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What can be edited after an AL goes public?


Max and 99

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You can edit everything (descriptions, solution phrases, journal entries, geofencing radius). But you should never add or delete locations, because the app cannot properly handle this, and players might see "strange effects" (like ALC not labeled as "completed" even though you found all 5 locations, or vice versa).

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On 8/17/2020 at 3:27 AM, baer2006 said:

You can edit everything (descriptions, solution phrases, journal entries, geofencing radius). But you should never add or delete locations, because the app cannot properly handle this, and players might see "strange effects" (like ALC not labeled as "completed" even though you found all 5 locations, or vice versa).

 

After I completed an AdLab, the CO later deleted one of the stages due to valid reasons (conditions at the physical site had changed).  Now, the app (Android for me) crashes whenever I try to re-access the individual stages of that particular AdLab.  I can bring up the AdLab's main page and can view the remaining journals as well as the activity log---- but if I tap on the map at the bottom to access the individual stages, that's when the app crashes.

 

BTW, it thankfully DOES still show up as completed, both on the map and on the list.  However, when I check my profile, the report of my Lab finds shows only the current number of stages as "found," which is one less than the number I actually completed.  I have no idea whether my total find count changed after the deletion occurred.  My guess is that the "system" knows my actual count, but it doesn't match with AdLab's current available count, hence the crash,  If anyone is asking, I prefer to keep my actual count intact,

 

Apparently, deleted AdLab stages are not archived---they simply disappear,  causing consequences as described.

Edited by TommyGator
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14 hours ago, TommyGator said:

 

After I completed an AdLab, the CO later deleted one of the stages due to valid reasons (conditions at the physical site had changed). 

 

Conditions at the site of one of my AdLab locations changed.  Because of the consequences mentioned here so often, rather than remove or relocate, I simply edited the original AdLab location, now providing the answer in the location description.

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Each location has a message.  When the user gets to her final location (whichever location that might be), the app goes straight to a celebration of AdLab completion, skipping right over the message relevant to that location.

 

To avoid that consequence, I put the important message in more than one location.

Edited by elyob
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20 minutes ago, elyob said:

the app goes straight to a celebration of AdLab completion

So there is no user-generated text in this message? 

 

21 minutes ago, elyob said:

skipping right over the message relevant to that location.

I remember this from the forum discussions. Even though the adventure lab goes straight to the completion screen you can still see the message from the final location in the journals. Correct? 

I'm just curious, trying to figure things out. 

______

Back to the original question what's the one part that cannot be edited?

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54 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

I'm not planning on using it, but I don't see where the final completion message goes (the one that cannot be edited). I don't even see where to create it. Just curious.

 

AFAIK, the CO has no "final completion message,"  only a journal entry for each stage.  When you complete each intermediate  (i.e., non-final) stage, you can tap on a button to see the journal entry for that particular stage before continuing on to the next stage.  The CO makes and can edit each journal entry.  However, it works differently for the last stage.  When you successfully answer the final question,  you get immediately pre-empted by the "Congratulations" screen which is stock from Groundspeak and cannot be edited.  You are then taken directly to the logging area so you can post your log, if so desired.  It is only after you either post a log or otherwise exit the AdLab that you can re-enter the AdLab and then scroll through all the journal entries, finally getting to read the last one that got pre-empted by the "congratulations" screen.

 

The lack of a final completion message is why COs who have made a bonus cache will make the AdLab sequential, then put the bonus coordinates in the last stage, knowing that you will have had to do all the stages before getting the bonus coordinates.  This method works, but otherwise needlessly makes you go sequentially for no other apparent reason other than to make up for the lack of an actual final completion message.  If such were to exist, the CO could put the bonus coordinates there, and then would not have to resort to making the AdLab sequential----unless there were an actual thematic reason for doing so----which I have yet to see, but recognize that such is theoretically possible.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

Back to the original question what's the one part that cannot be edited?

 

I just went back and looked at the AdLab I published, and it looks like I can edit everything that I originally entered.  If something can't,  it's news to me---but then, my experience is limited to the one AdLab I've been credited..

