Dani+Iris

I can confirm that: it can be hard but it does not have to be hard. I also organised some hands-on workshop events (all of my events were actually of that type. Dutch only sorry, but you get the gist when you look at the listings e.g. with translate) where I showed and practically guided fellow geocachers in different techniques and steps for making basic cartridges that are rich enough to get a lot of favo points :-) I not only used \\kit but also Urwigo and even Earwigo for that. What I personally like for the very beginner is starting with \\kit for the general layout of zones, questions, order, ... and then continue in Urwigo (just adding little extras like a NPC or an object you have to interact with to get the question instead of firing that from the onProximity event). You very quickly get a solid working cartridge that is rich enough to impress most players. I even use this technique myself often as it makes me focus on the import and fancy stuff and do not have to bother with the basics. I know that I have kick-started several geocachers in building nice Wherigo cartridges: I get a lot of feedback afterwards from the attendees and they show me their creations (or have me do the live testing) with pride.

The meta game is an interesting addition and I can see how it would keep the attention to keep playing WIGs alive. It will not be for everyone but that is OK. If understand correctly there is a limited link with the basic game and scoring system. Looks good.

Impressive but also in combination with the complexity of the Invaders meta game I have some doubts concerning your weak point: how to encourage quality over quantity. What we do not want is that by this setup very creative and good creators that are poor players (either no time or limited ability up to physical disabilities), are discouraged or not giving their best to the community very poor creators are forced to just "give" and thus create quantity because of the scoring system We saw the negative effects in Ingress and munzee, but also in geocaching with (in my opinion) stupid power trails, geoart and lame drive by micro's. Nice "on paper" (virtually) but no fun in the field. It comes from the premise that everybody has to give back and can not only take, but also that you can not only give. From this comes the idea that everybody should be equally able to create... And from this I think we end up with lower overall quality as the builders must be easy enough to serve the general creator. I read in the general Feature List thread things like "templates, snippets and general frequent scenario's", point and click or visual programming, ... Can we not accept that quality creation requires skill and is an art. And also, that some creators enjoy just doing that and are just rewarded by great logs, community appreciation and acknowledgement? I do not want to force good players into becoming bad creators or good creators bound by limits. Compare it with car building or art creation. Everybody agrees that building a good car is technically difficult or making a nice art work is only for limited creative artists. We do not want everybody to be a car builder or an artist? Imagine the rubbish on the streets or in the art world. But car builders and artists enjoy the reviews and public recognition of what they put on the market is of good quality. And lots of car users or art lovers can enjoy it without being forced to at least try to build a car or paint? Maybe this means that you can keep the elaborate scoring and meta game but at least provide for an extra layer like "quality logs". Otherwise it just ends up being a scoring system and no (or poor / minimal) logs that I can not enjoy anymore as mainly a creator? (look at the poor adventure lab logs and no other possibility of giving more to the quality creator)

I have to admit that "the need for a final box" currently is my least concern: yes, I think today there needs to be a box because very few people (geocachers) will play a Wherigo from Wherigo.com if there is either no "reward" from a found log on geocaching.com (from the players perspective) or there is no publicity for the cartridge by not putting up a geocaching.com listing (from the creators perspective). the urge of players "hacking" a cartridge or just plain sharing the final coordinates only comes from "finding the box and the log requirement" from geocaching.com. If we would be released from that requirement, would we see more effort put into the cartridge? I have to admit that most maintenance for my current cartridges comes from the box / final location issues, not from the coding/cartridge/bit rot. always ending in one or a fixed location is also a result from "the final box". Imagine the liberation in game play and variety of scenarios we could gain when ending in just one spot is no longer a requirement I know that in theory you could create WIGs just on Wherigo.com and not cross-list on geocaching.com. But in practice today this does not work. So today the final box is something "I must do" as a creator but "I would rather not do if I did not have to". How can we get to that? It brings up fundamental questions to me: do we need the geocaching community and (the burden of) its rules? (today yes: publicity, ...) can we get attention outside that community? (today sometimes: I used the platform several times for creating something for the general public. It works but it takes a lot of effort) can we then combine both communities? (maybe: the public attention dies very soon and the GC communicty will always at least have the drive for the statistics/found log - hopefully something more than that for the connoisseurs) I do believe that thinking about this choice (for GC only or (also) for general public) will sharpen the idea of what we want to build. afterthought: I have seen many alternatives over the years that tried to solve the problems we experience with WIG (like Actionbound, intercaching, ojoo, geomob, yes even adventure labs, ...) but many are already gone or slumbering or don't give the full range of possibilities. Wherigo has also been on the verge of dying over the last 10 years but hey: look at this thread. What kept it alive?

