Version 0.3.92 is underway.
Biggest spectacle of this is cartridge saving and loading. A few moments ago i have successfully stored and restored a game of Wherigo Player Tutorial.
Technical details about the solution will follow in a separate article.
And that's pretty much it. There's the usual bunch of random bugfixes, minor improvements and extended Wherigo functionality (did i tell you that you can now see a zone map?), but probably nothing to write home about.
Oh, and i switched back from NetBeans' default proguard 4.2 (obfuscator/optimizer) to older 3.9. The new one is too aggressive in optimizing and still has some bugs. I identified and reported one, but it's not yet fixed, so i can't really continue the search. And i don't need the stress of hunting bugs that aren't there.
Showing posts with label openwig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label openwig. Show all posts
August 2, 2009
May 19, 2009
openwig news
Well well well. It sure has been a long time.
Today i have released a new and improved experimental version 0.3.90 (yup, that means pre-0.4), codenamed "Threadless". Why? Well, it's not because it makes t-shirts. It's because it doesn't use threads. Not too much of them, anyway.
Before this release, OpenWIG relied on threads for event synchronization. Whenever I needed to call an event handler, I spawned a thread that would perform the Lua code and die. Which is all good and nice, but can bring a lot of trouble. For one, when you use many threads, you need to care about (dead)locking. For two, some j2me implementations are somewhat inferior to the rest *cough*Symbian*cough*. Their garbage collection is simply not good enough. So it's better not to create too many objects, if you know what i mean.
Also, for the same reason, there is now a pre-allocated instance of each of the screen types (like "item details", "zone navigation", "dialog" etc.) and no new screens are created.
Oh, and screen switching is now stateless. That means that each screen knows in advance which screens can follow it. And that's cool! Lots of problems with screen refreshing disappeared this way.
And lot of them appeared. Oh well, for every bug you fix, three new are born.
In other news, we now have the latest and greatest Kahlua revision, which means that we support more obscure code. Inventories and AllZObjects are now accessible from Lua as tables. And some minor thingies, i don't remember exactly.
Anyway, the new version is very cool and you should all download it.
Today i have released a new and improved experimental version 0.3.90 (yup, that means pre-0.4), codenamed "Threadless". Why? Well, it's not because it makes t-shirts. It's because it doesn't use threads. Not too much of them, anyway.
Before this release, OpenWIG relied on threads for event synchronization. Whenever I needed to call an event handler, I spawned a thread that would perform the Lua code and die. Which is all good and nice, but can bring a lot of trouble. For one, when you use many threads, you need to care about (dead)locking. For two, some j2me implementations are somewhat inferior to the rest *cough*Symbian*cough*. Their garbage collection is simply not good enough. So it's better not to create too many objects, if you know what i mean.
Also, for the same reason, there is now a pre-allocated instance of each of the screen types (like "item details", "zone navigation", "dialog" etc.) and no new screens are created.
Oh, and screen switching is now stateless. That means that each screen knows in advance which screens can follow it. And that's cool! Lots of problems with screen refreshing disappeared this way.
And lot of them appeared. Oh well, for every bug you fix, three new are born.
In other news, we now have the latest and greatest Kahlua revision, which means that we support more obscure code. Inventories and AllZObjects are now accessible from Lua as tables. And some minor thingies, i don't remember exactly.
Anyway, the new version is very cool and you should all download it.
December 5, 2008
internal affairs filed under JSR179
OpenWIG 0.3.07 is out and it supports JSR-179 style "Location Providers" a.k.a. internal GPS.
Getting that to work was no picnic, though.
Here's a basic overview of how it's supposed to work:
Well, yes, but with a caveat: there's no listProviders or equivalent method. If the phone has more than one provider, it can return pretty much anything it wants.
And it turns out that e.g. Nokia N95 has more than one provider, and one of them is very dumb and coincidentally that's the one that is selected when you specify "empty" criteria (the default Criteria instance means basically "anything will do")
It seems to work when you say that you want to get speed, course, altitude and you allow it to cost money:
Getting that to work was no picnic, though.
Here's a basic overview of how it's supposed to work:
- choose a list of things you want from your GPS device and set it all up in a Criteria object
- instantiate a LocationProvider by calling LocationProvider.getInstance(myCriteriaObject);
- periodically ask for a new location by calling provider.getLocation(timeout)
- or implement a LocationListener interface, and register that with the provider. You can then specify some refresh intervals and timeouts and whatnot. Fortunately, you can also leave it on default values.
