place of "Wrentmark"
(Pets) Changed reindeer to use location keywords for "snowy" for XP/attribute requirements in place of "Jarvonia"

Fixed

(World Map) Moving camera to locations/player no longer overshoots if triggered while inertia is present
(World Map) Realm borders (last zoom level) were redone to work on all devices
(World Map) All realms now have icons
(World Map) Improved Bottom Sheet behaviour
Fixed overflow issues with tags inside text
Fixed being able to do bank deposits from any location
Deposit button is now only shown when at a bank location & the item can be banked
Fixed that using abilities from item view closed the bottom sheet
Fixed the this gear set no longer exists error when equipping imported set
Withdrawing geat sets now takes quality into account. It withdraws if a higher quality than current in inventory is found, but does not if same quality or lower is found
Fixed using phone navigation not dismissing the world map when you have a bottom sheet opened
Fixed that GDTE was not wrapping to 2 lines on location info view
Fixed the validation error when doing travel + 1 with a summoned pet change
Fixed that you could only do one transaction when buying PFP options and needed to re-enter the shop to buy more
Player Icon not being centered in away screen
Fixed the problem with pet summons when traveling to Kildome cross
Now instead of showing 1 000 M steps when not being able to travel, steps until arrival shows N/A
Import & Equip now checks if the item is already equipped, and skips if that is the case
Fixed getting the same error message twice on incorrect travel pathing
Fixed that changing to correct requirement when seeing queued action having invalid requirement now updates the validation
Fixed that having incorrect requirements for an traveling activity did not cancel the action
Fixed the stack overflow issue happening when summoning pets to queue
Fixed the incorrect locale link for WalkPedia loading
(PFP Options) Fix mummy outfit not hiding headwear

Small Step Big Cape challenge

First, to quote @J's original post on our Discord server:

Hey everyone, we're having a closed beta friendly wager in #small step big cape club (Discord thread) - anyone who makes CoHA in 1.1m steps or CoFA in 4.5m steps gets to pick a pet and we will name our pet in your honor. (@MixHagelslag @barosepha @squigglyruth and me, @J).

For the last few months we've been discussing various strategies for achieving minimal step capes so even if you don't participate the discussion might be interesting!

Notable runs so far:

@MixHagelslag CoHA at 750k steps prior to hunting/tailoring update and again at 830k after the update, and CoFA at 5.53m steps

@barosepha CoHA at 1.31M steps past hunting/tailoring

@galrock0 coming up on CoFA once a rare pet drops, around ~5.5m steps

@squigglyruth currently on a CoHA challenge run via rushing tortoise, which just reached adulthood at 467k steps

To make it interesting, I'll be gifting a 1mo culitist sub for the first person to hit 4.5m step CoFA. (If the goalposts move due to new achievements getting added, I'll adjust it to a new reasonable threshold)

If you want to join the challenge, you can join the very active discussion on our Discord server! The discussion on this is under Challenges -> small-step-big-cape channel.

For a long time, we've also been thinking of hosting a similar challenge officially, but having one done by the community is even more fun for us to follow! For any runner ups in this challenge, we'll also throw in as rewards to whoever becomes the 2nd and 3rd place runner ups a reward of 1 month Cult Supporter (including all of its rewards) Patreon subscriptions.

We're hoping you'll have a lot of fun trying to overcome this challenge!

Until next time

That's all for today! We're currently working on the upcoming big stuff (as mentioned in the previous devblog), so this update is mostly just some new QoL and a bunch of bug fixes. I hope you all enjoy it!

Keep walking and stay hydrated everyone!

Pssst: it's also Ice Hockey World Championship (IIHF) going on right now. Finland will be playing against Czechia in less than an hour. Let's hope Finland wins gold this year...

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #85: Update on our way to Open Beta

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #85!

In this devblog, we'll give an update on the two big features that we are working on now and explain why we've been quiet about their development. This is going to be a lengthier DevBlog, so be prepared! This can be considered as a response to the Reddit post that was posted.

Last week we released the refreshed World Map. It's the first feature our new developer Crushy has been working on, and we'll probably be updating it with few more things and doing some polish in the next couple weeks.

Also today is the Ascension Day which is another public holiday, so happy Ascension Day everyone! Feels like during this time of the year there are public holidays every other week in Finland :D

Why there haven't been updates on the big three features

Last year we noticed that when we talked about certain features or other additions that we were working at that time, some people misunderstood those as promises that those things would be released very soon. This is why we felt that for our own sanity we should only publicly announce new stuff when they're very close to being released. We have internal deadlines when it comes to aimed release of a feature/update and we adjust those weekly based on how the situation develops.

A lot of the time when we're in the early phase or mid-development of something new our priorities change over time. Then we might need to delay the thing or work on something else and then jump back to the thing that was the primary focus. Also being committed to something being released at a fixed and publicly announced deadline (especially if the thing was still in mid-development when we announced it) often lead to situations where we were too optimistic on when a thing would be ready and then we had to do overtime for multiple weeks. This wasn't very good for our health or especially for me as I was sometimes working 24/7 for couple of weeks straight.

We decided that we would change from that to only announcing release dates when we're very close to release so we can stick to those and we won't end up needing to overwork ourselves when eventually something doesn't go as planned.

This has especially been the case for what we've been working now for a long time: trading. Trading is being worked in three phases and the first phase was already completed (OTA, over-the-air content updates). Also, we have completed the work on OTA being able to also send art assets and other types of media but there's some client-side work that needs to be done until it's fully ready for production.

What we are working on right now

Right now, we're working on two of the so-called "Big Three Features" (which has also changed a bit as will be discussed in the next chapter of this post). As explained in detail in the previous chapter: don't take these as promises that they'll be released in couple of weeks from now. The big features take months to develop and it's very hard for us with a very limited development team to give any exact timelines on how long any of these take to release.

Myzozoz is currently working on the Phase 2 of trading, which is adding a Mailbox feature to the game. This is a new service type in the game where you can receive items from the server. Prior to trading, we are planning to use it a bit to for example send some complimentary items during server downtime. And maybe small birthday presents for you character whenever it's their birthday (which is the day you created the character).

But the main thing about the Mailbox feature is that it's the second foundational piece for enabling transactions, as with that you'll be able to receive items when trading with other players. In our current trading plan, Mailbox is also used as a bank-like storage where you'll put your items that you might want to trade with other people, and if a trade deal goes through, the items will be sent from your mailbox to another player. This also enables that you can do trading regardless of your character's current location in the world.

When it comes to me (schamppu), I'm currently primarily working on Bank rework. The aim with this is to massively improve the performance and UI of the banking interface. But as is often with me, I constantly get dragged to some small bugfixes and other stuff, so it's hard to say exactly when this will be ready.

Once the Bank rework is completed and released, I'm moving to work on the Quest system. Our initial goal with this is that I make the system fully work, and we'll ship it with one quest that will work as the new tutorial. After that, we'll be adding more quests to the game. All initial quests will be aimed to work as something that gives a good direction for players that struggle with how open-ended WalkScape is at the moment.

Crushy is currently working on doing post-release support for the new World Map, after which he'll be doing some trials in order to make the location maps more interactable. We're not sure yet if we'll be doing it right away as the time commitment or technology needs might be too big, which is why he'll start by doing some trials from which we can gather information about how much work there would be to actually making the location maps work like we've imagined.

Changes to the Open Beta plan

Finally, a big update on the Open Beta plan: we're considering adding in Combat after the Open Beta has launched. For those that are not aware, we've always considered that to release Open Beta we need to have the big three features completed (Trading, Quests, Combat).

We're already going to be stretched quite thin with the work on Quests and Trading, and both of these features will still take several months to be released. If after both of those are completed we'd still need to work on Combat, which is definitely at least going to take as long as Trading did to complete, we would still be very far away from Open Beta release.

