Edit: After a weekend of work, I just added achievements https://lemmy.zip/post/69007248
It took quite a while, but it’s finally out. Fully free, no ads, no in-app purchases (besides a “Support the developer” option), no data collection and fully offline playable. All you need is your phone and GPS :)
I originally made the game to go on walks, unfortunately I sat even more in front of my PC to develop it. It is what it is. Hopefully it motivates some of you to get your steps in 💚
General idea of the game: Collect ingredients, brew them into potions and sell them to merchants. With the gold and reputation you get you can buy things and decorate your neighborhood. Other players see the same map and resources (so you can indirectly play together), but the game world fully belongs to you (singleplayer only).
General roadmap right now:
- Adding achievements
- Adding buildings you can improve over time (tavern to attract merchants and an ingredient tree you need to grow)
- More minigames and improving the existing ones
- And of course bugfixes, please let me know if you run into issues :)
For any questions and suggestions I’m always available!
Just read your comments about OSM data etc. Fantastic! Well done.
About to head on holiday to Europe, so have downloaded it and will play as I go.
Thank you!
Lovely. If you run out of street map as you travel, just hit the map button again. It will hopefully offer you the download for the new area :)
Great tip! Thank you
Fantastic. Pressed and held map icon and I’m now in Germany, in the village, and about to give it a go.
I’m on iOS so cannot try it out. Wishing you the best and looking forward to playing it on iPhone if you manage to get to that! Can you tell us more about the assets you’re using? I’m curious how you managed to get a cohesive look. Did you draw everything yourself? (Tip: look into adding ground shadows!)
Thank you :)
Ground shadows for which part?
There’s procedural terrain (fully code generated) for the map. And then there’s the decorations/buildings you can place (low poly assets).
Originally I wanted to generate all art by code, like your character could pick clothing, eyes, nose, mouth, hair, … but I just couldn’t get it to look good enough (unfortunately, I thought it would be really cool).
I’m a software developer, not an artist. I can do design work and draw a little, but not good enough. So I used a local image generation model on my GPU, generating each asset dozens of times and then reworking the best one in GIMP until satisfied.
For the light effects I drew a greyscale map on another layer, which then gets added to the asset at night (colored in with the color the player picked).
I’d love to hire an artist to redraw everything in a better style, but that’s simply not in my budget. Maybe if the game actually makes some money, which is unlikely ^^’
I see a couple people asking for an F-Droid release which would be great, but would require the app to be open source. Just thought I’d let you know there’s no obligation for you to open-source your app if you dont want to. If you’d rather keep it closed source that’s okay too
So interestingly, my phone downloaded and is playing it fine. We went to search it up on my husband’s phone, and his phone isn’t supported? Which is wild to me, as my phone is older/generally the one that doesn’t find apps!
Also maybe for the future, an idea! It’s very odd to me I can’t move the map at all. No swiveling around and looking, it’s always just looking northish I suppose! Maybe I’m more use to games like Orna where you can swivel and move and look around the map though.
So far I do like it! I look forward to more!
Edit: Wait, forgot about the main topic, what phone does your husband have? There shouldn’t be any restriction on Android version (if it’s one of the newer ones), but maybe I really messed up somewhere.
Yes, the map only has zoom for now (pinch in and out). As it’s a fantasy world I didn’t want to provide too much “looking around” options, the only thing that has to do with the real world is the street maps, which is an optional download ^^’
A little bit concerned people will do stupid things like go into private property, if I give too much freedom there. But I’ll think about adding a two finger move or something, the big question is just how to recenter again afterwards (button? There already is a double tap to reset zoom).
So I can say mine is a Galaxy A12 with Android 12 I think. I’ll edit this is a few hours when he’s awake and I can look at his phone!
I had a look at the topic, if his phone is from that era and was a budget phone, then maybe it doesn’t have 64-bit support (32-bit only). Unfortunately I can’t ship the game with 32-bit support :-/
But let me know the exact phone and I can tell you more!
So phone gained! Looks like a “Galaxy A13 5G” with Android 13?
Darn, it’s 32-bit only, as I thought. Sorry :(
Interesting concept and I wanted to try it. Downloaded from Aurora (because my phone is degooglized) and was kicked out of the game upon launch because google play isn’t enabled… Disappointing and I’d love to have it on F Droid too
Found it, Google injects by default an “Installer check” that blocks the app from running without Google Play.
I disabled it, try to get the newest version of the game (1.2.11) over Aurora and see if it runs :)
F Droid is a lot more messy, the game has to be 100% open source for it, which is not something I’m working on right now. I’d rather get it to iOS first.