Well, yes, but with a caveat: there's no listProviders or equivalent method. If the phone has more than one provider, it can return pretty much anything it wants.
And it turns out that e.g. Nokia N95 has more than one provider, and one of them is very dumb and coincidentally that's the one that is selected when you specify "empty" criteria (the default Criteria instance means basically "anything will do")
It seems to work when you say that you want to get speed, course, altitude and you allow it to cost money:
Criteria c = new Criteria();Oh and then there's the fun with invalid locations that can either have isValid flag set to false or be null. But that is easy to get right. Finding out that a phone is giving you a bad provider is the real pain.
c.setAltitudeRequired(true);
c.setSpeedAndCourseRequired(true);
c.setCostAllowed(true);
provider = LocationProvider.getInstance(c);
November 24, 2008
what's cooking
Version 0.3.07, that's what. It will have all bugs from the previous post fixed, and its navigation arrow will be prettier and move smoother and just be plain old sexy.
Oh, and internal GPS's will be supported!
It will be ready sometime this week.
For the version after that, I intend to try and dig a bit into saving and loading. It won't be perfect, but maybe, just maybe, it will work well enough for most cartridges.
sidenote: there is a midlet called "OpenWIG-blackmagic" sitting silently in my phone. it has all kinds of very evil features that should never have been born. muhahahaa!
sidenote2: The name "OpenWIG" sucks. I need to come up with a different one.
Oh, and internal GPS's will be supported!
It will be ready sometime this week.
For the version after that, I intend to try and dig a bit into saving and loading. It won't be perfect, but maybe, just maybe, it will work well enough for most cartridges.
sidenote: there is a midlet called "OpenWIG-blackmagic" sitting silently in my phone. it has all kinds of very evil features that should never have been born. muhahahaa!
sidenote2: The name "OpenWIG" sucks. I need to come up with a different one.
fun bits
a.k.a. OpenWIG bugs worth mentioning, and their respective cartridges
Srnčí důl:
the official Players call "OnSet*" before performing the setting. I.e., when you set task.Complete = true, then the player first calls OnSetComplete and only after that actually sets the variable.
The OnSetComplete event in Srnčí důl (Roedeer deep), for some wicked reason, checks for this behavior: if task.Complete == false then (do stuff) So if at the moment of calling OnSetComplete, it's already Complete, there be failurez.
Blair Witch:
so I took the latest and greatest version and headed out, to try and play this cartridge, which is probably best one in CZ, and also the most complex one. So it was kind of baptism of fire for OpenWIG. Plus, this time, i was a member of a group equipped with Colorados, so i could check the behavior against the "right" one.
Found two bugs. In one, i could see all my virtual companions long after we left them behind in a dead zone. The other, at first i didn't think that it's a bug. I just completed a simple task ... then all the coloradists spent half hour trying to complete the very same task and failing spectacularly.
Both bugs were rather easy to find and remove.
First one: when a zone deactivates, it stops evaluating position events. That means that if you deactivate a zone in which you stand, as far as OpenWIG is concerned, you'll stand there till the end of days. Because it will never again check if you are inside or not. It just remembers the last state.
Fixed by forcefully removing a player from a deactivated zone.
Second: in the mentioned task, you have to carry an object outside of an invisible zone that envelopes the visible zone in which you start.
The respective event asks if invisibleZone:Contains(Player). Welll..... Yes, if the zones overlap, the player can be in more than one zone at once. That works fine. But when doing that, I apparently overlooked something: it doesn't go the other way around. Player is in multiple zones, but only one zone Contains() the player. So when i was in the inner visible zone, the event never found out that i was also in the invisible zone, and let me throw the task object away without hassle.
Fix was fairly trivial, i just needed to override zone's Contains method... ah, why would i write all this, you can figure it out.
...and for a time, it was good...
Petřínská Wherigovka:
This cartridge also has that habit of deactivating zones that you stand in. But it turns out that when fixing the problem from Blair Witch, i overlooked something again.
There are two internal states for a zone: contain says whether you are present in (close to, distant from) the zone, and ncontain aka "next contain" says whether you are going to be present in the zone in the next five seconds, unless something happens. So most of the time it's the same as contain.
When "forcefully removing" the player, i reset the value of contain, but not ncontain. In the next timestep, zone realized that the player is going to be inside it real soon, and invoked the OnEnter event.
