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Hello, 

jpavlik creates a nice checker for GC5BA51 Here in my hometown there is a similar challenge which request to do the same, but everthing within 24 hours. Normally or better randomly nobody will fulfill this challenge ad hoc. Would it be possible to create a planing tool to find potentially caches within a region/(county). Better would be to define a centerpoint and then the tool has to find the nearest caches, which aren't found by the user.

* To fullfil the challenge you have to find caches which contains all 31 possible characters exactly once.

* all of these caches have to find within 24h (same day)

Thanks a lot

in Miscellaneous by smellfooth (4.8k points)
It cant be written with the checker system because they can only use founds.
So it has to be a native pgc function. My guess is that it would have a low priority because it not that useful for that many people compared with other potental improvement
To get a tool like that my guess is that it it better to ask someone to write it for GSAK or a standalone program/website that can take a CVS/gpx file exported from pgc a input.

The program is almost the same as the checker but it has to find all combinations and not just one.  
A hard part is probably to display the result in good way. There might be alot of possible alternatives.
The runtime might also be problem especially when the number of caches increases

1 Answer

+1 vote
 
Best answer

I've made the checker for GC5C2AE

http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC5C2AE/18262

however, as Target wrote, it's not possible to write some kind of planer using the checker system of project-gc.

by jpavlik (Expert) (18.5k points)
selected by smellfooth
Thanks a lot for your answers. I know you are the experts on PGC, but when I use the checker for GC3RHE6 (http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC3RHE6/305) I got a map with potential caches. Would it be possible to create such a similar map?
The checker that you have pointed is interesting, however this is not classic challenge checker. That checker has been wrote using another interface, probably by someone that has direct access to the project-gc site. I can write only the normal checkers like the http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC5C2AE/18262.
Another problem is, that checker for this particular challenge is very time consuming as they must try millions of combinations, so it's possible, that after you have select some area with a couple of thousands of caches, you should wait a couple of minutes for the result.
Maybe that some program for GSAK could do this task on user's computer. Personally I have not ever seen the GSAK, I don't know if they can do it, however I imagine that they downloads a list of caches from some area and can execute the query on local PC. In this case the task can be executed for hours without going in timeout (challenge checkers are limited to 30 seconds).
Try ask to someone that knows about GSAK for this planer.
On the contrary that is a classic challenge checker on pgc. The first one was written in native PHP and have access to all data. Only the site developer could create them
The new checker system is using a lua sandbox and are more limiting because other people can write them. Then they have to be more limiting for security and other reasons.
There are others and som have planing tools. if you search for 360° Challenge and you will find the most common special checker.
They are easy to identify if you find them in search etc  because "View source" "Download source" and "Tag Script" button as not active when you find them.
They are not tested in the background and can be found on the challenge maps by excluding challenges that you have passed or failed. The will be som new lua checker that ether results in error for you or have not been autochecked but most will be old checker.
It is mostly 360° Challenge except a few others

http://project-gc.com/Tools/Challenges?map=create&cachename=&excludeFulfilled=on&excludeNotFulfilled=on&show=has

There is a problem writing in i gsak when i now think about it and that is that the macro language is quit limiting and not that fast. There are no object and max 50 arrays and that will be a problem i suspect. To do thing fast in GSAK you have to do them in the SQLite database part and i dont think this is subtile for an   sql implantation.

I thin the esiest implementation  is to write a external program that takes a gpx och csv with caches as input
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