This page was written for those who prefer to learn things by trial and error rather than reading a complete documentation. It was also written to give everybody a first cartridge to get started with.

You will receive a functional but quite boring cartridge that you can play with. The cartridge as it is should never be released but if you beef it up with media and a storyline you might actually have your first cartridge.

If you want to do more than this basic cartridge there is (to my understanding) hardly a way around learning some basic programming skills (like if then else structures). This is where this page refers you to the tutorial that might help you to get a deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in programing a Wherigo cartridge.

Approximately 50% of this page has been copied from the tutorial. This page is provided to give you an extremely quick start without bells and whistles. If you have read the tutorial there is, besides the cartridge itself, most likely no new information on this page for you. If you have not yet consulted the tutorial and if you want to know more, start to use the tutorial.

This quick start is based on the cartridge FirstAdventure that you can download here (right click and save link as…). Save the txt file to a folder on your computer. You will need it in a few minutes.

The basic concept of a Wherigo cartridge is the creation of zones on a map.

In the above example 6 zones are created on the map and the human player (black) is walking from zone to zone to solve the cartridge. You can see that some zones are already visible to the human player (they are marked in green), other zones (marked in orange) are still hidden from the human player.

The human player can use his GPS or PDA to navigate to a visible (green) zone. Our human player is currently on the way to zone 3. This zone might contain a puzzle, an interaction or a clue that activates zone 4.

Zone 4 will then enable zone 5 and the player can continue his quest. Once zone 5 is visible, the human player can locate it on his screen and walk towards it. He navigates from zone to zone until he reaches his final target (zone 6). This is where the cartridge depicted above will end.

Your first cartridge that I have prepared for you will only have 4 zones.

Once you log in for the first time, you'll be presented with an almost blank page with your username and three options (Log out, Manage Cartridges, and My Account). You'll want to click on Manage Cartridges.

After you click on the Manage Cartridges link, you'll be presented with a powerful and possibly slightly intimidating form. This is the main form for doing things related to cartridges such as creating, deleting, loading, compiling, backing up, etc. For our purposes, we're only interested in a couple of the options.

• In the “Operation” drop down box, select Restore
• Use the Browse button to locate the file FirstAdventure.txt on your computer
• Click the Submit button to send your request to the server
• The cartridge FirstAdventure is now in your list of cartridges

In order to test the cartridge you have to compile the cartridge. Use the indicated settings and click the Submit button. You will be asked to save a file (FirstAdventure.gwc) on your computer. Select a subdirectory that has no accented characters in the path (you can e.g. use c:\earwigo) and save the file.

Now you have to leave Earwigo for a while and start the Groundspeak (TM) Emulator. Follow this information to start the emulator and try the cartridge.

To have a look at the cartridge, select “FirstAdventure” from the Select cartridge box and then choose Edit as the operation. Click Submit to start the cartridge editor.

This Edit Cartridge screen is probably where you'll spend most of your time in Earwigo. Have a look at the cartridge and try to modify the cartridge to your needs.

If you want to test the cartridge outdoors you will have to move the zones closer to your home location (or fly to Paris ).

• Select the Zones tab
• Select the map for Zone A.
• Make sure that the option Drag is enabled
• Drag the zones closer to your home.

The cartridge is obviously not very interesting. You can do the following to make it more realistic (or fantastic).

• Edit the Cartridge Description (your introduction)
• Edit the Zones Description
• Edit the Messages

LUA is an event driven language. Progress is made in the cartridge by linking events together. For your first cartridge I have done this for you. Each time your human player enters a zone an event will be triggered. This event displays the next zone, displays messaged to the player or saves the cartridge at the end of the game.

I assume you will have some trouble to follow the program structure at the beginning. Try to do it this way:

• open the tab labeled Zones and display the zone List
• select Zone A Properties and have a look at the properties
• open the Events tab for zone A
• select the Enter event

You can see that the human player triggers some lua code (Statements) when he enters Zone A. The most important item in the small event list is the activation of Zone B. Have a look at the zone B events and see how one zone opens the next zone until the player reaches the final zone.

Try to insert your own little code snippets and see how things work out. It might help to read this LUA introduction from the tutorial.

Good Luck! and … if you need to learn more, have a look at the tutorial .