JJG10101

Two more entries for the list: Diana Krall: "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" Sade: "Keep Looking" The Sade tune, in particular, seems appropriate. Fun thread.

Does anyone have any snowman-related geocoins for trade? I'm on a mission to collect enough for a small Xmas tree. ;-) I've got a few things I'd trade: a Venetian Masquerade, to name one. Thanks!

Just my two cents: using a U.S. presidential seal for a personal project seems a bit risky. You might wanna research "Executive Order 11649." Having said that, you could probably still get away with it. Did Groundspeak approve the design?

In response to the original question, I quote from "Top Gun": Negative, Ghost Rider.

I've got a Founders Pirate Tag available for trade. It shows Jeremy, Bryan, and Elias in a pirate ship beneath a Signal-inspired "Jolly Roger." I received it during this year's Block Party in Seattle. Just curious if anyone is looking for this tag.

1. FTFs: 390 2. A few years back, I was logging finds at the end of my lunch hour. Just before I finished, a new cache published .11 away. I looked at Google Maps, grabbed the coords, and *drove* to GZ. ;-) I found the cache and returned to my desk, exactly 11 minutes after receiving the notification e-mail. A few people mentioned they saw the notification, opened the cache page, and immediately saw my FTF. That was probably my fastest! 3. I should be an ORC in about 10 years or so. At least, that's my hope!

Really? I have the opposite view: leave this thread open for people to "vent." When TPTB come up with something, I'm sure people will have opinions one way or the other.

HUGE thanks, Jayman11! I'm thrilled to be the winner of a great set of coins. The cointest was straightforward, and the pictures (both on the voting and forum pages) are wonderfully cute.

Cute picture! I just voted.--JJG10101

I thought beauty was in the eye of the beer-holder.

Dead vs. alive, Groundspeak builder vs. the Earwigo approach... no matter which camp you're in, you gotta admit there hasn't been much buzz surrounding Wherigo. There's been no PR, no official announcements, no games, no contests, no cross-promotion, no social networking, virtually no changes to the Wherigo home page... it's been a quiet couple of years, marketing-wise. My advice to Groundspeak: stop ignoring loyal customers. Take advantage of people's intellect and enthusiasm and start generating, if not "buzz," at least a random spark or two. We're not paid to visit forums or create cartridges, but we do it. Do something, anything(!), to let people know the platform is either moving forward, moving backward, or treading water. A message from the CEO would do wonders. ;-) Just my two cents. Back to your regular programming.

Looks like a great coin! One question, though: did Groundspeak sign off on the design? It looks like you modified their logo a bit, and I know they're pretty strict about that. Just curious!

That's a good offer, matejcik. I'll try to play my cart "Lost Treasure of the Inca" in the next week or two. Do you need anything else besides the .gwl file?

There's only one way to be certain: trading places. You fly to Los Angeles, I'll fly to Prague.

Sounds good, I just might take you up on that offer. Two more thoughts: * I'd hate to think this was a North America issue. Granted, I doubt Garmin sells the 400t I bought to European customers; the U.S. topographic maps, to name one feature, wouldn't have much value for you folks across the pond. * Again, I'm not the only one saying this stuff. Take a look at this post from Ranger Fox, in the "Proximity Problems" thread: "...The Garmin Players do not seem to recognize zones beyond a single point. This has been a bug since day one and it has not been fixed. The same goes for OnProximity and OnEnter on the Garmin Players: OnEnter only fires when the player zeroes out and OnProximity fires when the player crosses the proximity radius of a zone."

this is false. FALSE. false , false, faalalalalaaalaalseeeeee! (that means that it's not true.) i have here a log from a Garmin Colorado that says that a zone was entered somewhere else than it's zero point - actually, it was outside the defined zone shape (by about half a metre), so in fact the Colorado allows even more tolerance. but obviously you have to come as close as "here". otherwise (i would think) it shows distance to the nearest zone border. Perhaps the problem is with too small of a zone. What has been reported with a small zone is that users may have to move about to get the distance to the zone down to zero in order for the OnEnter event to fire. Make the zones large enough and they player should have no trouble getting inside the zone and having the event fire. You might also trying using OnProximity which fires when the player is within the proximity distance. As you move toward a zone the following events should fire OnDistant - you move into the distance range of the zone. If the zone is visible, the zone will be displayed. A distance of -1 is infinite and OnDistant fires at cartridge start up. OnProximity - you move into the proximity range of the zone. OnEnter - you move into the zone itself On the way out the following events should fire OnExit and On Proximity - you move from the zone into the proximity range OnDistant - you move beyond the proximity range into the distance range OnNotInRange - you move beyond the distance range. The zone is no longer displayed. (not sure if this fires on the Colorado/Oregon) Just out of curiousity to those folks doubting my previous post, a couple of questions: 1. Do you own a Garmin Colorado? 2. How many carts have you authored/played? In my case, 1) I do own a Garmin Colorado. I've had it about a year now. And 2) I've authored 5 cartridges and completed 2 others. Several friends also have a Colorado unit and report the same thing. The zone concept is pretty simple, at least in theory. You create a box and when the player walks in the box stuff happens. In reality, I have *YET* to see that happen. Search this board, and you'll find other folks saying the same thing. But don't go by logs or what other people say. The best way to confirm/repudiate this is to try it "in the field." Simply put, OnEnter doesn't work as it should. I tried OnProximity and that had less-than-ideal results. So for now, I'll live with OnEnter requiring the player to hit the zero point.

