Updates to Wherigo\\Kit

2019-03-23

Switched over to using the GC API from the GC WCF service.
The site is now using HTTPS.
Began to retire wherigo.rangerfox.com and kit.rangerfox.com. I don't want to pay $600/year for wildcard certificaties for both rangerfox.com and wherigofoundation.com.

2019-02-19

Updated the check for when someone tries to save a Lights Out cartridge without any zones in a group.

2018-10-02

The Lights Out kit never saved its cartridge poster. I wonder why I hadn't noticed that before? Thank you, Danatisy!

2018-07-21

The cartridge description has been restricted to 450 characters. Long descriptions will cause the wherigo.com site to error.

2018-02-16

The context menu script I was using stopped having its click events fire. To fix it, I ditched the context menu I was using and implemented one somewhat in the way you'll see in Wherigo\\kit v2. Because of this, I threw in one of its new features: you get to see the coordinates of where you clicked.

2018-01-16

The image size has been increased 100% from 250x350 to 500x700. I'm hoping the player apps will be able to deal with it. An additional reason for this size increase is the acknowledgment that cell phones can display larger images with their screens. Let's hope they know how to scale the images if they prove too large!
The above image size increase only applies to images uploaded past this date.
The image resizer used in the Wherigo Foundation site has been copied over to Kit. You should see a positive change in image quality. Thank you, 10011010, for asking if the image quality could be improved.

2017-12-04

Test build: if the cartridge's author's name is "FamousEccles" or "test", the cartridge-building code will replace some special characters with their normal character counterparts. This build was created to test a case someone was having in the forum. Because I couldn't reproduce his issue myself, I wanted to make sure this solved his problem before I began testing to make sure this code's inclusion wouldn't mess with anyone's cartridges.

2017-11-30

All line returns in a cartridge's description are now removed when the cartridge is downloaded. This should cut down on issues with wherigo.com erroring because the description contains HTML (line returns are emitted as HTML so the player apps can pick up on them).

2017-11-16

It would help if Groundspeak's builder didn't say there was an error with inputs, wouldn't it? Groundspeak's builder usually assigns all answers to a different variable. This is, actually, optional. However, if I want to retain compatibility with Groundspeak's builder, I should probably follow that convention, shouldn't I?

2017-10-26

Playing in the emulator now uses OnEnter. For all other uses (zip, GWC, GWZ), Kit will use OnProximity. Thank you, Thot.

2017-08-24

You want a cartridge icon? You now have one. Thanks to archiejw asking for a way to set a cartridge icon, you can now do so. He asked for it and we delivered it on the same day! How's that for service?
You can set your cartridge's icon on the "Cartridge Details" section, accessible from the "Edit Cartridge Listing" link in the builder.
By the way, I'm continuing to work, slowly, on an open source v2 of Wherigo\\kit. When it's done, anyone who wants to contribute code or features to the project will be able to do so.

2017-07-06

So, a word about including paragraphs in cartridges: the player apps aren't consistent.
-- Groundspeak's emulator recognizes a regular line break (\n or \r), the newline character, and an uppercase , but not . -- Webwigo recognizes a regular line break (\n or \r) and the newline character, but not . -- Garmin Oregon recognizes a regular line break (\n or \r) and the newline character, but not . -- iOS app only recognizes a .
I received a request to help someone with paragraphs in his cartridge. This'll be fun.

2016-11-16

Fixed an issue where quotes in someone's user name would prevent a cartridge from being compiled and uploaded.

2016-09-16

Wherigo\\kit hosts the service that monitors for the wherigo.com cartridge download issue. Before, I was just monitoring for the protected memory error. There was recently another issue with wherigo.com, where one of the DLLs had an error. Had I been monitoring for any error, I would have received a text message about that. So, for this update, I'm now receiving all error messages. Gee, I hope I'm not woken up at 3:30 AM on a work morning/night to report the issue to someone who can fix it.