This is why some months ago we internally started considering that:

Quests are absolutely necessary in order to have direction and a good tutorial. It has to be there for Open Beta.
We only have one server reset planned, which happens when we launch Open Beta. This is why Trading must be released in Closed Beta and be fully tested so we can fine tune the economy with this one chance that we have.

Combat is a massive thing to work on and we can launch Open Beta without it. If Open Beta release is successful and the company could grow that would allow us to have more people working on it. Our biggest bottleneck (in addition to there being just three developers) for Combat is that we have only one artist (maxchill), and the planned Combat will require a lot of art assets. For this reason it would also make more sense that Combat is going to happen after Open Beta is released.

But we do recognize that without Combat in Open Beta WalkScape would be missing the "couch content" that we consider essential for having the full experience of the game. We're considering options such as including a Farming skill that would provide something you can manage while not walking or something else instead. So there would be at least something for the Open Beta that isn't Combat but scratches the same itch and is more realistic for us to complete in a reasonable time frame.

We would like to hear people's thoughts on this topic! After Open Beta we have planned our current development server with its rapid updates to become more accessible to larger amount of people. We would be using that to test Combat and any new massive features thoroughly before they're released to production. This would make it so that even if Combat is going to be worked on after the Open Beta launches we will have the opportunity to make sure it's not going to introduce exploits or critical bugs.

Clarification on server reset and Closed Beta progress

Another thing that we want to clarify here now is that there will be some cosmetic rewards for everyone who has participated in WalkScape Closed Beta. We've talked about these quite often, but I think it's good to have them clarified here publicly.

Also to note: Quests and Trading will take some time to be released, so don't take this as "they'll be released in couple of weeks" as we explained in the first chapter. Once they are released there will still be some time until we do the server reset and move to Open Beta. Mainly this is to do the following:

Final polishing, optimization, Quality of Life additions to make the game run and feel better.
Minor feature additions to support the core gameplay loop.
Setting up much more scalable server infrastructure, so we're prepared for rapidly growing player count.
Content additions to fill in any blank spots and doing as much balancing as required for the economy to work as intended and that content balancing in general is great.
All kinds of other preparations that go into moving to Open Beta, which take some time.

The rewards & other things that we promise to deliver for all Closed Beta testers

We will do a copy of the entire Closed Beta server. Once we add the Offline mode of the game, you will be able to play with your Closed Beta characters on Offline mode. This will take some time to happen after the Open Beta. It's too early to give any estimates how soon after the Open Beta we'll be releasing the Offline mode for the game.
Your in-game profile will be showing your total steps across all of your characters that you gained during Closed Beta.
Your title based on what tier of Patreon/BMAC you used to support the Closed Beta development if you've supported us.
We might publish a copy of the Closed Beta leaderboard and have it available on our website. You can at any time go back and see how well you did during the Closed Beta.

These are the main rewards we are committed to do for everyone who has participated in the Closed Beta. We might add more down the line but we're committed that the rewards include nothing that affects the gameplay. They'll be cosmetic or like with characters carrying over to Offline mode being restricted to not affect the online server.

We'll publish a more complete list of all rewards with more details once we're closer to the actual release of Open Beta.

3rd party API is now available

Link to the API documentation: https://tools-api.dev.walkscape.app/docs/

A message from falarikae, who has been an incredible help to us by creating an API for people interested in making 3rd party tools for WalkScape. Here's the message from falarikae:

Walkscape Data API - now open to community developers

The Walkscape Gear Tool has always been running on top of an API that directly reads Walkscape's assets and localizations and serves them as a JSON API. Starting today, it's open to anyone in the community who wants to build something on top of it - so you can finally stop scraping the wiki.

What's in it: items, skills, recipes, locations, achievements, activities, shops, loot tables, pets, rewards, and a bunch more. Basically all the static game content, queryable by id, searchable by field, and available in every locale the game is shipped in. Some data is still missing (things the gear tool doesn't use), but I can work on adding more in the future.

What it's good for: planners, calculators, Discord bots, anything that needs to know what's in the game. It's read-only and exposes no player data. Unreleased content is filtered out, so you won't accidentally spoil upcoming features.

How to get in: Send a message in the Walkscape Data API-thread on the main Walkscape Discord server. There's a dedicated thread there with full instructions, examples, and a place to ask questions or request endpoints.

Fair use: free for community tools. Please credit Walkscape/Not A Cult, and reach out before doing anything commercial with it.

Happy building.

-fala

Until next time

Alright, that's all for today! It's a lengthy post, and there's a lot to consider here. We would love to hear your thoughts on the mentioned topics and have an active discussion about these with the community. With that, we think we can do the best final decision on where to go from here.

Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoyed the devblog! See you again in two weeks.

Keep walking and stay hydrated everyone!

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #84: Release date for new World Map & more!

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #84!

During the last two weeks, we had an amazing opportunity to gather together (in person and all!) with the entire Not a Cult team. This took some time off from development, but I think it was really great for team building purposes. More on that below!

Also, we are now nearing the release of our next patch, and we're ready to set a release date for it: 6th of May, so next week's Wednesday!

What happened during last two weeks

First off, like said in the last devblog we had some server issues. These have now been resolved, but it took a bit longer than we would've liked to combat the issue. Myzozoz (who is responsible for our servers) was on vacation, which made it difficult for us to get it fixed quickly. But I'm happy to say I only needed to disturb his vacation by like 20 minutes :D

We also had a meetup with the entire Not a Cult team here in Helsinki! The weather was terrible, but that's how it is most of the time. We had a really good time, and I think it really helps us going forward that now we've all seen each other in person.

I'm hoping we could have more meetups with the entire team that is scattered around the globe in the future as well. But I'm so happy this could finally happen. Team building exercises are fun!

World map update releasing next week

We were originally hoping to get the update released this week, but with the server issues, meeting and tomorrow being another national holiday (May Day/Labor Day/Vappu/Vappen) we thought it's better to do it next week.

The next update with the reworked world map is releasing on May 6th, so next week's Wednesday! There should be no maintenance for this update.

The update will include some light content additions, content fixes, a plethora of bug fixes, and the brand new world map. Some of the functionality we wanted for the new world map is still missing, but it should already be much better than the old one. But as always, there is likely going to be some new issues introduced with it that we'll be hotfixing.

As covered in the previous devblogs, the new worldmap will include a lot of new features:

You can see your friends on the map
We've cleaned up the routes and made routes that you don't meet requirements for much clearer
The performance should be much better
The map shows undiscovered or rumored locations more clearly
You can see the different regions in Arenum when zooming out
You can search for locations
You can toggle visibility for different things
And more!

We've already ramped up our work towards the next big things that will be coming after the world map update. Stay tuned for those!

Until next time

That's all for today!

I'm hoping you all have an amazing May Day!

Hyvää vappua/Happy labor day/Glada vappen!

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #83: Server issues, work continues on the next update

Hello!

This time, we'll be covering what's currently going on with the servers and also giving a progress update on our next release.

Let's dive in!

Current server issues

We're currently encountering issues with our server provider, Hetzner. We assume that the problem lies in their systems, as the problems started when they began their maintenance on load balancers, which is still on-going.

I have contacted them, and it's the issue requires some more investigation. Also, myzozoz is currently on a short vacation, which makes investigating this issue a bit more difficult as he's our main server guy.

Currently, the servers are stable - but connecting can sometimes take a lengthy time. We'll try to fix this as soon as we can.

You can also check Hetzner's status on their maintenance here. Our servers are located on FSN1, which is still under maintenance.

Progress on next update

Due to the small chaos caused by servers and everything else that's been going on this week, our original plans for the release of next update is delayed a bit. Last week I was also busy upgrading our development tools for the game, which took some time away from working on this update.

The work on the next update continues, and we'll try to get it out as soon as possible. We're trying to cram in more bug fixes that would ship with the World Map update that's the main thing and already finished.

