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Emulator?


St.Matthew

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On a non Groundspeak related message board recently, someone posted that they sometimes use an emulator to complete Wherigos, then get coordinates to the final. In other words, they complete the Wherigo cartridge at home and not in the field. Did I miss something? I didn't know this was possible. How can I cheat-proof my cartridges?

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On a non Groundspeak related message board recently, someone posted that they sometimes use an emulator to complete Wherigos, then get coordinates to the final. In other words, they complete the Wherigo cartridge at home and not in the field. Did I miss something? I didn't know this was possible. How can I cheat-proof my cartridges?

Use North AB* CD.EFG... can't fake something that isn't in the programing. This only works if there's something to get numbers off of.

I think the Emulator uses sea level so there might be a way to put IF alt=0 THEN exit.

Edited by RIclimber
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short answer:

If you're using Earwigo or URWIGO, you can check a box "prevent running in emulator" and the builder will turn on some prevention measures.

If you're using the legacy Builder, you're out of luck - there is some code you can paste into Author section that does this, but it is messy, and if you're using the legacy Builder, i suggest switching to earwigo/urwigo anyway.

 

if all you're worried about is lazy cachers who sit at home and click in emulator instead of actually going to the field, this is a great solution.

 

long answer:

 

First of all, playing in emulator is not "cheating". In some cases it is legitimate, in some cases people want to use the emulator for playing even though they are actually in the field. (this is less the case nowadays when everyone and their grandma has a smartphone, but in the early days many people had netbooks but not Wherigo-enabled devices)

It is only cheating if you say the player has to be in the field, and even then it is the same as if they asked their friend for the final coordinates - i.e. no different from other forms of geocaching cheating that you can't prevent.

 

Second of all, realize that deep within its bowels, your cartridge contains the final coordinates and it has to give them away at some point.

Crafty people will manage to override the emulator check. Crafty people will feed fake GPS data to a smartphone application, thus "emulating" even without the emulator. Even craftier people will simply break into the cartridge and retrieve the coordinates without ever launching a player.

This cannot be avoided - simply because your cartridge already contains the coordinates, and it has to give them away, it will always be possible to convince the cartridge to give them away sooner.

(see also: so far, every game or computer program released was eventually cracked. once you have the code on your computer, you can mess with it.)

 

There is only one way to make the cartridge completely "cheat"-proof: not including the final coordinates at all, instead calculating them along the way as if it was a multi or a mystery cache.

This would require coding parts of the cartridge by hand and programming some formulas. I don't know if anyone ever did this, but i know for a fact that it can be done.

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As others have said there are ways to make it hard to solve on the emulator. Personally I'm not worried about trying to make something 100% hack proof, it's just a game.

 

I have 2 carts. On the first one, I have left it totally open and solvable using the emulator. Doing that doesn't buy you much, as the route goes from the closest parking location to the final following the shortest publicly accessible route - in other words you need to do the same walk regardless of if you solve it at home or on the trail. It is more fun to play it on the trail though.

 

The second one requires a sort of circular walk to several zones before a final walk to the cache. Partially for this reason I worked in some questions which require information based on items at the location, so you can't complete it by playing on the emulator alone. I've also had comments that people like the aspect of finding and entering information as part of the game.

 

I have completed one Wherigo cart on the emulator myself - that did not work properly on my device (iPhone). I tried it in the field first, then contacted the owner and confirmed that it did not work on iPhone. So I did it on the emulator and then went to find the cache.

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There have been a ton of posts over the past five years about preventing cartridges from being run in the emulator; your question is definitely in good company.

 

For the most part, including the emulator protection offered by Urwigo, Earwigo, and Wherigo\\kit will be enough to deter most people. One thing that has been hinted at but not suggested in the other posts is that I'd suggest you not put the emulator protection at the beginning of the cartridge. I ask that you allow people to play through part of your cartridge in the emulator before slamming the door shut. Allowing people to play part of the cartridge in the emulator is a really good way to give people a preview of what your cartridge is about and how to go about things in the field. It's like a trial version: you've now had a chance to experience part of it, so go out in the field to get the full version.

 

matejcik is right: cartridges usually contain the final geocache coordinates, so it has to provide them to the Wherigo Player at some point. There are a variety of ways to get at these coordinates, almost all of which require no small degree of technical skill. Personally, I want to play your cartridge to see what idea you came up with more than I want to find your cache (especially if it's a micro). And if the Wherigo Player crashes on me while I'm playing through a cartridge more than an hour long, you can bet I'm going to want to hack the cartridge so at least my time wasn't wasted. I think that once the Wherigo Player is more stable, part of the desire for hacking cartridges will go away.

 

There will be a different way to verify cartridge completions in the future.

 

-----

 

Anyway, hacking is harder than picking up your phone and asking a friend for the final coordinates he or she snapped when visiting the cache. To prevent against cheating, I'd suggest you start there as this is how a lot of caches are found. And as a cache owner, I'd prefer someone cheating and leaving a thoughtful log, providing feedback based on their playthrough in the emulator to a log by someone who played in the field who just made a crummy copy and paste with no real content.

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So I created a Wherigo cartridge in the Builder and then imported it into the Urwigo program and then checked the "Enable emulator protection when the cartridge is run in Urwigo". I then compiled a cartridge and then ran it through the Builder emulator and the Urwigo emulator and didn't have any problems. How come it allowed me to run it through the emulator?

 

Additionally, I like the idea of letting them run the cartridge part of the way (hopefully to get them hooked) and then stopping them if played through the emulator. What is the best way to accomplish this?

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Additionally, I like the idea of letting them run the cartridge part of the way (hopefully to get them hooked) and then stopping them if played through the emulator. What is the best way to accomplish this?

 

For this, an easy way to do it is to require some "field information" as part of the game. I.e. allow it to be played using the emulator, but then halfway through you need to answer a question which requires information from the field. That way they can play in the emulator until that point; then they need to go outside.

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