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2026-02-20: New Space: Café

The big news of the week is: A new Café space! The intended purpose for it is to use as an open space you could host yourself and distribute a link publicly.

Curious to try? This website hosts all official spaces to try. If you want to take a sneak-peak of the upcoming space releases, head over to the list of demo spaces and have a look around. Instructions for how to install a space yourself follow soon.

Please note: Not everybody likes to enter a video call with strangers at unexpected moments. Fear not! While currently video calling is heavily utilised, features to moderate a comfortable level of bumping into each other are in the works.

What else is new this week? The tooling to generate maps and how Gadgets are technically defined got overhauled. This was one necessary step on the way to stabilising the Gadget API, so more work on Gadgets can happen soon.

Other than that various other things got tweaked and tuned. The documentation was restructured and a small issue in the RSS feed (thank you Jochen!) got fixed. Much people-facing text in the toolbox got polish and a couple of smaller bug-fixes and code improvements.

2026-02-13: Tooling and code quality

The last week’s work focussed on 3+1 areas.

Gadgets. The code of and around gadgets was proofed a lot and some gadgets got lifted from proof of concept to release-ready. This includes video calling (using the great Jitsi software), embedding of arbitrary markdown documents (which you could store alongside your Waytale space), and embedding of arbitrary websites for general convenience. When the interface between gadgets and the Waytale Viewer has settled, corresponding documentation (“Gadget API”) is going to be released.

Toolbox. A lot of work happened on the tooling that helps with setting up and managing Waytale spaces and maps. More specifically, the waytale program got extended with a lot of functionality. Click and open one of the boxes below for a short preview of the new commands. Tutorials for effective use of those tools are coming soon, but the eager reader can already hop over to the Toolbox repository and experiment a little.

Space design. A small selection for ready-to-deploy spaces is planned and work on the next spaces has started. Next will be 1. café-like space that is intended for public use and configured accordingly (e.g. no video-calling or opt-in) and 2. in the project’s self-interest a space that showcases features and possible uses of Waytale. Work on those spaces will continue next week.

Code quality. Other than those three more substantial main areas, some work happened to improve code quality (stricter linting etc.), some refactoring of early code, and proper code documentation.

Usage: waytale [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Various tools to manage Waytale spaces and maps.

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  check     Perform health checks for a space and its maps.
  download  Download one of the official Waytale spaces.
  export    Export one or more Tiled maps into a Waytale map.
  init      Create a new Waytale space.
  serve     Run a local web/signalling server for a Waytale space.
  update    Update the configuration of a space.

Usage: waytale init [OPTIONS] DIRECTORY

  Create a new Waytale space.

  This command currently supports downloading a pre-configured space from the
  list of officially released Waytale spaces and asking some questions for
  personalisation. It is roughly equivalent to running the following commands:

      waytale download DIRECTORY
      waytale update DIRECTORY
      waytale check DIRECTORY

  The "quiet" and "force" parameters are passed along, if provided.

Options:
  -f, --force  Continue if target directory already exists. May overwrite files.
  -q, --quiet  Be less verbose about what's happening.
  --help       Show this message and exit.

Usage: waytale download [OPTIONS] DIRECTORY

  Download one of the official Waytale spaces.

  This command fetches an up-to-date list of officially released Waytale
  spaces. One of those is selected (see below), then the corresponding archive
  downloaded and extracted into the target directory.

  A space to download is selected either interactively, by picking a space
  from a displayed list of released possible spaces. Or it is selected
  automatically by picking the latest release of a space with a name matching
  the --latest argument. The specified search term need not be a the full
  space name (partial matching), but it must refer to exactly one space
  unambiguously.

Options:
  -l, --latest SEARCH-TERM   Be less verbose about what's happening.
  --strip-dir-levels NUMBER  When extracting archives, skip this many top-
                             level directories.  [default: 1]
  -f, --force                Continue if the target directory is not empty.
                             May overwrite files.
  -q, --quiet                Be less verbose about what's happening.
  --help                     Show this message and exit.