The world map is likely going to be expanded a bit more later. Currently the main improvements are that it should be much more performant, you can see your friends on the map, routes look much better and cleaner and that it provides more information to the players. We aim to expand on the information that it provides later as well!

The next update will also include some small content additions. We've already started the design for our next content update which I'm hoping we'll finish soon!

Getting rid of all AI-stuff in next update

Our next update will also finally get rid of all the remaining AI-art in the game. Maxchill has been working hard to replace every single location with the new isometric art that we've been showing off in these devblogs.

The work isn't yet 100% complete, but we'll already switch the few remaining ones to use a "work in progress" isometric art location. These should get replaced with proper ones in a month or two. The remaining locations are the most work intensive, as most of them are the city locations found in GDTE.

Even though it was quite a process for maxchill to create all of the locations in isometric pixel art, I personally think it's awesome that the game will finally be completely free of AI art.

Shoutout to Herbert

Last time we also listed a bunch of 3rd party web tools that the community has made to the game, but we didn't include a shoutout to Herbert - our Discord bot made by ParadoxBoxx.

Herbert currently is in charge of moderating verification so that spam bots don't get through to our Discord. And Herbert lets you use a bunch of different commands, like:

/set_flair to set yourself a flair that shows your in game stat, like steps, total level etc. on Discord server.
/flex to share your WalkScape character on the Discord server. Naturally to flex your levels and steps! :D

We have a dedicated #flex channel on Discord to show off. Herber also updates a #census channel where you can see how many players are in each location.

There are also some other features that are coming to Herbert very soon, so stay tuned for more!

If you haven't joined our Discord, you can do so from this invite link

Until next time

That's all for today!

I'm hoping in next devblog we've got some more exciting news to share! And I'm trying hard to get the server stuff fixed ASAP.

See you again in two weeks, keep walking and stay hydrated!

WalkScape Gear Optimizer link

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #82: Hunting & Tailoring post release

Hello everyone, and welcome to DevBlog #82!

This time, we'll cover a bit of the things with Hunting & Tailoring post release stuff we already released, and we'll give a shout out to some of the 3rd party tools that have been popping up from the community. Let's get started!

Hunting & Tailoring post release

We've released both a smaller hotfix and a bigger patch since last devblog! You can see the full changelogs of the patch that was released here!

As a summary, we fixed a lot of the bugs that were caught by players and we introduced some Quality of Life stuff with fine material + gear crafting, Gear Sets, and minor things in many places of the UI. And we included a small April Fools thingy there as well which many of you posted here about! :D

The patch also improved performance, and aimed to especially help with people who experience ANR's on Pixel devices. While it didn't completely fix the issue, it improved that front quite a bit. We think we've also now recognized the root of the issue, and will be focusing in later updates to fix the problem entirely.

The patch also included some new content, balancing changes and more!

WalkScape 3rd party tools & materials

There's lately been a lot of 3rd party tools released for WalkScape, and I'd like to give a shoutout to them here!

As a note, these tools contain spoilers! If you don't want to get spoiled, I don't recommend using any of the tools.

WalkScape DB

WalkScape DB link

This has a lot of different types of tools in it. It has all of the in-game content searchable, their relations, gear set optimizer, planner, and the WalkScape Map.

WalkScape Optimizer

WalkScape Optimized link

This tool is another new one that helps to optimize gear sets for different activities and recipes in the game. It seems like it still has some April Fools stuff going on as well! :D

WalkScape Gear Optimizer

Another great tool for optimizing your gear sets for different activities!

Guide: WalkScape "Collector's" Edition

Guide: WalkScape "Collector's" Edition link

Probably one of the most in-depth Guides to follow for WalkScape. 33 pages long, and recently updated for the Hunting & Tailoring update. It is an amazing guide if you like to follow one!

WalkStats

WalkStats link

An alternative for leaderboards. Gives you more insight on things like XP gains and has rolling weekly leaderboards.

Arky's Activity Sheet (Bonez565 Version)

Arky's Activity Sheet link

An amazing Google Sheet formatted for easily tracking you progress and for optimizing your gear for different activities.

WalkScape Map & WalkScape Gear

WalkScape Map Link

WalkScape Gear Link

Both of these tools have been around for quite a long time already. Map tool is convenient to look up activities and locations, whereas Gear is great for creating gear sets for the game and also includes a gear optimizer.

Next update

We're already finishing up work for our next update that'll bring some major improvements to the World Map. As it's still not completely finished and there's a bunch of Easter related national holidays starting from tomorrow, it's a bit too early to state the exact release timeline for that one.

We'll also be working on the content side to balance things further that were added in Hunting & Tailoring while also adding some new stuff. The next content updates won't be as massive in their scope though - with this one, we were already stretched quite thin considering how massive it became.

Feedback & until next time

That's all for today!

One special thing we'd like you to do is to write as a comment to this feedback on Hunting & Tailoring. On Discord, we've had some great feedback in the threads we have created for the update. We would love to hear your thoughts and experiences now that the update has been out for some time.

Feedback on the content updates is crucial for us to learn from our mistakes and make sure the upcoming content updates will be even better designed. So all kinds of feedback is much appreciated here!

Thank you, and see you in next DevBlog! Stay hydrated and keep walking!

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

+632 Changelogs (Patch for Hunting and Tailoring)

Hello!

Wevre released a patch fixing some issues that have been found in the last week or so with the most recent update. Here are the changelogs!

Added

Quality outcome from overleveling is now visible in All Attributes view
(Items) 2 new items (1 new supporter item)
(Recipes) 1 new recipe
(Keywords) 5 new keywords
(Banned Keywords) 1 new banned keyword (Fishing rod rest)
(PFP Options) 1 new pfp option
(Loot Tables) 1 new loot table
(Locations) ISO art added for Warrenfield

Changed

Gear used in crafting is now ignored for fine checks. You can now craft with fine materials + gear
(Achievements) What A Trip achievement added pfp reward
(Activities) 1 new loot table added to an activity
(Activities) "Predator hunting (Spear)" renamed to "Predator fishing (Spear)"
(Items) Sturdy fishing rod rest added Fishing rod rest banned keyword
(Items) Spectral breeches Artisan level requirement raised to 55%
(Items) Spectral breeches base attributes for Crafting Outcome decreased to 3, Double Rewards removed, and chance to Find Ecto raised to 5%
(Items) Spectral handwear Artisan level requirement raised to 55%
(Items) Spectral handwear base attributes for Crafting Outcome decreased to 2, Double Rewards removed, and chance to Find Ecto raised to 5%
(Items) Spectral vest Artisan level requirement raised to 55%
(Items) Spectral vest base attributes for Crafting Outcome decreased to 3, Double Rewards removed, and chance to Find Ecto raised to 5%
(Recipes) Spectral handwear recipe required amount of Bones reduced to 2
(Recipes) Comfy fishing chair recipe level requirement reduced from 38 to 22
(Recipes) Comfy fishing chair recipe item requirement of Sturdy fishing rod removed
(Recipes) Comfy fishing chair recipe experience reward reduced from 198 to 168
(Recipes) Tatty handwraps recipe mummy egg loot table removed
(Recipes) Tatty skirt recipe mummy egg loot table removed
(Recipes) Tatty garb recipe mummy egg loot table removed
(Recipes) Tough linen recipe mummy egg loot table removed
(Activities) Spelunking has had a mummy egg loot table added to it
(Activities) Cut bamboo has had a mummy egg loot table added to it
(Items) Multiple applicable items have had new keywords added to them to aid the Walkpedia links
(Items) Golden skydisc rarity changed from rare to uncommon
(Locations) ISO art added for Mangrove Forest, Granfiddich Shores, and Farsand Coast