2016-06-19

When publishing to the WF site, Kit tries to provide the WF site with the cartridge's country and province/region/state. Kit uses Google for this. However, there was an issue where Google might (likely) provide a province/region/state that does not match the list of provinces/regions/states gc.com uses. When this happens, Kit's users saw an error message about needing a country and province/region/state, or it should be -1. This was because Kit could not provide the province/region/state ID, so defaulted to not passing anything, which the WF site's API (rightfully) rejected. The WF site's API is a stickler for correct, precise information! Anyway, this entire situation has been rectified. It was difficult for me to pin down because my test cartridges are in the US and some European countries that receive the right province/region/state information from the call to Google. A thank you goes to Danatisy for giving me a good scenario I could test. I apologize for being a day late beyond my initial estimate for this. Things happened.
Yes, typing "province/region/state" over and over again in the previous bullet point was tiring.
Also brought to my attention by Danatisy, if you're using the old wherigo.rangerfox.com address, some cartridges have an issue with being sent to Webwigo, the online emulator. I resolved this by forcefully using the new kit.wherigofoundation.com address.

2016-05-07

I added a background task to monitor wherigo.com for cartridge compile outages (the dreaded "Attempted to read or write protected memory" error seen when people try to download a cartridge). Due to Groundspeak's request, I can't send the email directly to Groundspeak. But I can set the service to monitor every half hour and send me a text message, even if it's at 3AM during the night, so I can notify Groundspeak. Ouch. Well, we do what we have to do to get by, right?

2016-04-06

Resolved an issue where copying a cartridge would strip the copy of its images. Thank you to Forestress for pointing it out!

2016-03-31

I heard the tabs wouldn't show up after the first zone. I guess Google Maps has been updated again. I fixed the issue: the tabs in the zone information section now display again. Perhaps it's time to update the script driving the builder?

2016-01-19

mayela mingi found an obscure bug with the wherigo.com site! If you have a newline before two dashes, the wherigo.com site will error when a user attempts to download a GWC. This does not happen on the wherigo.com compiler service page. Really weird. Anyway, no one should have to remember this obscure problem, so I adjusted Kit to get around it by changing your two dashes to one.

2015-11-03

You can now delete your cartridges from Kit. In reality, I'm just marking them as deleted in the database and not showing them to you. I chose that because someone at some time down the road will spend ten hours on a cartridge, accidentally delete it, and ask for it to be undone. Thank you, peejay, for the feature suggestion. It turned out I already had cartridge deletion (in the way I described) already implemented in the code and database. I just had to implement it in the UI. One last thing: only cartridge owners can delete their cartridges.

2015-10-07

One more update for cartridges using the same name for zones.
Modified the way cartridges are read from and written to the database. This needed to be done because characters in one cartridge in particular was causing issues. For those who are wondering, Kit stores all your cartridge information while in memory in a fairly straightforward C# class. To save your cartridge, it serializes the cartridge to XML and puts it in the database as text. Likewise, when you need to see your cartridge again, Kit will retrieve that text from the database and convert the XML back into a C# class. This makes it really easy for Kit to store and retrieve stuff. If you're still following me on this, let's get a bit technical: the serialization worked okay, but some characters had issues in the deserialization, making an invalid XML document (no, it's not > or <), and I had the literals set up--and the XML is stored as UTF-16, per the serializer. I just had to implement data contracts, remove the offending characters, deserialize, add the characters back, and save. At that point, everything seemed to work on further deserialization. Okay.
In case anything goes wrong, I took a snapshot of the database. I routinely do that when I touch something deep down in Kit. Well, this is something a little too deep down, so I wanted to make a note of it.

2015-10-04

In certain situations with cartridges using the same name for multiple zones, Kit got in a loop when it tried to create unique zone names if the zone name was exactly 25 characters (that's the maximum for some players). This update fixes that. Thank you, Starkiller_!

2015-08-20

If your cartridge is public, you can now distribute the emulator link you see on the cartridge details page. The link to the emulator you see on the builder page, however, is private and will not work for sharing.

2015-08-10

Made the zone balloon box a little larger and gave the zone description box a placeholder so people will know how to use it.
When the zone balloon box comes up, the correct tab is now selected. Although with the new map updates, I guess you can't call it a tab anymore.
Prevented users from entering bad characters into the multiple choice answers.
I first created Kit in December 2011. Looking back at this example of my work and coding, I can tell I've improved phenomenally. It almost hurts to have to work with this. Even the Wherigo Foundation site is behind the times on what I can do. I don't want to put in the time necessary to redo a lot of these sites just yet. I'd chose the WF site to update first, but I'm not going to touch that site until it's clear it'll be used.

