[Resolved] Checker technically possible?

Dear All,

We have the idea to the following challenge cache: Mit acht Cachen um den Äquator (English: “With eight caches around the equator”)
Name: Mit acht Cachen um den Äquator
GC code (in review process): GC72R77.

This means, that
The goal is meet if the sum of the distance from the challenge cache coordinates to eight caches founds is larger than 40.075 km.

There are three additional conditions:
1. The eight geocaches have to be in different countries. (The home country is not allowed. This should reduce the number of distanceacalculations significantly.)
2. Four founds have to be earthcaches.
3. The remaining four caches have to be different types. All types are allowed.

Do you believe that a checker for this challenge is technically possible?

Many thanks for each reply!

ate&batzi



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2017 07:07AM by ate&batzi. (view changes)

I'll mark this question as a new script required so a script writer will look at this request

"The home country is not allowed"
This can't be incorporated as written into a checker, as the checker system doesn't have access to the user's home coordinates. Additionally, if it was available it might lead to some incongruous results. For example, if I moved from Australia to Germany and updated my home coordinates, any of my Australian finds could count straight away.

An alternative would be to check if the user has more than half of their finds in one country and, if so, exclude that country.

Thanks for reply!

The condition "The home country is not allowed" is not of importance, especially for Europe. The dimensions of these countries are small compared with the equator's length. The intension was to reduce the number of calculations. Don't know whether this is a problem or not. Your alternative check is simple but effective.

Unfortunately, we are not familiar with any programming. Okay, sometime in the past we did FORTRAN programming. Seems not to be actual anymore. Therefore we are looking for help.

Just as an fyi, the models to approximate not home country can have some unexpected behaviours. These occur particularly when the cacher lives somewhere with few caches. A cacher from Taipei might easily have half their finds in the US or the less strict most as well. Caching near las vegas can have big weekends.

Another approach some have used is to exclude the country the challenge is in.

Thanks for this clue but it seems that the checker is technically not possible. We assume that the calculation and evaluation of the distances is the main problem. Hopefully someone can solve this problem within the next two weeks. Otherwise we will cancel this cache. Thanks to all.

The distance portion certainly is doable. The home portion it sounds as though you dropped.

If this needs a new script, wait times vary. Different taggers have different expertise. The same with script writers. And all are volunteers.

First at all: Many thanks for this advice. Of course, we know that the script writers are volunteers and we appreciate their work very much!
The intension of our last reply was not to push anybody. Thus we will wait and inform the reviewer that there is still hope. We (Germans) do not understand the meaning of the sentence "The home portion it sounds as though you dropped.". Do you mean that the cache listing is still rudimantery? This is through because we are not sure whether a checker can be realized or not.

As I understand it, the current requirements are:

The goal is meet if the sum of the distance from the challenge cache coordinates to eight caches founds is larger than 40.075 km.

There are three additional conditions:
1. The eight geocaches have to be in different countries.
2. Four founds have to be earthcaches.
3. The remaining four caches have to be different types. All types are allowed.

Exactly. The challenge cache coordinates are N 51° 00.699 E 013° 44.060 (updated).

Do you qualify for this cache?

The checker in the current state says you do not qualify. The caches below are the ones that the checker found. It has you just short at 39985.338766km.

It runs fine for a few other users. Please let me know if there is some discrepancy.

Array
(
[Multi-cache] => 1
[select] => Array
(
[1] => Array
(
[cache_name] => El "àrbol de Navidad" en el Cañón del Sumidero
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2017-03-08
[country] => Mexico
[cache_id] => 4204954
[refdist] => 9701.610323
[longitude] => -93.031100
[latitude] => 16.740167
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC4ZYCK
)

[2] => Array
(
[cache_name] => Turnoff to Alton
[type] => Letterbox Hybrid
[visitdate] => 2013-08-25
[country] => United States
[cache_id] => 3475128
[refdist] => 8897.904175
[longitude] => -112.538500
[latitude] => 37.428050
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC46DYV
)