Which had a rather lengthy dialog. Which ended in a question. Which, if answered correctly, would deactivate the zone. Which would lead to another OnEnter... you see where this is heading.
Also i found out that even when the zone is inactive, quite a lot is going on in it.
So i put a stop to it, and that's the end of this nasty little bug.
...or is it?
Srnčí důl:
the official Players call "OnSet*" before performing the setting. I.e., when you set task.Complete = true, then the player first calls OnSetComplete and only after that actually sets the variable.
The OnSetComplete event in Srnčí důl (Roedeer deep), for some wicked reason, checks for this behavior: if task.Complete == false then (do stuff) So if at the moment of calling OnSetComplete, it's already Complete, there be failurez.
Blair Witch:
so I took the latest and greatest version and headed out, to try and play this cartridge, which is probably best one in CZ, and also the most complex one. So it was kind of baptism of fire for OpenWIG. Plus, this time, i was a member of a group equipped with Colorados, so i could check the behavior against the "right" one.
Found two bugs. In one, i could see all my virtual companions long after we left them behind in a dead zone. The other, at first i didn't think that it's a bug. I just completed a simple task ... then all the coloradists spent half hour trying to complete the very same task and failing spectacularly.
Both bugs were rather easy to find and remove.
First one: when a zone deactivates, it stops evaluating position events. That means that if you deactivate a zone in which you stand, as far as OpenWIG is concerned, you'll stand there till the end of days. Because it will never again check if you are inside or not. It just remembers the last state.
Fixed by forcefully removing a player from a deactivated zone.
Second: in the mentioned task, you have to carry an object outside of an invisible zone that envelopes the visible zone in which you start.
The respective event asks if invisibleZone:Contains(Player). Welll..... Yes, if the zones overlap, the player can be in more than one zone at once. That works fine. But when doing that, I apparently overlooked something: it doesn't go the other way around. Player is in multiple zones, but only one zone Contains() the player. So when i was in the inner visible zone, the event never found out that i was also in the invisible zone, and let me throw the task object away without hassle.
Fix was fairly trivial, i just needed to override zone's Contains method... ah, why would i write all this, you can figure it out.
...and for a time, it was good...
Petřínská Wherigovka:
This cartridge also has that habit of deactivating zones that you stand in. But it turns out that when fixing the problem from Blair Witch, i overlooked something again.
There are two internal states for a zone: contain says whether you are present in (close to, distant from) the zone, and ncontain aka "next contain" says whether you are going to be present in the zone in the next five seconds, unless something happens. So most of the time it's the same as contain.
When "forcefully removing" the player, i reset the value of contain, but not ncontain. In the next timestep, zone realized that the player is going to be inside it real soon, and invoked the OnEnter event.
Which had a rather lengthy dialog. Which ended in a question. Which, if answered correctly, would deactivate the zone. Which would lead to another OnEnter... you see where this is heading.
Also i found out that even when the zone is inactive, quite a lot is going on in it.
So i put a stop to it, and that's the end of this nasty little bug.
...or is it?
November 3, 2008
OpenWIG 0.3 beta
Released this night. Head over to the openWIG project page and get it (link is on the right side).
It has its own functional file browser, and a pretty preferences screen. It mostly looks the way i described it a while ago.
No big changes on the player side of things, though, only some minor bugfixes.
Caveats:
It has its own functional file browser, and a pretty preferences screen. It mostly looks the way i described it a while ago.
No big changes on the player side of things, though, only some minor bugfixes.
Caveats:
- It's a beta and i didn't really test it (mostly because of the emulator stuff mentioned in last post). It just might be that it is severely broken in some stupid way and unfit for general use.
- It can no longer load files from JAR archive. That functionality might be restored, but as of now, i don't see any reason to do that.
October 6, 2008
bitrot
Last time i did something with openWIG, it was a rather nifty little midlet that did some cool stuff.
When i fired it up today, it didn't do anything. Plus it seemed that it only has parts of my most recent work. Or something.
Apparently, it has gone bitrotten from not being touched in few months. I'll have to dust it off, clean it up, look for the missing parts on my laptop and push out a version.
In other news, i've fixed the bug where the midlet would die instantly if you disconnect the GPS. Funny thing, i never thought that it's a bug in the application, i thought that it's just the way things are. Oh well.