2015-06-06

When publishing to wherigo.com, that site replaced all line breaks in the cartridge description with the HTML equivalent. However, the site would throw an error if you tried to save the description. To get around this, I had to strip out all line breaks prior to publishing to wherigo.com. You can, however, add them back on the wherigo.com cartridge description page.
Groundspeak is expiring gc.com logins after three months. So you'll have to log in to Kit every three months as well.

2015-05-07

Resolved a WF site publish bug. I spent another half hour wondering why the cartridge object still has a WG code. It's because I'm storing the entire object in the database. When I edit the database table, I'm not editing the object inside. Oh.

2015-04-29

I started looking into an issue of using special characters with the encrypted text feature. I came up with a solution, but Webwigo didn't like it. I'm going to have to do more testing and ask others in the Wherigo Foundation for some suggestions.

2015-03-28

The following is a summary of all features released today. The last update was on 2015-03-20.
The last zone now remains active. This is to help guide plays into the final zone instead of having it disappear.
The default proximity radius on new zones is now 8 meters. Since most people play with cell phones, this is the minimum acceptable distance due to a cell phone's estimated position error (or, at least, that's what I've been experiencing).
The emulator check has been expanded to include many more emulators.
Messages and questions now use obfuscated text. This means players cannot download a cartridge and read the messages and text easily in a text editor. As far as I can tell, this feature works properly. However, it's a risky feature to force on everyone, so I'm making it optional for now. You'll find it under the name "encrypted text" within your cartridge list. Please let me know if you experience any difficulties. By the way, automatic publish to wherigo.com and the WF site will use this obfuscated text by default.
To get all these features within your cartridge, just download your GWZ and upload it to wherigo.com again. It's all automatic.
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Began work to get obfuscation to work for non-English cartridges. I finished it and tested it with a couple cartridges.
If you notice one of your cartridges was edited today, that's because I did a final test on the main server in preparation for updating the site.
I updated the cartridge list page. I'm fairly confident of the obfuscation change, but I'll give everyone a chance to use it or not before I switch Kit over to producing obfuscated cartridges all the time. If you publish from Kit directly to wherigo.com or the WF site, the obfuscated text version will be used. I had to chose some sort of default.
Total time for all these features and testing: 11.5 hours.

2015-03-24

More work on the text obfuscation. I completed testing the text obfuscation with English cartridges. I still have to work on adapting the obfuscation code to non-English text. I think there's a lot more work and testing ahead to make sure this will work for all cartridges everywhere. On the up side, I get to look at cartridges people have developed, so I'm enjoying that aspect.

2015-03-23

I fixed the paragraph issue I was having. I'm not all content with the solution, but it definitely gets the job done.
Now for the last change I wanted to make: the final zone needs to remain active, but all events should not trigger a second time. Had I not been trying to maintain cross-builder compatibility, this would have been easier to implement.
There's still an issue with the text obfuscation. I can only release it if it's perfect. It's 95% of the way there, which is not reliable enough.

2015-03-22

A new day, a refreshing break. I solved the issue I was having with using obfuscation with the inputs. It took just a couple minutes.

2015-03-21

More work on text obfuscation. I'm trying to stay with the way Earwigo does/did it, mostly so I can be consistent with something.
Paragraph marks are hard. First, the WF.Compiler removes them if I compile for the WF.Player. I did not know this, so wasted some time. After that, including paragraph marks in the obfuscation will not work well with Earwigo's obfuscation function. I'm going to have to figure out how to get around that limitation. For me, it's twofold: getting around it when obfuscating when the cartridge is being built and making sure the lua function to deobfuscate does it correctly with the paragraph marks inserted. This is going to take a while.
Still having trouble with validating the inputs for some reason or other.
No release yet.

2015-03-20

It has been a while since I got serious with Kit. Let's do that in this update.
A three meter default proximity radius was a dumb idea when most people are playing on cell phones. I increased this to 8 meters.
The anti-emulator test locks down more emulators than before.
A cartridge save command is now executed automatically when the next zone is displayed. This should help people whose cartridges or apps crash.
I got most of the text obfuscation done. Unfortunately, it currently removes all paragraph characters. I'm going to have to pub them back.
I'm considering making the text obfuscation thing opt-in for a while. I'll test it myself on five or ten cartridges, but I honestly can't test this for everything out there.
Supper at midnight. Yum. I worked too long tonight. No release yet.

