Hello and welcome to Devblog #56! We have some great and exciting announcements to make this time.

Just in the last devblog two weeks ago, we announced my development focus shifting towards Devtools 2.0 in order to start shipping new content more rapidly. Now we have the first content update completed and in internal testing - so let's dive in!

10th skill to WalkScape: Trinketry

With the help of the new Devtools 2.0, we've managed to add a 10th skill to WalkScape and a bunch of other new content. So without further ado, let's introduce Trinketry!

In the picture above, Trinketry is shown as the process of making rings and amulets. In the game, players can find both trinkets and rough gems that can be crafted into rings and amulets using the Trinketry skill. Along with these materials, players will also need gold and silver bars to create many of the rings and amulets. We had a lot of fun (= trouble) trying to come up with a name for the skill. The description actually includes three of our other candidates: gemology, gemistry and jewelcrafting. We chose Trinketry as that name was both unique and flexible, as the skill isn't always just about gems and jewellery. You can craft flower necklaces for instance!

The rings and amulets crafted in WalkScape come in the well known system of different qualities, ranging all the way to Eternal. Some of these items are very powerful and can be especially useful in the game, especially at higher qualities. I personally expect that when trading is added, high quality trinkets would be very high in value, as crafting some of them is rather difficult.

Trinketry also introduces a new service known as Trinketry Benches. These benches are found mostly in GDTE and mark the beginning of our content development for this region. From the beginning, there will be four unique Trinketry Benches available, some of which come with their own unique quirks.

In GDTE, players will also come across a new faction called Erdwise, which brings new jobs and rewards to the game. Furthermore, new activities have been included to give players more opportunities for exciting gameplay.

Floursifter's designer notes

Trinketry was one of the three skills I designed post-Syrenthia, and I'm so excited that it is in the game! It was the best candidate to develop as we built and tested the new Devtools environment, which has progressed very rapidly in the last two weeks. Devtools 2.0 has truly revolutionized my relationship with content development. In the past weeks, we’ve gone from sending files back and forth to each other on discord for version control and no operational devtools, to having full version control and many devtools in a workable state! It was particularly useful to spend a lot of time rapidly prototyping and deploying the new devtools live with schamppu over the last two weeks, as he was able to watch me develop content and see where the pain points were in real time.

In terms of Trinketry, although this was the easiest skill for me to implement, it is quite difficult to level up. There were many considerations in the design process:

• The existing landscape of looted rings and necklaces
• How to effectively integrate other pre-existing content and the other skills
• Clear themes on what materials are useful in different parts of the skill

Players should have some decent ideas of the final design from the spoiler. It’ll be really fun to see WalkScapers rush to level up, compete on the leaderboard, and discover new content. And, if you enjoyed crafting one perfect tool before, I know you will really enjoy crafting two perfect rings!

We’re trying some new technology out, and would appreciate special attention and any bug reports on the following:

• Several items in WalkScape were transformed into different items. I tried to preserve your progress where possible, so if you have gems, gold ore, or certain rings and necklaces, please don’t panic if these are now new items. Any items that were changed away from being gear (like some existing jewelry) should delete themselves from your gear sets when you login.
• There are some new attributes in the game, and I’m hoping these provide some nice competition with current attributes for chasing certain content in the game.

Release schedule and details

While the content update is now ready, it will spend at least another week in testing while we make sure all of the features work (the new leaderboard for the skill still has a few issues, for instance, that we need to iron out). We'll be pushing it out when we're confident that it's ready for public release. So, while we will not be setting a release date, I can say that it will be released in the next two weeks - before the next devblog!

We will post a development update a day before its release, so people can fully prepare for when it goes live. It'll be rather interesting to see how a new skill being added works in the game - I'm especially interested to see how people will be competing in the brand new leaderboard.

My secondary goal while is to add a few small quality of life tweaks into the game while the internal testing is going on, so that's another thing to look forward to in this update! We've already fixed some bugs and made a few improvements, and I'm hoping to have a some time to add a couple more things that have been asked for.

Devtools 2.0 progress

It's clear that we've been working hard on getting everything up and running again for content delivery, and I'm pleased to say that we've not only made progress on developing content, but we've also successfully got Devtools 2.0 into a state where they're now functional. While there are still some features that need to be added to fully maximize the potential of the new devtools, I believe that we have made an good start in a short amount of time. Considering that the devtools were not working at all two weeks ago and now we have both the tools ready and a new update, it's been really smooth and fast development so far!

Moving forward, we are excited about the prospect of being able to release new content more quickly. This milestone has given us momentum and drive to continue improving and expanding our content delivery. Thank you for your patience and support!

Here are things that are still missing from our Devtools 2.0 until we consider them to be completed:

• Cloud sync, so when multiple people work on content at the same time, the changes are reflected to everyone simultaneously. We're currently using Git to synchronise changes which works okay, but isn't a tool that is familiar for floursifter and maxchill.
• Content branching, so we can create branches of content updates internally to test out things without changing the "main content".
• Over the air updates. We had this before the engine update, but as it changed so many things it isn't in the game anymore. This is most significant to players, especially as we plan it to include art assets. Then you should be able to get content updates and fixes delivered without needing to update the game from Play Store/AppStore.
• Development QoL, a bunch of smaller things that will help floursifter and maxchill to organize and work on content more easily. One major missing thing is metadata for content (for instance: when things have been edited and by who, is the content a draft or in testing, and so on).
• Automated changelogs. Currently it's hard for us to track what changes have been made in each content update and write those out in the announcements, and with Devtools 2.0 the idea is that the tools would write changelogs automatically based on what has been changed.

Plans before Wave 4

A lot of you are also anticipating for the next Wave, and we're well aware of this!

Before we release Wave 4, there are a few important things we need to address. One key priority is integrating watch support for iOS, a request we've heard loud and clear from both past Wave updates and our player community. Ensuring that step graphs are accurate is another critical issue that needs fixing before we can move forward with the next Wave. It's essential for new players to have a nice initial experience, and inaccurate graphs would be a big obstacle to that.

The to-do list includes:

Must have

• Watch integration for iOS. iOS is our main priority, but while developing it I will do some testing for the Android side to see its current viability. This feature has been on hold now while we worked on Devtools 2.0 and the new content update, but we get back to it after the release of this content update.
• Steps graphs fixed. Steps graphs are now broken and rather complex to correct as steps are being synced between the server and the client very differently compared to how this was in the past, and with smart watches making sure the graphs are correct will be even more complicated.
• Any remaining major bugs or issues fixed. Currently there are not that many, but we're anticipating that Flutter team would release a fix to older GPUs and Android versions so the game would work again for those who have older devices.

Nice to have

• One smaller content update in addition to upcoming Trinketry update.
• Introducing a few more QoL additions to the game to make the overall experience better.

As seen here, the list isn't very long by any means. We anticipate that finishing up our work with watch support for iOS will take some time, and it's hard to estimate exactly how long it will take, as we saw there were a lot of quirks that come with the integration.

We will be working as hard as we can to get these remaining things done and launch the next Wave!

Until next time

That's all for today, and it's going to be very exciting to have a new skill introduced to the game along with a plethora of other content. I hope people find the new skill both fun and useful - it's quite a big introduction with more than 70 new items added to the game.

Stay hydrated and keep walking! ❤️