[HN Gopher] Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your lo...
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Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area
Author : adamlynch
Score : 369 points
Date : 2022-03-19 12:50 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (backofyourhand.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (backofyourhand.com)
| Aachen wrote:
| Title: s/area/street names/
|
| Was already wondering how this game was going to work, like
| geoguessr maybe?
|
| Still fun though! Just not what I expected from the name.
| patrickwalton wrote:
| I can't seem to get it to my area. It's in Ireland and I can't
| find an option to make it go anywhere else.
| [deleted]
| adamlynch wrote:
| Hey Patrick, there are buttons to zoom in & out in the top
| right of the map. You can then click/tap on any town / anywhere
| on the map to set the location.
|
| And it'll remember that location next time.
|
| (You can also click and drag the map to move around)
| sokoloff wrote:
| On iOS, the two finger manipulations (drag and pinch zoom)
| worked very well, then a single tap to place the game area. I
| was pleased at how fluid the map manipulation was; nice work!
| adamlynch wrote:
| Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Thanks, I was worried
| something was broken
| code_runner wrote:
| Love this! Works great on mobile. Awesome idea.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks. I'm glad to hear that because I put effort into mobile.
| I thought it would be my older family members that would like
| it the most and use it on phones or tablets (I was right)
| bussiere wrote:
| nice concept :)
| adamlynch wrote:
| Hi HN, I made Back Of Your Hand, a map-based game where you're
| given random street names and you have to locate them on the map.
| You can play solo or compete with friends on other devices.
|
| I made it for my dad as a Christmas present. It also gave me an
| opportunity to learn about geocoding, etc.
|
| Tech: serverless, Leaflet, Turf, Svelte, TypeScript, Cloudflare
| pages. I tried to use as many open / free tools as I could. I
| originally used map tiles from OpenStreetMap but they were
| discontinued so it uses Mapbox and Maptiler now.
|
| Questions / feedback welcome. I also wrote a blog post with more
| information: https://adamlynch.com/back-of-your-hand. The code:
| https://github.com/adam-lynch/back-of-your-hand
|
| Warning: it's pretty difficult, unless your streets are numbered
| :)
| rubyfan wrote:
| how does this get my location? I use a Cloudflare WARP+ which
| seems to mask my IP for most sites but this one looks like it's
| using a nearby cell tower?
| adamlynch wrote:
| I don't know exactly but I use the geolocation information
| Cloudflare gives me in my edge function/worker. It's not 100%
| accurate or reliable. Your result can vary minutes apart or
| depending on which network you're on.
| kuu wrote:
| First of all: it's really cool and fun! Congratulations!
|
| As a small feedback: adjustable radius would be more fun. For
| example in the town were I had my childhood, this area is too
| big and takes other neighbourhood/cities that I don't know, but
| for where I live now it fits great.
|
| Again, nice job and congratulations for making it!
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thank you :)
|
| This has come up so much. I'll be adding it, thanks!
| jwagenet wrote:
| Dropping a pin close enough on mobile to get 100 points was
| really difficult. I probably was only able to average like 12m
| accuracy even though the pin appeared to be in the correct
| place every time.
|
| I also did my area twice and around 6/10 were either numbered
| or major roads that are very easy to ID. It might make sense to
| deemphasize larger or longer roads and numbered roads for a
| better balance of true local knowledge.
| adamlynch wrote:
| I will fix the pin accuracy issue for sure!
| lostlogin wrote:
| Zooming right in helps, but with 100% knowledge of the
| answers I still got points deducted.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I'm only getting a blank background on Firefox, both Android
| and desktop.
|
| Edge too, is the service just down?
| adamlynch wrote:
| OK it should be _more_ back now. I migrated from Cloudflare
| functions to a Cloudflare worker. Make sure to clear your
| cache / hard reload though
| adamlynch wrote:
| Yes but it should be back now?
|
| My hosting provider (Cloudflare Pages) seem to have a limit
| on "functions" I cannot increase. I've worked around it for
| now but it might open at Cork for everyone. If so, you can
| zoom out and tap the map to select somewhere else.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I put my town's coordinates in manually and it's still
| blank, and I don't see anything zooming all the way out.
|
| What do you mean by functions? I would just request
| location with javascript and use Google geolocation as a
| fallback.
| adamlynch wrote:
| OK I'm done with fighting fires for now and can answer
| that last question. Cloudflare offer "functions" and
| "workers", they're like functions that run on the edge
| CDN nodes.
