"Nothing available" - iPhone problem

[+Delta68]

My latest creation works fine on the Oregon but has this strange "Nothing available" error on the iPhone (3G)

 

It pops up when a command is called.

 

I have an item with eight buttons on each with a command and that works fine but I have other items with commands which produce the error. The first item is loaded to the Player on startup but the other items are positioned in zones

The zones are active from the start. Not sure if that is significant.

The items in the zones show up in 'you see' on proximity

 

I never had this problem with the previous version of the player but I have tweaked the code a bit since installing the latest player

 

I found a Czech forum where someone has the same problem but I'm not sure they resolved it here here's the same page translated through Google

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[+bretina]

I had a similar problem occur on a cartridge I just made. I suspect the reason is accuracy. The Oregon is more accurate then your iPhone (especially the 3G) so the Oregon is 'keeping you in the zone' (less GPS drift) whereas you probably are near the zone border, and with the 3G you literally are drifting out of the zone.

 

In my case I had characters with a command on them (Throw Snowball). I could throw a snowball when I first hit it, but when the next one came up it wouldn't do anything and said "Nothing Available". Couldn't figure it out. Finally I clicked on the zone and it said the zone (that the character was in and I used to be in) was about 30 feet away. I could still see the command as I had it up when I was in the zone, but I had since essentially moved out of the zone so it blocked triggering it. I walked to the zone and tried the command again and it worked.

 

The player must be in the same zone as the item/character to trigger commands on them. I tried to get around this by having them with a high proximity, and while this sort of worked, the problem then became where it would trigger multiple commands (I had the same command on multiple characters).

 

I was using an iPhone 4s and getting this once in a while, but I remember our iPhone 3gs, the GPS on it was very inaccurate. I imagine you would get a lot of GPS drift on it. The best thing to do is get further into a zone so that even if you drift you stay in it.

 

Now how to code around that or to convey that is what is happening to the user (rather then the not helpful error message it gives) I am not sure.

 

- Bret

 

My latest creation works fine on the Oregon but has this strange "Nothing available" error on the iPhone (3G)

 

It pops up when a command is called.

 

I have an item with eight buttons on each with a command and that works fine but I have other items with commands which produce the error. The first item is loaded to the Player on startup but the other items are positioned in zones

The zones are active from the start. Not sure if that is significant.

The items in the zones show up in 'you see' on proximity

 

I never had this problem with the previous version of the player but I have tweaked the code a bit since installing the latest player

 

I found a Czech forum where someone has the same problem but I'm not sure they resolved it here here's the same page translated through Google

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[+Delta68]

Thanks for the reply bretina

 

It sounds like you might have diagnosed the problem. I've had so much trouble with zones in the past that this current one I've fairly small zones (20 feet square) but has everything happening 'On Proximity' and proximity is set at 50 feet

 

I'll try increasing zone size and see if that improves things

[+Delta68]

I had another play this morning and it seems that although I can see the items in a zone when in Proximity range, I have to actually be in the zone for the commands to work.

 

This is a major problem and I'm sure that it wasn't that way with the previous version of the player.

 

I had to spend a good few minutes at each zone waiting for the commands to work whereas previous tests using an older version of the player have been no trouble at all

[+Team Peredox]

Thanks for posting this. A cacher reported the same kinds of errors on one of my Wherigos, but I thought he must have been doing something wrong. Now I see that there might be something wrong with the app.

 

I haven't done any testing on this issue, but most of my zones in this cart trigger On Proximity to make it easier for the player. If he hasn't fully entered the zone when trying to use items or talk to people, then this is going to be a problem.

[+Delta68]

That's exactly what our latest cartridge does.

 

I've had so many problems in the past waiting for zones to trigger that I wrote the whole lot based on On Proximity. This works great on the Oregon.

 

The caches themselves are several miles away so I have I have a test version of the cartridge with waypoints closer to home. With the Oregon I can play though the whole thing (nine zones) at walking pace without even have to slow down. If only I can somehow get the iPhone to work this well...

 

 

Mark

[+SoaringEagle]

Thanks for posting this. A cacher reported the same kinds of errors on one of my Wherigos, but I thought he must have been doing something wrong. Now I see that there might be something wrong with the app.

