Is there a better way of emulating the cartridges?

[+Rebel Alliance]

I have just about finished my first cartridge.

The coding side was very easy and enjoyable thanks to the urwigo app.

But testing in the emulator is a right pain.

More often than not, the map gets in a state and will not allow me to move my little icon.

Usually as I am about to get near to the end.

The cart has 22 zones so it is getting to be a bit of a hinderance to test it in this fashion.

 

Is there any other way to emulate a cartridge prior to a full field test?

[Ranger Fox]

I've had a problem where I can't drop David (the lackey icon) on the map. When that happens, I just drag him some more and try to release. If that doesn't work, I could always click elsewhere and choose "Goto Here" from the context menu. That usually moves him.

 

As for a field test suggestion, what about this: When it's time to test a cartridge, change the coordinates of all your zones to somewhere around your house, office, neighborhood, or other area you frequent. Make the zones very close to each other so you don't have to do a lot of walking. You can then play through the cartridge using another Player application without having to go to the location you chose for the cartridge.

[+TheHarvesters]

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.

[+Rebel Alliance]

Thanks for the responses.

@rangerfox, yep tried all those, I usually end up just having to restart.

I also have a test cart for testing any in game logic.

 

I did a walktest this morning and found a few glitches.

Mainly with my unit (I think).

It crashed twice when trying to save and also when using the scrollbar on an image?

 

Whilst out I did a recording of the nmea datastream.

That way I can test the compiled cart as if I were walking around but actually sat in my own home

Edited May 16, 2010 by Rebel Alliance

[+sTeamTraen]

As for a field test suggestion, what about this: When it's time to test a cartridge, change the coordinates of all your zones to somewhere around your house, office, neighborhood, or other area you frequent. Make the zones very close to each other so you don't have to do a lot of walking. You can then play through the cartridge using another Player application without having to go to the location you chose for the cartridge.

Earwigo has a one-click option to move the whole cartridge to a different starting location at compile time, for exactly this purpose. (The distances between the zones are maintained, though.)