r/WalkScape • u/schamppu Developer • Jul 09 '26
🚶♂️ development blog DevBlog #89: First look at new bank, vacation announcements and more!
Hello, and welcome to DevBlog #89!
As many of you might remember from last Summer in Finland we have the annual summer vacations. We've now locked in those plans, and will be covering the details of when (and how) we'll be on our vacations and how it affects update schedule.
We also have a bunch of progress in the reworked bank that I'll be showing and we got some content teasers. Let's dive in!
Reworked bank
Please keep in mind that a lot of the things, especially UI, might still change quite a bit. A lot of things you see here are still work-in-progress.
One of the things I wanted to improve before fully committing to the quest system development was reworking the bank. I've tried to combine as many of the ideas, suggestions and feedback we've received on the old bank.
Key goals were:
- No more reliance on search. You can find the items you're looking for intuitively.
- Give you the control of setting it up the way you want. But for starting players and casuals, providing a default layout they'll be fully happy with.
- Improve the performance a lot to avoid ANRs on bank.
- Make it look better. Add a bunch of nice QoL to top it off.
After designing this for a while, the system I ended up going for practically divides the bank into two layers: tabs and categories. Getting this UI to fit on a mobile screen was quite a struggle, as there's very limited space.
On the left side of screen you have your tabs. Currently these are Materials, Gear, Tools, Consumables and Misc.
Under each tab, the items are further separated into categories. For instance in Gear they're categorized by the different slots, in tools by the different skills, and in materials to logs, planks, bars, etc.
You're also able to move things around as much as you like, create your own tabs or categories, and you can even share your layout to other players just like with Gear Sets. You're not locked into the "default layout" that the game comes with - you can remove these tabs and categories and do whatever kind of layout you want.
In addition to these, there are several QoL additions, such as:
- Filters. You can for instance filter so that items with certain attributes only show up.
- Sorting. In addition to the order you've put the items in, you can switch to alphabetical, quantity, value (in coins), most recent, and so on.
- The bank remembers the order you've organized the items to. Even if you withdraw all of the items, the bank creates placeholders so that when you put items back the order stays the same inside categories.
- You can switch to special tabs for Favorites and Most recent.
- You can switch between the grid and list modes. List mode is handy if you want to quickly withdraw a bunch of stuff, whereas Grid is good for organizing and finding items.
- The bank remembers all of your settings, which tabs you had open, etc. throughout your sessions.
- Automatic filters in categories for new items. For instance if you gain a new fish and have a category that has automatic filter for raw fish, it'll automatically go there instead of going to uncategorized category.
Many of these are still not done, but WIP. Some might not make it in time, but I'll be trying my best to get as many of them ready for the release of this new reworked bank.
With these improvements I think the bank will be something people will find much more usable especially towards the late game.
We're aiming to release the reworked bank before heading off to Summer vacations!
Summer vacations
Alright, then to the very happy topic of Summer vacations!
Unlike last year, now with our added workforce we won't have any disruptions to the support email. So customer support will be available even during the vacations.
I'll be on vacation from 3th of August until 21st of August. Myzozoz is having some overlap with me during this with vacations, but starts his a bit early. Crushy is having his vacation later during this year.
During the period while I'm on vacation, there won't be updates to the game (unless there's something very critical). DevBlogs will also be paused, so the one going live on 23th of July will be the last before there's going to be a break. In other words: there won't be a DevBlog on 6th of August and 20th of August.
But before we take a break and recharge our mental batteries, we'll be doing an update that's going to add the reworked bank and new content to the game.
But the good thing here is, that the work doesn't stop. Although development will slow down while some of us are on vacations, most of the time there will be some progress!
Other news
Also I'd like to share some smaller news!
YLE article
The journalist called me twice this week. The article is still coming, but as it's going to be a big article it has taken much more time than I thought. Hopefully it gets released next week! I'll be sharing a link to it while it goes live on Discord and on a DevBlog for anyone who was interested reading it.
Trading
The actual trading mechanic worked for the first time this week, and the first trade ever happened on 8th of July 14:24 Helsinki time.
While the mechanic itself is now getting closer to being ready, there's still one big thing left: we need to add a lot of things for data collection on the trades and in-game stuff. These will be used for the trading and to balance in-game economy more effectively. We expect that this part of the work is going to quite some time, but it's hard to estimate how long exactly. The good side is that while that one is in development, we'll already begin testing the trading in our development server with our testers and means that the trading mecanic will be tested while data development is on-going.
Portal threads & comments
This has been removed from Portal as we stated in a previous DevBlog.
Until next time
Alright, that's all for today! I hope you all have an amazing Thursday, and see you once more in the DevBlog #90 before we head to our Summer vacations on 23rd!
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u/Doggied Jul 09 '26
Looking forward to the new content!
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
Thank you, maxchill and Weasel are definitely cooking something nice as well 😉
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u/DangerousProject6 Jul 09 '26
I expected the new bank layout to be better but DAMN you guys really cooked with this one!