Fixed

Fixed steps count estimate to be accurate
Fixed the crafting steps required estimate being incorrect
Fixed that objects in Rumors are always unlocked by default (so they do not show Unknown)
Fixed alignment issue in WalkPedia expandable cards
Fixed some attribute values still missing a +
Container keywords are now included in WalkPedia
Fixed that changing required gear for travel reroutes instead of cancelling
Fixed the positioning of value comparison chips
Fixed that the inventory size updates when changing pets
Increased the current level of skill font sizes
Selected material will now be used if there is one in crafting UI that has multiple possible options
Same abilities should no longer be able to be listed twice
Faction unclaimed rewards count now updates properly
Added a bit more robust checking for bottom sheet manager so devices with physical buttons can pop it more reliably
Fixed that you cannot see XP gained value if using only one memosphere
Fixed that unmet material requirements in crafting view show up as zero even if you have some quantity of the item
Fixed that in feeding view pet is always shown as rare
Fixed that queuing pet summon affects active abilities
Fixed the problem where collectibles could drop twice
Gear set UI improvements
Gear set now allows to swap to an item that has the same banned keyword (so for instance, from a pickaxe to another pickaxe)
Samsung Health DST issue fixed
Fixed the updating of ability requirements
Fixed optional inputs for stuff requiring keyword inputs
Reworked gear set manager quite a bit to make its logic work better with all of the changes
Reordering gear sets now updates the listing
Gear sets now again check for the highest quality for items in the page screen
Gear set items are now revalidated when creating a new set so banned keywords do not carry over
Optimized data message sizes between threads, which should improve performance and alleviate ANR issues on Pixels and some other devices
Updated some dependencies
Simplified the crafting quantity slider
Optimized character PFP updates server side quite a bit, reducing player save sizes a lot and CPU demand
(Activities) Added missing Hunting chest drop to Predator fishing (Spear)
(Keywords) Fixed broken linkages to service descriptions

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #81: Hunting and Tailoring released!

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #81!

We've just yesterday released a massive new update to the game, so this devblog will be a bit shorter than usual as we're currently busy with post-update support and there isn't much new to share. But let's dive into it!

Hunting & Tailoring release

So, we've released two new skills yesterday! Plus a bunch of QoL changes, mechanics, pets and more!

We estimated that the server work would take around 6 hours, but got the maintenance done in less than 3 hours. We often leave room for errors in these estimates, so if something goes wrong we're still within the maintenance time window. With the OTA system nothing went wrong, so it was quite a smooth sailing from start to finish to get it deployed.

We also already released a hotfix to the game yesterday. More will come in the following days and weeks fixing any issues that the update might've caused.

What's next?

We're aiming for our next update to be released in a few weeks. It'll introduce the reworked world map and one other thing that's still a secret. But stay tuned for that!

On the content side, our content team will start preparing for the next content update. With two quite massive content updates, the next ones will be smaller in their scope. This update was so big that it started to become hard to keep a track of everything we were changing, so it's a nice change for us to have a bit more focused and smaller content updates next.

Message from WalkScape Wiki

Hey everyone Bonez here for a quick wiki update. As with all major game updates the wiki is under embargo until next Thursday. This is done to give everyone a chance to explore and experience the new content without full spoilers. It also gives me a chance to build out and update the code that generates the wiki files with the new features and in this case two whole new skills. For those interested I'll also be updating Arky's sheet and plan to release that ASAP as well.

Once the embargo drops I'll get right to adding new content and making pages for everything. In the meantime if you'd like to help out with the wiki it is now possible to translate most pages, you can make an account (with a confirmed email) and take a look at the page here to get started. As always if there are problems or things not looking right feel free to ping me on discord (@bonez565) or reddit (u/bonez656). Have fun and enjoy exploring.

Hotfix Changelogs

Added

(Job Boards) 7 new Kallaheim jobs
(Job Boards) 6 new Azurazera jobs
(Job Boards) 7 new Granfiddich jobs
(Job Boards) 7 new Blackspell Port jobs
(Job Boards) 14 new Everhaven jobs
(Job Boards) 13 new Halfling Campgrounds jobs
(Job Boards) 2 new Vastalume jobs
(Guide Tips) 5 new entries for Tip of the day
(Keywords) 1 new keyword

Changed

(Items) Coral Cape keyword search and skill type requirement for chest find attribute changed to gathering instead of individual skills
(Recipes) Adamant hatchet recipe Crafting XP reward increased further (181 > 212)
(Recipes) Adamant pickaxe recipe Crafting XP reward increased further (181 > 215)
(Recipes) Violite hatchet recipe Crafting XP reward increased further (230 > 257)
(Recipes) Violite pickaxe recipe Crafting XP reward increased further (234 > 261)
(Recipes) Violite sickle recipe Crafting XP reward increased further (232 > 259)

Fixed

Fixed COHA and COFA unequipping
Fixed the whitescreen error caused by Finnish translation error
Added the + sign back in to attribute listing of positive values
Steps required display cannot go negative anymore
Switching to different skill recipe now updates the skill icon properly
Fixed that return items could go to decimals when min/maxing the value at their min or max
Fixed that requirements with multiple item options always shows the primary material when tapped, not the substitutes
Fixed the odd sort by option in gear sets
Fixed activity teleporting abilities not teleporting to locations

Until next time

Alright, that's all for today!

Like said, expect some hotfixes landing in during this and especially next week! We'll be for the time being busy with post-update support.

I hope you'll enjoy the new skills, content and everything that came in this update!

Stay hydrated and keep walking!

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevUpdate #32: Maintenance on 18th before the update goes live & changelogs!

Hello and welcome to DevUpdate #32!

IMPORTANT! On 18th of March, so this week's Wednesday, we will be releasing the update. Before the update goes live there will be a long maintenance, as we are upgrading our servers.

The maintenance will start 9AM UTC+0 on 18th of March! The update is expected to last six hours, which means that the maintenance will be lifted around 3PM UTC+0 on 18th of March. The maintenance can take longer or shorter than expected, depending if any problems arise during the maintenace.

Once the maintenance on the servers is done, the update will go live directly after the maintenance is lifted on 18th of March.

This is a very complex update to deploy, so be prepared that there will be some issues when it's live! We'll be deploying hotfixes to fix issues that are found.

Changelogs

Added

Added a new View All Attributes view that allows filtering and some other options
Reworked the attribute listing styling to be more readable
Two new skills: Hunting and Tailoring
Keywords in item view and WalkPedia item pages are now tappable and link to WalkPedia
Keyword page added to WalkPedia
Game client now uses the new OTA server
Keywords now have descriptions
Pet data added to character exports
Added input keyword activity mechanic for Hunting purposes
Added caching to world map image and location ISO art pieces to make loading those much quicker
Attributes from inputs are now visible in the item view
Pet info screen now shows actions to next level
Eggs no longer gain excess XP before they are hatched
Can lock chests
Updated all of the dependencies to some modern ones
Inputs used for activities are visible in While Away
All of the page titles now use an unified component that hides the previously always shown tip
Attributes in gear page are now removed, and instead there is a button to open the full attribute listing view
Filtering for consumables now works in All Attributes
Filtering for fine input benefit now works in All Attributes
Filtering for services now works in All Attributes
Filtering for overleveling bonus now works in All Attributes
Filtering for abilities now works in All Attributes
Reworked the main view to make it more airy and so that conserves a bit more vertical space
Moved tip of the day below attributes and stats
Moved saved steps below the attributes and stats
Added temporary effects mechanic
Added input cooldowns mechanic
Added a slider to open certain amount of chests at once
Added Hunting and Tailoring leaderboards
Activity name now works as a button that takes you to WalkPedia to that activity
In crafting, having a fine material selected now autoselects fine material when you open a recipe
Info cards in WalkPedia are now collapsable
Added whitelisting for external links in localizations
Added links to Discord, Reddit and Portal in the guide tips
Can now select recipes in Gear Sets so crafting skills are visible once you have completed at least one recipe
(Abilities) 3 new abilities added
(Banned Keywords) 7 new banned keywods added
(Keywords) 5 new search keywords added
(Keywords) 1 new service keyword added
(Keywords) 12 new item keywords dedd
(Location Maps) Vastalume ISO art added
(PFP options) 3 new PFP option added
(Shops) 1 new PFP option added to NaC shop
(Services) 5 specific Loom services added
(Locations) Loom service added to: Frusenholm, Azurazera, Salsfirth, Vastalume, Wraithwater and Myriadian Arc
(Items) 129 new items added (2 new chests, 1 new supporter item)
(Recipes) 67 new recipes added
(Loot Tables) 28 new loot tables added (2 for new chests, one for new attribute)
(Activities) 17 new activities added
(Mysterious Merchant) 2 new skill chests added to MM shop
(Pets) 2 new pets added
(Achievements) 6 new achievements added
(Rumors) 7 new rumors added