When i fired it up today, it didn't do anything. Plus it seemed that it only has parts of my most recent work. Or something.
Apparently, it has gone bitrotten from not being touched in few months. I'll have to dust it off, clean it up, look for the missing parts on my laptop and push out a version.
In other news, i've fixed the bug where the midlet would die instantly if you disconnect the GPS. Funny thing, i never thought that it's a bug in the application, i thought that it's just the way things are. Oh well.
May 22, 2008
openWIG status report
Version 0.2.99 was released sometime this night, as opposed to what I wrote last week.
It has pretty navigation and crude but functional reading from filesystem. Everything important is on the project page, follow the link on your right.
...oh, and did I mention that we can now decode the GWC format? Well, we can. Feel free to load your memory card with cartridges and head outside.
It has pretty navigation and crude but functional reading from filesystem. Everything important is on the project page, follow the link on your right.
...oh, and did I mention that we can now decode the GWC format? Well, we can. Feel free to load your memory card with cartridges and head outside.
May 14, 2008
openWIG status report
Just a quickie: navigation is almost done, filesystem access is not.
But, since i had to employ quite a bunch of clever tricks (let's call them that, at least until they all fail spectacularly), i need guinea pigs to test them on as many phones as guineapigly possible.
There will be a highly experimental version 0.2.99, as a precursor to actual 0.3.0 (which, according to my roadmap, should have at least partially usable filesystem access). I will probably release it sometime this night.
But, since i had to employ quite a bunch of clever tricks (let's call them that, at least until they all fail spectacularly), i need guinea pigs to test them on as many phones as guineapigly possible.
There will be a highly experimental version 0.2.99, as a precursor to actual 0.3.0 (which, according to my roadmap, should have at least partially usable filesystem access). I will probably release it sometime this night.
May 7, 2008
openWIG status report
In short: the fun is over, now begins the hard work.
In longer...
Well.
Version 0.2.6, released some two weeks ago, doesn't have it all, but it has most of it: rather reliable zone detection and navigation, support for all basic Wherigo constructs (including Timers) and their events, images (preloaded in the jar file), PlayAnywhere features...
There are still quite a few loose ends in the Lua library, and i'm looking forward to tying them up. But unfortunately, there is a number of things whose priority is much higher.
One, navigation screen.
What we have now is something along the lines of "239,2m northwest". Which is nice, but not really precise. What we need is a graphical display with an arrow pointing towards the destination. Perhaps with some additional info - distance, target/current coordinates, speed, signal strength...
HandyGeocaching has it all, and i'll probably borrow most of the code. But to be honest, i dread the moment when i'll have to open the HG project again. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing with the code ... it's just that it's a Netbeans 5.5 project with visual designers, and it really really dislikes Netbeans 6. Or vice versa. Anyway, it's so ugly it's not even funny.
I'm actually thinking of writing my own navi display from scratch, just to avoid this :e/
Two, preferences and persistence.
This is where it starts to get funny - the midlet reached a level of complexity where some kind of preferences screen is necessary.
Which brings us to...
Three, filesystem access.
Yesterday I checked in a class that can load things from gwc cartridge. It is useful by itself, no doubt about that - at least it will enable people to save their cartridges into the jar without any external tools (apart from a zip, obviously, but everyone has zip today). But to make it really interesting, you have to be able to open things from a memory card.
That means filesystem classes plus browser gui plus persistence (see above) and a whole lot of other minor changes. Such as...
Four, brand new main-screen UI.
Because the current one doesn't really expect to have more than one cartridge. We need file browser (see above), cartridge selector with preview (splash screen, description etc.), Preferences screen (see above) and ability to close cartridge and open a new one.
And the best part is that this all needs to be done in one step, otherwise it won't make any sense.
Well, the navi screen i can release separately. But now i have gwc reading, not navigation. And gwc reading doesn't make sense without filesystem. Et cetera et cetera.
In longer...
Well.
Version 0.2.6, released some two weeks ago, doesn't have it all, but it has most of it: rather reliable zone detection and navigation, support for all basic Wherigo constructs (including Timers) and their events, images (preloaded in the jar file), PlayAnywhere features...
There are still quite a few loose ends in the Lua library, and i'm looking forward to tying them up. But unfortunately, there is a number of things whose priority is much higher.
One, navigation screen.
