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Maps in player,,


ctunkta068

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I've done three Wherigos recently, and felt that they were so basic as to be not worth making into a Wherigo at all. It was just a case of wandering round urban streets from one location to the next, with nothing of interest in the cartridge or the ground we covered, and where the "locations" had nothing to differentiate them from any other nondescript part of the street.

 

Which led me to think maybe I should look at doing one myself, in a more attractive location, with a proper story line and making slightly better use of the platform.

 

So this evening I started to look at what was involved. I rather assumed that the first thing to do after choosing the location would be to map the playing area. One of the things we didn't like when playing was that there was no map - just a mostly blank screen with a small, hard to read compass in the corner. I had expected a "real life" map for a tour, or a more imaginative interpretation of the ground for a game. But nowhere have I seen anything in the tutorials about creating such a map.

 

Can I just confirm that it is possible to create a map as part of the cartridge, over which the player's position is superimposed?

 

A supplementary question - can the Oregon make sounds other than beeps???

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I'm just supposing and thinking...

 

When Wherigo was first created, there was no such thing as a mobile mapping app (or smartphones, for that matter). The question then becomes if Garmin could even show special waypoints on the map. I believe they can because they show hunting dogs' locations on the Garmin Astro. However, I believe their Wherigo Player is closed when you exit it for another feature on the GPSr. I think the Garmin GPSr operating system does have the capability of launching a map from within an application (look at the geocaching application, where it shows you the cache on the map before you select to navigate to it). However, I don't know if the Wherigo Player would be paused during this time. (Due to the Oregon's lack of resources, I've no doubt having Wherigo running in the background and a map shown in the foreground might tax the unit.) Game-breaking things would happen if the Wherigo Player would be suspended in the background while the map was active (because zone events wouldn't fire while the map was displayed).

 

It's also not possible to have a custom map on the cell phone apps because their developers were trying to imitate the official Wherigo Player, which doesn't use maps. The good news is the app makers did add maps. The bad news is some of those maps won't be refreshed (zone states updated) until the map is reloaded.

 

As for the sound question, the Garmin units do not have hardware to reproduce anything but beeps. Back in early 2008, Jeremy posted an application that would allow you to compose beeps of varying pitches to make some crude "music" on the Garmin units. I do not know of a cartridge that makes use of this. In fact, that leads me to a warning: even if you play a cartridge on a smartphone, mp3 sounds will be stripped from the cartridge if you choose to download the cartridge for anything else but Pocket PC.

 

Due to the disconnected nature of Garmin GPS receivers and their limited resources, I would rather not see Wherigo offered on future Garmin GPSr models. Aspects I'd love to add to the game, such as interconnected playtime events and Wherigo Invaders, would not work on disconnected devices.

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