Changed

Changed the achievement chip to be at the bottom of the screen
Made the minimap slightly smaller to clear out some space at the top
The XP tracking thing at the top was no longer needed, changed it to be the player name + title
(Loot Tables) 2 new skill chests added to Treasure grabber loot table
(Recipes) Hydrilium Diving Gear recipes changed to Smithing
(Recipes) Kelp Diving Gear recipes changed to Tailoring
(Shops) 1 new item added for sale to Undercurrent
(Shops) 2 new items added for sale to the Adventurers' Guild Swampost
(Shops) 1 new item added for sale to Kallaheim's Frosty Finds
(Shops) Hemp and Flax added for sale to Kallaheim's Frosty Finds
(Items) The Camouflage cape has been renamed to the Leaf cape with new artwork
(Items) Artisan Adventuring Tools have had their level requirements in their respective skills increased to 30
(Loot Tables) Removed maple logs and spruce logs from Carpentry chests
(Loot Tables) 2 new items added to the Adventuring Guild Chest
(Loot Tables) Increased hemp drops on Butterfly catching
(Characters) Peter Banksworth has 1 new rumor
(Characters) Runa Norrberga has 1 new rumor
(Characters) Flora Floursifter has 1 new rumor
(Characters) Oldin Skogsan has 1 new rumor
(Characters) Seth Kader has 2 new rumors
(Characters) Bentley Ward has 1 new rumor
(Job Boards) Removed Lumberjack boots Jobs from Everhaven and Granfiddich Job Boards
(Activities) The Tortoise egg loot table has been relocated to Flooded river fishing (Rod) from Flooded field scavenging and replaced with a new loot table
(Loot Tables) added 1 new item and raw shrimp to the gain crustacean table (Crustacean's call)
(Loot Tables) Find random piece of junk table (Trash grabber) has a new item and thus rates slightly adjusted for other items
(Loot Tables) Trash upcycling recipe loot table has a new item and thus rates slightly adjusted for other items
(Shops) 3 new items added for sale to Northstar Mercantile
(Shops) 3 New items added for sale to the Granfiddich Tool Market Stall, along with a bronze pickaxe, bronze hatchet, iron pickaxe, and iron hatchet
(Shops) 1 new item added for sale to Undercurrent
(Shops) 1 new item added for sale to Lost Soulsourcing
(Shops) 1 new item added for sale to Southern Gem
(Shops) 2 new items added for sale to the Adventurers' Guild Outpost
(Shops) 2 new items added for sale to the Adventurers' Guild Swampost
(Shops) The Adventurers' Guild Swampost now only buys 2 new items
(Items) Raw Shrimp and Raw Lobster now have the new Crustacean keyword
(Locations) New activities added to several locations (Kelp Forest, Stalking Yew Woods, Port Skildar and Blackspell Port)
(Activities) Guard duty Agility XP reward reduced (140 > 114 XP)
(Activities) Predator hunting now requires lvl 45 Hunting, also Fishing XP reward reduced (320 > 242 XP) but added Hunting XP reward (77 XP)
(Loot Tables) Forest foraging no longer has requirement bonuses on snowdrop or moondaisy but they will now appear at slightly reduced rates, also honeycomb replaced with hemp at a highly increased rate
(Loot Tables) Plains foraging no longer has requirement bonuses on snowdrop, flax, or hemp, also honeycomb replaced with grass at an increased rate
(Recipes) 1 new item added to Amulet of the animal kingdom recipe
(Recipes) Tarsilium hatchet recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (153 > 135)
(Recipes) Tarsilium pickaxe recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (153 > 138)
(Recipes) Willow fishing rod recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (157 > 136)
(Recipes) Hydrilium pickaxe recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (180 > 148)
(Recipes) Hydrilium hatchet XP recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (180 > 148)
(Recipes) Hydrilium sickle recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (180 > 148)
(Recipes) Hydrilium coral spear recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (180 > 148)
(Recipes) Kelp rope recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (59 > 49)
(Recipes) Adamant hatchet recipe Crafting XP reward increased (181 > 201)
(Recipes) Adamant pickaxe recipe Crafting XP reward increased (181 > 205)
(Recipes) Violite hatchet recipe Crafting XP reward increased (230 > 240)
(Recipes) Violite pickaxe recipe Crafting XP reward increased (234 > 248)
(Recipes) Violite sickle recipe Crafting XP reward increased (232 > 247)
(Recipes) Tarsilium saw recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (166 > 142)
(Recipes) Tarsilium hammer recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (166 > 142)
(Recipes) Ironweed twine recipe Crafting XP reward reduced (96 > 72)
(Locations) New activities added to several locations (Azurazera, Frusenholm, Nomad Woods, Farsand Coast, Red Coast, Beach of Woes, Old Arena Ruins, Mangrove Forest, Bog Top, Halfling Campgrounds, Halfmaw Hideout, Wraithwater, Tendon Wet Fields)
(Loot Tables) Feathers added to Bird nest table
(Achievements) Jack Of All Trades has the new skill chests added to it
(Locations) New activity added to 2 locations (Norsack Plains and Casbrant Fields)
(Loot Tables) 1 new item added to Rusty chest
(Items) Brilliant emerald dragonfly now gives +2% Hunting WE
(Items) Haunted teddy bear now gives +1% Tailoring WE
(Characters) NPCs have put away their festive hats

Fixed

Top notch is now symmetric for the minimap as well
Fixed achievement cards getting horizontally different heights
Ectoplasm (or any specific inputs) now checks in counting between fine/regular- Fixed the drop counter when dropping items
Fixed the pathfinding issue. The pathfinding was skipping the cost of the first neighboring location it was traveling to
Fixed centering the inventory item count
Caching added to abilities, improving performance quite a bit
Updated one of the tutorial .gifs as it was 5mb long. Now has new UI shown and is 500kb
A bunch of performance improvements, too many (and technical) to list each one here
(Items) Spectral fishing cagespear extra DR fixed (6% > 5% DR)
(Loot Tables) Change Pearl bracelet to uncommon tier of Syrenthia Chest

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #80: Hunting and Tailoring schedule, QoL and map rework!

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #80!

This time, we have more or less pinned down the release timing for the Hunting & Tailoring update. And we'll be showing off a bunch of new QoL features this update is going to bring with it. Plus as an extra we have a sneak peek on what should be released few weeks after this update along with some other new features!

Let's get started!

Release schedule for Hunting and Tailoring

We are currently on the last stretch of balancing and adding in the last bits of content needed for this update to go live.

We're currently looking to release it on 11th of March! But if in our final testing some needs arise or more polishing or testing would be needed, we'll release it on 18th of March.

As we're also releasing a new server that will be handling the over-the-air updates, we're a bit more limited on what date we can release this on as we need one where we can stay up late fixing any possible problems that the new server might have.

There will be much longer than usual maintenance due to the server work, so be prepared for that. We'll announce more accurate server maintenance times once we're closer to the release in a DevUpdate.

Quality of Life

Not only will this update come with a truckload of new content, but we've been hard at work adding some QoL that will be shipping with the update too.