What we have now is something along the lines of "239,2m northwest". Which is nice, but not really precise. What we need is a graphical display with an arrow pointing towards the destination. Perhaps with some additional info - distance, target/current coordinates, speed, signal strength...
HandyGeocaching has it all, and i'll probably borrow most of the code. But to be honest, i dread the moment when i'll have to open the HG project again. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing with the code ... it's just that it's a Netbeans 5.5 project with visual designers, and it really really dislikes Netbeans 6. Or vice versa. Anyway, it's so ugly it's not even funny.
I'm actually thinking of writing my own navi display from scratch, just to avoid this :e/
Two, preferences and persistence.
This is where it starts to get funny - the midlet reached a level of complexity where some kind of preferences screen is necessary.
- GPS mode - Manual, Bluetooth, Built-in, Serial port.
The latter two are not done and i'll again have to dive into HG to fetch them. But that doesn't matter, bluetooth alone is enough fun. Last connection info should be persistent. And Manual mode has a few differences of its own.
- Navi screen refresh intervals.
Turns out that some phones of a certain vendor who shall remain nameless (cough cough Nokia cough) (and possibly some others, but that is yet to be seen) take a screen update as an instruction to scroll up. Which is all fun and games until somebody loses an eye, i mean, until you notice that the navigation info is on the bottom. And since the refresh interval is 1 second (synchronized to game engine ticks and presumed GPS ticks), unlucky owners of the affected phones can't really see the navi info.
If the screen was to refresh at, say, 10 seconds, their direction would not be so precise, but at least it would be readable.
- Last opened cartridge, information about cartridge directory, logs directory etc.
All those things that suddenly appear when you load and save files to the filesystem.
Which brings us to...
Three, filesystem access.
Yesterday I checked in a class that can load things from gwc cartridge. It is useful by itself, no doubt about that - at least it will enable people to save their cartridges into the jar without any external tools (apart from a zip, obviously, but everyone has zip today). But to make it really interesting, you have to be able to open things from a memory card.
That means filesystem classes plus browser gui plus persistence (see above) and a whole lot of other minor changes. Such as...
Four, brand new main-screen UI.
Because the current one doesn't really expect to have more than one cartridge. We need file browser (see above), cartridge selector with preview (splash screen, description etc.), Preferences screen (see above) and ability to close cartridge and open a new one.
And the best part is that this all needs to be done in one step, otherwise it won't make any sense.
Well, the navi screen i can release separately. But now i have gwc reading, not navigation. And gwc reading doesn't make sense without filesystem. Et cetera et cetera.
April 18, 2008
news
OpenWIG development finally slowed down as I approached the more difficult problems - zone and distance detection.
However, they now seem to be finished and working nicely on my SE K610i.
I even implemented "slow hysteresis" to compensate for GPS fuzz: when you are about to walk into a zone (where "zone" is not Wherigo.Zone, but a well defined area, e.g. the proximity space around a Zone, the inside of a Zone, or maybe the space so far away that it's even outside the DistanceRange), OpenWIG waits for five consecutive position samples that confirm your position in the new zone, and only then acknowledges the new position.
It's too late for me to be able to explain it in simple terms, but it actually is simple. And it works surprisingly well, at walking speed at least. But it is five seconds slow. I'll see what I can do about that.
Version 0.2.4 includes precise zone detection, distance detection, OnProximity and OnDistant events (last two from the "basic set" that is used in every other cartridge)
...and... (drums, please) navigation!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, OpenWIG will now tell you exactly how far away are you and what direction you should take. The instructions are still rather crude, and they are displayed even when you are inside the zone (you can just disregard them, they don't mean anything inside a zone. i use them for debugging), but it does work.
Get it while it's hot!
However, they now seem to be finished and working nicely on my SE K610i.
I even implemented "slow hysteresis" to compensate for GPS fuzz: when you are about to walk into a zone (where "zone" is not Wherigo.Zone, but a well defined area, e.g. the proximity space around a Zone, the inside of a Zone, or maybe the space so far away that it's even outside the DistanceRange), OpenWIG waits for five consecutive position samples that confirm your position in the new zone, and only then acknowledges the new position.
It's too late for me to be able to explain it in simple terms, but it actually is simple. And it works surprisingly well, at walking speed at least. But it is five seconds slow. I'll see what I can do about that.
