Basic Tips for Wherigo Builders

[+Pandemi]

I have spent most of my waking hours over the last few weeks writing 2 lengthy, if simple, Wherigo cartridges (see The Tattoine Incident & Knutsford). I am using a Garmin Colorado but the problems experienced by early Players of my Cartridges with PDAs are consistent with the problems I experienced. Both my cartridges seem to be working fine now so it goes to show that Wherigo does work with a bit a patience .

 

I would like to start a thread covering some basic tips to writers of new cartridges. Many of these points are covered elsewhere in this excellent forum and some may well have already been fixed but they have been lessons learned through much trial and error and through much trawling through the forum to resolve.

 

Wherigo is a fantastic tool and has great potential. I am truly impressed with what the developers have done so far but I hope this thread may help others find a few short cuts through the learning process. For starters, and in no particular order:

 

- When moving from zone to zone the next zone often doesn’t ‘fire’ (i.e. become visible) until you are reaching its proximity. A way round this is to set the ‘Distance’ of each zone so it overlaps with the previous zone. So, if your next zone is (say) 500m away from the previous then set the ‘Distance’ of the next zone to (say) 1km. Somehow that makes sure the next zone is 'visible' to the previous zone and will allow it to fire as ‘Visible’.

 

- The Garmin Colorado doesn’t like long pages of text in a ‘Message Box’ so the programme will often freeze when it tries to load an overly long message. If this happens then reduce the length of or text so it doesn’t fully fill the available text in the message box.

 

- The 2 problems above will not be apparent in the emulator. It is only when you test the cartridge ‘on the ground’ that they will become apparent so make sure you test the cartridge live before you can be sure it will work. The emulator is great but it is not always a true reflection of how the cartridge will work on the ground.

 

- Audio files caused me big problems. Both my cartridges played fine on the emulator but on the ground locked up intermittently when they came to an audio file (either a wav file for Pocket PC or a ‘System Beep’ on the Colorado). I know these are meant to work but for some reason these gave me endless locking problems on both my cartidges.

 

- Only use JPG picture files. Other formats (e.g. GIF & BMP - I'm not even sure if they are 'valid' formats on Wherigo ) may make the cartridge lock on the ground.

 

- Set JPG picture file sizes to 230 width. This appears to be the optimal size - at least for the Colorado screen

 

- Load picture files using the ‘Tools>Wizard>Batch Import Media’ command. Often if you try to load them direct it will error with ‘Select File Type Not Valid’

 

- Make sure there are no spurious characters (e.g. para returns) in an otherwise empty media file ‘Description’ box as this will also cause the cartridge to lock

 

- The cartridge unlock process at the moment only seems to work if you set the cartridge to ‘Complete’ at the some stage during the programme (e.g. by getting the Player to enter a complete code). The Player then needs to upload the ‘Completed’ *.GWS file when the cartridge has been completed. The other methods of unlocking cartridges on the Wherigo website don’t seem to be live yet.

 

- At the moment it does not seem that cartridge ‘Builders’ can view completed GWL files uploaded by players onto their cartridge home page.

 

- When specifying a zone ‘shape’ online make sure you ‘Save’ the changes and then hit ‘Close’ at the bottom of the screen or the changes won’t be implemented. Often you can’t see the ‘Close’ command as it is right at the bottom of the screen (I believe this has been fixed on the latest release).

 

- If you ‘Place’ an object in a zone it will erase your ‘Media’ and Description’ contents so make sure you ‘Place’ it before entering these.

 

I’m sure a lot of these may be ignorance on my part, or may be specific to my own setup, so don’t assume I am necessarily right. I would appreciate any comments or corrections from the Developers or other Builders on any of the points above.

 

Thanks for a great tool – I’m completely hooked .

Edited March 26, 2008 by Pandemi

[Ranger Fox]

This is an excellent collection of very useful information, Pandemi! Thank you very much for contributing to this.

 

I have one I'll contribute. It was a point of confusion from before:

 

- When test playing your cartridge in the emulator, all invisible zones will show on your map as light shapes. This is on purpose and for your convenience. The zones will not show like this when a user downloads your cartridge.

[+twolpert]

- When moving from zone to zone the next zone often doesn’t ‘fire’ (i.e. become visible) until you are reaching its proximity. A way round this is to set the ‘Distance’ of each zone so it overlaps with the previous zone. So, if your next zone is (say) 500m away from the previous then set the ‘Distance’ of the next zone to (say) 1km. Somehow that makes sure the next zone is 'visible' to the previous zone and will allow it to fire as ‘Visible’.

There is a known incompatibility between the Colorado and the PPC (and emulator) in this respect. On the Colorado, a zone is shown (in the locations list) only if Enabled is true, Visible is true and the player is within the "distance" setting of the zone boundary. If distance is -1, then an enabled, visible zone is always shown regardless of player proximity. On the PPC and in the emulator, a zone is shown whenever it is enabled and visible, regardless of the distance setting or player proximity.

 

On both platforms, when distance is -1, the "on distant" event fires when play begins. This generally means that the "on distant" event is fairly useless when distance is -1. But on the Colorado, this is the only way to show the zone without regard to player proximity. If you need the "on distant" event, then the only alternative is to live with the proximity restriction on visibility.

 

There is some question as to which is the intended behavior. I believe that somebody from Groundspeak is checking with Garmin on this point, but I have not seen a resolution posted.

Edited March 26, 2008 by twolpert

[+kazuma]

Great thread...

 

I'm also starting an italian wiki for Wherigo (time is not helping me though).

Anyway, just to add my 0.02€...

 

When "answering" to question, take in consideration that some devices can have limitation on the size of the answer. On the Colorado, for example, you can't insert answers bigger than 18 chars.

 

Kazuma, geocaching-italia

[+vphakli]

Good info for me too. Do you mean enabled as Activated?

[+twolpert]

Good info for me too. Do you mean enabled as Activated?

Oops. Yes. That's what I get for posting without having the builder in front of me.

[+twolpert]

There is a known incompatibility between the Colorado and the PPC (and emulator) in this respect. On the Colorado, a zone is shown (in the locations list) only if Enabled is true, Visible is true and the player is within the "distance" setting of the zone boundary. If distance is -1, then an enabled, visible zone is always shown regardless of player proximity. On the PPC and in the emulator, a zone is shown whenever it is enabled and visible, regardless of the distance setting or player proximity.

 

On both platforms, when distance is -1, the "on distant" event fires when play begins. This generally means that the "on distant" event is fairly useless when distance is -1. But on the Colorado, this is the only way to show the zone without regard to player proximity. If you need the "on distant" event, then the only alternative is to live with the proximity restriction on visibility.

 

There is some question as to which is the intended behavior. I believe that somebody from Groundspeak is checking with Garmin on this point, but I have not seen a resolution posted.

This has now been resolved. As of the PPC/emulator release of 03/27/2008, all units conform to the Colorado behavior. See the builder release notes and this thread.