Ranger Fox

The connection aborted error is something new. It's Groundspeak's server, so they'd have to look at it. (Thank you for @ing me.)

Yeah, if you keep with Groundspeak's builder and didn't know to install the 64-bit Windows fix or the fix to use Google's updated maps API (both are available in this forum, pinned to the top), then you'll soon start running into problems. That said, the builder isn't all that bad--but that's only if you know what you're doing and like to click a lot. Or perhaps it is. I'm not a good person to ask because what I usually do is set up objects using Groundspeak's builder, switch over to the raw code, build the cartridge from there, and occasionally load the cartridge back into Groundspeak's builder to see if it compiles and to play test what I've done up to that point. So, no, that's not a normal workflow at all. A good number of the community uses Urwigo. If you're really new, you can make something basic in Wherigo\\kit, then import that into Urwigo to see how it was done and tweak the cartridge from there.

If you used the builder's UI for that, you'd need to set up OnEnter or OnProximitiy events for each of the zones, then set that particular zone's Active state to false. Instead of using "currentZone", just use a reference to the zone itself. For example, if you have a zone called zoneFluffyKittenTeaParty, instead of setting currentZone.Active = false, you'd set zoneFluffyKittenTeaParty.Active = false in your event. (Hopefully, the zone name got a chuckle. It's a reference to Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos character.) Even taking the direct code way, there's no easier way to do this. Sure, you can have one function that iterates through all zones in the cartridge and creates an event for each zone that will perform this action, but then you have the problem of this being set for all zones (or those matching a certain name or other property filter).

You have the 64-bit fix, right? If you get stuck on something, you could always email me the file and send a message via the gc.com messenger so I know to check my email. As long as you're patient, I can help.

http://www.rangerfox.com/map_fix/map_fixes.zip

Groundspeak's builder needs to be updated if you're on a 64-bit machine (you are): You'll later need to update the maps: If you have any further questions, please post in the Building Wherigo Cartridges subforum. More people watch that one, and it's the appropriate place to post questions regarding the creation of cartridges.

That's a nice workaround.

When I see that, I just look at the cacher's placed caches. This gives me a general idea. If the cacher hasn't placed anything, I could get a flawed idea by the person's found caches. I've observed I could click on a few random pages and make a guess, though the same approach would not work for someone who finds caches only when traveling. As I said, the found caches part is flawed, but it might work under some circumstances. Yes, though, I do like to see that someone has noted his or her home region. I also understand some people do not either wish this information to be known, know how to update this information, know others use this for things, or care.

There isn't a way to search by open source cartridges. Such a search criteria had never been added. I would have suggested you use the site's keyword search, but it was producing errors this morning. The Wherigo listing site was created back in 2006 or 2007 and has only been updated for certain reasons (e.g. how logging in was changed in the back end, the cookie notice). I would not expect any future updates.

Yes, you can't rely on the proximity event for inactive zones because of just that: the zone is inactive. If you wanted to hide a zone and still have the event trigger, you'd have to make it active an invisible. I'm going to modify what Tungstène said. Let's say you had a tour guide cartridge in a large historic park and you had 100 zones. If you use a timer, you will need to be careful if you're displaying messages to the user. I had a problem more than a decade ago where I used a timer every two seconds to move some zones to simulate three characters walking in a park ("Sadie's BiG Adventure"). This involved getting the next coordinates by index in a 300 - 1000 element array and then moving each of the five zone points to the next location, then reactivating the zone. This worked well on a Garmin Colorado, but caused dialogs in a Garmin Oregon to be delayed by thirty seconds to a minute. Fortunately, modern devices should be able to cope with this, but just be aware that calculating distances every second or two will put a strain on the cartridge. (Of course, what you'd really do is make it so the timer doesn't automatically reset. When the timer ticks, you check all zones and only then restart the timer.) I like the idea of container zones. This is what game development does. When you reach a loading zone in a video game, it preloads the next area before your character arrives. You could also incorporate this into your cartridge. For example, let's say you're in that historic park. Each zone in the game might be presented as a ghost of a person from that era. When you arrive near where you think a ghost is, the player can select a "scan" command from a ghost detector item. The detector item, you can say, might take up to a couple seconds to detect the ghost, depending on how faint the ghost is. If a ghost is found, that zone activates (or events fire). If one isn't, the detector will tell you the closest ghost or show it on your map. What you're doing is making a gameplay element out of a game limitation. I strongly recommend this option because you're making something fun out of it and people would then expect to wait because they think it's part of the game.