 

I haven't done any testing on this issue, but most of my zones in this cart trigger On Proximity to make it easier for the player. If he hasn't fully entered the zone when trying to use items or talk to people, then this is going to be a problem.

 

I think this is a problem with the version 315 of the Wherigo app for the iPhone. Two sets of players have reported the same issue to me. I went to verify today with my iPhone and I had the same problem. It seems that the player strips a space in the action name. The action on one of my character is "Talk to" but the iPhone complains "Talkto Nothing Available".

 

I had played this cartridge several times before without any problem. It has not change since November. The only thing that has changed is the version of the Wherigo app.

 

I have sent an email to Wherigo.com to alert them but I am not sure what is the best way to get a fix.

[+redsox_mark]

 

I think this is a problem with the version 315 of the Wherigo app for the iPhone. Two sets of players have reported the same issue to me. I went to verify today with my iPhone and I had the same problem. It seems that the player strips a space in the action name. The action on one of my character is "Talk to" but the iPhone complains "Talkto Nothing Available".

 

I had played this cartridge several times before without any problem. It has not change since November. The only thing that has changed is the version of the Wherigo app.

 

I have sent an email to Wherigo.com to alert them but I am not sure what is the best way to get a fix.

 

I got this error recently trying to play a nearby cartridge, using version 315 and hit this problem. The action should be "Talk to" a character "The Forester" - but I get the "Nothing Available".

[+Delta68]

Not sure what the correct route is to report player bugs

 

Pi-Soft's website doesn't appear to be there anymore

 

I have sent a request to Groundspeak asking for their help.

 

 

Mark

[Ranger Fox]

Not sure what the correct route is to report player bugs

 

Pi-Soft's website doesn't appear to be there anymore

 

I have sent a request to Groundspeak asking for their help.

I'll try to remember that when I have a meeting with Groundspeak later this week. I don't know if you're just supposed to contact the developer, spstanley, directly or what. (On a side note, it appears he's on a one-a-day streak since May.) I cringe when I think of submitting bugs to Groundspeak because there have been times I've done so and later had to badger them repeatedly before they were addressed.

[+Delta68]

I'll try to remember that when I have a meeting with Groundspeak later this week. I don't know if you're just supposed to contact the developer, spstanley, directly or what. (On a side note, it appears he's on a one-a-day streak since May.) I cringe when I think of submitting bugs to Groundspeak because there have been times I've done so and later had to badger them repeatedly before they were addressed.

 

Thanks Ranger Fox!

I knew he was on here somewhere but I couldn't remember his name and the search didn't help much

 

Mark

[Sandy]

Not sure what the correct route is to report player bugs

 

Pi-Soft's website doesn't appear to be there anymore

 

I have sent a request to Groundspeak asking for their help.

I'll try to remember that when I have a meeting with Groundspeak later this week. I don't know if you're just supposed to contact the developer, spstanley, directly or what. (On a side note, it appears he's on a one-a-day streak since May.) I cringe when I think of submitting bugs to Groundspeak because there have been times I've done so and later had to badger them repeatedly before they were addressed.

Groundspeak acknowledges that there have been times when bugs have not been addressed in a timely manner. We are working on our best practices and specifically to address this exact problem.

 

[+SoaringEagle]

I just went to test my theory that that version 315 was stripping a space in the action names. I renamed my action "Talk to" on the first character to "Talk". I just went to play it and i still get "Talk nothing Available".

 

So there is a more fundamental issue. I am not using proximity. I was in the middle of a large zone. My iphone was very stable. Not sure what the issue is but it really needs to be fixed.

 

I also just received an answer from Groundspeak saying that they are working on the issue:

 

Hello Arnaud,

 

The developer of the app has been notified of this issue and is working on a fix. Please let us know if the problem is not resolved in a timely manner.

 

 

Best Regards,

 

Jon ("Moun10Bike")

 

Community Relations Liaison to Engineering

Groundspeak - The Language of Location

 

Hopefully there will be a fix soon.

[Ranger Fox]

Excellent! I'm pleased with that response time.