A word of caution: zone events (at least on the Garmin Colorado) don't execute until you hit the "zero point" in the the zone. In other words, players have to wander around getting closer and closer to zero, until the magic word "(Here)" appears. Just wandering into the zone won't do anything. This bugs me to no end. Essentially, the Wherigo functionality is a bit compromised since you need to hit zero for zone events to start working.

I have the opposite problem. Developing the concept, writing descriptions and character dialogue, working on graphics.. that's the easy part for me. When it comes to the technical side, I can hold my own, but it's not my favorite part of creating a cartridge. I should probably hang out a shingle that says "ghost writer for Wherigo."

I usually start with a "storyboard": Wherigo blog: storyboard

This drives me nuts. In an attempt to get around the bug, I tried using OnProximity for my last cartridge, instead of OnEnter. Boy, was that a mistake. The PocketPC units (which seem more prevalent around here) didn't like that. So.. I switched back to OnEnter, although trying to hit the zero point makes (Garmin) cachers look like wandering drunks. IMHO, this is one bug that should be fixed.

I'm using what I'll call the "ABCDEF" approach. Essentially, it's a series of six questions that must be answered in the field. A brief explainer: while in the first zone, an item appears. I call the item "Puzzle A", and it features a character image and text. The text follows. * * * * * Your cell phone rings. "Newton here," the conversation starts. "Just to get things going, how many mini-spotlights are mounted in the ground INSIDE "Connector"? SUBTRACT three from this number, and call it A. * * * * * There are 10 spotlights in the ground, so subtracting three means that A = 7. "Connector," by the way, is the name of a HUGE artwork with lights mounted in the interior. As far as I can tell, there's no way to get this number without being in the field. At the end of the cartridge, I'll say something like, "The geocache, by the way, can be found at N33 41.ABC, W117 39.DEF." I'm thinking this prevents any sort of emulator play, extracting graphics, or hacking the files. Naturally, there are ways to get around my approach. Since I've posted "Connector" on the Waymarking.com site, it's possible someone could post a photo of the lights. Hopefully not. Folks could also try to use the Internet to find some image or reference, although I doubt that would work. Finally, there's the remote possibility that someone who's found the cache could tip off other players, but again, I doubt that. Just doing what I can to prevent cheating.

So how do you plan to have anyone play your cartridge? Will this also be a Wherigo geocache? Deane AKA: DeRock & the Psychic Cacher - Grattan MI He said "source code" not executable. Right you are. Once you upload a cart, there's a series of "Creative Commons Settings." For my first two cartridges, I allowed players to download my source code. I don't do that anymore, primarily to prevent non-Colorado/Oregon/PPC geocachers from taking shortcuts. Around here, folks would play the game in the emulator, then run out and get the cache. That's not the point of Wherigo. Had they asked me, I would've *gladly* loaned them my Colorado. The way I see it, early adopters should get some benefit for taking the plunge and buying Wherigo-compatible hardware.

Yep, that's approach I take. I'll include a zone where I instruct the player to "count the letters in the name. Call it A." I repeat this approach five more times. At the end of the cartridge, I say "the cache is at 33 41.ABC..." Even if someone hacks the cart and tries it in the emulator, they still won't have the final coords." Long story short, I guess I've got a three-step approach: 1) make the coords a puzzle that can only be solved in the field, 2) include the "desktop" emulator check, and 3) don't allow people to download the source code. Yes, it means folks in other states/countries won't see my work, but it prevents the locals from taking shortcuts (and several have admitted they tried).

It looks like the poster function is broken. I can't see any posters at all.

I agree, Garmin is the best. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)