Wherigo Foundation: WF.Player for Android

[+charlenni]

I want to devide the thread for WF.Compiler and WF.Player into two threads, because WF.Player belongs to the "Wherigo Hardware" forum, while the WF.Compiler is better hosted in "Building Wherigo Cartridges".

 

The WF.Player uses the same Core/Engine than the Player for WinPhone from Mangatome. So all the things behind the scences work on both the same way (and also on the WF.Player for iOS). Here I use the original Lua implementation and a Wherigo library compatible to the GS emulator. You could play a cartridge, you could load and save a game. I have some crashes because memory problems while using images. There is up to now no map. I started with Google Map, but want to change to a new one, so we could use the same map online and offline with all implementations of WF.Player (Android, iOS and WinPhone). Beta testers missing a little bit more than the iOS testers (perhaps WhereYouGo has more features than GS Wherigo on iPhone).

 

Around the inner core, there must be more functionality: you could start a game. But all other don't work up to now. All access to the new website API is missing. History lists or multi save files are not implemented. Also there is no posibility for offline maps. There are only english and german language files. So there had to be done some more work to make it better than the original GS app for the iPhone.

 

The goal is to use most of the code (80% and more) on all platforms. With this, we could make improvments much more faster than now, where each developer has to all improvments by his own.

 

You could find the open source code at Github.

 

Todo:

- change to PCL and MvvmCross concept, so that more code from WF.Players on different platforms could be shared

- move to OSMSharp as map for online and offline, tiles and vector use

- use the same localization files for iOS and Android version

- and much more

Edited April 1, 2014 by charlenni

[+Mangatome]

Broken link, the repo is at https://github.com/WFoundation/WF.Player.Android

[+charlenni]

One of this horrible copy & paste problems . Sorry.

[+idego]

Any news? You have my full moral support

[+charlenni]

The work is still in progress.

 

I moved the code to Xamarin.Forms and now we have 90% of the code on iOS and Android. This is very good for later extensions.

 

A real problem is the offline map. Hope, I could get a cheap component for this, which do all the work.

 

The core component is meanwhile tested with the player for Windows Phone, because it is identically. But it seems, that it is very stable.

 

If there any good news, I will report.

[+Vooruit!]

Normally, in development threads it's a nono to ask for ETAs, but this community being so friendly, I can't help myself asking how things are going.

 

Really excited about the whole WF thing!

[+charlenni]

Thank you, remembering me to inform the community. There are so much conversations in the background, that I often forget to inform you.

 

The development of WF.Player is going on. The Core is the same as used for Geowigo, the Wherigo player for WinPhone. With help of Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms I joined the versions of WF.Player for iOS and Android, so that more than 90% of the source code is the same. With this, each feature for one platform appears on the other platform as well. The most things are working correct.

 

The game play works nearly perfect. Sometimes it crashes, more often on Android than on iOS , but both versions are now very stable. Because using the official Lua kernel, you don't have to check, if this or that works on the player. If the cartridge works in the official emulator, it should work on WF.Player too. Saving and restoring works like on the emulator.

 

Outside of the game play there are some parts that don't work correct. Handling of cartridges could work better. On both platforms you could copy cartridges to the app. On iOS you could add it by download and "Open with..." too. This doesn't work on Android. Deleting cartridges, logs and save files comes with the next beta version. The next big part would be the connection to the new website, so that you could search and download cartridges directly from the Wherigo Foundation website.

 

I created a PDF with some screenshots, so that you could see, how the UI looks. You find always on the left side the iOS and on the right side the Android version.

 

If you have any questions, than I try to answer this.

 

Best regards,

Dirk

 

PS: I post this message on the other WF.Player thread too.

[+Mr&MrsWunderbear]

Hi

I'm not great at these forum things so bear with me. I have created 2 Wherigos using Earwig and have started a new one with questions and answers. I am very disappointed in the user interface on android. Can I get hold of the beta of the Wfplayer?

[+Vooruit!]

Dirk, thanks for the follow-up, much appreciated.

[+Forest-Ghost]

Is it possible to load the open source code from the WF.Player.Android page onto an android phone? If so, how would one do this?

[+charlenni]

No, this could not be done. You need a ready compiled package.

[+peejay]

No, this could not be done. You need a ready compiled package.

 

Is WF.Player still being developed?

Thanks.

[+charlenni]

I started with the development of a common player on iOS and Android back in 2012 and some parts are even older. I bought software and invested many time. Since January 2013 we have started to support Wherigo as Wherigo Foundation, a group of people, that have all worked to support this incredible game in the last years.

 

Since than we (better RangerFox) talked to Groundspeak to support us. Not by money, but with an agreement, that we could create a website, players and builders. You need this, because there is a patent on Wherigo and the name "Wherigo" is registered. Up to now (3,5 years later) the only official announcement of Groundspeak was, that no geocache listing should refer to the Wherigo Foundation website at www.wherigofoundation.com. Each reviewer was instructed not to publish the geocache, if they find a link to this website. Even, if the cartridge couldn't published on www.Wherigo.com, because of limitations of this website (no update since 2008, limitations of size of cartridges). I decided for me, that I only publish the players for Android and iOS, if there is an agreement with Groundspeak, because of legal reasons.

 

With the above in mind, I decided now to drop the active development of WF.Player and waste no more time. I assume that Groundspeak isn't interessted in Wherigo but doesn't want, that anyone else develop it further. They had their time and I assume, that 3,5 years should be enough for such an agreement.

 

Both players for Android and iOS are ready. Testing of betatesters show, that they are the most stable once out there. Both use the same core as the Windows player Geowigo. Improvements could be done for the map (offline map) and the interaction with the new website (up-/download cartridges). The complete source code is available at GitHub (https://github.com/WFoundation). No need for any commercial software. You could use the free MS VisualStudio 2015 Community edition with Xamarin support (Windows) or the XamarinStudio (Mac OSX) to build the apps. Perhaps someone is interested.

 

I want to give thanks to all people, that support me in this time.

 

Best regards,

Dirk (Charlenni)

[+hal-an-tow]

Sorry to read this, what a shame you have no official endorsement to bring Wherigo up to date .Thank you for giving your time effort and expertise.

[+peejay]

Well I am sorry to hear that but thank you for all the work you put in.

[+CWillyPngn]

That's a bummer. I'm so sorry to hear about that. Many thanks for all your time and efforts that went into this project.

[K-and-K]

I have a Monterra GPS, to which I can choose different online and offline mapping options, online works great. but I'm not playing indoors or tethering to my phone, so my other options are to find the maps on the GPS drive itself.  Because it uses the Android operating system for our Chile trip I used maps.me app for offline.  I purchased the topo for Canada, and North American road maps, though it has global highways for default it lacks the detailed info required. So you are globally SOL again. But the maps.me app did the trick.

 

But back to the Wherigo ... NO !

 

I believe we require a .map file extension to be stored on the drive, another format to look for !