a_snail

A basic single page journal shouldn’t be difficult, just keep adding text to a string variable, either from a user input or fixed text messages in reaction to doing something. I’ve kind of done that in the past to display the characters the user has found when they arrive at a meeting place (too many characters to have proper characters at the meeting place, hence the text). Flipping through pages is much more of a challenge, but from what I’ve seen should be possible. I do wonder how much could be stored in the memory and if it would be to the determent of the rest of the Wherigo. Some devices may struggle with lots of text. A clear button is probably essential for pages user can add text to.

My personal take on this is that a Wherigo can be something fun and to be enjoyed like reading a book or solving a logic puzzle. If you play nicely, you get a great experience, if you want to look at the answer or look at the back of the book first then that’s also your choice but for me spoils the surprises and plot that the author has gone to the trouble of adding and which may only be apparent if you stand at the spot in question. I can however see the merit in dads running through a Wherigo first to make sure they understand what needs doing (so they aren’t embarrassed) before taking the children out for a walk. Its also nice if you get stuck or want to try alternative solutions to run it through on the emulator to find out where you went wrong. Its especially useful for Wherigos from authors that kill players or prevent completion 3 hours into the game due to something you did or didn’t do earlier in the game and you just want to pick up where you left off. My final comment is that I have no hope of getting to most new Wherigos (much as I would like to), so if someone puts in protection anywhere but the end, I just can’t play it which is a shame and no good to anyone. As for the people logging completed games (done on the emulator), whilst its not ideal, they have shown an interest in the authors work which is a good.

PS included is a fixed version DefaultCommands.zip

Your problem is you have been using a DOS editor to modify the .lua file e.g. Notepad.exe. If you do this, I think its the Carage return line feeds get modified from what I guess is the Unix style to DOS style. Some text editors will allow you to edit the .lua files, but you must preserve the format. I use UltraEdit and answer NO I don't want to convert to DOS format. You have two options, 1.use the Wherigo builder author editor (I think you can cut and paste any text into there and it will save it in the right format) 2.save files in Unix encoding using a specialist text editor

I've just tried your IOTest.gwc on a Garmin Oregon and that also crashes.

Hi The last (and only) Wherigo I made, the sound file I used crashed PPC's the second time it was played (took a while to trace). "The Cartooners" very kindly found the problem and gave me their Alarm sound but thats about 2 seconds in length. Sadly I don't have access to a PPC, so I can't test any sound files to make sure it works, so I would like a sound file that is no more than 1 second long that is a beep or alarm that definitaly works on a PPC's. Any help would be appriciated

I suspect most people here think of them selfs as beginners to some degree. I doubt many people have use LUA before trying to create a Wherigo. I suspect there is a lot that could be done in Wherigos that people havn't thought of yet. After all, animation and moving things is only just been explored, what other things could be done? I do agree with the Ranger about keeping the code on Groundspeak websites to try and keep a none elitest feel to wherigos and not split the comunity. Getting new people in is good for all concerned, new people new ideas, new boundaries pushed back. Stupid questions are rearly stupid, just a lack of knowledge, which is what these simple examples would fix

With more and more devices becoming available that can play Wherigos (especially on mobile phones), it seems a bit silly to abandon it now. I doubt Garmin would have bothered with Wherigos for the Oregon if they though it would all fizzle out.

How permanent is that wiki likely to be? It might be better if Groundspeak hosted the example scripts. PS the comment earlier about getting the hour into a variable, thats the sort of thing I was thinking about for small bits of code colleciton, or find out how far it is from one object (player, object, character) to another object.

If there is something specific your trying to do, I might be able to help given I've been digging through Whack a Lackey rescently to work out how the basics work and then developing my own stuff (which is moving "character" objects around and calculating distances and bearings between characters, locations, objects and the player).

I like the idea, although small bits of code are also useful as well. Yes they are kind of tutorial like, but unless I've missed it (I probably have) I don't think there is anywhere else where these small bits of code could be placed for people to dig through and think - "I didn't know you could do that, that gives me an idea". Currently (and a big thanks Ranger Fox) Whack-a-lackey, is one of my main sources to find out how to do all sorts of things. If possible it would be nice if these small or big bits of code could also reference actual wherigos where you can see in situ the bit of code in action and perhaps get a better understanding of how it was intended to be used. Thanks to all those people who publish source code.

Thanks for info. Looks like the smallest screen size is the PPC, so I might just target that screen size initially. Is the Oregon screen size the same size as the Colorado? Since my original post, I've come across http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=207358 which suggests there is a utility that resizes pictures for mobile phone users that use openwig. Given the person complaining was using openwig, I can only assume the utilty didn't work correctly or wasn't used. Has any one tried it and does it work?

I havn't found a definitive answer to this on the forum (yet), so, a couple of questions to see what others are doing. In the past, I've used the following picture sizes for the width, but not necesseraly the full height. Zones: 180 x 230 px Object details: 250 x 230 px Message Boxes: 230 x 230 px Tasks: 230 x 230 px Should I be including different size versions of the same picture, so that different devices show the picture correctly i.e. normally full width. I've had comments that my pictures where too big to display correctly on a moblie phone size screen. If I only need to supply one picture, should the picture be larger than above and hope the user downloads the one for their device and some how the picture is magically shrunk to fit the device (prefer not to waste processor on the GPS to do image resizing). If I should be including different sized pictures, can anyone give me a list of what sizes I need. I'm also guessing not all devices have the same shaped screen, so it would be kind of nice to know how big other device screens are, partly to try an avoid some problems I've had where on the Oregon there is no scroll bar, so its not always obvious you need to scroll down resulting in people missing some text. Thanks

A nice easy one: Player.Name when run in the emulator is "Builder"

Method 1 has the bonus that you could have a picture for each combination to illustrate to the user what is going on. I'm guessing from your comments that you have a separate zone for each tower, so you would only need a set of pictures for each tower, which is probably not that many. Method 2 is definitely the nicer (from a design point of view), but I do wonder how your going to convey the information to the player. I've tried in the past to order things in the view, e.g. button order, but they have always had a mind of their own. A third method (not a great solution I admit) which could be done without authorscript might be to use a two digit number variable to represent the location of each disk with the first digit being the tower number and the second digit the position in the tower.