2015-03-06

Removed a lot more characters from the GWC/GWZ/ZIP file download name. I also centralized the code responsible for converting the name to something that's safe for transmission. I apologize in advance to those of whom this operation butchers your cartridge's name in the file download. It was either that or call all download files "cart". Once it's more common for cartridges to have a WG code associated with them, I thought about using the WG code instead. (The WG code is provided by the Wherigo Foundation cartridge listing site. By the way, if you use the site, please be advised you will still need your cartridge listed on Groundspeak's wherigo.com for the geocache to be published. This is in the guidelines.)
In the next update, I will switch the database credentials Kit is using. It's currently using my admin account. If I'm to grant others access to source control, I'm going to need to use some other user name and password for Kit. I need to go through and give execute permission to the other accounts.
Thank you Ttcm4geo for the donation!

2015-02-24

Fixed a problem associated with downloading cartridges with a comma in their name.

2015-02-23

Fixed a problem some people had reported regarding playing cartridges with WhereYouGo. This involved switching the compiler target device.

2015-01-30

Now that Kit is hosted in Azure, I can go back to using an internal reference to the WF.Compiler instead of dancing around with a special compile service I had set up in Azure to get around the server issue.
As of this writing, Kit is hosting 1,622 cartridges (my cartridges excluded). The site sees around 4,200 page views in a month with an average time of 5:24 spent per session. 14% of visitors use a Mac. The most visitors are from US, SE, DE, and NL. Neat. The most useful thing about Google Analytics is I'm able to see if anyone is using the site before I update it.

2014-12-20

Added Google Analytics to the site. Now that I'm paying more to host the site on Azure, I'm curious to see how many concurrent users Kit experiences and what, if any, the peak access times are. I'll use this information to determine if and when I need to add more resources to host the site.

2014-12-19

Someone reported another site outage. I moved Kit to a new web host and rewrote how it stores files so Kit now uses whatever storage provider I feed it.
Moving the site does count as a massive update. By the way, there are over nine thousand images used in cartridges. It takes freakishly long to transfer all the files. Truthfully, that was the main hold-up and why I decided to do the move as early as I did (I didn't want to move the images a second time after I verified the site).
By the way, this new web host is much more expensive. Instead of $100/year, I'm paying $480/year. See how much I love you? If you want to donate a little something to help offset this cost, I'll gladly let you help me.
Please let me know if there are any other site outages or problems.

2014-11-19

There was an issue with some trailing spaces on a multiple-choice input. I adjusted the script to remove all such spaces from everywhere.

2014-11-09

Now that the WF site has Webwigo emulator integration, I added it to Kit.

2014-11-04

I found a way to use the Q&A kit's lua exporter to do most of the exporting for the Lights Out kit. This means I'm not going to have to spend another fifteen hours writing an exporter from scratch. (Note: Kit was made as a technical demo under a very short timeline, so I had originally made it so I would have to write an exporter for each kit because they could be very different.)
I was able to export the first Lights Out cartridge.
Improved the cartridge list page. When you have a long list of cartridges, the cartridge information box will now scroll with the browser.
Big, huge hint: Your geocache will be in the last zone group, which will contain only that zone.
I'll have to monitor how people are using this kit as it's slightly more complicated than the linear Q&A kit.

2014-11-03

I began working on the Lights Out kit's lua exporter. I remember when I was working on the Q&A kit's exporter. It's convoluted and complicated to maintain compatibility with the other builders (to produce output like Groundspeak's builder made it). I am taking the hard way again so people can import the cartridge into either Urwigo or Groundspeak's builder and learn from it. Had I taken the easy way, I could have saved myself some repetition and used a bunch of author script. However, Kit is a builder from which you can learn when you're ready to move on to the full-featured builders, so I need this compatibility.

