smthng

Thanks Tom, I've been waiting for someone to set up a Wiki for Builder. Unfortunately, I'm useless at editing Wiki pages, but I'm really hoping there are plenty of others who will be contributing. Wiki's can grow into incredibly good resources and we really need one for this. Thanks again for the effort! I'll be keeping an eye on it regularly.

I didn't see it posted anywhere else, so I figured I'd let everyone else know as well... I see on the Wherigo site that there is a new version of Builder up... Current Version: 2.0.4825.3287 Last Release: 2/25/2008 Size: 2 MB I'm downloading it now and will start updating and completing my tutorial if possible. Any chance we can get a list of fixes that were completed for that?

My pleasure and it's completely ok with me... that's why I posted it in the first place. I hope it becomes a model to get a LOT of people started on Builder. I just hope no one steals my tour before I finish it... I'm actually planning on doing a full walking tour of the National Mall and the memorials and monuments in the area. I'll probably be updating the tutorial quite a bit over the next couple of days... I see a new builder was posted and hopefully it will fix the couple of roadblocks I've run into.

Make sure you're not trying to use a Task event to fire it... Task events are bugged and we're waiting for a new release of builder to fix it.

Thanks for the the code. I'm taking a bit of a bit of a break from the tutorial until the new version of builder gets posted. I keep running into bugs and I don't think it's going to be real helpful for me to have to change it everytime I find something else. I'm glad it helped though. I'll check out hte code against my source in a bit. I'll probably be revamping the whole tutorial next week... same content, but it's getting too "big" for just one page.

Forgive me if this doesn't make sense, but I really don't understand your question. I'll hazard a guess that might point you in the right direction though... I think the problem you *might* be having is with profiles. The Colorado acts totally differently depending on what "profile" you're using. If you're in "Automotive" mode, it defaults to trying to route on roads and it doesn't give you some of the options you might be looking for. Try making sure you're in "Geocaching" or "Recreation" mode (in the menus, that's normally under "Others - Profile" or something similar). Once there, you can see the other screens you might need on the main menu or the "Others" toolbox-looking menu. My guess is that you're just not seeing some of the screens you need because you're in the wrong profile or you haven't dug through the "Other" menu. Again, I'm kind of guessing, but I hope that helps a bit. Sorry if some of my menu descriptions are a tad "off", I don't have my Colorado with me right now.

It has NMEA capabilities, but I've read several reports of people having issues with it. The problem appears to be that the Colorado only has a USB output and NMEA is normally a serial connection. Using the usb-to-serial adaptor doesn't work because the Colorado thinks it's being plugged into a laptop and it goes into "storage mode" (which is how you transfer things to it) and doesn't act like a GPS when it's plugged in. This is probably something that will be fixed in a firmware update eventually, but I don't know how or when. Again, take all this with a grain of salt, I'm just repeating what I've seen in a few posts by people who've tried it. The best thing you can do for more accurate information is to check the Groundspeak GPS Units and Software forum or the Colorado FAQ page. The forum has a few posts from people who've tried it with mixed results.

BTW... all of City Nav (not NT) fits on a 2Gb card. It's generally around 1.7 Gb, but changes a bit depending on which year you're loading. I've used every version from 2004 and up and they all fit on a 2GB card for the US & Canada. Note, this is for the standard version, not the NT version... I haven't messed with the NT version at all.

So far, they appear to only be used for categorization... http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=185223

I probably tried a half dozen different ways to fire that puppy and couldn't get anywhere. Glad to know it's not just me being stupid. Thanks!

I'm getting similar behavior on my task events. It looks like they aren't triggering at all. Here's what I did... Made a quick and easy cartridge with three zones (all active). Made three tasks that were basically "Go to each zone". When the zones are entered, they fire off a "When the player enters a zone" event that sets the appropriate task to Complete... "Set ztaskGoToJeffersonMemorial Complete true". The tasks do get flagged as complete, as I can see them disappear in the emulator. Each task has a "When a task status changes" event that is supposed to do the following: Increment TaskCount by 1 If TaskCount Equal 3 Show a series of Dialog messages to the player Set cartDCMallTour complete true else Show a message to the player end None of that seems to be happening at all. I don't get the series of dialogs when all tasks are completed (TaskCount=3) and I don't get the (else) message if they aren't all completed. The cartridge never gets completed either. Is this a bug with the builder or code, or a bug with the emulator? My Builder is 2.0.4807.4874 2/11/2008 10:06:48 AM and my emulator is 1.0.2963.18199 12/31/1600 7:00PM engine version 2.11. If you want more detail (including message log), it's all posted in the tutorial I'm building at http://smthng.info/Builder (near the bottom).