Here's an overview on some of them!

All Attributes page

We've added a new page to the game where you'll be able to see all of your active attributes. This new page is accessible from both the Gear page and from the main activity view, by pressing a new button.

In this view you can also filter the activities based on what's giving them. If you want to only see what your tools give, or for instance what your tools and your pet gives, all of that is possible here.

It also shows things such as the "overleveling" bonus you get to your work efficiency.

Reworked attribute listing UI

While working on the show all attributes page, I also overhauled the look of the listed attributes. Functionally it's the same, but I added more colors, contrast, padding and other goodies to make it much more easier to navigate if you want to open up the nested extendables.

Open X amount of chests

One of the requests we've had for some time now, but it's finally here: now in the treasury view you can use a slider to choose the amount of chests you want to open.

Keywords page in WalkPedia

This was already mentioned in the last devblog briefly, but it's now ready. You can now in the game tap on any keywords (like light source) and see all of the items that have the keyword.

Main UI overhaul

This was partly done as a performance improvement, fixing some parts of the logic to make the game run faster. But while at it I also did some improvements to the main view of the game based on all of the feedback we've got from the community.

We also "hid" a bunch of the always shown descriptive texts in the views under the question mark buttons. This makes the views fit more information and remove some of the clutter that the long texts caused.

Performance improvements

I've also done a ton of general performance improvements to the game, trying to address problems especially common on Pixel devices (ANR issue). While we can't say for sure if these fix those, the current testing shows that the performance has improved quite a lot. So at the very least, I think it's safe to assume that this should make those less frequent and hopefully we will find solutions that fix those issues for good.

Crafting now remembers choosing a fine material

Another minor thing we've heard a lot of people asking for! But now in the crafting UI if you choose a fine material, it actually selects fine materials once you choose a recipe as the inputs.

And more

These are just the main ones, but naturally the update will include a bunch of small improvements, bug fixes, and more. We'll release the full changelogs later!

World Map rework

This is still very much WiP, and something that our new developer Crushy has been working on!

The original world map in the game was coded a long time ago, and to make it be more performant and support more cool stuff people have been asking for, we've been reworking it from scratch.

The new world map, which should be released few weeks after the content update with some other new features, improves on several the original in multiple ways:

You can see where your friends are in the new world map.
We have improved the performance massively, making it a lot smoother.
The route markers no longer overlap in places where there are a lot of them, making it much cleaner.
Zooming out you can see the borders of the different factions in the game. We're still debating if Syrenthia will be shown or hidden :D
Improvements to seeing what locations you haven't explored & you only have rumors for.
Support added for things like quest markers.

Things that we'll aim to add include:

Having a way to search the locations and do some filtering.
Seeing a bit more info when zoomed in about the locations (like has a bank, services it got, and something about the activities)

Seeing your friends on the map alone is pretty cool, I'm personally quite excited to finally be able to see all my friends there!

Until next time

That's all for today!

We're hoping that we can get all of the necessary missing pieces ready for the release on 11th, but as said, if that doesn't work out we're certain that it's then going to be released on the 18th.

I know it's weird to have two release dates here (the other could be considered a fallback date), but we really want to get this out as soon as possible and it's very difficult to give a clear date and time when there are still a few things missing. And I know there's a ton of excitment, so we want to deliver as soon as it's ready. With the accompanying server update however, this is a bit trickier than usual.

I hope you enjoyed the DevBlog, and see you again on the upcoming DevUpdate and the next DevBlog!

Keep walking and stay hydrated!

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #79: Two new skills coming: Hunting & Tailoring!

Hello and welcome to WalkScape DevBlog #79!

It's been a long time since we originally teased Hunting and Tailoring skills, and due to circumstances we had to put those into the back burner for a lengthy period of time (this is covered a bit more in the Designs and more section of the devblog). But finally, after a lot of design work done by Weasel and maxchill, plus many of the required game mechanics falling into place these two skills are getting ready for the release!

In this DevBlog, we'll cover what these skills are and some of their designs and related mechanics. So let's dive into it!

Hunting

Let's start with Hunting skill!

Hunting is a new Gathering Skill that is used mainly to gain materials that are needed for turning them into equipment through Tailoring. It also has uses in Cooking.

Hunting skill uses Hunting bows as their main tool, but it's also quite different from any of the other gathering skills. You won't be able to hunt anything (but there are naturally some fun exceptions to this!) with a bow if you don't have arrows. You can craft arrows by using Carpentry skill and there are multiple different tiers of arrows. High level hunting activities might require you to use better arrows, but overall better arrows are very useful as they give you work efficiency while you're using them for a Hunting activity.

Arrows require bars, logs and feathers to craft them. You can see this from the screenshot below. And just as a general note here: a lot of things might still be changing from what you're seeing in these screenshots while we go around and balance things.

Crafting and using fine arrows will also grant you a significant buff when used on a Hunting activity, like seen on the screenshot above. Also, you can see here that using Bronze Arrows grants a bonus to your Work Efficiency while hunting. Getting your hands on some fine arrows will make your Hunting much much more efficient.

Tailoring

Tailoring is a new Artisan Skill and it's mainly used to craft yourself gear that is useful for skilling purposes (and later down the road, probably quite useful for certain combat gear as well!). Many of the tailoring recipes use stuff from Hunting, so these skills go well together. You often also require materials from Foraging. Each set of tailored gear have items for your Head, Chest and Legs slots. There might be some exceptions to this though!

There are multiple tiers of gear made through Tailoring and the main thing Tailoring aims to accomplish is to make players less reliant on gear drops that are coming from Chests. Tailoring gear also grants buff to an entire group of skills, like to all of Gathering or Artisan skills at once, so if you're using these items you will find yourself needing to switch gear much less frequently.

This update will add a lot of recipes to the game. Just for tailoring, we have around 40 recipes for all of the different tiers of gear you can now make! Tailoring also introduces a new Loom service to the game.

Designs and more

Hunting and Tailoring has required quite a lot of design work and iteration. We originally teased this way back and we did have some designs for these skills, but most of those were early drafts and didn't include things such as different tiers of arrows being used, content for two new skill chests, consumables for the new skills etc. It's been on our back burner for a long time, and now as we've completed a lot of what we internally call "content debt" we've finally been able to jump to it.

Mechanically, Hunting was also dependent on reworking how activities work in the game. That was already added while doing the Travel + 1 update last year and in December's content update we added the required systems to use items as inputs for activities (like the bank repair in Wraithwater does). Now this update takes things further by allowing any item from certain keyword to be used as an input. Higher level activities can introduce requirements to these, such as use at least level 50 arrows and so forth.

We also decided that doing the content all the way to the new "content level ceiling" of 70 would've been too much at once, so at first the content for Hunting and Tailoring will cap at around level 50+. Depending on how much more we can get done before release, we could go higher than this. We will be adding more recipes, items and activities in the following updates for these two skills like we've done to every other skill.

Few important points about the general designs for these two skills:

Arrows being crafted through Carpentry is aimed to make Carpentry feel much more useful. Currently it's been very lacking, but this greatly increases its usefulness in the game.
Bows are crafted with Carpentry, so that also makes Carpentry more useful.
Tailored gear are versatile (granting bonuses to an entire group of skills at once), and are designed to be the main way for players to improve their skilling gear. Gear drops from Chests are still useful in some situations, but you'll definitely want to get yourself some tailored gear ASAP. This also reduces reliancy on RNG somewhat, as you can craft yourself decent gear.
Hunting is designed to feel quite different and not as easy skill as you need to get arrows and you'll be spending them while doing the activities. This also creates a natural "burn" for materials, as they're being consumed through Hunting.

Other additions, fixes and QoL

And that's not all! We've also worked to introduce a few new QoL additions that will be launching with this update. Main ones include a significant improvement on performance and memory use of the game. There are also a plethora of bug fixes, new WalkPedia page for Keywords (so you can for instance easily see all the items that count as Light Sources in the game now!). Full changelogs for these will be released once we release the update, as a lot is still being worked on.