[3] => Array
(
[cache_name] => Golden Rock
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2015-02-27
[country] => Myanmar
[cache_id] => 2190439
[refdist] => 8056.843545
[longitude] => 97.098817
[latitude] => 17.481483
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC2TA48
)

[4] => Array
(
[cache_name] => Petrified Waterfall - Travertine Curtain
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2016-01-31
[country] => Oman
[cache_id] => 1446200
[refdist] => 5205.868012
[longitude] => 54.433800
[latitude] => 17.075700
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC20ANH
)

[5] => Array
(
[cache_name] => First-cache-in-Shiraz
[type] => Traditional Cache
[visitdate] => 2014-04-03
[country] => Iran
[cache_id] => 862102
[refdist] => 3992.961906
[longitude] => 52.562167
[latitude] => 29.633867
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC1BPWN
)

[6] => Array
(
[cache_name] => {30/30 BONUS} Hiking Through Fornea
[type] => Unknown Cache
[visitdate] => 2016-09-01
[country] => Portugal
[cache_id] => 4372742
[refdist] => 2164.336757
[longitude] => -8.805000
[latitude] => 39.558333
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC55J04
)

[7] => Array
(
[cache_name] => Lean on Me
[type] => Virtual Cache
[visitdate] => 2014-08-27
[country] => Italy
[cache_id] => 35965
[refdist] => 848.416222
[longitude] => 10.396383
[latitude] => 43.723017
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC8C7D
)

[8] => Array
(
[cache_name] => 3. Heidenauer Frühjahrsevent 2013
[type] => Event Cache
[visitdate] => 2013-04-13
[country] => Germany
[cache_id] => 3300964
[refdist] => 9.889964
[longitude] => 13.859333
[latitude] => 50.970667
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC40JPM
)

)

Ignore the previous post. I found a bug.

Does this look right.?

41552.945432
Array
(
[cache_name] => El "àrbol de Navidad" en el Cañón del Sumidero
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2017-03-08
[country] => Mexico
[cache_id] => 4204954
[refdist] => 9701.610323
[longitude] => -93.031100
[latitude] => 16.740167
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC4ZYCK
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => THE GREAT-6
[type] => Multi-cache
[visitdate] => 2013-09-06
[country] => United States
[cache_id] => 2660766
[refdist] => 9473.788894
[longitude] => -118.300383
[latitude] => 34.118833
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC3A3H3
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => Golden Rock
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2015-02-27
[country] => Myanmar
[cache_id] => 2190439
[refdist] => 8056.843545
[longitude] => 97.098817
[latitude] => 17.481483
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC2TA48
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => Petrified Waterfall - Travertine Curtain
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2016-01-31
[country] => Oman
[cache_id] => 1446200
[refdist] => 5205.868012
[longitude] => 54.433800
[latitude] => 17.075700
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC20ANH
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => First-cache-in-Shiraz
[type] => Traditional Cache
[visitdate] => 2014-04-03
[country] => Iran
[cache_id] => 862102
[refdist] => 3992.961906
[longitude] => 52.562167
[latitude] => 29.633867
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC1BPWN
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => {30/30 BONUS} Hiking Through Fornea
[type] => Unknown Cache
[visitdate] => 2016-09-01
[country] => Portugal
[cache_id] => 4372742
[refdist] => 2164.336757
[longitude] => -8.805000
[latitude] => 39.558333
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC55J04
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => Gateway to the Sahara
[type] => Earthcache
[visitdate] => 2013-03-29
[country] => Tunisia
[cache_id] => 1073970
[refdist] => 1989.855044
[longitude] => 9.018167
[latitude] => 33.434333
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GC1JVB4
)
Array
(
[cache_name] => The Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)
[type] => Virtual Cache
[visitdate] => 2017-04-27
[country] => United Kingdom
[cache_id] => 58247
[refdist] => 967.680951
[longitude] => -0.126000
[latitude] => 51.498600
[premium] => 0
[gccode] => GCE387
)

Hi sloth96,

My yesterday evening's message seems to be lost. Thus again: many thanks for your huge effort to write a checker for our challenge cache. It's amazing that it works so well!
Your results are a littele different to the selection we made by hand:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/037662fb-4bff-4838-9559-1904064cd32a_l.jpg

Thus the last entry:
The Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)
[type] => Virtual Cache
[visitdate] => 2017-04-27

is from our current holiday trip. Therefore, please apologize the short reply.