Another n00b question... what are the appropriate media specs and formats that are available for us to use? Gif, jpb, whatevers? Preferred sizes for PPC and Colorado? Audio bit rates and formats for PPC? Any way to create whatever the funky "beep" file that the Colorado uses? I tried going through the wizard to create the three lackey coin quests, but when I played it on my Colorado, even some of those screens were a bit "funky", so I'm afraid to use them as a reference.

Ack! I'm a doofus. I updated every machine except the one I built the tutorial on. I'll get the screens fixed on my next hack at it. Although, I just created a new zone with the new version and the same thing applies, so I don't think I'll have to update much. When I create a new zone using "Create from Map", it uses the painfully slow terraserver, just like my tutorials from the previous version. It's only AFTER I've created it that I can use Google. The Create from Address doesn't really work for the kind of stuff I'm doing... Memorials and monuments in DC don't really have addresses. Thanks for the answers to my other posts too... they're all things I ran into writing up the tutorial. I'll make some adjustments based on the answers. Thanks again!

Ranger, I understand your concern and I agree with it. I'm sure I'll be playing plenty of carts that I can't physically get to in order to play. But, the opposite side of that coin should also be considered... I can see people having 30 carts listed in their profile, from all over the world, even though they've never left their home town. I'd be willing to be that someone figuring out how to work around the altitude zero issue eventually. When designing carts, I'd be happy to allow someone to go through everything except one question, which I would encrypt. If they get it right, I know they're on location and they get a completion code, badge, congratulatory email, etc. That "final completion" should be something that someone can ONLY get by running the actual cartridge in the right place. Encryption of some kind allows us to keep that sense of achievement. It's an important tool. Honestly, I think encrypted answers should be available as an option in the builder and it wouldn't surprise me to see it in a future version. Until then, I appreciate your work on it. It's good to know there are options available should I need them.

Probably a stupid n00b question, but I'm gonna kick it out there anyway... What's the difference in Builder between "state" and "status". As far as I can see, there are four flags/values for tasks... Visible, Active, Complete and Correct. The Event actions for a task are "state changes", "status changes" and "correct value changes". I'm assuming the following: "Active" flag change will trigger the "state changes" event. "Complete" flag change will trigger the "status changes" event. "Correct" flag change will trigger the "correct value changes" event. "Visible" flag change will not trigger anything. Are these correct? Nothing I can find really clarifies which of these is which and that's kind of an important thing to know, IMO.

Thanks! Ok, I uploaded the next "chunk o' stuff". I changed a bunch of the HUGE dialog boxes to thumbnails and went through some basic event/action scripting. It's still not ready for public consumption, but I think I'm ready to start taking on a bit of feedback and suggestions if anyone has any more. What I'm really concerned with right now are any errors that I might have because I don't understand or explain something correctly. There are also a few bits where I simply say "sorry, I don't know what this is yet" as well... if anyone can clue me in to some of those, that would be real helpful... I'm just learning as I go. I'll worry about cleaning up and making it presentable when I know I've got the basic content correct. It's getting a lot bigger than I originally thought as well, so I'll probably break it into sections during my next major editing session... probably a main page that goes over the basic steps, which each heading I have as a separate page instead of all crammed onto one big page.

I'm trying to figure out builder a bit. I've always found that the best way for me to learn something is to try to teach it. So, I'm making a tutorial as I go. So far, it's just the basic cart and zone creation, but I'll add more as I go. The screen shots are original size and the formatting is very basic... I'll address both of those before I consider it closer to done, but I'm interested in any thoughts (and corrections to anything I have wrong). Do me a favor and let me know if this could be considered useful and if there's anything I should change before I continue. http://www.smthng.info/Builder

Cool. Thanks Ranger, that makes it a lot easier knowing I can just pick somewhere within the area I'm building in and go from there. Now all I have to do is structure my tour so that it doesn't matter which zone the player tags first.

Ranger, Thanks for the excellent article. I'd considered something like this a few times, but don't know enough about Builder or LUA to be able to manage it just yet. I'll definitely be giving this a shot when I get my first "real" cartridge up and running. Would it be possible to enter the code in the Events section of an Input in builder? I can see in the Inputs section in builder than it has "Bold = Script Exists" in the description window. If you can enter the code here for every input, wouldn't that make it "normal" in builder, so you don't have to worry about Builder stomping on the LUA source code after editing it?

