TheHarvesters

I only had time to watch through to the point where you start the builder demo but this is excellent! Well done. I did guess fish though I'll come back and check out the rest later and give you som moe comments then. The fact that you've include the files as a way for the pupil to learn as you tutor is great.

That's a good inisght to someone like me who doesn't really know this stuff. I'd also say it's a favourable set of pro's and con's - there is a lot of potential in that. Is there a possibility that bluetooth will develop to make this even more attractive? i.e. longer range and bigger scale of players?

Nice! and then I thought... oooh oooh... If Groundspeak ever update the website, they could have a feature where players could store their own avatar information. So as well as downloading the player.name you would get the player media, maybe an alternative 'game name' which they could change for each cartridge they downloaded, or.... oooh oooh! maybe each cartridge designer could even specify the variables they wanted the player to populate before downloading the cartridge - to personalise the game experience more.

Oh, and sTeamTraen - how about Earwigo being modified to accomodate the new Object class etc? (assuming this works out sometime)

The players could have the same cartridge, but the cartridge allows different character options, e.g. Boy and girl, or builder and architect, or warrior and wizard - whatever that game dictactes. Those different characters may have the abilities that enable them to perform certain tasks required to fulfill tasks and collect items or interact with virtual characters to move through the game. Maybe both (many) characters need to be present to complete a task - like bringing down the boss needs x many players or a variety - with different items. Also - would they have to meet in a designated zone? Couldn't they meet in any zone (if the cartridge were developed that way), or couldn;t they even meet outside of a zone - because the remote-player proximity could work in a similar way to zones? Anyway - The sky is the limit. I like this idea. As sTeamTraen has already queried - would bluetooth actually be 'strong enough' for this?

Ha ha ha! ;o) Definitely opt-in only. Whilst you might bump into other wherigoers (not sooo likely around here...yet), I'd envisaged this as an intended outing for a group, that may have to (cos the cartridge demands it) or else prefer to (cos the cartridge enables it) play together to achieve something.

I heard that the new Garmin (C62?) does not come with Wherigo installed - could there be a downloadable player for future Garmins? and other GPSrs?

That could be all kinds of cool! ;o)

Well, I suppose it first demands that the technology is smart enough to recognise another 'unit' in the vicinity. Ideally by means of a unit-id so each could be 'named' seperately. Depending on the game scenario, the other players may be friend or foe of course. In terms of the interaction - perhaps the other players are like mobile zones, and otherwise the events can work in similar ways, e.g. when 'foe' in proximity then commence battle - lose game points. If friend maybe you can swap or share items to help with an overall goal - maybe a goal that is time bound and could not be solved by one person alone. I'm sure if there were a way to realise the concept then the developer community would come up with all kinds of ways of exploiting it. I didn't have a specific game in mind - but I'll give it a little more thought. Paul.

If we're allowed to take leaps here, then I see the next level as being player interaction. i.e. if another player is in the vicinity they become another player character in the game you are playing. Group Wherigo anyone? Wherwego perhaps?

Great minds think alike John! You might like to check out this cartridge/geocache that we have had running for just three weeks now. It was our first cart and from conception (this was originally going to be a multi!) to publication took 6 months. It's far from perfect under the hood, but it plays well enough. The cache page hints at the mutliple paths and there are three cache pages which you can find from the link I provided - that denotes three possible endings. Check out the logs - we're thrilled with the feedback so far. I'm already exploring how this idea goes to the next level, but I;d rather not say much more about that here...yet - if you have any questions, then pm me. cheers, Paul.

I've been using Earwigo to develop and this is a cinch in that tool. I just checked this out for you using the standard builder, and oh my! I was reminded of how non-intuitive and complex it all seems in there! Anyway - yes you can. In the build an action process under a character, say, there is an action option titled "Show or hide a character or item command". If you go through the options there to select the character or item, and teh action, and then you can set it to false meaning it wont; display any more. Obviously if there is a circumstance to resurrect it you can follow a similar process to set it to true (and therefore visible) Hope that helps. Paul.

I had exactly this problem and in the end de-tuned the scenario to make it less problematic for the unit(s) that play it. I'll be interested to see if there is a better way to overcome this. I learnt from this forum that there is on ly one 'message slot', and so when one message is displayed it shoild just take the place of the older one. However, I go the crash situation you describe. I did begin by using a show main screen ahead of showing the new message, and that did seem to work without crashing, but confused the hell out of some of the field testers as the flow of the thing was broken. I suggest you try the show main screen then, and see if that works for you. If anyone else has ideas about this I'd be very interested. Paul.