2026-02-06: Closed beta-testing

The development process has entered the next phase: Closed beta testing! This phase is planned to last few weeks, where the current (humble) set of features can be tested by a small circle of people. After this, a public call for beta testers will be published.

The last week was filled with big and small fixes and improvements across all repositories. First versions of gadgets for collaborative writing (using Etherpad) and drawing/whiteboard (using WBO) were made. Those will be polished in the next weeks and some more gadgets are planned for next week. Having multiple gadgets open at the same time is possible now. The landing page was updated a little for clearer communication what Waytale is about and some screenshots.

Due to other commitments in March, the schedule for the public beta version is not yet fixed. But it will be announced here in the next weeks, stay tuned!

2026-01-30: First Waytale space almost release-ready

The last days were very busy with work towards the first release. This will include the first official Waytale space, which will be a homely house. The design for this “home” space is near complete and is going through practical testing and bug-fixing of the pre-configured gadgets.

The space builds on a number of tilesets, which were gathered from different sources. In the process some Tiled-compatible tilesets were created that can freely be used for Waytale projects and outside of it (see respective readme files and license information).

The Viewer received a lot of improvements and bug fixes. More prominent changes include: Better spatial navigation, display of the zoomed space, settings styling, and error communication. Development tools (waytale command and release scripts) were streamlined.

More information to follow next week!

2026-01-26: Preparing the first release

The first few days of the year were devoted to a different planned commitment (worked out fine). Back to Waytale!

Current work focuses on getting a first release of a Waytale space ready, so people interested can try it out and play around with it already. If you have access to some web space, the process ideally is as simple as downloading a ZIP file, extract it, modify a file a little (e.g. name your space), and uploading all files (more details on installing here).

That first release requires a bit of functionality and assets in a basic version. This includes the following parts (more actually, but let’s keep it short).

• the viewer you use to access the space including dependencies (done)
• a designed space (work in progress)
• avatars sprites, i.e. visual resources people are represented by (done)
• tilesets, i.e. visual resources the space is represented by (done)

A note on the last point: While the internet is full of tilesets, not every set of graphics is suitable for technical, stylistic, or legal (licensing) reasons. A curated list of suitable tilesets will be kept in the Tilesets repository and a tool is in the works to help with license-related tasks such as crediting.

In other news: Want to stay up to date on Waytale developments without checking manually all the time? You can now subscribe by RSS feed.

2026-01-03: Happy new year!

Happy new year from Waytale! Looking forward to a year with many exciting developments planned!

Not so much has happened over the holidays, mostly due to recovering from sickness and closing the year. Some other planned commitments will be keeping me busy until the middle of next week, but then I will be happy to continue working on Waytale, including a couple of new features. Until then!

2025-12-21: Weekly roundup

Last full week before Christmas! The focus was on the last polish before making a first alpha version available (scheduled for next week). Today’s post also summarises some small here-and-there efforts scattered over the last weeks.

Most notably, all repositories (listed under the Waytale organisation on Codeberg) are now updated with the last local changes! From now on updates should be pushed more frequently. Here is a short repository overview:

• Most features will appear in the repositories of the Viewer application and the Gadgets that extend functionality. Here is the code that makes the functional, interactive magic happen.
• Assets include Avatars representing you and other people, and Tilesets which gets composed into Spaces. For all of those (and possible also Gadgets) there are different distributions planned for space customisation.
• Then there is the Pages repository which holds this website, and currently separate Documentation repository containing technical descriptions for how to use Waytale as visitor, owner, creator, or developer. (More on that below.)
• Finally, the Toolbox provides some useful programs to help with setting up a new space, developing, or automating common tasks.

In case it is not obvious, please note that this is all very work in progress and the current state does not constitute the final set of features. There might be rough edges here and there and missing features, but more is to come in the next months.

