Animations in Urwigo

[+YawningFox]

Hello!

 

Very Much in-progress Cartridge Explanation:

 

I've begun working on a new Wherigo cartridge (it seems I'm hooked on programming these...) where the player meets and interacts with various Geocaching containers in order to decide which one to hide. It is structured very similarly to a dating simulator where the player, posing as the main character, has to successfully converse with romantic interests and/or build up statistics that they prefer in order to win their favor; the Wherigo will almost be a parody of DDLC, at least with the character Monika. In my Whergio, though, players will just have to reply in a way that the cache container would like in order to be able to hide them. However, the character who explains to the player how it works, Cameron (a webcam), is also an option. Since we aren't allowed to hide webcam caches anymore, Cameron isn't officially available to select. You don't converse with Cameron during the "favor-building" part of the game. Rather, when they explain the rules to the player, dialogue can lead the player to say something along the lines of: "Oh, I'd actually like to hide you" and/or "Why aren't you up there with the others," which will prompt Cameron to explain that they're not allowed to be hidden anymore. The player will then be able to say something like, "If only I could hide you, if only there was a way..." This will activate a boolean variable that will come up later in the game. After the "favor-building" part of the game, (where normally the character with the most "favor" value is hidden by the cacher), if the boolean has been activated, Cameron will pop up to talk to the player: "Hey, [name], can I talk with you for a second?" The options will be: yes, yes, yes [the player can already tell something fishy is going on]. Cameron will then go on a villain mololouge about how they've been stifled by all these website restrictions and how they've been so lonely before the player showed up. They'll break the fourth wall and reveal that they're sentient & can control the game's source code, unlike all of the other containers. Cameron will proclaim that they're better than physical geocaches, who erode or get muggled. They'll always be there for you. We "don't need those other caches." Here's the part where I was uncertain, though. I want Cameron to delete all of the other characters by sending a command to delete their files. I want to show a console-like screen where this command is being typed up, like Cameron is doing it in the moment. Like " delete Ninu.chx | Ninu.chx deleted successfully. " To do this, I'd like to use a video (preferably) or GIF file. Is there a way to have this show up in the Wherigo player through Urwigo, even if by using raw LUA code? I searched the forums, but the only solution I found was this one from ~2014, which mentions adding a new image file for each frame. I could do that if absolutely necessary, but it would be super time consuming, especially for the multiple times I want Cameron to "override" the Wherigo's source code, from "consulting an API" to give them a voice, to "accessing the Wherigo servers" to rename the cartridge to "Cameron" and replace its image with their face. Also, I wanted Cameron to show the player a "trick," where their image becomes very large and hyper-saturated after a few seconds. It would be easier to use the one-photo-per-frame technique on, but would this more complex animation be possible as a video or GIF as well? Thank you so much for reading this and for your time!

 

TLDR: Is there a way other than having them click on a link to present the player with a short (~5 second) video or GIF? Is there any way to have animations in Wherigo cartridges other than by changing the photo every frame?

[+Hügh]

2 hours ago, YawningFox said:

TLDR: Is there a way other than having them click on a link to present the player with a short (~5 second) video or GIF? Is there any way to have animations in Wherigo cartridges other than by changing the photo every frame?

 

The short answer is no.

 

The (slightly) longer answer is maybe; the newer phone apps might accommodate animations (with some hacks) but GPSes certainly won't. If you want to maximize compatibility then stick with static images.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Hügh