The power of riddles

This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 04/03/2009 18:20:21

The power of riddles
I'd like to show you some different aspects of riddles which may help you to design a mission which contains more than going from checkpoint a to checkpoint b to checkpoint c. Please feel free to comment, add your own ideas or show me and others possible flaws. I am using most of these features in my missions already published and in those which are currently created.

Don't use special characters in the riddle solution

GPS Mission has currently an issue with special characters like üöä ß and the like in the iPhone version. Don't use those in the ridlle solution unless the patch has been made available by Orbster. It's likely that I will delete this point, once the update is available.

Give clear instructions how the answer has to be entered at the end of your riddle description

"Please enter a 4-digit number"
"Please enter the number without the € ($ sign etc.)"
"Please enter only one word"
"What is the last Name of ..."
"What is the second first Name of ..."

Use multiple choice answers when you're in doubt that the player may have problems

A - 0,6 km
B - 0,7 km
C - 0,8 km
"Please enter only the letter of the correct answer."
Be aware that a player who is stuck may cheat by trying all choices. This may still be the better solution then having the player to abort the mission.

Use riddles for education

Use simple or complex math equations like
5 + 5 = ?
5 + 8 - 6 + 3 = ?
for training purposes.

Make vocabulary tests for foreign languages.

Especially your kids will love that. Youll' get them out of the house into fresh air combining learning for school with having fun and being outside. Escort them and you'll spend some qualitiy time together. This may be a real matchwinner for you.

You may as well give your player additional informations without asking for a riddle to be solved. These informations may contain whatever you want. In this cause use a hint like "Enter C to continue".

Use riddles for story telling

Just add text and maybe even pictures to make your story more dense. There is actually no riddle involved in this case so you give the player a hint like "Enter C to continue". Tell your story around the solution. Use the success message too for that story telling.

Use the very first riddle to remind iPhone users to disable WiFi during the game play

Use this text or something similar:
"Dear player, if you are using an iPhone, please disable WiFi while playing this mission. Coming to an hotspot during the mission play may cause innterruptions of the GPS feature of your device. As an additional effect you will enhance your battery life for game play. Enter C to continue." Enter C as solution into the mission designer and enter something like "Have fun" as success message.
You may as well put that reminder into your mission description. If you'd like to be player friendly enter as last riddle a reminder to the player that he may want to enable WiFi.

Enter multiple riddles at any checkpoint

This is a great feature of GPS mission. You may enter as much riddles as you want at every checkpoint.

Use riddles to avoid setting checkpoints

Please remember, that the next checkpoint will not be shown until the last riddle of the previous checkpoint has been solved. This is a very strong feature of GPS mission and has two effects:

You may circumvene the 12 checkpoints limit of GPS mission. But this may make your mission too long and therefore unplayable because the batteries of the GPS device got depleted before the player reaches the final checkpoint. Be careful when planning such a mission.

You avoid the appearance of the next checkpoint on the map and can lead the player around the playing area by using riddles. This is great for missions where you want the player to find places places without giving the sometimes all to obvious GPS clue. Whenever you are ready, feel free to stop adding riddles and let your player see the next checkpoint.

Use riddles for explaining detours

Explain the detour in the riddle where your player may collect additional gold. Tell him into which direction the detour leads and into which direction he has to advance to the next checkpoint without detour. You may want to use a photo, which shows the player the direction of the detour.

Use pictures in your riddles

This really is the holy grail of GPS mission. Make extensive use of pictures. Use pictures to send the player to the object shown on the picture. Ask a question about the object in the picture which could not be answered from the picture itself. Combine this with the story stelling tip and you're mission will become really special and fun. This may be time consuming because, you'll have to go to the mission location, shoot your pics go back home and process your pics and integrate them into your mission workflow. You may use your iPhone or GPS handy to droy waymarks. You may as well use a non GPS enabled digital camera, but in this case you'd better write down where you took your pics. Process your pics with iPhoto Picasa or some similar software. Make them look brighter, older, darker whatever you want and whatever suits to the story of your mission.

place your riddles in the vicinity of the checkpoint and not excactly at the location of the checkpoint

This will greatly enhance the playing experience because the player can no longer rely on his GPS device to find the spot shown but has to look out by himself. Decide for yourself how difficult you'll want to make it. Be aware that you, as the mission designer know what is located where, but your player doesn't necessarily know as well. Don't make it too hard. If your riddles may be hard, tell so in your mission description in advance. Not every mission has to be suitable for beginners, and not every mission has to be solved in the first run. But make it clear that your mission is a real challenge and may even be a mission impossible.

Always think of the non local players

Don't expect any local knowledge from your player. He is not you, he does not have your background or knowledge, and he is NOT the mission designer. Step aside regularly and think of those players and how they would see your riddles. If local knowledge is necessary, tell it to everyone in the mission description to avoid disappointments.

use riddles for traffic warnings

Make extensive use of that one whenever your player has to cross a street or walk along a road, even if it is on the pedestrian pavement. Always use the same warning sign or picture. Tell him to be cautious and not to forget about his surroundings. You'll have to enter something like "Enter C to continue" at the end of your warning message. Write something like "Take care" into the success message.