What’s the problem with 100% open-sourcing? Third party libraries?
Wow that automatic installer check is really shitty from Google, I wonder why I never saw outrage about that, it will close access to most apps in degoogled operating systems
Ah, sorry, by default Google seems to inject some kind of Google Protection into new apps. You’re the third person asking about F Droid, I’ll have to take a look :)
I might need to do custom builds for that though (strip out Google plugins), I’ll put it on my todo list.
+1 for f-droid pls :)
Looks great, thank you for developing it and for releasing it for free without catches! I hope that you will eventually release it for iOS.
Have you posted this to Mastodon or any other social media yet? I hope that word will spread and make your game popular. :)
Just on Reddit, but it’s a ghost town with zero interactions, lol.
I’m not really active on Twitter like sites, not my style unfortunately :-/
No problem, I understand. I’ll see what I can do to spread the word.
You may want to consider cross-posting this to some other communities on Lemmy though, like !freegames@lemmy.ml and perhaps !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml since this is a pretty interesting use of OSM data. Thanks again.
Will do, thank you!
Thank you!
Congratulations and good luck!
Copped!
So you just walk around irl and collect stuff that way?
This is really cool! I’ll def download it and send some support :)
Thanks 💚 Let me know what you think about it!
This looks great! I’m downloading it on Aurora rn, but if an f-droid version comes out I’ll be very excited!
Let me know if it actually works from Aurora. I had to strip out the Google protections so it doesn’t crash on launch (:
Seconding the F-Droid request.
Also, the app is not available in Russia, is that by design?
In any case, good luck with it and thanks for sharing something like this!
Also, the app is not available in Russia,
it will be released as soon as you leave ukraine :D
tell putie. I’m sure he’ll listen then.
Oh yeah, as if I’m personally marching on Kherson in full armor.
Dude, these kinds of attacks have lost ground a long time ago. Plenty of Russians do not support what’s happening, many struggle themselves under drone strikes, quite a few actively resist. Or did you think large-scale attacks of Ukraine on some of the most crucial military objects happened without any help from Russians?
If you want to display your active civil stance, do it where you can. With US, Europe, Australia and more following Russia’s footsteps, I’m sure you’ll have ground for political action. Harassing Russians for the sake of being born in Russia is shortsighted and only serves to make you feel morally superior while doing nothing.
Dude, these kinds of attacks have lost ground a long time ago
like russians in Ukraine lol
If you want to display your active civil stance, do it where you can.
I do. Like here.
Look, I live in the US, I know it suuuucks having a leader you don’t trust, who’s actively fucking your country raw dog. Every time someone says “TRUMP SUCKS THE US IS TERRIBLE” I affirm the premise. If you don’t support the shitbag, good luck with your revolution!
but as a game dev, I’d wouldn’t publish my stuff in RU until that’s done, and I don’t blame anyone one iota if they aren’t either.
Seconding the F-Droid request.
Also, the app is not available in Russia, is that by design?
In any case, good luck with it and thanks for sharing something like this!
Yes, sorry. I had to limit a handful of countries due to laws.
For example Japan forces you to register a business there… similar to Vietnam. Russia has sanctions. And so on :-/
I see! This is understandable for a small indie dev.
But I’ll always be happy to see other avenues for distribution :)
It’s on Aurora now, so that should work :)
Aurora causes weird issues for me, and also the anonymous access seems to be no more for everyone, so doesn’t help me in particular.
But I’m one user, and overall, having it on Aurora means a lot! Besides, having it there means someone eventually shares the .apk itself, and that’s something I can certainly work with, even if I’ll have to update manually.
Overall, a good development! :)
I honestly have no clue about APK sites, but some already picked up the latest version: https://apkcombo.com/wandering-alchemist/com.vlyn.wanderingalchemist/
I don’t have a degoogled phone, so I can’t test if it runs, sorry.
That’s some very obscure place to take apks from, but ultimately it works, thanks :D
Love the harvesting minigames!
Lovely, have fun! 💚
well, I don’t have any interest in this game. but, since it’s free with no data collection I’ll try it, and give it 5 stars
I’m always looking for a walking game, unfortunately I’m stuck on iOS. Do you use OpenStreetMap for your map data? I’d love to add your game to our wiki if so.
I still need to get a used iPhone to look into iOS releases (:
Map data is from OpenStreetMap, then heavily cut down and compressed so people don’t have to download so much.