My second real Builder question... Why is there a starting location and what does it do? If I'm building a "point A to point B" type of cartridge, I understand it, but if I'm doing a tour or puzzle, I may not care where the player starts. Why do I have to define it and what happens if the player starts somewhere else? What worries me even more is that the starting location is a "point" - one set of coordinates. What happens if the user is 100 feet from the starting point? Will the cartridge not let them complete any tasks until they find the start area? It seems that if you HAVE to have a starting area, it makes more sense to be able to define a zone for it... possibly a very LARGE zone. Something like "somewhere in Central Park, NY" makes much more sense to me.

Hey all, I've been tinkering with the Builder and have made and tested a few super-simple carts, but there's a LOT of info that I'm just not "getting" with cartridge design. Most of it is real basic stuff, I'm sure, but with zero docs and most of the open source stuff being pretty complex, it's kind of tough to get going. So, my first question is "Is there somewhere I should be looking for basic tutorials and/or examples?" It seems that this is pretty much "it" so far. If that's so, I'll be happy to compile stuff as I figure it out and host it somewhere. It would be nice to at least have some real basic "getting started" Builder info available somewhere. So, my first real builder question... What's the difference between "Activity Types" when starting a new cartridge... I know that there's four different types, but what exactly does it do when you pick one over the other? When is a cartridge a puzzle or fiction as opposed to a tour? Thx!

I don't totally understand your question, but perhaps I can clear up some of the additional fog enough to answer your question along the way... Basically, you've got a basemap (ok, a couple of basemaps) loaded in the internal memory. You've got an SD card slot that can hold one other map that the Colorado will recognize. Without doing some pretty odd manipulation of stuff, that's all you've got to work with. While I haven't tested it, I've heard that it's real easy to blow away the basemaps in the internal storage. It's a REALLY good idea to copy the entire internal storage to your computer as a backup before you start messing around with stuff. I consider this a pretty hefty flaw in the design, but it's there and we've got to deal with it. Back up your storage! The other set of maps you load (using Mapsource) from your PC goes onto the SD card and is "compiled" into one big file... I think it's called "garmin.img" or something similar. If you try to load another map onto the SD, it blows away the .img file and compiles a new one with the map you sent. So, if you need to add one more map segment to your existing mapset, one way to do it is to do a transfer of maps FROM your device first. This doesn't actually transfer them, it just tells mapsource what's on your device and selects it all for you. Then you can add the additional segments you need and transfer them back to the device. This will nuke the .img file and recompile a new one with all the maps. If you need multiple mapsets... the easiest way to do it is to buy multiple SD cards and load them each separately with the maps you want. Then simply swap the SD cards back and forth as needed. With the 400t, I can't see much need for this. But with the 300, you might want one mapset for the Topo 2008 and another mapset for City Nav. They can't both live on the same card, so you'd have to load them up on separate cards and swap them back and forth. There are a lot of workarounds to deal with this, but none of them are real elegant. One is to load up a card with one mapset, rename the img file and then put another mapset on it (assuming you've got space). Then you can use your computer to rename both files back and forth so that you don't have to swap cards. I don't see that as "real useful" though, as you'd have to plug your Colorado into a puter every time you wanted to swap mapsets. Seems like it's easier to swap cards. This was the deciding factor for me to get the 400t instead of the 300, btw. Knowing that I can always have both the topo AND City Nav maps available at all times was the deal-maker. Hope that helps.

My 2000mAh Eneloops are getting me 6-7 hours of field use. I haven't done any measuring of backlight versus non-backlight or anything. I turn it on, go walking, driving, geocaching, whatever. I can get 6 or 7 hours out of a set. I use WAAS but generally don't use the compass.

My 400t has done that once. I figured it was a battery glitch or something and forgot about it. Unfortunately, I don't remember which firmware I had at the time, so I guess this isn't that helpful.

I can't say that the card will or won't work, but your I/O issue is probably not because of the card. Mine does the same, no matter what size maps or what kind of card I've used. Use an external card reader on your PC to dump maps to the card, then put the card in the Colorado. That worked for me and it happily reads a 1.7 Gb file (all of City Nav 2008). The writing to cards in the unit error is probably a firmware fix that'll happen in the future. Yes and no... Technically, yes, you need to pay for the map unlocks on each unit. But, Garmin is still a bit "forgiving" on that. If you registered on My Garmin, you can do some of it without calling Garmin. Register your 76C and City Select 7 on My Garmin if you haven't already done so. Then register your Colorado. Go under the registration details for your 76C and you should see your City Select show up with an "unlock for additional unit" link. Use that to unlock for your Colorado. The licensing for City Nav 2008 is a bit different and I'm reasonably sure it won't offer the "additional unit" link. If you call Garmin, they might give you another code if you ask nicely. They did for me, but I also have a dead Streetpilot that I was replacing, so they used the software I had for my Streetpilot and assigned a new code for it to run on the Colorado.