|
| These functions receive geolocation information via a
| function argument. So I've a function that intercepts
| requests to the app, grabs the geolocation information,
| and rewrites the URL (inserting the coordinates e.g.
| /lat,lng).
|
| I go into more detail about this in the blog post but
| originally it just opened in Cork for everyone. I
| disliked the idea of having an annoying browser prompt
| for location permissions. I made it for my dad so having
| no geolocation was fine to begin with and I eventually
| added the geolocation I described above. Less friction,
| no extra client-side requests.
| noisefridge wrote:
| Nice and fun. Have you considered points of interest, photos
| from open sources like Panoramio or Creative Commons search,
| links to Wikipedia articles?
|
| Sometimes I get stumped and I also want a picture to explain it
| adamlynch wrote:
| Very interesting. No I haven't, thanks
| TimPC wrote:
| The circle is a bit large as in larger than a single
| neighborhood for my city. I feel like the game is useful when
| it asks you how well you know a single neighborhood. It's less
| interesting when it asks you how well you know 2.5
| neighborhoods.
| bwanab wrote:
| Agreed. I live in a densely packed urban neighborhood.
| There's no way I know streets that aren't main streets more
| than 1/2 mile away.
|
| Cool concept though. This would be a nice game at many
| geographic magnitudes.
| rockostrich wrote:
| It's also kinda silly to do streets for something like
| Manhattan since it's a grid. But landmarks/businesses would
| work really well in any city.
| petschge wrote:
| In my case it covers three different villages...
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I'm considering adding difficulty
| modes or a way to change the radius. I'd rather that people
| wouldn't get a perfect score too easily though
| TimPC wrote:
| I think it's more important for the game to be meaningful
| than difficult. How well do you know a neighborhood is
| deeply meaningful. How well do you know 2.5 neighborhoods
| isn't. I'd strongly recommend sacrificing difficulty for
| meaning here.
| mathgeek wrote:
| This is relative to the density of where you are playing.
| The default radius out in rural areas doesn't have enough
| roads, for example. A customizable radius or geofence
| sounds appealing.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| A geofence matching the city limits would be great
| adamlynch wrote:
| Right now there's no backend but potentially I could have
| a leaderboard per geofenced city / town
| adamlynch wrote:
| I agree (and what you want out of the game). I wonder is
| there a "number of streets" which is a better sweet spot
| / a better default, rather than a radius
| nannal wrote:
| I want to chime in as well to say I felt the circle was too
| large, I know districts in cities vary in size a lot but,
| but the game covered ~6 with mine in the middle. Checking
| the village I grew up in also covered the edges of three
| towns around it and a neighboring village.
| SECProto wrote:
| I enjoyed it! worked reasonably well for the city I tried.
| I did have a few nitpicks, but they are mostly datasource
| related as opposed to anything you can control - the
| several rounds i played included a pedway system, several
| walking trails, and a private driveway. Only change I might
| suggest making is the radius of the pin - getting a 99/100
| for being 6m off because the pin didnt go exactly where I
| thought it was. Or is there any way for the pin to snap to
| an object?
| adamlynch wrote:
| Can you give me the coordinates you played in? I will
| review the "objects".
|
| I can do something with the pin too. Probably not
| possible to snap though, no.
|
| Thanks!
| SECProto wrote:
| > Can you give me the coordinates you played in? I will
| review the "objects".
|
| Here's the osm for the pedway object, labelled a
| footpath. https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/11909462
|
| Here's one of the trails:
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/511807176
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks! (https://github.com/adam-lynch/back-of-your-
| hand/issues/18)
| kiney wrote:
| I think it would be useful to use actual boundries of
| villages or neighbourhoods instead of circles. Not sure how
| difficult that is. (the required data is in OSM, at least
| in germany)
| bussiere wrote:
| Good concept but the circle on european city may have too many
| streets to know them.
|
| having the option to choose the size of the circle could be nice
| :)
| adamlynch wrote:
| This has come up so much. I'll be adding it, thanks!
| hirundo wrote:
| What you get if you live in the boonies:
|
| "There aren't enough streets in this area. Please select
| somewhere else"
| adamlynch wrote:
| Yeah. Someone did ask today to be able to increase the circle's
| radius for cases like this
| function_seven wrote:
| This is a fun game!
