Reusing cartridge

[kvhollis]

I recently took an idea I had for the west side of the state and used it for the east side of the state during my last visit over there. I created a cartridge for it and it turned out pretty well I think.

 

I would like to take that cartridge and re-use it (thus ((hopefully)) saving me a little work).

 

I was thinking - change the zone names, media, and coordinates but leave the rest intact so as not to have to redo so much.

 

Is this possible? Encourageable?

 

Thoughts are welcomed!

[Ranger Fox]

There are a few points of view I'll mention about this. Ultimately, the decision is up to you since it's possible and there are no guidelines against it.

 

From a geocaching standpoint, it's fine. A cacher can duplicate a cache idea as many times as s/he desires. That's why so many caches are under lamp pole skirts and on guard rails.

 

From a Wherigo standpoint, it's technically feasible. You can change around whatever, resubmit it, and have it available.

 

I would, however, like to focus on the quality aspect. Do you think duplicating a cartridge will impact its quality? Will that deprive your players of a better experience? What more can you do to ensure those playing your cartridge have a better time? Originality enhances quality, but on its own does not make up for its absence. As long as your players enjoy what you created--and that's what ultimately matters--it has accomplished its purpose.

 

Personally, I would like to discourage the lamp skirt and guardrail equivalent of a cartridge. I think Wherigo is about designing quality experiences for people. Ultimately, though, it's up to the community as a whole to decide what they want and in which direction to take it.

[kvhollis]

Thanks, Ranger Fox, for your response.

 

My motive here is simply trying to save some typing and clicking time due to my carpel tunnel issues as I am still paying dearly from the latest cartridge I built!

 

Each of my cartridges (and the ideas behind them) have continued to improve in the originality and complexity categories.

 

While I am not trying to re-create the likes of a LPC or Guardrail style of cartridges - I am trying to give the players on each side of the state something fun to do. The cartridge will be different enough for each side to have a great time as it is based entirely on their knowledge of their local community.

[kvhollis]

Well I reused some of the cartridge file.

 

I changed some zones here and there, text here and there. I added different functionality.

 

When I publish - it's updating the ORIGINAL cartridge and not creating a new cartridge on Wherigo's site! At this point I'm going through the cartridge code seeing if there is something here that would try the LUA code to a particular cartridge.

 

I believe I found it too...

 

EDIT: cartDoYouSeeWhatISee.Id="ef12768e-a915-4e61-8305-d3980a0a336d" in both cartridges are exactly the same! I'm going to try modify this line and see if it works!

Edited September 20, 2008 by kvhollis

[kvhollis]

I changed the cartDoYouSeeWhatISee.Id="ef12768e-a915-4e61-8305-d3980a0a336d to a cartDoYouSeeWhatISee.Id="ef12768e-a915-4e61-8305-d3980a0a336E.

 

My heart sank for a brief second thinking many hours of my time just went down the tank and I was going to have to do it again!

 

Scary that I'm starting to play around in the LUA code directly too. Tonight I created some skeleton zones wtih barely enough to exist and added scripts to each of the zones manually! That certainly saved a LOT of clicking in the builder too!

Edited September 20, 2008 by kvhollis

[Ranger Fox]

The IDs, by the way, must be unique. I'm not sure why the Player needs GUIDs for each object, though. I wonder if the Player references objects exclusively by GUID while a cartridge is being played.

 

I agree about editing the code directly. That's one of the Builder's weak points: you can generally do things faster by writing the code yourself. You can even do simple things the Builder can't, such as putting a variable's value into a Message Box. It also excels at creating objects (zones, items, etc) faster than by hand. While I like hand-coding things, I do recommend using the Builder to set things up before you dive in to the code.

 

As long as the Builder makes it easy for the general public (e.g. those who will have a difficult time understanding programming) to make a cartridge, it's successful.

[kvhollis]

The IDs, by the way, must be unique. I'm not sure why the Player needs GUIDs for each object, though. I wonder if the Player references objects exclusively by GUID while a cartridge is being played.

 

I agree about editing the code directly. That's one of the Builder's weak points: you can generally do things faster by writing the code yourself. You can even do simple things the Builder can't, such as putting a variable's value into a Message Box. It also excels at creating objects (zones, items, etc) faster than by hand. While I like hand-coding things, I do recommend using the Builder to set things up before you dive in to the code.

 

As long as the Builder makes it easy for the general public (e.g. those who will have a difficult time understanding programming) to make a cartridge, it's successful.

 

I believe it was the cartridge GUID - in fact I noticed it's the same GUID used in the URL on Wherigo.com's site and it all came from the cartridge.

 

I wondered how to place the value of a variable in a message box... thanks for the info! Any sample code for this "student" to look at (ok, ok. "borrow") for resuse so I can see the value of said variable?

[Ranger Fox]

I believe it was the cartridge GUID - in fact I noticed it's the same GUID used in the URL on Wherigo.com's site and it all came from the cartridge.

When you said that, I had to check it out. GUIDs are guaranteed to be unique on one machine, but not across machines. That would have been a potential problem with the Wherigo site if the cartridge's internal GUID was the same as the web site's listing's GUID. However, this is not the case; cartridge GUIDs have no bearing on the listing's GUID.

 

I wondered how to place the value of a variable in a message box... thanks for the info! Any sample code for this "student" to look at (ok, ok. "borrow") for resuse so I can see the value of said variable?

The Builder could overwrite the code for this, so to be sure that doesn't happen, I'd advise you to put the entire function in the Author Scripts section of the lua code so the Builder leaves it alone.

 

For sample code, reference a few open source cartridges. Here are some MessageBox code variations from my Whack-A-Lackey cartridge:

 

Wherigo.MessageBox{Text="The game time is now " .. gameTime .. " seconds."}
Wherigo.MessageBox{Text="The " .. WhatsItCalled() .. "'s proximity is now " .. ZoneProximity .. " feet."}
Wherigo.MessageBox{Text=[[This game's playing area has a ]] .. (gameMaxDistance / 3) .. [[ yard/meter radius.  The moment you start the game, the place you're standing becomes the center of the game board.  Choose your playing area wisely so it's free of obstacles and you can get anywhere quickly.]],}
Wherigo.MessageBox{Text=txt,Media=zmediaCoordinates,}

The first shows a simple variable; second, a function call and a simple variable; third, calculation and brackets; and fourth, a variable (txt) and picture being displayed.