Just my two cents in this thread: I was already following this thread actively once it started as I am still regularly developing new WIG cartridges because I love the stories I can tell and the interesting interactions, even with all the technical hurdles of the current platform. I still believe in the idea of location based rich interactive applications that make a better geocaching experience. I am experienced in Wherigo/kit, Urwigo, Earwigo and just plain lua development in notepad. I choose the tool that fits my needs of the moment my worst fears were that at some time in the future Groundspeak would discontinue the platform or that the technology becomes too broken to be fixed for today so yes, I really want to be involved in this group and participate where I can be of use On the list of features and categories: we also need an out of scope list, things we agree that we will or do not want to pursue (like ads). Suggesting things for the out of scope list will sometimes be more productive than just adding stuff at the wishlist in one priority or the other. It makes it more clear where we are heading. For example: do we really want a dependency on being on-line / being connected? if we go on with this project, we must leave this forum not only because of the conflict of interest that you are referring to but also because it is very hard to consolidate the information, views and insights gathered in the replies we also must think out of the box (of geocaching): being active in the community of geocaching you don't realise how small it is. For example in my country Belgium there are 40.000 active cachers on a total population of about 11 million. Even if only half of them could be considered as potentially interested in this type of outdoor gaming, that is less than 1% we could reach. And even in that 1% geocachers only a very small percentage is currently interested in WIGs. I read this a lot in my logs "I hate doing WIGs because..." on this last topic: several of my WIG cartridges are also made available outside the Wherigo.com platform (I just host the .gwc on my site for download) and I am surprised that I can attract non-geocachers with the fun of it. I skip the hurdle of having an account, struggeling with the download and broken Wherigo.com site, ... The only hurdle remains with a separate player app and a cartridge that needs to be installed. Could we consider bundling the player with a specific cartridge that could be more easily installed with one click? Ease of installation will be a key to the success and last but not least: this is a huge project to start, especially with a remote and diverse international team that will have to deliver without a commercial or professional driver, just for the love of it. So we need a project lead that can manage that.

As a courtesy I want to inform @Ranger Foxthat I adapted this cartridge into GC9JX7K I first of all translated into Dutch but I also heavily changed how the game is presented to the players: instead of whacking moles, I transformed it into Santa Claus throwing around christmass balls you have to collect. Likewise the bonusses are changed into more meaningful extras (a poison ball, a super grabber, ...) Adaptation was done solely with notepad and is fairly easy but still requires detailed attention as one typo makes a huge difference. I enjoyed reading the code and the comments :-) I suppose it should go into your list https://www.geocaching.com/plan/lists/BM2WTWH The credits to Ranger Fox and the original Whack-A-Lackey are in the About ("Over") message of the Instructions Item in the cartridge. Thank you very much for sharing this as an open source cartridge. I always learn a lot by looking at the code and it generates ideas for new cartridges.

Did you find what was wrong with your cartridge? I also have to deal with geocachers complaining that some of my cartridges (that worked fine on the previous iOS version and still work fine on Android WhereYouGo) stopped working on the latest version 1.5.6 (29) on iPhones... The messages I get are diverse: from "not being able to (down)load the cartridge" to "not showing any zones/items/tasks/..." after startup". Have other cartridge owners also experienced breakage of their cartridges on the latest iOS version? I read in this thread that some issues are "amplified by the iOS player" (and thus that previous and other players could work with). Is there some list of these issues?

I also already did what Ranger Fox suggests: just hosted the .gwc file on my own website and link to it with a QR code and then some very basic manual how to install the Whereyougo app (or other player). Just to give you an idea of this: http://www.tiensepoort.be/buitbinnen (sorry, Dutch only but you get the idea when you use Google Translate) This one even shares the route and final with the geocache and Wherigo listing... I just did it because of what you asked: making the geocache/Wherigo more widely available to the non-geocaching community without the hurdle of creating an account, activating Wherigo.com for the first time, .... It was even a requirement of the people that gave me the permission for the final location.

Ah... the mysteries of technology a big thanks for the magic!

No progress? Is it lost forever?

Just a kind reminder to this... Is the information of the wiki lost forever?

Move item to player...

Is this wiki permanently down? Any idea where this information has gone to?

Indeed... I just tried it myself with the importing the cartridge in Urwigo and that works. Seems to be a bug then with earwigo. I will post my question on the earwigo discussion forum.

On http://Wherigo.rangerfox.com/ \\kit promises "Compatible With All Wherigo Builders" but I don't succeed in importing a gwz or lua file into earwigo. What are your practical / current experiences wtih the intended idea of "start a cartridge in Wherigo\\kit, then import it into another Builder for more hands-on editing"? Is this a earwigo bug? Have you better experiences with Urwigo? Any other ideas?