We also have two bigger QoL/feature additions being worked on at the moment, and we're estimating that these will be ready to ship few weeks after the Hunting and Tailoring update. So stay tuned for those!

Release timeline

We're currently estimating that Hunting & Tailoring will ship out in early March (as long as no one in the team gets sick, sickness has been pestering us quite a bit this year). We still have a few things missing and some balancing to do, and right now we are transitioning our Over-The-Air (OTA) updates to work through another server. We'd like this to ship only after that is ready. Our recently introduced OTA update system currently introduces too much demand for our servers, and we've been building another one that's just dedicated for downloading game updates. This should make it so that updates don't crash our servers momentarily when updates go live.

Once we have everything ready, I'll do a short DevUpdate with the changelogs and exact release date & time!

Until next time

Okay, that's everything for this devblog! I hope you enjoyed it. We're really excited to release two new skills to the game simultaneously. And I'm also very excited for the things that will be shipped out after this update! We'll be sharing more about those things in the next devblog. I can say that a lot of people have been asking for these things quite some time now!

Have an amazing Thursdsay! Stay hydrated and keep walking! ❤️

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #78: WalkScape team grows, notes on bad luck mitigation

Welcome to DevBlog #78! Our hiring process has now been completed and we're back to regular work (with onboarding going on as well). Also, we have a statement here about the bad luck mitigation system that was a big conversation in our community Discord last week.

Greetings from Crushy

This Monday, our freshly hired developer has started at our office here in Helsinki! Please welcome Crushy, our new developer addition to the team. Here's an introduction from him!

Hi guys, I’m Crushy, the newest Not a Cultist to join Not a Cult! I’m a code cruncher by trade and I’ve been around the block in the game industry for what feels like (and actually is) a decade working mostly as a freelancer for companies big and small and games ranging from bad to not bad.

Someone could say I was brought on board to synergise the monetisation team, enable our shareholders to maximise profitability and start conceptual work on the first wave of cosmetic DLC. Said someone would be lying as I’m actually helping the rest of the team create more stuff you enjoy!

I first heard of Walkscape around three years ago in that mythical Reddit post. At the time it felt like a cool app to get me out of the house more often. But then I saw some glimpses of their progress: a slowly growing team of people that seemed like they knew what they had, where they were going, how to get there without selling their souls (how not-very-Culty of them) and listening to their community. I was kinda envious to be honest!

Well here I am now, writing this (how the turns have tabled). While I’m fairly new I hope to become a more household name for you all - perhaps as a scapegoat for when things go wrong.

Needless to say, we're really excited that our development team has increased from just me and myzozoz to having one more person here helping us to develop new features quicker. It's awesome, and the office feels much more alive now that it's not just us two here!

Statement on bad luck mitigation system

On our community Discord, there was quite a lot of talk on having bad luck mitigation system introduced to the game.

Bad luck mitigation systems are quite divisive, like we saw with the conversation that happened on our Discord. I was first considering doing a survey on this issue to see where the community stands on it, but we decided it's not as useful to survey it before the actual bad luck mitigation we've had in mind this entire time is introduced to the game. So we want to release trading first, and only after that start considering if there's still need for more bad luck mitigation (or see that the trading system solved it). I think at that point the answers this survey might provide us will be more relevant, as it would be quite difficult to answer it now with full picture on this issue before the feature is out.

We've already introduced bad luck mitigation to the chests in the game, and we'll keep considering these sort of systems for some of the hard to get things where they would make most sense. But for now, we'll not add any bad luck mitigation to the RNG itself, as trading will provide an alternative way for people to get most things in the game that might otherwise be very RNG dependent to achieve.

I hope this clears things out on where we stand on introducing changes to the RNG. So just as a conclusion: no changes for the time being, and this issue will be revisited once trading is out. When it comes to the single player version of the game that won't have trading, we probably will be providing and option to enable bad luck mitigation for those that want it. But on the multiplayer side, we want to see what kind of effects the trading will have and if that itself solves the friction this issue causes.

Current progress on the next update

Alright, next up an update on our next update. We've made quite a big leap forward in the past two weeks towards our next big update. With the hiring process now done and onboarding starting to require less involvement from me and myzozoz, we've made progress on the feature side too. Weasel and maxchill has done an incredible work on creating and designing new content.

Still, we consider it a bit too early to fully announce and reveal what's going to be included in the next update, but I'd say there is a very decent chance that next devblog on 19th of February will have a lot more to say about it.

Until next time

Alright, that's everything for this DevBlog! I hope you enjoyed it, it's very exciting for us here to have a new pair of hands working on the game. And in the next DevBlog, I'm quite certain we'll have more to show on what's coming next.

Stay hydrated and keep walking everyone! ❤️

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #77: Hiring process update

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #77! This time, we're doing a short update on how the hiring process has been going. And we got some isometric art pieces made by maxchill to show here which replace some of the AI generated ones in Syrenthia!

In the last development blog, we stated that for the rest of the month, me and myzozoz will be busy with the hiring process that's been going on since December. For this devblog, we have an update on that.

On the game content front, maxchill and Weasel have been doing some great progress. It's still a bit too early to showcase what they're working on, but you can expect an update on that in one of the next devblogs.

Hiring process

So far we've had 316 applications for the game developer position we opened in December. During this week, we've conducted interviews with a bunch of people, and I'm quite certain that we will have this hiring process completed in the next two weeks. Due to the large volume of applications, it's no wonder why this has taken a lot of time to go through all of them and then doing interviews.

Naturally after the contract is signed, there will be time spent on onboarding, legal stuff and things like that. These shouldn't take that much of our time though, so we're quite positive that we'll be able to move back to regular development speed before the end of the month.

If everything goes as planned, our newly hired developer will be introducing themself in one of the next devblogs, and you'll also get to know who has joined Not a Cult! Even though this process has been quite a time consuming one, we can't wait to have another pair of hands helping us out to develop the game even faster.

Until next time

That's all for this devblog! While this was a short update on the hiring process, I'm hoping that in the next devblog we'll be able to share more exciting news about the game itself.

Stay hydrated and keep walking everyone! ❤️

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevBlog #76: Second Year of WalkScape!

Hello and welcome to DevBlog #76! We're back from the holidays and this devblog will be longer and a bit different than usual. As WalkScape's Closed Beta started on 18th of January, 2024, we'll take a look back to the last year and what's been done, and also cover what we're hoping for this year. Let's get started!

WalkScape in 2025

Engine Rework, Gear Sets, January 2025

DevBlog #53

The year started off with a big update to the game's engine. Most of the engine was rewritten, and we made the game's logic work in a separate library, so game logic could be more easily be shared with servers and development tools for the game.

This was a much needed update to pay off a large amount of technical debt that we had accumulated and to make development of new features much more straight forward.

With this update, we also shipped the Gear Sets feature to the game.

Devtools 2.0, March 2025

DevBlog #56

To make content development to the game easier, we built what we called "Devtools 2.0". Previously, creating content was through in-game devtools that weren't as great for creating content quickly. New Devtools have also been developed quite significantly since that whenever needed, and made it so that the content development requires little to no development work unless there are new features needed to be added.

Trinketry skill added, March 2025

DevBlog #56

Trinketry skill was added to the game, bringing the total number of skills up to 10. This also came with new services, pretty much complete rework of amulets & rings in the game, and with trinket materials being added to the game.

iOS Smart Watch support, April 2025

DevUpdate #22

We added support for smart watches on iOS. This also came with new UIs for language selection, improved localization support, new content, improved in-game settings and much more. We used the earlier implementation of iOS smart watch support as a way to prepare for Android smart watch support, which was much more complex to implement.