2014-10-06

Thank you for the donation, Danatisy! You're the first to donate to my projects! I haven't ever put up a donate link before because if I get something back from what I do, it's not altruism, is it? But someone once pointed out to me it's rude to do something and not give the other person a way to show thanks (which is my usual modus operandi, if you haven't noticed).
Bitcoin: 1ENAYmenfyBQ9LUX6awbVsfNFZ7qpTvFuz
Dogecoin: DCw4gTb7BgY3tGbPqc6eN2svMHdCK35ZL3

2014-09-15

j-annie asked if me how to copy cartridges (of if Kit could). No, it couldn't. But it can now! This update introduces the ability to copy a cartridge. If you copy a cartridge that is shared with you, you will own the copy. All images are copied as well. Thank you for the incidental suggestion!

2014-09-10

Fixed the problem that prevented the Q&A cartridge's zones from being reordered after dragging them around. (I new there would be issues after fissioning most of the builder's common functionality out so I could create the Lights Out cartridge type.) Thank you, OnTheGoDad!
I will not be able to get back to Kit by the end of September to finish the work on Lights Out. October is out because I won't have any weekend time for anything but my photography work. I'll try to get this done in November, if possible. Something is happening behind the scenes, so that might defer my work even more.

2014-08-27

You can now update your zone's proximity range. You will need to use a whole number, so no decimals.
On the Lights Out Kit, the new zone group dialog now will not come up after every time you edit your cartridge listing (e.g. name, author, etc.).
Thank you to those who reported these two issues! It is appreciated!

2014-08-09

Zone actions now show up in the zone actions tab in the Lights Out kit.
The media/image association now works. Why wasn't it easy to do? Well, with the linear kit, I was associating media with a zone based on the zone's order in the timeline and within the cartridge. But since zone groups are now parents in the timeline, I had to switch to a different way of doing things.
Lights Out preview released - You can create a cartridge with it, but it does not yet have any way for you to build the lua cartridge file. I'll take a break, listen for feedback, then create the lua cartridge builder that will enable you to export from Kit to a Wherigo listing service.

2014-08-08

I ran into a situation where Firefox wouldn't store session state on my local computer anymore. After quite a lot of headscratching, I switched to using Chrome as my development platform. I preferred Firebug as my DOM navigator, though. Oh, well.
Zone groups can now have an image associated with their clear message.
The Lights Out cartridges can now be saved to and loaded from the database.
The UI aspect is now at around 95%. All that remains is to look through what I've done, create a larger test cartridge, and make sure my changes didn't have a negative impact on the linear cartridge. After that, I can release it as a preview. In case you're wondering, I'm currently at 10.5 hours on this project. I still have the complicated lua parser to do.

2014-08-07

Work continues on the Lights Out kit.
Fixed the disappearing balloon issue.
You can now edit a zone group by clicking on the group's name.
I wired up events so zone group edits are saved. You can even upload a picture for the completion message, provided you're using that.
The UI aspect is now 80% complete, I think. The hard part--the thing that'll take twenty some-odd hours, will be in creating the lua script builder with everything I have. I'm not looking forward to it.

2014-08-05

Slightly reduced the HTML code needed to display the timeline. Kit was developed just before I changed my coding style, so I'm either stuck coding in that style or updating it. I'm trying not to update the style because that will affect the linear kit. My scripting and CSS skills in particular have improved a huge amount since I created Kit and the Wherigo Foundation sites.
Zone groups are assigned a color. All zones that appear within that group will have the same color. This should allow you to differentiate zones from different groups on the map.
Implemented the marker renaming. Lights Out zone groups will be assigned a letter and zones assigned a number. The marker on the map will show both of these.
Zones can now be moved between zone groups. Since doing so requires the map's marker to be changed (color and text), the zone will have to be redrawn on the map, meaning the dialog balloon for that zone must close. Oh, well.
Some of the changes resulted in a few errors on the linear cartridge. I expected that, though, and fixed those errors. Let's see how many more crop up.

2014-08-04

Lights Out work continues. I added to the zone group dialog the ability to set the minimum number of zones that must be completed in a group and the message the user receives for completing the group.
I can now create a zone and assign it to a group.
The zone numbering system used in the linear (Q&A) kit doesn't work well here. I will need to create a system that will number the zones in the format "1A". That's for later. There's still quite a bit of work left just getting the UI set up and running on this kit. I'm in it for the long haul.

2014-08-03

More work on the Lights Out kit. I can now create the first zone group and see it on my timeline. The new kit name even shows up within the settings section. There is still an overwhelming amount of work to be done before I can even show people a preview of the Lights Out kit.