|
| I tried 2 areas: where I live today and where I delivered pizzas
| 20 years ago.
|
| 3/5 for my local area, 5/5 for my old stomping grounds. I'm no
| London taxi driver, but I do have a bit of Knowledge about my old
| neighborhood. We didn't have GPS back then and we liked it!
|
| The size of the circle was perfect. Just large enough to
| challenge, but not so large that random tiny streets miles away
| trip the player up.
| imadethis wrote:
| This would be actually helpful practice for first responders.
| FDs/EMS in my area are expected to memorize all of the streets in
| their region, and I imagine it's the same for PDs too. Another
| layer on top of it would be to quiz you on how to get from a
| fixed point (the station) to a random intersection. For the US,
| you could also provide a random block on a street rather than an
| intersection.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Huh, sounds similar to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734219. Thanks! I'd love
| to help first responders
| ossusermivami wrote:
| I admin I know nothing of my neighboroud, pretty fun tho and made
| me figuring it out
| taken_every_ wrote:
| Might be better to base this off of buisnesses and landmarks in
| your area. I know mine quite well but fucked if I know where some
| tiny side street with a common name is. Maybe that works better
| with American style suburbs and grid cities, but in Europe it's
| pretty difficult if you are not specifically a delivery person or
| taxi driver.
| quantumf wrote:
| Wow, what a great idea. This is incredibly fun.
| pivo wrote:
| I failed completely because in my selection (US:
| Boston/Cambridge) there are multiple streets with the same name
| like Broadway and First Street, and I always picked the wrong
| one.
| adamlynch wrote:
| If they have exactly the same name then you should've gotten
| points. If so, please give me an example and I'll fix it. If it
| was "Roxbury St" versus "Roxbury Ave", then you're just unlucky
| sorry
| myself248 wrote:
| Yeah, this is killing me. NORTH WOODWARD AVE turns into
| WOODWARD AVE turns into NORTH WOODWARD AVE turns into SOUTH
| WOODWARD AVE turns into WOODWARD AVE turns into NORTH
| WOODWARD AVE completely at random, and none of them count as
| each other. And sometimes multiple parts of the same road
| show up in the same quiz.
|
| I know this is fundamentally an OSM data problem, but it's
| also your UX problem now. (N 42.5, W 83.17 if you want to
| have a look.)
|
| Also it was quizzing me on park trails. And I just got an
| underwater tunnel at the zoo. I guess those are technically
| named ways in some manner of speaking, but they're definitely
| not streets with signs.
|
| All that aside, this is really fun! Personal best 470/500. I
| wish I could make it longer; n=5 is a small sample and my
| scores vary tremendously from one run to the next.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > quizzing me on park trails
|
| I got one of those too, but I liked it. Nice to explore the
| major bike/pedestrian paths.
|
| I guess it could be an option.
| myself248 wrote:
| Yeah, I figured out it was a park trail, clicked in the
| middle of the only park in the area with substantial
| trails, and actually scored very well on it. But the zoo
| exhibit...
| adamlynch wrote:
| I will be reviewing that definitely. Thank you
| dwiel wrote:
| All the different variations of names of the same road
| definitely made the game too frustrating to play much in my
| area. Simply counting all names that are only different by
| cardinal direction as the same name would solve it. I
| imagine in some places though this would be the wrong
| behavior.
| mahathu wrote:
| adam, I loved this and also shared it in my family WhatsApp
| group. we all had a lot of fun playing it, thanks for the great
| idea and execution! one minor suggestion: consider adding a cross
| or some other indicator at the circle of the screen during the
| map selection stage. I found that sometimes you want to move the
| circle a few metres in some direction, but it's difficult to
| guess/tap where the new center should be without knowing exactly
| where the current one is.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Great to hear! Thanks for the feedback. An alternative might be
| to make the circle draggable
| worstestes wrote:
| Hey Adam! This is awesome! Have you ever considered using
| something like MapLibre as an open source alternative to MapBox?
| adamlynch wrote:
| I wasn't aware of it, thanks. I didn't use Mapbox originally
| but I had to switch after the OSM no-streets tiles were
| discontinued. I'll look into it!
|
| https://github.com/adam-lynch/back-of-your-hand/issues/15
| kfajdsl wrote:
| I basically failed because almost all of the selections were
| random tiny roads in subdivisions (thanks Atlanta sprawl). Got
| all the roads with thru traffic though!