I'd also like to publicly praise Nick for his hard work on this. An excellent web-accessible developer tool for Wherigo cartridges. As many of you will appreciate this is far and away better than the 'official' development tool. I stumbled across it in this forum when I wanted a simple way to set zones (outside of the US!) using a map tool. I now find it totally intuitive and the support forum is excellent too, with suggestions from all and sundry being responded to - releases of updates to the tool are frequent and well managed. Thanks Nick! My first cart/cache has been 'live' for just two weeks now and I'm enjoying the feedback - you must take some of the credit for that. Paul.

This cart: http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.a...c8-e1b7b2cd1999 and the feedback from it so far suggests that a safer limit to consider would be 850 characters. Bear in mind that new lines seem to take up a fair chunk of memory too.

Would the memory used for waypoints and routes and such make any difference? That is one of the theories. As we get some more feedback about the different units we should be able to give a firmer advice to builders to say, "don't set message text above 850 characters, making sure that any inserted variables (i.e. concatenated strings) are taken into account." That's probably a good rule right there, but we need to see if other units are failing at 750 or anything lower. Paul.

I just uploaded this to help with tests regarding the accepted text size in messages on different units: http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.a...c8-e1b7b2cd1999 I'd be interested in any feedback. How you think it could be used at geostock etc. Update: my Nuvi 550 typically bombs at 950 characters, but has also shut down at 910. My Oregan 300 is out on loan at the moment but I will get that tested asap. I will also be asking for some of my geobuddies to help with this testing, but will wait for further comments from this forum first. Paul.

I had the same pains when testing through emulation... there is a certain knack to it. Also, I set an item up called 'Zone activator' and in it I set up a series of scenarios that I want to test, so I can go to almost any point in my large adventure and play through that part of it. As well as activating the appropriate zone it will set the variable etc as they are needed for my live test. So you could have a 'find the chest with key' and a 'find the chest without key' option, etc. This is obviously disabled in the final cartridge (just awaiting approval now). There is also a deactivate-all-zones option in the 'Zone activator' which means I can do several test in sequence without blowing through the active-zones ceiling. It's your cartridge - you can make it do what you like! ;o) Paul.

Hi, could someone please confirm for me: in the above post it seemed that one fault of the player on a pocket PC was that text in longer messages could not be scrolled through. Is this still a problem? Does it affect all Pocket PCs? Is there any way around it? Other than to have the messages shrunk in the cartridge? If there is a finite length to messages for pocket PC's what is the longest length? and is this dependant upon any image that might be shown to accompany the text? I don't own a pocket PC so I cannot test this for myself. Obviously I'd like to make my cartrdige as open as possible. thanks Paul.

Thats interesting! 8) So this will contain the player's geocaching account name?, e.g. mine would be TheHarvesters..? That is correct. COOOOL! thankyou... thread hijack, out...

Thats interesting! 8) So this will contain the player's geocaching account name?, e.g. mine would be TheHarvesters..?

I had a problem which seemed to be caused by trying to show a message when one was already displayed. I can;t be certain that's what it was, but I have (I think) worked around it by using an on-exit command to display the main Wherigo screen. I suggest giving that a go. I'd be interested to know if it actually helps too. Paul.

Thanks for your responses - I'll consider the better solutions you offer above, but I'm just delighted that I'm getting a working solution now, so I'm in no rush - other things to sort out. re: Urwigo - I took a look at that. It looks pretty!, and those features would be good, but I was so far into using Earwigo, I didn't want to have to learn another tool. Earwigo has its advantages too of course. When I get to look at building another cartridge (I can't stop having ideas!) then I'll re-consider Urwigo for that.

I had similar thoughts early on in my build. I'm developing my first Wherigo at the moment, and I've leapt in at the deep end it seems! dadgum my imagination! 8) My thinking was that the proliferation of Wherigo would be increased if we were more open with our cartridges. The fact is I am unlikely to be able to complete any/many from so many other countries - where they are location bound. If I want the fruits of my labor (and its taking a lot of effort!) to be fully realised, then perhaps someone could lift my adventure and re-imagine it in another location - with a nod to me of course... ;o) That way we can enjoy the posts of users all over the globe instead of just in our local neighborhood. I think this proposition could be improved by some additional functionality in the on-line site - something around shared cartridges, and watch lists etc. But there is nothing to stop us doing this is there?

You seem to state that the save option does not work in the oregan but I just tested it this morning and it seems to work okay. I'm using the Earwigo builder, so I don't know if that has resulted in a different approach to the official builder - or is there something else I'm missing? Paul.