The website you are reading this on is currently split into 2+1 main parts:

• The purpose of this website is currently to provide an entrance to Waytale on a project level, with more high-level information and suggestions for how to use it.
• Then via the new Documentation menu item there is more technical documentation and guidance for how to make best use of Waytale in different roles (as mentioned above).
• Not yet online but planned, there will be a demo-space (timeline tbd) available for interested people to try it out quickly.

Other than that, in preparation for the planned alpha release, a robust release mechanism was set up to manage the releases and assets as outlined above efficiently. Supporting that, the Viewer got a very Friday-afternoon update-reminder in case newer version are available.

If time allows there will be another update in the next days. Either way, merry Christmas to all readers who celebrate!

2025-12-15: Weekly roundup (double feature)

The news item from last week got lost in the hustle and bustle of parallel job commitments, overlapping deadlines, bouts of sickness, and, well, it being December. Not so many flashy things happened in each week, so here is a double feature.

The last two weeks included a lot of smoothing out rough edges in many different places. More visibly, this covered a better onboarding experience in new spaces and some user interface improvements. Since pictures are nice, so here is a sneak preview of the current state (text continues after). Please note: Very work in progress of course and may be familiar with people who know the prototype. Either way, expect changes in the future.

Regarding internal changes, some parts of the Viewer code got made more robust and prepared for planned features. Preparations for irregular releases of asset repositories were made. Repositories were (locally) updated to match some standards to e.g. have proper readme and license files.

During restructuring into multiple repositories and it took a little time for the dust to settle. So much stuff is approaching a proper state locally and I’m looking forward to publishing them and then keep working in the public under the Waytale organisation on Codeberg.

Finally, updates are coming to the website (which you are reading). Documentation will be coming before Christmas, a demo space for quick trying out, and some time in the future also API documentation for the Viewer.

2025-12-01: Weekly roundup

Today completed the work of last week, which was about finishing the last last steps to reach feature parity with the public prototype. Hooray!

To a large degree this included setting up the gadget framework, including boilerplate functionality like activating a gadget when close, loading of external dependencies, and so on. Also work started on two reference gadgets (displaying markdown documents and Jitsi integration) with many others to come.

Another big block of time went into re-creating some important UI features, notably the tab view, welcome/help pages and the settings pane. While dependencies of Waytale are being kept as small and robust as possible, the settings now build on an external library which will provide a lot of flexibility for per-gadget settings as well.

2025-11-21: Weekly roundup

In a personally short week, the last days were largely invested into a couple of smaller boring under-the-hood changes. The Waytale project is divided into a couple of repositories somewhat reflecting the Outline. This streamlines build processes (e.g. of the “viewer” part, documentation, or this website) and releases of assets (e.g. tilesets). Most of those repositories are not online yet, but probably get put online this or next week. Stay tuned!

Other than that, the groundwork for gadgets was rewritten (from Tiled maps to interactive in the “viewer”), some tools for testing were created, and the planned structure structure was redone to be a bit cleaner.

2025-11-14: Weekly roundup

Last week was mostly continuing the rewrite of the Waytale navigator. Space and map loading works, walking around, and now also the WebRTC core, so now you can see the avatars of other people walking about. Rewriting already paid off here.

In other news, preparations were made for online API documentation. Some more background information was put into this website. Anyone building with Waytale (including me right now) will require a local development setup and a new helper tool will simplify this part a bit.

2025-11-07: Weekly roundup

In the last and this week focus was mostly on rewriting the core features of the main interface of Waytale. The demo so far was a lot of copy-pasted code to see whether it works, but not maintainable. For the new code base a model-view-presenter pattern will be employed and it’s looking much tidier so far.

Other than that, some tilesets were prepared for public use and a new demo space is being worked on, which will eventually be linked on the landing page of the project.

2025-10-27: Website online

Well, hello world.

2025-10-16: Funding by NGI Zero

The Next Generation Internet Zero coalition spearheaded by NLnet selects the Waytale project for the NGI0 Commons Fund call from April 2025. The NGI0 Commons Fund provides grants to people who help build the digital commons.

2024-11-19: Prototype

First “proof of concept” is uploaded and experimented with over the following months.