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On 8/18/2020 at 9:09 PM, TommyGator said:

The lack of a final completion message is why COs who have made a bonus cache will make the AdLab sequential, then put the bonus coordinates in the last stage, knowing that you will have had to do all the stages before getting the bonus coordinates.  This method works, but otherwise needlessly makes you go sequentially for no other apparent reason other than to make up for the lack of an actual final completion message.

Rather than doing what you describe, and because I had no reason to put the finders through a sequential session, I included pieces of the bonus coordinates in the "Location completion message" for each location.  By making sure that no location contained just the final digit for either latitude or longitude (which could make it possible to search a fairly close +/- 0.010 for the final), it becomes necessary to find all AL locations to get enough coordinate data to locate the bonus.  In other words, no location contains just a digit dd mm.mmm,.  Rather, the least significant amount of data in a location is dd mm.mmm.

 

Edited by ecanderson
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1 hour ago, mustakorppi said:

Is there a way to temporarily disable the whole adventure or individual stages? (e.g. because a location becomes temporarily unreachable)

You can switch the whole AL "off", and return it to "public" when it can be played again. But there is no way to disable individual locations.

 

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1 hour ago, mustakorppi said:

Is there a way to temporarily disable the whole adventure or individual stages? (e.g. because a location becomes temporarily unreachable)

I don't know if this will be helpful to you, but the other day I noticed a local Adventure Lab had one stage that was not accessible to the public because of covid. The person who created it gave the answer in the question of the missing stage so you can still complete it. 

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On 9/5/2020 at 10:07 PM, Max and 99 said:

This is purely hypothetical! Again, just out of curiosity.....

If the creator of an adventure lab feels his lab is not getting a lot of visitors (or he wants to enable more people to complete it, or make up your own reason), can he/she change the coordinates of all stages, and the descriptions, so it's a new AL and a new location. New state, new country maybe? 

I know it sounds ridiculous I'm just curious if the system allows that. 

 

I'm pretty sure that "the system" would allow it. You can change every location at will, incl the coordinates. The result would be, that players who completed the AL, will no longer see the AL on the map in the place where it used to be. Instead, they might coincidentally find that they "completed" an AL they've never heard of in a place where they've never been. Not really in the spirit of the game, I'd say ;) .

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1 minute ago, baer2006 said:

I'm pretty sure that "the system" would allow it. You can change every location at will, incl the coordinates. The result would be, that players who completed the AL, will no longer see the AL on the map in the place where it used to be. Instead, they might coincidentally find that they "completed" an AL they've never heard of in a place where they've never been. Not really in the spirit of the game, I'd say ;) .

I agree. I'm a little surprised that there isn't a feature in place to prevent an AL from being moved, at least past a certain distance. It was a hypothetical question anyway.

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Consider that GS has reasons for not applying any judgment or oversight over AdLabs.  The idea seems to be that these are experimental and have been given to the community "carte blanche" to see what the community can come up with.  Establishing rules and then enforcing them changes the whole concept of "experimental," and then drags GS into the quagmire of having to adjudicate complaints between COs and finders, as well as complaints from COs who feel such oversight was, for some reason, unjust.  The forums already contain complaints requesting the ability to delete logs or otherwise punish finders for not complying with what the CO intended, which would invariably result in complaints to GS for arbitration when such actions are challenged, and I would guess that GS isn't in the mood to enter that fray at present, but is interested to see the ideas generated by the community and the issues/advantages they bring.

 

Of course, that's just my guess.

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On 9/24/2020 at 5:25 PM, TommyGator said:

Consider that GS has reasons for not applying any judgment or oversight over AdLabs.  The idea seems to be that these are experimental and have been given to the community "carte blanche" to see what the community can come up with.  Establishing rules and then enforcing them changes the whole concept of "experimental," and then drags GS into the quagmire of having to adjudicate complaints between COs and finders, as well as complaints from COs who feel such oversight was, for some reason, unjust.

 

This was the basis for the defunct Geocaching Challenges, and a significant reason for their de.. defunc.. defunctation. :P

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Be aware that users who have the AL downloaded to their device have a cached copy of the AL information. So if you change things like a question and the answer, their device will still show the old one information. They can swipe left to remove the cached copy and reload it but you need to communicate this. I just tested this with a change to an Answer on one I'm building using Test mode and confirmed this behavior which I suspected.  So edit with care.

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