Be sure that your riddles don't get lost

Avoid anything seasonal. "Don't Cross the frozen lake" may be a sign which will most likely be gone for spring, summer and autumn. Avoid anything which could become a victim of vandalism if that is likely to happen at your mission spot. If in doubt, fall back to a multiple choice riddle, even if the player can use that for cheating. Check your missions and the contained riddles from time to time. Walk them yourself. Ask any player who aborted one of your missions or has not finished it for a long time (something like playing for 3234 minutes) if you could be of assistance or if something is wrong with your riddles.

Mark information given at a checkpoint or in a riddle as important if you want to use it in a riddle to come

If you refer in your riddle to past information given earlier in your mission, be aware that it is impossible for the player to scroll back to that information. Whenever information given at any time during gameplay is important for further gameplay inform your player at the exact moment you give him that information. This is very important. Use such kind of riddle design very cautiously. If in doubt don't use this kind of riddle at all.

Use a riddle at the last checkpoint asking for feedback

Thank your player for playing your mission and ask him for feedback. Ask him for sending you comments, what could have been better and what kind of mission he wants to see from you in the future.

Use a riddle to prevent the mission from automatically ending at the last checkpoint

Tell your player that he may want to collect any not yet collected gold or go back to some photo tasks to shoot the pictures. Tell him that when he enters "E for end mission" the game will be terminated and those gold stacks will be gone.

P.S. Orbster, please feel free to use any of these hints for your FAQ or GPS mission manual.

P.P.S. Orbster, I am not able to change the order of riddles or to insert new riddles in between existing ones. Am I missing something? If not I'd like to request this feature for the mission designer.

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enhanced to reflect the comments of aphex3h - corrected some typos

You name some very nice features and I will surely try out some of them in my next missions. I want to give a warning though, that especially giving hints at locations that are not marked with a checkpoint flag ist very tricky to players not knowing the surrounding.

Let me give you an example. I'm currently in Bremen, about 600 kilometers away from my hometown. There are several missions here to select from. I tried 2 of them. In one of them a riddle gave a clue for a certain store to find which required me to ask local people for directions. This may be uncomfortable for shy players or impossible to solve if nobody is around. (Which would virtually not happen in larger cities)

The second mission I had to abort because the riddle was to find out the manufacturing date of a ship on the local river nearby. The poster with the solution for this riddle was removed from the display because the ship was deconstructed month ago. So make sure that your solutions have a certain amount of reliability. Make sure that it can be solved by people who only visit the are which you are familiar with.

One advice of my own: Write down a detailed mission description giving not only a clue at the story but a short introduction in what to expect from the mission, which includes what kind of riddles to expect.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 03/03/2009 15:20:15

Hi there,

Very nice explanation! It hits the bull's eye I think.

Pasi and myself have also started a conversation with similar topic - maybe we could come together to work out a great "Quick Start Guide in creating missions" or something.

Please see our posts here: http://gpsmission.com/forum/posts/list/209.page

Greetings,
Brot

These are all great tips that I will work to include in my next mission - thanks a lot!

I tried 2 more missions and had to cancel both. I think that the first one uses german special characters in the keyword (ä, ö, ü, ß) which currently prevents iPhone 3G players from solving riddles. Or it is just very bad hinting at the solution.

The second one I had to cancel, because the question was unsolvable. Except for the initial mission text the player is completly without knowledge of people appearing in the story. But the first riddle reads something like this:

Sergej: "What is the healt condition of aunt Trude?"

The Player does not know who Sergej is, don't know who the aunt is, of whom the woman is the aunt of, and worst of all, how in hell her condition is. This is bad riddling!

Important: If you refer to past text or checkpoints in your mission during a riddle, please write a small summary in the same dialog the question is asked because it is impossible to scroll to past checkpoints. Whenever you want to give a hint to the solution, do so in the very same text box you ask the riddle!

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 03/03/2009 20:46:52

Piemaker, that is a really excellent article!

A few months ago I wrote a short blog entry that was only hinting at some of these points:
http://orbster.com/blogs/JoernsBlog/2008/09/30/1222796640000.html

Your article offers a lot more detail!

I personally use the "add more than one text riddle" idea quite often! It also was an important part of the Megamission.

But I find the following point especially important:

Give clear instructions how the answer has to be entered at the end of your riddle description

"Please enter a 4-digit number"
"Please enter the number without the € ($ sign etc.)"
"Please enter only one word"
"What is the last Name of ..."
"What is the second first Name of ..."

The challenge should be finding the correct answer and not guessing the correct format!
Posts like this are very much appreciated! -- I know we could use a better FAQ...

Helping to improve overall mission quality is one of our top work items. We will show (at least to the mission creators) who aborted the mission at what checkpoint/challenge. So it becomes clear if there is a fundamental problem. And we will over time introduce more features that help you avoid situations in which the answer is "king alfred the fifty-fourth" (and you keep typing "alfred" or something).

@piemaker: You're right. It's not possible to reorder text riddles in the mission designer currently.
@aphex3k: The iPhone special-character problem is fixed in the upcoming iPhone patch.

Thanks!

Joern

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