There is already a thread discussing this: In general I think it is a nice idea to be able to add QR codes (and other new possibilities) to the gameplay but the problem today is indeed that other playes (iOS and/or Geooh Live) do not currently support it and ideally the activation of this feature should be controlable by the cartridge as to not to confuse the users (novice users mistake the player feature for the QR scanning as a part of the specific cartridge...). Of course that will not be possible from the current state of the Wherigo system as it is in practice declared dead by GS (and the revival process by the Wherigo Foundation is a very long and hard road to travel). In our local Belgian/Dutch Wherigo Facebook group there was also recently a confused user asking the same questions: where did I have to look for a QR?

Thanks a lot for the explanation. I opened the updated WF cartridge in a hex editor and the character is hex 0A. Still looking for how to introduce it in earwigo (or only post edit the .gwz _lua file ... with a hex editor?) I'll try to work with that in my cartridge and will let you know the result here. Side note: I always use the localization option of earwigo - and it is one of the many reasons why I like that builder - because in the tiny country of Belgium we already have 3 native languages and on top of that a lot of international geo-tourists. Building my cartridges only in my mother tongue (Dutch, in fact more exactly Flemish as sometimes even our Dutch brothers think we speak another language :-) ) would limit the number of players of players, especially in tourist heavy areas like my home town Leuven. So yes, for me localization is an important factor.

Update: I seached the earwigo google group on this issue and @sTeamTraen says there that you should include (in earwigo) \060BR\062\010 into a string and then at runtime his WWB_multiplatform_string function will do the necessary conversions for the platform it is running on... If this is true... cool :-) but I still have to get it to work (and in webwigo I can not for the moment). (why oh why does this all have to be so difficult)

Sorry, but still a bit confused about what you did/fixed... Could you elaborate? What is the "newline character" of the GS builder? Is it \n ? And if so, what/where did you exactly change "some double quotes to double square braces" to make it work in my cartridge (with earwigo)? I could not find it out by diff'ing the lua produced by my earwigo and your WF cartridge because I did not get a lua copy before I sent it to you... (I before tried with \n in a string but this showed up as ... \n on the iPhone) I used a variable var_nl that I concatenate the string I want to break so I could if then else on the player to use different break characters if needed, but of course being able to use just one for all would be nicer. And yes, I (have to) publish it on the Wherigo.com site or my reviewer won't agree...

link sent via DM on your geocaching profile. Thank you for looking into it.

I am building with earwigo. Do you have an earwigo account, then I can directly share with you the link. If not, I will send the .lua extraction.

Still confused after a test I did with this: see attached screenshot. On the left is the iPad and the right Android WhereYouGo The <BR> works fine on the Android but on the iPad only shows as a <BR> So maybe, it is what you said: the iOS only supports <br> and not <BR> ? I will test it again (but I do not have an iOS device myself and will have to rely on someone else...) If I can not solve this (use one specific newline character across all players) I will make a workaround that fits into the game: I will show a message that consists of two parts delimited by the different line break characters one by one and ask the player to confirm when it is split in two lines. From there on I will use that value in var_nl variabele to concatenate my strings that needs splitting... I think I can make it work in the story without my players noticing too much I am technically struggling with this :-) Or is there another way that you provide the same experience across players? Is there a safe way to test the device / player and branch from there to use the correct line break character?

To make sure I understand this correctly: using <BR> will result in a line break for all players (but at least for Android WhereYouGo and Wherigo for iOS ?) (my confusion comes from the fact that the edited original post still states that iOS only recognizes <br> but the final post states that <BR> must be used for compatibility between player apps. In other words: iOS works with <br> and <BR> ?)

I my area there are very few cartridges but when a new one is published a small but very dedicated group of players is very eager to get the completion code to unlock the cartridge on Wherigo.com. When I forget to provide it, I will get complaints very soon. On most of my cartridges about 30% of the found it logs on geocaching.com also entered the completion code on Wherigo.com . For other players and the cartridge owner it shows the total number of completions on the cartridge listing page (on Wherigo.com). This gives an extra hint of the success rate because the log only enables you to mark it is as "played" (not necessarily completed). Again, I disagree (a bit): I always liked that Wherigo.com logging provided an extra means to give your appreciation to the CO by the built-in rating system that formalizes more your experience than the geocaching.com favourite system. It also gives an overall average rating on the listing which again says a lot more than just the % favourites of premium members. The favo system is in a my opinion a weaker system as it as just a binary yes/no credit system. I hope that the completion code and the rating system survives in the future of Wherigo (on the Wherigo Foundation?)