[+spstanley]

Luckily, someone brought this thread to my attention. I'll check it out! May I have a link to your cartridge for testing purposes?

 

My latest creation works fine on the Oregon but has this strange "Nothing available" error on the iPhone (3G)

 

It pops up when a command is called.

 

I have an item with eight buttons on each with a command and that works fine but I have other items with commands which produce the error. The first item is loaded to the Player on startup but the other items are positioned in zones

The zones are active from the start. Not sure if that is significant.

The items in the zones show up in 'you see' on proximity

 

I never had this problem with the previous version of the player but I have tweaked the code a bit since installing the latest player

 

I found a Czech forum where someone has the same problem but I'm not sure they resolved it here here's the same page translated through Google

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks

[+SoaringEagle]

Luckily, someone brought this thread to my attention. I'll check it out! May I have a link to your cartridge for testing purposes?

My Cartridge is http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=fd57a024-a197-46e1-af00-d56aacc0e965

[+Delta68]

This is my latest http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=80927e16-2264-4b86-94bd-a8a903e0254e

 

This might not be a good example though because it wasn't working 100% even on the previous version of the iPhone player - although the items were working fine in the zones

 

It's got a block to prevent it being played the the Groundspeak emulator as well...

 

Thanks

 

Mark

 

Edited for spelling

Edited January 11, 2012 by Delta68

[+Team Peredox]

If you need another one for testing purposes, here's mine: The Lost Treasure of Cabeza de Vaca

 

Thanks for the quick response!

 

Jim of Team Peredox

[+Delta68]

Something else I noticed was this:

 

I might be mistaken but the values of variables don't appear to be being restored on a resume.

 

Why do I think this?

The cartridge has eight flag variables which are each set to true when each zone is visited. The the cacher can choose to hide each zone when it is finished with.

When all eight zones have been visited it un-hides the ninth zone.

 

The cartridge automatically saves after each time a zone has been visited so if it crashes the cacher doesn't have to start from the beginning again.

 

The test version I was playing with has 'status' comments to help debugging and I accidentally exited after zone two

When I resumed the game and reached zone three I'm pretty sure the status messages didn't show for the previous two flags states suggesting that they were false however, zones ONE and TWO did remain hidden

 

The function checkZones() is called after each zone is visited.

'total' is a numeric variable declared as a normal cartridge variable ie: not locally

 

function checkZones()

 

total = 0

 

if(Z1Visited == true) then

total = 1

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z1Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z2Visited == true) then

total = total + 2

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z2Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z3Visited == true) then

total = total + 4

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z3Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z4Visited == true) then

total = total + 8

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z4Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z5Visited == true) then

total = total + 16

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z5Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z6Visited == true) then

total = total + 32

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z6Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z7Visited == true) then

total = total + 64

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z7Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

if(Z8Visited == true) then

total = total + 128

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("Z8Visited")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

end

 

if total == 255 then

Wherigo.ShowStatusText("total == 255")

Wherigo.ShowStatusText(tostring(total))

 

zoneGrotto.Visible=true

zoneGrotto.Active=true

 

Wherigo.MessageBox{Text=[[Well Done! You have caught all the reindeer.

You must now take them to Santa's Grotto]],}

end

 

end

 

 

Mark

[Ranger Fox]

As a workaround, you could test for the zones' [not] active states. At least one zone will be active unless the player completed the cartridge. Interesting use of quasi-binary, by the way.

 

Lately, I've been calling that type of game "Lights Out": a player can visit the zones in a group in any order, but must visit a certain number (in this case, all) before proceeding.

[+SoaringEagle]

I received a confirmation that a fix is on the way from the developer:

 

I was able to duplicate the problem with your cartridge and submit a fix. It was not considering an item to be within a zone if the zone was not visible. There may be an additional issue regarding proximity to a zone, but for now I've addressed the visibility problem. Thanks again.

 

Thanks Shawn!

 

Arnaud.

[+Delta68]

Interesting use of quasi-binary, by the way.

 

Going off topic here but originally I had nine zones which had to be visited to unlock a final tenth zone. The zones could be visited in any order and the player would pick up a piece of a treasure map. In order to display the 'completed map so far' I had to have 512 images - one for each of the possible variations of the map.