Good question. Both Earwigo and Urwigo do take some getting used to. When I was new to Urwigo, I had to get used to clicking on the object (such as zone) and seeing its properties in a different spot and then how to work with its flowchart-like interface. Earwigo, once you get access, has its menu across the top and the logic flow looks closer to Groundspeak's builder. I did think about further expanding Kit, but for the past two years, I've been putting in a lot of unpaid overtime at my job. Perhaps, later, I might get back to doing something with Wherigo. That depends on Groundspeak's actively supporting the community.

There isn't a way to filter by builder application because that information is not tracked. Typically, when a builder like Urwigo creates a cartridge, it does not include its .urwigo file within the zip file it creates. This means even if the cartridge was open source, someone else would not be able to open it in Urwigo--especially if the cartridge uses text obfuscation. I think some Earwigo-made cartridges might be importable into Urwigo, and all Groundspeak builder and Kit cartridges can be imported. (Caveat: if a cartridge relies heavily on author script, it likely won't matter which builder application you import it into.)

I'm finding reports that this is normal for Groundspeak's site. You have to find a time when it'll work. I've given up reporting problems and outages because no one there seems to do anything about it. I can log in at the moment, by the way. And my user account on that site no different from anyone else's.

Let's not post to one of the oldest threads on this board, okay?

I'd suggest archiving the event after a few weeks or when everyone has logged they have attended. I believe this is automatically done by the site these days after a certain period of time elapses. Also, if your event is held at a park or other such venue, I'd strongly suggest making sure the site be cleaned and trash deposited in appropriate receptacles. Make sure all travel bugs have been picked up from tables. As for things to do after an event, you could stay and talk to people, find some caches, look for waymarks, place a cache, play a Wherigo cartridge, go for a hike, do chores, do other satisfying and filling activities, or put in more unpaid overtime at your job. Whatever you decide to do, make it worth your time. You only have one life, so live it.

There was an alternate Wherigo player for iOS, but you can't talk about it since it directly "competes" with Groundspeak's app. Fun with guidelines...

For those curious, the compiler (I was using the compiler from Groundspeak's builder application) didn't seem to like that Earwigo put some functions at the top of the cartridge. I moved everything down to the author script block and Groundspeak's compiler liked it. However, things can't be that simple. Groundspeak's Wherigo site's compiler did not like that cartridge. So, what we have here might be a case of slightly different compilers. Well, we learn something every day. So, we have something like this: zitemTarget.Commands = { Debug = Wherigo.ZCommand{Text="Debug", CmdWith=false, Enabled=false, EmptyTargetListText="Nothing available"}, } So, within the Builder's compiler and WF compiler, this is valid. The Wherigo site's compiler, however, seems to hate having a command titled "Debug". I seem to remember something similar happening before in the forum, perhaps sometime around an October one or two years ago...

They should still be working. If you’d like, you can send me the GWZ that isn’t working and I can see if I can upload it through my account. But, first, try to see if the cartridge works with the online compiler, just in case. I hope this isn’t related to the other site problems.

While it was a coincidence, my find count is a palindrome. Ha, ha. I did not time that.

That’s correct: it’s old news. I remember being told the news by Groundspeak when I was still having meetings with them. That day, I was attending a mini golf event. I’ve recently been playing around with an overhaul of cartridges and the player app. I can define a cartridge in C# and use Blazor (WebAssembly) to run the cartridge natively in a browser player app. I still have a lot of work ahead, and I want to see if I can somehow run the lua engine in WebAssembly. This is more of a personal exercise, putting in work whenever, than something for me to release—especially because I want it to handle new things out of the box.

As you may have noticed, Kit doesn't give you the option to define the cartridge's starting coordinates. Instead, Kit uses the first zone as the cartridge's start. I'd wonder if Webwigo, the emulator, was having difficulty interpreting these coordinates. Since I'm at work at the moment, I cannot check to see if anything might be happening on Kit's end. (I just hope your first zone isn't over the ocean as well. Then again, I don't think I've ever heard of a diving cartridge, possibly one exploring an underwater wreck. But I think you'd have a difficult time maintaining a GPS lock under several hundred meters of water...)

Theoretically, the only limit might be in performance. I believe the cartridge would experience slowness before you have server problems. I hope you’d be able to avoid such a structure by being smart about what you’re testing and grouping similar arguments together.

The WF site lists who is responsible for what, by the way.

For sounds, it depends on two things. First, if you download the cartridge for a handheld GPSr, the compiler will strip out the sounds because the device type doesn’t support them. Second, if the cartridge file does have sounds, it depends on the player to play them, and that’s out of my control.

I’ve always been able to download from the WF site directly to my iPhone. I start outside the Wherigo app, using the Safari browser. After clicking to download the cartridge, the browser asks if I want to open the cartridge in the Wherigo app. (A few times in the past, the browser asked to open a cartridge in iMovie, though confirming it launched the Wherigo app instead.)