| myself248 wrote:
| Oooo.
|
| Longer roads should score more points because they're more
| important / you're a bigger idiot for missing them? ;)
| Kye wrote:
| Same area. There's a hundred or more tiny subdivision roads
| for every major road. It would be better to omit roads under
| a certain length entirely since it's not reasonable for
| someone to know all the roads in a subdivision they never
| have a reason to visit.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Definitely considering this btw but it might need to be a
| setting
| rsstack wrote:
| I didn't realize it was just going to be street names, and picked
| my area in Manhattan. The streets and avenues are numbered :)
| mypalmike wrote:
| Same in my part of Seattle.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| This is great
| mgfist wrote:
| Living in Manhattan is a cheat code for this
| djhn wrote:
| This is great. Works very well for Helsinki.
| adamlynch wrote:
| I've actually heard that before! Kiitos :)
| alistairSH wrote:
| No map loading for me - too much traffic? Safari on iOS.
| fuzzybassoon wrote:
| Same here. It was working when I first visited 10 minutes ago,
| but I got an error at some point and now it won't load
| (multiple browsers, multiple computers).
| Twisell wrote:
| Probably a HN hug of death situation.
|
| The app seem to rely on a third party basemap provider, they
| usually have have a quota beyond which the service will stop
| serving maps for the app.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Yes but it should be back now?
|
| My hosting provider (Cloudflare Pages) seem to have a limit on
| "functions" I cannot increase. I've worked around it for now
| but it might open at Cork for everyone. If so, you can zoom out
| and tap the map to select somewhere else.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Still no map for me.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks. I've confirmed it's back but then somehow
| Cloudflare started served an old deploy again for some time
| and now it's back working again. I didn't change anything.
| Ugh.
|
| https://5fee8b00.backofyourhand.pages.dev/ may be more
| reliable but who knows.
|
| As for the original issue, Cloudflare has a 100k function
| invocation limit and I can't even pay to increase it.
| adamlynch wrote:
| OK it should be _more_ back now. I migrated from Cloudflare
| functions to a Cloudflare worker. Make sure to clear your
| cache / hard reload though
| chadlavi wrote:
| 475/500 in Brooklyn, which I will consider a total success. Neat
| game!
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Would be cool if bars, restaurants and tourist attractions were
| added! But a fun little geoguessr like romp either way.
| myself248 wrote:
| Yessss, this is what I imagined from the headline. But I
| suspect the data quality is trash...
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Will look into it
| lwkl wrote:
| This is crazy hard it covers my whole city and parts of the
| metropolitan area. I guess you will have to play this a lot to
| get any good at it if you are living in a medium sized city in
| central Europe. :)
|
| Edit: I think you should be able to make the radius a little bit
| smaller or add an option to choose from different radii.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Great feedback, thanks. I also considered factoring in street
| length for difficulty modes.
|
| My dad has gotten a perfect score a couple of times. Cork isn't
| huge but that's still very difficult. He's a human map
| robbedpeter wrote:
| There's a tiny distance between this game and actual mnemonic
| techniques used by world champion memory athletes. Method of
| loci capitalizes on the fact that the brain stores memories
| using a map like structure, as a result of grid cells.
|
| If you can, get a cabby in London with "The Knowledge" to do
| a session. Such cabbies are among elite humans, of a handful
| of disciplines known to alter the structure of their brains
| in a predictable way. Like Shaolin monks, Australian
| aboriginal shamans, and others, they've got an amazing
| superpower.
|
| Neat game, and fascinating peripheral subjects, thanks!
| adamlynch wrote:
| Fascinating, thanks! I knew of memory palaces but I hadn't
| considered taxi drivers! Can't wait to tell my dad someone
| on the internet said he's a genius :P
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Also, your dad is 99% of the way to having an enormous
| "memory palace" if he's got all of Cork memorized. All he
| needs to do is imagine a walk between any two points in Cork,
| then imagine the things he wants to remember at different
| places along that journey, such as at every intersection. To
| recall, simply imagine repeating the journey, and the
| remembered items will be at the intersections. Digits of pi
| or the order of a deck of cards are a good way to test it,
| and the cards bit is great for pub tricks and free beers.