I think I have had your problem where the Oregon locks up and dies a couple of times, but I half though it might have been low batteries at the time because it wasn't reproducible. Since then I've had mixed luck with the Showing windows (e.g. Tasks, Inventory, Main window) to the point where I've decided they are too unreliable to use in new code. It may have something to do with other stuff e.g. timers or entering / exiting a zone happening at the same time which causes the trouble, but thats only a guess.

There is a definate interest in Wherigos, with 3rd parties developing their own builders (sorry I've forgotten the link to the other builder) and players (e.g. http://code.google.com/p/openwig/). Like Ranger Fox, I do hope existing stuff will continue to work and its a case of getting new facilites or at the very least a way to convert existing stuff over to the new system. I also hope that what ever is in development, uses the same code on all devices so that if it works on one device, its likely to work on another (assuming the users of both devices do the same thing - users so unpredictable) unlike currently when you need to be aware of bugs in devices you don't have access to never mind own. Fingers crossed Garmin will provide updates to support the new stuff as I don't really want to buy another Garmin just yet.

A zone shaped like a maze!!! Do you happen to know what the Wherigo was called? Sounds like fun and also something I've being pondering about rescently. I'm not suprised that the Colorados struggled a bit, given the usual rule is keep zone shape simple, I would have thought most GPSs would struggle. I guess if the maze is broken into smaller chunks it would work quite well.

From what I have read in other comments, the colorado will only display one button on a "Show message to player" window. The Wherigo I did apparently worked on a colorado and I used lots of "show messge to player and then using the button to show other ones. A note of caution though, I think I may have had problems with players drifing in and out of zones that display these types of window when you enter the zone especially when the input window is active (I think this can be replicated in the builder and player). I got round this by deactivating the zone before starting the sequence to ensure it could not be interupted.

Sounds good. I had a bit of a play around with moving zones earlier today. The Emulator doesn't seem to highlight the correct bit of the map, however the location pointer seemed to work and event triggered at the new location. I'm assuming (at the moment at least) in the case of the Indies boulder, the boulder will be a zone in its own right that moves, and you can't do anything useful with objects or characters i.e. when the boulder zones arrives at your location you effectivly enter the boulder zones and get flattened []

Its definitally 64bit thats causing the problem. I've had to use a Virtual Machine (although in my case it was VMWare running XP) to get round the problem. Unfortunately I can't get the sound to work (driver issue), so its far from ideal, but at least its a solution. Personally I think its an issue to do with DotNet libraries that are being used. The moving zones and npc's sounds interesting, as it happens I was pondering the best way to have snakes (Indiana's best friends) moving around and the player trying to avoid them. I'd be interested to know how you get on with the bolder scene. My main concern is the refresh on the Oregon not showing the new position / information. Good luck with your project

Oops, managed to post the same thing twice

Might not be the best way, but I've rescently done something very similar where each time a task is completed I started the same timer (a countdown timer of 1 second). The Timer incremented a counter each time it ran. When the counter hit the correct number, it went on to do other things. The reason I did it this way was I wanted to put as much of the code as possible in one easy to run place (also easier to maintain) and the Builder to recognise all the code. At the end of each task all you would need to do is start the timer. If your not bothered about viewing the code in the builder, then you could create a function to do something similar. The only problem is you always have this 1 second delay, that said it does give the GPS (Oregon in my case) a chance to do other stuff like setting zone status and descriptions, so in some ways its a good delay.

It may or may not be the same issue, but I've had quite a lot of problems with the screen refreshes on the Oregon i.e. the screen gets updated with a new screen whilst the user is interacting in some way with the Oregon. An example of this is "Show a screen to the player". I gave up totally trying to display tasks using this method and have the oregon crash a number of times when zones became active and inactive when the main screen got drawn. So, my suggestion would be to remove any "Show a screen to the player" settings and see if that helps.

Task do work on the Oregon as does sound, but only a beep. To get the beep working see topic "Anyone got sound out of the Oregon?" I've got the opposite problem, I've got an Oregon but nothing else, so with a bit of luck I will get the Wherigo finished in the next couple of weeks and we will see how well it goes. I am a bit worried in case I've exceeded numbers of zones, characters etc or made it Oregon specific. Really all I can do is make sure it works on the Oregon and the emulater and say that in the description, and then just wait for feedback. As for updates, Garmin has an updater program that you download from their website, plug you GPS into the USB slot and then run it. It will scan for any devices attached and then update them. Currently they are on version 1.6 (out a week or so ago, and its a much nicer interface for entering coordinates, however I don't know of any Wherigo changes). I do seem to be getting zones duplicated at the top of the list now which I didn't previously, but that might be my Wherigo when I was testing it over the weekend. Ranger Fox, do you know if its possible to post completely different cartridges for each device when you upload them (I've not tried this yet). I was thinking I would have a full version working how I wanted it, and a slimline version that has half the stuff chopped out, but has a very high chance of working on most devices thus allowing all users to find the geocache.