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Release Notes (Adventure Lab® App: Time to complete Adventures) - November 19, 2021


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7 hours ago, Gill & Tony said:

Even if you use a fake GPS it still takes over an hour to drive from Wodonga to Mount Beauty.

Seems you're not aware what FakeGPS app means. People are virtually moving their smartphone to the LabCache location and unlock the Question button. Doing this five times is definitely done in less than 10 minutes from those people's sofa. :o

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19 minutes ago, HHL said:

Seems you're not aware what FakeGPS app means. People are virtually moving their smartphone to the LabCache location and unlock the Question button. Doing this five times is definitely done in less than 10 minutes from those people's sofa. :o

I am perfectly aware what a fake GPS app is and how it can be used to cheat.  Whether or not someone is using a fake GPS app to pretend that they are at the site or not doesn't affect the fact that it takes more than an hour to DRIVE from Wodonga to Mount Beauty.  Which is what I said and what you disputed.

 

 

Edited by Gill & Tony
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8 hours ago, The Leprechauns said:

Link to Instruction Manual (the Help Center section on Adventures).

 

You're welcome!

Hum not super useful in the current state :

 

- Not in the app so good luck finding it for a new player 

- No screen shot of the app

- Also no explanation about what is the "gear icon" (for new adventures)

Edited by Lynx Humble
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the latest update seems nice but it worries me a bit.
On the screen of my phone it is not possible to read the full description.
It works on my tablet, which of course has a much larger screen, but I don't take it with me on the street or into the woods.
Here's a printscreen of my phone, where what the CO has done its best on cannot be read by me on the way.
Also a print screen of the tablet, clear that you can read what it says. I'm really not going to read everything at home first. Hopefully this can be adjusted.

Screenshot_20211204-232336.png

Screenshot_20211204-232340.png

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4 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

All the ones with a lot of text that I can find you just continue by scrolling down. Are you saying you cannot scroll down to see the rest?

You can certainly scroll down, but the scrolling would stop short in that the last few text lines at the bottom would still be covered by the "footer" button.  :(

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11 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

Why can I read all of it and you two can't? In my screenshot above, is that all the text for that location? Is there more below?

The final paragraph in the full text is "In the years following the unveiling of the flagstaff, Petone workshop staff lowered the flag whenever they learned that one of their workmates had died. Their colleagues at the East Town Railway Workshop in Whanganui held similar ceremonies."

 

Max and 99 can see all the text.

Viervoeter truncates at "... Whanganui held" and misses out on last line "... similar ceremonies."

Mine (attached below) truncates at "... Whanganui held similar" and misses out on last line "... ceremonies."

 

So it would depend on how the last line might get to the "unscrollable" zone.  That might also depend on the App version and/or phone hardware.  Mine is Android App version 1.3.16; build: 2511 | Samsung S8 (SM-950F) | Android version 9

 

 

Screenshot_20211206-084904_Adventure_Lab[1].jpg

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2 hours ago, Mermaid.Man said:

Well I can see all of the text. 

 

Looking at the different screen shots, it looks as if the issue may be related to font sizes (or perhaps screen sizes). Screenshot_20211206-151845.thumb.jpg.521cf618577bd019f82891df4ff07577.jpg

Yes, I had wondered about font size, but could not find changing that within the AL app.  I have since changed it at the phone level: Settings > Display > Font size and style > Font size.  My previous screenshot was based on a font size at the 4th tick mark (out of a maximum of 8), and it truncated at the last line, missing "... ceremonies."  Below are the results from the various settings on my phone:

Font size: 1st tick mark (smallest) ... can see all text ... no truncation

Font size: 2nd tick mark ... no truncation

Font size: 3rd tick mark ... no truncation

Font size: 4th tick mark ... truncated last line ..."ceremonies."

Font size: 5th tick mark ... truncated ... "held similar ceremonies."

Font size: 6th tick mark ... truncated ... "in Whanganui held similar ceremonies."

Font size: 7th tick mark ... truncated ... "the East Town Railway Workshop in Whanganui held similar ceremonies."

