Hello again, Lemmy!
It’s been a while since I last posted here, and the reception for the post was really awesome - thank you all for that! I also created a community in Lemmy for the game: !walkscape@lemmy.world where I’m posting every development blog post.
We have a new Closed Beta wave right now, so if you’d like to try out the game, you can follow the instructions available at walkscape.app/help. The wave is running until January 7th.
Since the last post, we’ve now started to add some Quality of Life updates to the game and we’re nearly finished with the lengthy optimization process of the game engine and servers. We’re expecting to release the next update next month!
If you haven’t heard about the game before, I started this project as a personal hobby project to help myself walk more. I tried most of the games available, but I wanted to have something that didn’t need attention while walking and wouldn’t have predatory monetization like most mobile games tend to have these days.
The game is inspired by RuneScape, and you level up skills, craft gear, find loot and so on by walking IRL. We have a short introduction video to the game where I explain and show how the game works in more detail.
Once again, thanks Lemmy for all the awesome feedback we’ve got and for the countless encouraging messages that you’ve sent us. And I’m hoping to see more of you in the game & community!
I’ll answer any questions or feedback here in the comments and in our own community. Happy new year, and happy walking <3
I’m using GrapheneOS and struggling to get the game to count steps when it’s not actively open. Anyone else using GrapheneOS and have any tips?
I haven’t used GrapheneOS myself, but I’ve heard from others that running it in sandbox works. The game requires Google Play Services in order to count the steps in background, so sandbox with Google Play Services should fix that. The API the game specifically uses is the Recording API.
From my understanding, any app installed directly from Google Play should be in the sandbox and have access to Google Play Services. I haven’t quite worked out where the steps are missing, but it seems when the game is open it’s fine, and when the game hasn’t been killed by the OS it’s also fine. If I go back to the game and it has to launch again from scratch, it doesn’t seem to count steps that happened while the game wasn’t running (foreground or background).
I also see this post where others are seeing the same thing, and are not using GrapheneOS. Maybe my use of GrapheneOS is a red herring and there’s actually something else happening.
It was always odd to me that apps need to be constantly active to get the steps. I don’t get why the phone doesn’t just count in the background then allow you to request “how many steps today” or “how many steps since X date/time” via the API.
The game doesn’t need to be active on regular Android and counts steps when killed. I’m pretty sure the reason why it’s like that on GrapheneOS is that when the game is killed, the sandbox is killed and the Google Play Services shut down. If Google Play Services aren’t on there, the Recording API will not count steps in the background.
Probably easiest solution is to let WalkScape to run in the background, when it’s freezed the battery consumption should be basically nothing.
Do you promise to never add season pass, premium currencies, lootboxes or anything of the sort?
If yes, count me in!
We have lootboxes that are (and always will be) obtainable through gameplay. You can get chests from any activity while you’re playing the game. Same applies for cosmetics, which are also something you obtain through gameplay.
The very first devblog I wrote I already promised that we will never do predatory monetisation. Affordable subscription should be all we need to keep the game running. And no ads either!
Hiya, walkscape user here!
Been loving the game, I’m just wondering if you could add a section to the website/game that explicitly goes over what data is collected and what it’s used for?
We do have the privacy policy on there, which lists what sensitive information we collect. It’s a bit vague, and we could later on edit it to be more specific, but I don’t have the required skills to edit those kinda texts and we can’t afford a lawyer at the moment. The sensitive information we collect are your email, username and step data, and the step data includes device information (phone model & operating system).
Non-sensitive information includes all kinds of gameplay data, like items you got and how many things you’ve crafted etc. which we use for game balancing and when designing new content.
Does step data just mean the number of steps (and timestamp, I assume), or do you actually track the routes walked, which would mean gps coords/ tracks.
Cause the first is much less invasive and problematic than the latter option.
It’s just steps and the timestamp, no location data. We don’t ask for location permission, and it’s not accessible through OS APIs either.
The game is a lot of fun and good motivation for walking.
But at a point the inventory management becomes a pain to manage and annoyance to switch gear sets around.
Hope you come up with gear sets to help ease these burdens and give some qol. Bank filter would help but still would be a pain to switch sets.
Keep up the good work.
Hello! Gear sets are actually coming in the very next update to the game, that feature is already pretty much finished. Most recent devblog covers this more! We held a poll about what are the most frequently asked QOL, and gear sets were #1 so we started with that.
You can check how the system works here: https://lemmy.zip/post/27883811
What a coincidence, I’m a QA tester that was illegally fired and therefore no longer bound by my moonlighting clause. I’ll have to give it a try!