2014-07-31

Began working on the Lights Out / Knockout kit. This is the first time a second kit has been added, so there's a ton of code rearranging to do. I was asked about this kit from someone during a time of peak productivity. This is going to take a little while to create.

2014-06-19

Resolved a problem where Groundspeak's builder didn't like the zone names when they contained an ampersand. Thank you, murphley!

2014-06-04

Kit was not including the cartridge's "poster" (the main image you define for your cartridge, as Groundspeak's site calls it) in cartridges it generates. This was something that hasn't been in Kit since it was first created. I never even noticed. Thank you, Spring Grove GeoTour, for pointing it out!

2014-05-02

Trying to clear up a reported bug when a GWC compiled on Kit is played in OpenWIG. To do this, I updated the cartridge compiler and forced Kit to compile its own cartridges once again (instead of using the compiler service I created in Azure). I wonder if this server's permission level will allow Kit to compile cartridges again? We'll see.
(Second update) Of course not. The server still prevents cartridges from being compiled directly on this server. I really need to spend time to move Kit over to Azure, where such a thing is possible. I'm reverting to the previous version of Kit.

2013-10-06

Added code so square brackets doesn't mess up cartridge compiles.
Switched over to using the Wherigo Foundation API for cartridge compiles (a hack, really). The compile issue will go away on its own when I get a chance to move the entire site to a new server.
Added code to enable publishing to the Wherigo Foundation site via the Wherigo API. You can either contact Ranger Fox for access to this preview feature or break out Firebug or Greasemonkey.

2013-08-01

Added a Finnish translation to the site. Thank you, Arnyk! Sorry, but this news page will remain in English because I don't want to have to bother Arnyk every time I update the site. If anyone sees any problems resulting from using Finnish on the site, please let me know. FYI: It was a little challenging to make sure the decimals in the script remained as English because that would mess with Google Maps' plotting of the zones.
When cartridges are complete, Kit now marks the cartridges as such. Now, you can upload the Garmin save files to unlock a cartridge.
When a cartridge is completed, a completion code item now appears in the player's inventory. It's a little more convenient for the player this way.
I added the zone's proximity range to the builder's UI. You can now control how close people have to get to the zone before its event will trigger. Please note this is in meters. Sorry, people in the United States: please work with it for now. (I also live in the United States, although both Wherigo\\kit and Project Foundation (code name) both use the metric system.)
At a later date, I'll work on integrating Wherigo\\kit with Project Foundation (code name).

2013-07-09

The company that hosts this site introduced a security update that prevented the cartridge compiler from running. I created a cartridge compile service in my Azure cloud and am pointing Kit to it. Not quite the most optimal solution, but it is the solution that provides me the fastest response time. Since this is my first time using the cloud, please report any compiling problems.

2013-05-02

Kit is now using Project Foundation's (code name) Wherigo compiler to create GWC files for testing. Please report all GWC compilation errors as this is vital to know for Project Foundation's debut in late 2013.

2013-01-26

Fixed a bug resulting from a user not entering a correct answer message in a dialog. Also made this a required field so this does not happen again.

2013-01-01

Switched to using Groundspeak's production API. No more staging site and problems with that.

2012-11-18

Resolved yesterday's issue. Zone names are now restricted to 25 characters to preserve Wherigo builder compatibility and so the cartridge will compile correctly. Only A-Z, 0-9, and several symbols are used for a zone's name while all others are stripped out when the cartridge is created and downloaded. This is because Groundspeak's Builder, our baseline compatibility benchmark (if it works with this, it'll work with anything else) likes to rename your zones' name in the code (not visible to you) to match the name you gave your zone, minus unsupported characters. This means Kit needs to restrict the names to safe characters and lengths to make sure everything is compatible (and compliable so it can be uploaded to wherigo.com).

2012-11-17

Quick update to restrict Kit from making zones with very long names and a few other unsupported characters.

2012-11-05

If the user didn't have home coordinates set, there was no way s/he could make a cartridge because the builder sets the map to the user's home location. Now, if the home location isn't set, it'll use the first cartridge's posted coordinates. Failing that, it'll use Mt. Ellinor, a place I found to be pretty and a nice spot to visit (and far away from me), as the map's home coordinates.

2012-08-09

I reduced the size of the last zone so people are led better to the final.