Font size: 8th tick mark ... truncated ... "at the East Town Railway Workshop in Whanganui held similar ceremonies."

 

So the obvious workaround is to reduce the font size in order to avoid the truncations ... in my case, down to the 3rd tick mark.

 

However, this remains a bug as the box "Get closer to the location to unlock and answer the challenge question. [Answer]" could be made smaller.  In any case, that box should not obstruct the full scrolling of the underlying text, regardless of the font size that the user has set on the phone.  Afterall, we should not discriminate against players who do require bigger font sizes in order to read comfortably.

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It blows my mind there are ALs that take 2+ hours to complete. It never occured to me someone would create them with stops so far apart. I guess it was inevitable because long-distance multis do exist. I'm glad the time average has been added because I would be really peeved if I started one of these unwittingly. 

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1 hour ago, JL_HSTRE said:

It blows my mind there are ALs that take 2+ hours to complete. It never occured to me someone would create them with stops so far apart. I guess it was inevitable because long-distance multis do exist. I'm glad the time average has been added because I would be really peeved if I started one of these unwittingly. 

I encountered one of these ALs recently, it would have required many hours of driving for hundreds of km to complete! Very bizarre. It would be great if there was the ability to comment on such ALs without completing them..

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3 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

I would be really peeved if I started one of these unwittingly. 

 

If you compare AL and multi-caches there is a big difference. You will get a find from every completed AL stage even when you deside to interrupt the search due to long distance to the next stage. No waste of time.

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6 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

It blows my mind there are ALs that take 2+ hours to complete. It never occured to me someone would create them with stops so far apart. I guess it was inevitable because long-distance multis do exist. I'm glad the time average has been added because I would be really peeved if I started one of these unwittingly. 

 

The ALs I enjoy the most are the ones that take a fair bit of effort and time to complete. If I'm going to travel for an hour or more to get to the starting location (only a small handful are closer to home than that), I want there to be more to do than just a short stroll before heading home again.

 

My own three are intended as medium to long walks, although two of them can be done by driving to parking spots close to the locations. Broken Bay Sands is a 3.7km beach walk, Wreck of the Maitland is a 5km loop walk with an elevation drop of 160m from the roadside starting point to the shipwreck relics, and 5 Lands Walk is a 10km coastal walk with a mixture of beaches and steep headland crossings. That last one is a good four hours walk although it can be driven in about an hour.

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In an effort to conserve fuel, I routinely do parts of several different lab caches that are in the vicinity of each other on the same trip. It could be several months before I complete each of those individual labs, especially if I have travelled to another city to do them. Other geocachers that I know, like to get a lab cache on each calendar day, so it could take a minimum of 5 days to complete one set of lab caches. Someone earlier mentioned that if a set of lab caches take over a day to complete, should have those values removed before calculating the mean. I like that idea.

 

Another thing to consider is the time could be extra short if two people are sharing a phone to do lab caches. My husband (with his own user name) and I share a phone, so whoever logs second does the set in less than a minute. Sometimes when I am low on data, I gather the answers and wait until I am connected to Wi-fi to log them and again this ends up less than a minute. Unreasonable numbers of less than a minute for 5 parts, could also be removed before calculating the mean. This would also help if a set of lab caches are consistently being arm-chair logged.

 

I have a set of lab caches that take about an hour walking on level pavement (and faster if taking the free public LRT), but the time listed for it is 120+ minutes. My guess is that cachers may have chosen to log it over several days. Also, from the logs, it turns out that one of the locations is sometimes inaccessible due to demonstrations at City Hall. This meant that they needed to wait for another day to complete it.

 

I am in agreement with the post by thebruce0 on November 20th, where he said that perhaps there could be some way to indicate that this is a calculation and may not reflect the real time if one chose to do the set in one go.

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17 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

It blows my mind there are ALs that take 2+ hours to complete.

I know what you mean! I'm always amazed at how many different interesting ways people can do things. I love home many different approaches people have found to creating Adventure Labs!

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