Easter Eggs

[fendmar]

Does anyone code Easter Eggs into their cartridges?

[Ranger Fox]

I've done that once or twice.

 

One of my Easter eggs is in "The Fox, Chicken, and Feed" cartridge (open source; WG8 on the Wherigo Foundation). I use the standard set of graphics and icons throughout the cartridge except in one special case: when the fox eats the chicken. First, the function name within the source code is called DoesRangerFoxEatTonight. If the fox is alone with the chicken, the user sees the message "Ranger Fox ate your geochicken. Thank you for the food!" I also show more of the photo I created that serves as my avatar in this forum (yes, I set up and took the photo myself). The chicken object is swapped out for a bones object. Also, if the chicken eats the feed, the user sees the message "The chicken ate your feed. To punish it, feed it to Ranger Fox."

 

Within my "Battleship" cartridge (open source; WG5Y), I test for the user's name and enable some fun testing options.

 

But, no, those aren't quite Easter eggs in the real sense of the word.

 

I don't think many would like it if I included Easter eggs in the Wherigo Foundation site. Regardless, I do have one Easter egg. When you're writing log entries, you can use the standard set of gc.com smilies. In fact, if you type a smiley code, it'll replace the code with the smiley right in the editor. In addition to the standard set, I have one graphic that is not included in that list. If you type out its code, it'll show the graphic. This is my Easter egg. Since this is professional development, I've restrained myself from adding anything else that's unexpected fun.

 

I'd be interested in hearing about others' real Easter eggs.

[+Dani+Iris]

Oh yes, I do that in almost every cartridge. Most of the time it is a sophisticated way of anticipating what a player can do wrong and react to that in a funny way. Of course it is a thin line between anticipation (and you could then not really call it an Easter Egg) and a real Easter Egg where a user normally would not go unless he deliberately looks for it (or is guided to it).

 

As an example of the first type, in my UZL Wherigo demo (http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=547e08a1-002e-4b8e-a4f6-053826867065) I invite the player on the corresponding geocaching.com listing to do unexpected things to find hidden and funny features that you would normally not see when you just want to reach the end as soon as possible. This cartridge is only in Dutch so not so easy to show how it works here. But the listing states that "do whatever is not expected to attain the highest possible FUN score" (je [kan] proberen een zo hoog mogelijke FUN score te behalen... door net niet te doen wat van je verwacht wordt). The score the players report is coded in a way that I can keep track of what they found. Not all eggs have been found yet...

 

A better example of the second type is my recently published The Place to Be(er) (http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.aspx?CGUID=db3edb86-f0c4-47fe-8114-ae94c68bcb2a). The main goal of the game is guiding the player in Leuven along the bars. But there are also two extensive provisions of finding an Easter Egg: the player is asked to state his favorite beer. He can rethink his decision and input another favorite. If he keeps on doing this by entering 6 specific beers (in any order) he gets to see the Easter Egg. I made a mystery cache of that, with the name "Easter Egg": http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC51VZK_easter-egg?guid=b7c483e4-ac2c-4d4a-b6c1-a0f9cf68227e Both caches refer to eachother but not directly and as a result the players of the Wherigo did not find the egg yet but the solvers of the mystery have to play (part of) the Wherigo in order to find their final coordinates. You can get to the Easter Egg in two possible ways. Either on location (at the moment that the main characters asks you for your favorite beer) or (better for this community but also for the solvers of the mystery) not on location, by starting the cartridge at home. This forum can try it as well: start the cartridge, choose your language (English), skip the invitation for the demo tour (answer No) and you already see "a bag" in your inventory. You can keep on blowing into it and you will gradually see that the messages change until you are also asked for your favorite beer. You then have to at least enter 6 different beers that correspond with the beer slogans in the mystery and... bingo! Yes, it is a hard puzzle. (There are other Easter Eggs in that same cartridge but these are more of the first type). If you digg up the code you will see a lot of functions with names like checkalleggs(), checkandanswereggs(), checkandseteggs(), ... and expressions with names like alleggs, ... and expressions and variables starting with egg... The FTF on the mystery found out about the egg by scraping the cartrdige for names...

 

One warning: you put a lot of effort in programming the Easter Eggs but few players will find out. So you have to prepare for that: either low acknowledgement of your invested time or one way or the other point players to (the possibility of) the egg (I am still waiting for the TTF on the Easter Egg Mystery).

 

But overall, I found that programming Easter Eggs into the cartridges is a lot of fun (you mostly do it for your own entertainment...) Enjoy!

Edited September 20, 2014 by Dani+Iris

[fendmar]

Thanks for the replies. If I ever get a cartridge completed it will probably include an additional zone with an acknowledgement.

 

When doing some research with the builder I ran across a couple of things that are probably Easter Eggs, but I don't know what triggers them. (A reference to Plugh and fjords and a hello from Seattle. )

 

Anybody have anything else?

[+Delta68]

I found this thread while looking for something else

 

Anyway, I thought of a neat Easter Egg idea but I want to be able to have a zone which is visible but inactive so it shows on the map but not in the zone list.

This works in the emulator but doesn't work on the Android with WhereYouGo

 

There's no hope at all of it working with the Garmins or iPhones

[+Delta68]

Actually, setting distance range and proximity range to zero might work

Edited February 17, 2015 by Delta68

[+charlenni]

An inactive zone is normally nowhere shown.