Version 0.2.4 includes precise zone detection, distance detection, OnProximity and OnDistant events (last two from the "basic set" that is used in every other cartridge)
...and... (drums, please) navigation!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, OpenWIG will now tell you exactly how far away are you and what direction you should take. The instructions are still rather crude, and they are displayed even when you are inside the zone (you can just disregard them, they don't mean anything inside a zone. i use them for debugging), but it does work.
Get it while it's hot!
April 10, 2008
they are on to me!!
[panicks] Yaaaaaaahh!!! They're coming! ... must ... keep ... ahead .... !! [panicks again, runs around in circles]
In other news, OpenWIG 0.2.3 is out and it supports various kinds of Inputs, as well as few more dummy functions.
In other news, OpenWIG 0.2.3 is out and it supports various kinds of Inputs, as well as few more dummy functions.
April 7, 2008
OpenWIG: GPS support ready, gwc format possible
Version 0.2.0 of OpenWIG has crude support for Bluetooth GPS modules. Plus a Play Anywhere mode, so you can play the included Zooventure Level Two regardless of where you live.
In other news: misch of geocaching.cz said that the gwc format doesn't look at all difficult to him. And that he would probably be able to decode it.
That means that OpenWIG will probably have support for original Wherigo Player cartridges, and that means that you will be able to play full-featured Wherigo on your mobile phone!
Isn't that just wonderful?
In other news: misch of geocaching.cz said that the gwc format doesn't look at all difficult to him. And that he would probably be able to decode it.
That means that OpenWIG will probably have support for original Wherigo Player cartridges, and that means that you will be able to play full-featured Wherigo on your mobile phone!
Isn't that just wonderful?
April 5, 2008
expert at making things more complicated
Oh Me Oh My.
For whatever reason, Wherigo is designed in a way that perfectly maps to J2ME's gui handling. Commands, actions, dialog boxes, it all looks like somebody designed it to work in a midlet.
Except for one thing.
To quote Wherigo Advanced Concepts on the subject of MessageBoxes and Dialogs:
On the other hand, it's quite a dumb idea to automatically cancel the dialogs when another comes. What if the user doesn't have time to read it? But ... who am I to judge :P
So let's restate the problem.
Strangely enough, it worked, and it worked really well.
Too well, actually.
I apparently missed some of the Advanced Concepts.
It actually does work like that. Dialog is put on screen and the script continues happily on its way. Return values? No sire. There are callbacks instead. Who could have thought?
(anyone who would try it in the builder ... oh well)
In fact, the very Wherigo Level Two cartridge I use for testing is relying on this "feature". Instead of if/elseif conditional blocks, it just displays messages over one another, stopping at the right time.
I was very surprised that OpenWIG showed more messages than the emulator. I even thought that it's a bug in the emulator, or some kind of unspecified if/elseif handling - which would be very, very bad.
Nope, none of that. Once again, I made the problem more difficult for me. If I didn't want to do it "properly", it would have been easier, and correct at the same time. Folks at GroundSpeak apparently don't do things the "proper" way, but the "practical" (easy for the programmer) way. I'll have to get used to it.
But auto canceling the dialogs? Come on. That is dumb. Really.
For whatever reason, Wherigo is designed in a way that perfectly maps to J2ME's gui handling. Commands, actions, dialog boxes, it all looks like somebody designed it to work in a midlet.
Except for one thing.
To quote Wherigo Advanced Concepts on the subject of MessageBoxes and Dialogs:
The Wherigo Player automatically cancels any message box that is buried by another user interface element. This means that the message box will not remain on the screen even after all other UI elements have been closed. However, the message box script (if one exists) will still execute. The author can override this by creating a condition to specify what should happen if the 'Cancel' button is pressed. These conditions will work regardless of whether the player intentionally presses 'Cancel' or the message box is automatically canceled by the application.Funny, I thought, this is going to be rather tough. You have to keep a return value from the message box, but anything can close it anytime. Hello and welcome aboard, race conditions. And what's even better, Lua VM is thread-unsafe. And it would be dumb to lock the whole VM for as long as the dialog is on, because that can be quite a long time.
On the other hand, it's quite a dumb idea to automatically cancel the dialogs when another comes. What if the user doesn't have time to read it? But ... who am I to judge :P
So let's restate the problem.
- Midlet UI works in non-blocking, fire-and-forget mode. Which is basically a good thing for an UI to do, but...
- ...we need to keep return values. Therefore we must block on the dialog.
- Anything can close the dialog anytime. I.e., another thread must tell the first one to continue.
