Wherigo / URWIGO / Earwigo comparison

[+formicaPL]

Hi,

I'm new to this topic - I have never build a cartridge, but have played once. Now I'm starting to think about creating one, since in my country there is only one Wherigo on GC

 

I was reading this forum and found that there are three different builders - Wherigo Builder, URWIGO and Earwigo. It's hard for a beginner to spot the differences between them and I didn't find any straight comparison.

 

Could you help me in making a decision, which one to choose?

[+sTeamTraen]

Only one of them is translated 100% into Polish.

[+formicaPL]

Thanks sTeamTraen.

But "not being translated into polish" is actually not a problem for me I'm thinking more about - which one is the most stable or universal for different devices.

[Ranger Fox]

Whichever Player you choose, there will be a steep learning curve. It also depends on personal preferences.

 

Groundspeak's Builder is good for simple stuff. You can get a decent cartridge done using it. People have reported, though, they have trouble dealing with its user interface. Through personal experience, I can definitely say I don't like having to click so many times to get stuff done. Tech support-wise, I prefer this Builder because it creates readable lua script. Unfortunately, the error messages Groundspeak's Builder throws out leave much to be desired.

 

Urwigo, I feel, might be the more popular builder application by those that create more than one cartridge. It's UI is really pretty and professional-looking. If you're visual and like flow charts to create your cartridge, this is for you. Urwigo includes several functions that make building cartridges easier, such as calculations and pseudo-encryption (from experience, it is much more difficult for me to hack these cartridges). From a tech support side, the lua script it creates is obfuscated with meaningless names and, in addition to its text "encryption" (it uses escape codes instead of text), it's really difficult for me to look through and figure out what is going on. Urwigo really does look and feel like a step up from Groundspeak's Builder.

 

As for Earwigo, it's web-based, which means you can access your cartridges from anywhere. I'll need to let sTeamTraen talk about it (please do) because I haven't used Earwigo enough to offer a fair and just opinion of its capabilities when compared to the other Builder applications.

 

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Everyone else can feel free to add their posts to point out differences between the Builders or to say why they use the Builder they do. Though I don't have to say this in such a well-behaved community as Wherigo, as a moderator, I will: please don't judge others by their opinions as we all like what we do for different reasons. (Anyway...)

 

Personally, I find myself using Groundspeak's Builder more often. Several of my cartridges involve custom coding (predominately, Whack-A-Lackey and Battleship), so I'm usually working with the lua script itself more often than not. Because of this, I usually set up the simple things, such as object (zone, item, character, etc.) creation in the Builder, then switch over to notepad for my author script. My time is usually 20% Builder, 80% or more author script. When I reach a point when I can test, I load the cartridge back in the Builder, compile it, and run it in the emulator. If the Builder throws an error, I know I did something wrong, so I switch back to notepad and correct it.

 

Just beware taking my personal preference to heart: some of the things I do with Wherigo aren't what you'd normally do in a cartridge. If you need some convincing, look up Whack-A-Lackey, Battleship, and, to a lesser degree, Sadie's BiG Adventure [sic]. So please don't base your decision on what I do.

 

Instead, I'd like to suggest you give Urwigo a try (note I don't have recent knowledge enough to suggest Earwigo, so sTeamTraen will have to speak for it). The community's response to Urwigo has been very positive.

[+formicaPL]

Thank you very much for your response!

[+sTeamTraen]

The unique (AFAIK) features of Earwigo are:

- You can transform your cartridge into a "play-anywhere" with one click.

- Import and export to/from the Groundspeak builder (that means you can leave Earwigo and go back to the original, with minimal loss of information).

- Entirely Web-based, so you can use it from your iPad, Mac, Linux, etc; you never have to see a file until you compile the cartridge.

- Support for multilingual cartridges, either at build time or at runtime.

- Builder translated into 5 or 6 languages completely, with others underway.

 

Compared to what I have seen of Urwigo, Earwigo does not have as nice a graphical interface - there's no drag-and-drop, for example. If you are used to the Groundspeak builder, Earwigo might take a little more time to learn, because the concepts are substantially different. With Earwigo, you define almost everything - messages, dialogs, etc - before you use it, rather than as you go along. This means that you don't appear to make as much progress in the first half hour, but as your cartridge progresses, you find yourself able to re-use a lot of stuff.

[+CedarPointFreak]

Thank you for the comparison, as I am in the same boat, and looking to see which editor I am going to try first, I think I am leaning toward the urwigo first.