I also added emulator protection. Anywhere you want in your cartridge, click on that little hand icon and add some text. The cartridge will close after this message is shown to the player. This can be injected anywhere into the cartridge.

2012-06-04

This update should fix the problem of the missing images. I can't reproduce it anymore, at least.

2012-05-22

Patched a problem with missing uploaded images. I haven't figured out what's causing it, though. This patch will cause Kit to verify an image is present before attempting to display it on the Builder page and use it when building a cartridge. That's the best I can do while I'm preparing for Geowoodstock. By the way, if you see me there, feel free to say hi.

2012-04-24

I focused on Kit's cartridge publish service this evening. Here's the issue: A user (thank you, bucknuts) published his cartridge to wherigo.com from Kit. He then made changes to that cartridge using Kit; in this case, the cartridge's name. He then used the cartridge publishing service to send the changes to wherigo.com. However, wherigo.com's form still had his cartridge's old name.

It turns out this is a bug on wherigo.com's end. It receives the updated cartridge. However, it does not reread the cartridge. Instead, it populates the cartridge update form with what it found in its database--the cartridge's older information. In my testing, I left the cartridge's old name there, submitted the form, then downloaded the cartridge source from wherigo.com: it used the new name I gave the cartridge in Kit. However, when you download a GWC from wherigo.com, it uses whatever values are in the database for the cartridge's name and description. Baffling, isn't it, for the site to have the source, but use the database's values to construct the GWC and not what's already inside the cartridge? Just to verify all this, I downloaded a GWZ from Kit and uploaded the file manually: it reads the new name from the file and even says it uploaded the new name cartridge, but it doesn't update the cartridge's name in the database. I know I can convince Groundspeak to work on small changes to the site, but I don't know if I can sell them on fixing this issue. Besides, it seems easy to work around: just update the cartridge form yourself.

Thus, most of my update this evening involves creating a UI to notify people not to be scared of what they'll see when they're redirected to wherigo.com. To see what I did, publish something from Kit to wherigo.com, then come back here and do it again. You'll then see the message. I also added a thank you message when you use the cartridge publishing service.

One last thing: this application's official name and casing. The official name and casing is "Wherigo\\kit", pronounced as two words (silent slashes). In shorthand, it is "Kit", casing the second word as a proper noun. I doubt it matters to anyone but me at this stage, but I did want to make a note of it.

2012-04-16

Bug fixes:
You can now save zone images again.
The last open-ended input's answer is now removed when looking at another input.
Added "no image" to the placeholder image you see when the user hasn't selected an image. The display height was increased a bit.
Added directions to the multiple-choice input dialog so the user knows what the radio buttons are for. Later, some other UI gimmick will be needed.

2012-04-15

Bug fix: Groundspeak's Builder does not like apostrophes in file names.

2012-04-04

Updated the cartridge output to use OnProximity instead of OnEnter for zone events. Later, I guess you'll get a choice as to which event you want to use. At the moment, for the current (linear) kit, you don't have a choice. Please note this means you will need to edit and save your cartridge to get into this new format before you can build it properly. Since Wherigo\\kit is still in its early stage, such a change and general announcement is fine because I know all the cartridges in the system.

2012-03-28

Updated the linear kit to allow people to use images with correct and incorrect input answers. I also addressed a bug that occurred when building a cartridge in which an input used an incorrect message, but not a correct one (and vice-versa).

2012-01-16

The production site is now off the code freeze. I moved everything developed on beta over the last two weeks to production. As long as your cartridge is in English, you can now create and share linear cartridges on production as that part is complete. I have an idea how I'm going to set up the architecture for the Lights Out-type cartridge and have begun moving things around on the builder to prepare for that. For the most part, you should not see any changes there until I'm done. I will continue to develop on beta. This news section will be different depending on if you look at it on beta versus production. Consult here for what's going on.

From here on out, I will alternate my time between logging caches and working on Wherigo\\kit. This week, I will continue logging caches from October, then next will be Wherigo\\kit and so on. Once one activity runs out, I will fill the gap with the Statbar Modifier v2 (after taking some time off to rest, as it does wonders for concentration and being able to stay awake during the day). I estimate it will take me a solid four weeks to catch up on cache logs--this must be done by March, before I add several thousand more to my queue. This is my schedule.