- Lua VM is thread-unsafe, therefore the two must somehow arrange locking. Plus locking of the dialog threads, because a third dialog can come at any time and kill the two.
Strangely enough, it worked, and it worked really well.
Too well, actually.
I apparently missed some of the Advanced Concepts.
in Wherigo, a message box does not pause the cartridge. Instead, the game continues to run while the message box is still displayed on the screen.Just like midlets do. Fire-and-forget, anyone?
It actually does work like that. Dialog is put on screen and the script continues happily on its way. Return values? No sire. There are callbacks instead. Who could have thought?
(anyone who would try it in the builder ... oh well)
In fact, the very Wherigo Level Two cartridge I use for testing is relying on this "feature". Instead of if/elseif conditional blocks, it just displays messages over one another, stopping at the right time.
I was very surprised that OpenWIG showed more messages than the emulator. I even thought that it's a bug in the emulator, or some kind of unspecified if/elseif handling - which would be very, very bad.
Nope, none of that. Once again, I made the problem more difficult for me. If I didn't want to do it "properly", it would have been easier, and correct at the same time. Folks at GroundSpeak apparently don't do things the "proper" way, but the "practical" (easy for the programmer) way. I'll have to get used to it.
But auto canceling the dialogs? Come on. That is dumb. Really.
Wherigo midlet ... or is it?
Once upon a time, there was Wherigo. It was closed-source, closed-format, and worked only on PocketPCs (and some kind of obscure navigation device). It did not work on cellphones and the developers apparently weren't interested in making it work.
Turns out, however, that the Wherigo Builder produces plain Lua source files. It can't be too hard to make that work on a mobile phone, now can it?
Well, let's hope not. Enter matejcik, who just recently bought a bluetooth GPS module to use with his phone. And whose idea of fun is, among other things, staying up late (or early, you might say) coding weird stuff.
Working name of the project is OpenWIG. As of now, it can run nearly all of Zooventure Level Two from the tutorial.
No GPS connectivity yet, but you can input coordinates by hand. I might keep this feature, as it would enable folks without GPS-enabled mobiles to play. Then again, I might not - you know how things go, cheaters are everywhere and this would only make it easier for them.
You can't load your own cartridges yet, and you will probably never be able to load gwc files, as the format is closed and I have no experience in reverse engineering. But once the loading functionality is there, I will probably set up a web service that would take your sources and compile them to OpenWIG-friendly format.
Heart of the midlet is called Kahlua and it is a Lua virtual machine for J2ME. It eats Lua 5.1 bytecode compiled files and works pretty damn well, considering its size. It is also fast enough on all phones I tested.
(Then again, it's not like the Lua scripts in the cartridges do a whole lot of work. Setting variables, conditional branch here and there, that's about it.)
And as an added value, the guy who wrote it was very helpful and the (two) bugs I reported were fixed immediately.
No download link today, but you can find some testing versions in this thread (in Czech).
Update: check out OpenWIG's Google Code page.
Turns out, however, that the Wherigo Builder produces plain Lua source files. It can't be too hard to make that work on a mobile phone, now can it?
Well, let's hope not. Enter matejcik, who just recently bought a bluetooth GPS module to use with his phone. And whose idea of fun is, among other things, staying up late (or early, you might say) coding weird stuff.
Working name of the project is OpenWIG. As of now, it can run nearly all of Zooventure Level Two from the tutorial.
No GPS connectivity yet, but you can input coordinates by hand. I might keep this feature, as it would enable folks without GPS-enabled mobiles to play. Then again, I might not - you know how things go, cheaters are everywhere and this would only make it easier for them.
You can't load your own cartridges yet, and you will probably never be able to load gwc files, as the format is closed and I have no experience in reverse engineering. But once the loading functionality is there, I will probably set up a web service that would take your sources and compile them to OpenWIG-friendly format.
Heart of the midlet is called Kahlua and it is a Lua virtual machine for J2ME. It eats Lua 5.1 bytecode compiled files and works pretty damn well, considering its size. It is also fast enough on all phones I tested.
(Then again, it's not like the Lua scripts in the cartridges do a whole lot of work. Setting variables, conditional branch here and there, that's about it.)
And as an added value, the guy who wrote it was very helpful and the (two) bugs I reported were fixed immediately.
No download link today, but you can find some testing versions in this thread (in Czech).
Update: check out OpenWIG's Google Code page.
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