Bogged Down update, May 2025

DevBlog #61

This update came with changes to how the Wave system works for the game, and 4 new locations adding a new sub-region to the game: the Swamp area. We also started Wave 4, after which we did changes to the supporter pricing and closed beta access in order to be able to hire an additional developer.

Adventurers' Guild update, New Players update, June 2025

DevBlog #63

These updates added new content, balancing and general improvements to help new players and make the Adventurers' Guild feel better. We also did quite a lot of bug fixing, especially related to steps graphs during this time.

Travel +1 Update, July 2025

DevBlog #64

This update added rumors mechanic and we did a major server rework, which had been started at least a month prior. The main new thing was adding Travel +1 mechanic and reworking the way activities work in the game entirely, so we could support different & more varied types of activities in the future.

Faction chest update, QoL, in-game announcements, August 2025

DevBlog #67

We did a big rework on faction jobs, chests, added repeating rewards for factions. In this update we also added in-game announcements and bunch of QoL related features, such as a new way to browse jobs in the game.

Android Smart Watch support, September 2025

DevBlog #69

After we had the iOS Smart Watch support working nicely, we started the work on Android Smart Watch support. We did a special implementation for Samsung devices, and added support for other devices through Health Connect. This update was also accompanied with a bunch of fixes, new content and balancing changes.

QoL & OTA update, November 2025

DevBlog #73

For this update, we reworked how abilities are displayed and how they work in the game, and added that they can have multiple charges. We also added a new OTA system, so content team can easily deploy newly created content & fixes through a separate tool, including new localizations.

This update also included a bunch of QoL changes, like reordering Gear Sets, sorting inventory, Work Efficiency breakdown in activity view, and much more.

Going South Update, December 2025

DevBlog #75

We added new features such as input acitivites, limited activities, Mysterious Merchant and Pets to the game. This was also the biggest content update of the year, adding two new regions to the game with new higher-level activities.

During December, we also started the hiring process for third developer to the team.

Looking back at 2025

During 2025, we almost managed to release one new major update each month while also having full-length Summer & holiday season vacations. And this doesn't count for dozens of minor updates and hotfixes we've released as well. We also had a significant change in the content team during this year. And this doesn't count for everything we've done in the background that isn't visible to the players, such as:

We've added two new servers, with third one for OTA updates coming soon
Major improvements on our server infrastructure, server alerts and server monitoring
Anti-cheat systems have been improved significantly, even with the added complexity of smart watches
Moved to a new bigger office!
Started hiring for 3rd developer
Most of the AI generated art has been replaced with isometric art handcrafted by maxchill

During 2024, we released three major updates to the game (Achievements & Consumables update, Syrenthia update, Major QoL update with new UI etc.). A lot of the first half of 2024 was spent on working to make the Android pedometer work properly, and during that time there was just me working on the game. In 2025, with the addition of myzozoz to the team and improving our pipelines, planning and meetings, we've sped up the development quite a lot.

What is our plan for 2026

For 2026, we're planning to increase our development speed even more and we've already shifted our focus to tackle the remaining big features for Open Beta launch. With the content creation pipeline now being in good shape, we are also planning to keep pushing out content frequently while working on the large remaining features for Open Beta.

Myzozoz has been working on prerequisites for the trading system, with the OTA being the first one that needed to be done, and we're working on the trading system constantly. In total, it's a very complex system with a lot of things we need to implement with as much care as possible, which is why it's also very time consuming. With just two developers, it's been quite a massive feature to work on, especially as we both often need to work on other things as well. Hopefully with a new developer focusing on the bigger features would become a bit more easy.

Meanwhile, I'm also working on some bigger features. I'll be sharing what those are later once they're closer to completion, and as usual, we'll be sharing more of our plans & upcoming features once they're nearer to their release.

Hiring process

In December, we started looking for third developer to the team. We had already moved to a bigger office so we have space for more people. Hiring is quite a time consuming effort, but it'll be done before the end of January. We have already interviewed one candidate in person, and we'll have around five more interviews before the end of the month.

The changes we did to the Wave system and pricing back in 8th of June, 2025 has enabled us to hire a third developer to the team. We stated in DevBlog #60 that if we could increase our revenue from $12k-ish per month to $17k (after taxes, currency exchanges and platform fees) we would have enough revenue to hire a third full-time developer. We reached this goal around November. Changes in the exchange rate of US$ to Euro did initially hurt us pretty badly (making the original $17k goal way too low), but since that we've managed to increase the revenue slowly. Also, Patreon recently added their own payout system to their service, which made us able to ditch PayPal, lowering the fees & currency conversion costs a bit.

If you haven't supported us so yet and enjoy the game, consider supporting us on Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee! Every new supporter helps us to grow and without all of this support, we wouldn't have been able to increase our development team size or buy all of these new servers we have. So huge thanks for all of the existing supporters!

Due to the hiring taking a lot of our time for the time being, there likely won't be any big update to the game in January. But as we saw with myzozoz being hired to the team, bringing a third developer to the team will after a few months speed up our development efforts significantly. And I can say that we have some really promising candidates applying to the team!

Once we've made the decision on who to hire, they'll likely introduce themself in one of the devblogs, hopefully in February once this process should be already completed.

Happy new year 2026!

Alrighty, that's all for today!

I wish you all a happy new year 2026! I'm really excited with the coming year for WalkScape, as we're again able to scale our team and efforts even further. And I'm happy with all that we managed to do in 2025. We've been constantly improving and we're able to deliver faster, and I'm dedicated to keep it that way. For 2026, we hope this year to be even better than 2025!

Stay hydrated and keep walking everyone! ❤️

View original on sh.itjust.works

walkscape·WalkScapebyClay_pidgin

bug: got the Overprepared achievement incorrectly

I got the Overprepared achievement when I logged in. But I've never cleaned the holy fountain? I noticed after equipping my kelp diving gear, but it might have been there already.

walkscape·WalkScapebywalkscape

DevUpdate #31: Hotfix +596 released and something for the holidays added!

Hello!

Another quick DevUpdate before we're leaving for the holiday break. We've released +596 Hotfix that fixes some issues people encountered in the most recent update. Here are the full changelogs!

Added

(Rumors) 10 new rumors
(Items) 1 new item
(Pets) 1 new pet
(Loot Tables) 2 new loot tables
(Abilities) 1 new ability
New translations from community translators

Changed

Changed that gear set open button is now at the top of gear page
(Items) Removed currency keywords from shells and ectoplasm
(Activities) Icons changed ectoplasm fishing and another activity
(Characters) NPCs in Jarvonia are looking more festive (temporarily)
(Loot Tables) 2 activities had new loot tables added to them
(Loot Tables) Grappling hook removed from Ridge scrambling activity loot table
(Activities) Carpentry lvl requirement for Repair the bank increased to 58 to match required saw

Fixed

Added game mode to android manifest
Fixed minimap height
Fixed that locked items are in the dropped warning
Currencies are no longer deposited with deposit all button
Pet animation frame time lowered to 150ms from 200ms
If service requirement has more than one keyword requirement, all get listed now
Item removal code now again removes from the smallest stack in inventory
Pet XP is now granted once action is completed. Takes saved steps into account
Fixed Doomsday Prepper achievement
Minimum time between steps increased to 4 seconds from 1 second to help with performance issues on certain devices
Fixed the count in bank resetting to original value when entering numbers in bank
Fixed the issue where activity listing thought the location is unknown when you are traveling to an unknown location
Fixed that service listing in WE breakdown does not have a minus when its negative
Fixed material inputs being always red
Fixed the pet time thing not converting from UTC to local time
Performance improvements to places where activities are listed
Optimized step bar chart widget build times by using asynchronous builds
Fixed that cooldowns could not immediately tick multiple charges with excess progress on them
Added Username as autofill hint to Email/Username field
(Activities) Extra loot table appropriately added to an activity
(Services) Fixed negative color on steps added for Cursed Sawmill
(Activities) Graveyard Foraging now drops Window's Kiss