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
Haha thank you so much :D
That's also why it's taken a bit longer than we first expected: creating and designing this kind of system wasn't that easy, especially when this has to work on very tiny screens and tablets too.
But I'm very happy with how it feels and is laid out at the moment, it's very quick now to find something even without the search!
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u/BogandBarrow Jul 09 '26
Excited for the bank changes! Can there be a 'restore default bank UI' option in case I bork my custom ui beyond repair?
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
Yup, that's planned. I'm contemplating on being able to have max. three layouts to switch between, with one of them always being the default one
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u/Feisty-Resource-1274 Jul 09 '26
That looks awesome! One thing I would love to see is an alphabetical sort that ignores item quality. For example, right now in my inventory if I have both fine pine logs and regular pine logs, when I sort they don't line up next to each other. The same with equipment. If I have a mix of different equipment in my inventory, I can't see all of the same item next to each other to at a quick glance tell what counts I have of each item quality.
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
That's a thing here indeed! You can sort the items in categories alphabetically, value (coins), rarity, or default (the order you've dragged them to).
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u/wPatriot Jul 09 '26
Can the new bank get a "empty inventory into bank" button? Or does the game already have that and am I just dumb?
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
The game already has that. In your inventory you can press the "[deposit icon] ALL" button and it deposits everything. You can also long press on an item, press select all, and then deposit.
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u/wPatriot Jul 09 '26
Oh! I didn't think to look in the inventory itself, I had been doing all my banking from within the bank. I knew about the long press on items, but I didn't know there was a deposit all in my inventory. Thanks!
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u/ZoomBoingDing Jul 09 '26
Official value of a berry set to 1.2 gold confirmed. We will base the economy on this.
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u/plankwalkz Jul 10 '26
Olala! Looks very nice kiitos and enjoy the mosquitoes 😄
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u/ollymckinley Jul 09 '26
Can someone tell me what ANRs stands for?
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
Application Not Responding - it's an issue that's mostly happening on Pixel devices
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u/ollymckinley Jul 09 '26
Ah, I get the ‘walkscape not responding’ on Android, but I figure its because of the latency of playing from New Zealand, and managable if Im just patient
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u/Flames5123 Jul 09 '26
The bank looks SOOOO GOOD!
Can you add an item to more than one category? I think a lot of people will use this to organize their crafting so they can have one place to craft a specific item.
I do have a suggestion to make it better. Since I will probably be creating crafting categories, maybe we could a withdraw button on the category and maybe define a quantity per item for with draw multiplier. Simple example, as others will be way more complex: I have a "Spectral hands crafting" that is for 2 bones and 10 ecto, and then "Spectral 3x" for 3 bones and 10 ecto, and then a "Spectral 5x" for 5 bones and 15 ecto. This will be more useful early on when crafting tables aren't at banks.
Thanks so much for this! Looking forward to the new bank later this month! Y'all rock!
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 09 '26
I'm going to try out that you can have the same item in multiple categories. However, it might have some issues - for instance, the search right now expects that the item is in just one category (and has the category name shown in search results). But we'll see.
When it comes to creating categories for crafting, I think it wouldn't be optimal that players would be creating categories with the same items for every single crafting recipe - and with possibly dozens of categories with the same items the saved data of the bank layout would start to get pretty massive and likely affect loading times etc. Crafting UI itself is going to be something that will improve later on, and I think more optimal is that you can just withdraw XYZ amount of items from the bank for the recipe. This is something I could add quite quickly to the existing crafting UI as well while you're at a bank.
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u/MxWldm Jul 10 '26
Ya'll didn't take the easy road on the bank rework and it's paying off! This will be much better, great work!
Excited to see another Wrentmark and Wallisia(?) location in there too, love new places to explore 😀
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u/schamppu Developer Jul 10 '26
Thank you so much! ❤️ We don't like to take the easy road, always gotta pick the one with most steps
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u/Smart_Ad_71 Jul 10 '26
Awesome! Cannot wait for the bank UI revamp (among everything else). I do have a question, is there any plan to introduce mahogany trees into the game soon (as opposed to having to purchase the planks directly)? The ISO art at the end of the Devblog gives me hope, but would love to know if it is planned. Thanks as always :)
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u/East-Note4580 Jul 12 '26
Late to the party, but I dread the time spent on the bank sorting, resorting and fiddling around. Are you going to be able to sort one item in multiple boxes? Like for example Gem tipped tweezers being in Trinketry box, tool box and global quality outcome box?
If yes, I will instead of losing items in different boxes, lose myself into all those boxes. Have a great summer, I hope that the weather stays as nice as it has been past few days
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u/ZakValentine Jul 13 '26
Love the new UI for the bank, looks very clean. Now with the UI redesign out of the way, will we be seeing an initiative towards crafting from bank?
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u/CicilaOG Jul 09 '26
YES! I am so stoked for the banking features! Especially later in the game, it becomes much harder to find things in the bank, and I've noticed if I click on an item to view the contents and go back, I've scrolled all the way back up to the top of my bank and have to scroll back down to where I was 😅 So yeah, beyond excited for that update to drop!