No problem.
A couple of quick questions.
Someone could have 5 earth caches in their count, 4 from the 4 earthcaches and one from the 4 others of unique type. Is this acceptable.

Also there are some folks who get their caches via locationless caches. Is this acceptable or do you want to block locationless caches?

Five earthcaches are okay. We like earthcaches!
What do you mean with locationless? Virtual, event, webcam? With only multi, puzzle/mystery, tradi, letterbox and wherigo it seems to be too difficult. We allow all types and hope that the logs are fair. It's also possible to fake a cache with log because many owners do not check the logs.
Thanks again!

A "Locationless (Reverse) Cache" type is normally excluded from challenges which are based on locations therefor I strongly advice to exclude this type from your challenge.

http://geocaching.wikia.com/wiki/Locationless_Cache has a description. They are all archived but there is/was one in Australia that always pops up from time to time. But there are finders that have been around that long

If you recommend it, please exclude Locationless (Reverse) Cache" type. You are much more experienced.

My apologies for not completing this sooner.

Your checker is available at: http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC72R77/26213

Let me know what you think.

Great! Many, many thanks for the time and huge effort you made to create the checker!
It works very well but we have still two wishes:
1.) The distance is given now with many decimals. Please could you reduce the (displayed) decimals to meter (3 decimals).
2.) Could you add the sum of all eight distances as the main criterion of the challenge as last row to the script output.

Hello,

The script is updated. Let me know what you think.

I just tried it on myself and it says the best distance is 0km. I should qualify, given I have finds in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

sumbloke Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I just tried it on myself and it says the best
> distance is 0km. I should qualify, given I have
> finds in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

You only have found earth caches in 3 countries. Australia, new Zealand, and Germany. You need 4 for this challenge. 0 is the longest it could find with 4 earth cache countries.

Perhaps some more clarification is required on the output.

Hi sloth96,

for our purpose it looks great.

With respect to your comment to sumbloke's comment: Maybe a further comment: "You have not achieved (satisfied?) the cache type conditions." (or something like that) would be helpful. Maybe before the distance condition.
Than: "The total distance with only (e.g.) 7 caches is ..... " or maybe better no calculation of a distance.
I do not know what appears as script output if one not achieve the conditions.

ate&batzi

You should be able to run the tag as any other user. You might want to try running myself, sloth96, sumbloke, any reviewer you expect might review it, and the name they cache under. But myself and sumbloke should show you the failure messages.

I checked for several nicknames and it looks fine.
I found only the following "negative" message "You have not found caches in enough countries." It's fine.
Then me trials were stopped: Error As a non paying user you are only allowed 10 checker runs per day.

Which message appears when any of the cache-type conditions are not achieved? It's not easy to find such a canditate.

You have found the two.

"You have not found caches in enough countries."
and
"You found caches in enough countries but we could not find a long enough route. The best distance found is " ..tbest.." kilometers."

If you do not meet the other requirements such as the minimum number or unique number number of caches it shows up as the best distance is 0.

It now reads:
You found caches in enough countries but we could not find a set with the right mix of caches.

It now reads:
You found caches in enough countries but we could not find a set with the right mix of caches.

This is a much better "message" than "If you do not meet the other requirements such as the minimum number or unique number number of caches it shows up as the best distance is 0." This is a little complicated.

Criterions for exclusion:

First: not enough contries
Second: route not long enough
Third: not a set with the right mix of caches.

Great! Thanks again!