The quasi-binary was in order to select the correct map image.

 

It worked fine in the emulator but was virtually unusable in the Oregon so I scrapped the idea.

 

Mark

[+SoaringEagle]

FYI, version 316 of the Wherigo player just came out. It fixed the previous issue for me. I was able to run through my cartridge without an issue. "Nothing available" is gone.

[+Delta68]

I just tried mine. It's better but "Nothing available" is still happening

 

I've got two items which become visible OnProximity to the zone

Proximity is set at 50 feet

Zone is 50 feet square (ish)

 

With the Oregon and the Pocket PC players, the commands on the items work as soon as the items become visible.

On the iPhone (3G) the commands only work once I'm inside the zone

 

It seems to detect the zones better with version 316 but it still doesn't work as well as the Oregon or the Pocket PC

 

Why don't I have bigger zones? I hear you ask. Well, each of the zones contains a physical cache as well so I want to keep the zones small in order to maintain accuracy for finding the actual cache.

The OnProximty commands are to show a hint etc on approach to each cache

 

Thanks

 

Mark

[+spstanley]

Mark,

 

Can I have a link to that cartridge? I have a fix already coded but not yet tested.

 

I just tried mine. It's better but "Nothing available" is still happening

 

I've got two items which become visible OnProximity to the zone

Proximity is set at 50 feet

Zone is 50 feet square (ish)

 

With the Oregon and the Pocket PC players, the commands on the items work as soon as the items become visible.

On the iPhone (3G) the commands only work once I'm inside the zone

 

It seems to detect the zones better with version 316 but it still doesn't work as well as the Oregon or the Pocket PC

 

Why don't I have bigger zones? I hear you ask. Well, each of the zones contains a physical cache as well so I want to keep the zones small in order to maintain accuracy for finding the actual cache.

The OnProximty commands are to show a hint etc on approach to each cache

 

Thanks

 

Mark

[+Delta68]

Mark,

 

Can I have a link to that cartridge? I have a fix already coded but not yet tested.

 

Sure!

 

Here it is: http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=80927e16-2264-4b86-94bd-a8a903e0254e

 

Thanks

[+spstanley]

Thanks, this tested well so the update has been submitted for review.

 

Mark,

 

Can I have a link to that cartridge? I have a fix already coded but not yet tested.

 

Sure!

 

Here it is: http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=80927e16-2264-4b86-94bd-a8a903e0254e

 

Thanks

[a_snail]

I've got a similar problem. I think it was refered to earlier in the comment about talking to the Forester

 

The link is:

http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=ea623ab7-e352-4983-a3e6-d61b0eab877a

and you can download the sourcecode if you want.

 

In the emulator you would start the cartridge,

goto the start zone

then goto the Smoke

At this point you see a Forester, talking to the Forester does nothing on the iPhone.

 

I know this Wherigo has other problems when running on the iPhone in that you can't see the snakes (characters) moving towards the player and you can't see where the Forester is to follow him as he guides you to his home (I might need to make the characters moving zones to get round this), but for now having a solution to the event not working is a good start.

 

Thanks

[a_snail]

I've got a similar problem. I think it was refered to earlier in the comment about talking to the Forester

 

The link is:

http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=ea623ab7-e352-4983-a3e6-d61b0eab877a

and you can download the sourcecode if you want.

 

In the emulator you would start the cartridge,

goto the start zone

then goto the Smoke

At this point you see a Forester, talking to the Forester does nothing on the iPhone.

 

I know this Wherigo has other problems when running on the iPhone in that you can't see the snakes (characters) moving towards the player and you can't see where the Forester is to follow him as he guides you to his home (I might need to make the characters moving zones to get round this), but for now having a solution to the event not working is a good start.

 

Thanks

 

Looks like the problem is I'm trying to talk to a character that is outside the zone they are associated with. Enlarging the zone to include the character fixes the problem. The person who tested it for me also thought having the zone active but not visible might also cause the same problem. I guess that comes of me using zones for multiple purposes to keep the numbers down.