| porjo wrote:
| Another change i think would be helpful for beginners is
| ability to set the road category e.g. only guess tertiary and
| greater roads
| adamlynch wrote:
| Good idea
| astura wrote:
| Depends on what you're looking for but I think this would be more
| fun if it excluded very tiny streets, like minimum length. I got
| what is essentially a driveway for two houses that's not paved or
| labeled, nobody would know it's name (or that it was a named
| street even) unless you lived on it or next door to it. (I live
| next door to it). Might be less fun if someone got that on their
| first try.
|
| But, again, some people are looking for a challenge, so maybe
| make it an option.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| Now you know more about your local area!
| adamlynch wrote:
| It's interesting seeing so many different opinions on the
| difficulty (whether it's street length, circle radius, etc).
| I wonder would the same people's opinions on GeoGuessr
| correlate or not
| astura wrote:
| No I don't, I said I live next door to it, so I knew it.
| humanistbot wrote:
| I kept getting "Alley" for a city with lots of alleys (DC), which
| was very frustrating.
| adamlynch wrote:
| OK I've updated it to exclude "Alley". Thanks
| humanistbot wrote:
| Thanks!
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| How much does this cost to run with the whole Mapbox thing?
| piceas wrote:
| Neat. Unfortunately appears to be limited to streets in your
| local area. I hoped/expected a list of interesting destinations
| in the area such as art installations, parks, or even popular
| restaurants etc.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Will look into it
| traceroute66 wrote:
| Fun, but you know what would be really cool ?
|
| A Blue Book mode.
|
| For those unfamiliar Blue Book refers to test "runs" done by
| London taxi drivers when they do The Knowledge[1].
|
| It would be fun to be given, say _" Australian High Commission,
| WC2 to Paddington Station, W2"_ and have to place multiple pins
| on the map and then graded on your result.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my4lDxOCCyg
| adamlynch wrote:
| So is the goal is to mark the route you would take? Sounds
| interesting.
|
| Semi-related, it could show you two pins and ask you how long
| it would take to drive between them at a given time of day. It
| would compare your guess to Google Maps or similar.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > So is the goal is to mark the route you would take? Sounds
| interesting.
|
| Basically yes, the Blue Book works on turns so you would mark
| the turns.
|
| So for the example I gave above (Australian High Commission -
| Paddington) you might mark the turns:
| ALDWYCH CATHERINE ST RUSSELL STREET
| DRURY LANE HIGH HOLBORN PRINCES CIRCUS
| ST GILES HIGH STREET EARNSHAW STREET NEW
| OXFORD STREET OXFORD STREET GT PORTLAND
| STREET MARGARET STREET CAVENDISH SQUARE
| HENRIETTA PLACE MARYLEBONE LANE WIGMORE
| STREET DUKE STREET MANCHESTER SQUARE
| MANCHESTER STREET GEORGE STREET EDGWARE
| ROAD HARROW ROAD HARROW ROAD ROUNDABOUT
| BISHOP'S BRIDGE
|
| > between them at a given time of day
|
| Yes, I guess it could give you extra points for choosing less
| busy routes during rush hour.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks for explaining!
| jedberg wrote:
| I did where I live now, and only got 100/500 (perfect score on
| the major road, no idea where the rest were). I did my childhood
| home and got 99/500.
|
| My suggestion would be to stick to majors and semi-majors (longer
| through streets). It would be more fun that way.
|
| Also there may be a bug, for the one road I got in the second
| try, I put the marker dead center of the entire road, but it said
| I was 4 meters off and gave me a 99, even though the green line
| was under the pin.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely fix the pin accuracy
| and I'm thinking about what to do around street length &
| difficulty
| leetrout wrote:
| The streets in my town were not completely highlighted and
| counted off points. I assume that is an issue with how the shape
| is interpreted because the street name changes in a turn that
| isnt a clear intersection.
| adamlynch wrote:
| If you could give me an example, I'll look into it.
|
| I ran into issues like this with a strange streets (described
| here https://adamlynch.com/back-of-your-hand/#the-lioscarrig-
| driv...), so I consider any two streets with the same name in
| the OpenStreetMap data to be the same street. I.e. if you put a
| marker down near any of them, you get points.
|
| However, if the section of road has a different name, then it's
| different.
| leetrout wrote:
| I think the OSM data is bad. Lots of street highlights dont
| match the correct names.
|
| Thanks for the response.
|
| I can look at what you are using from overpass later and see
| what is up with their data.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Great yeah, I was going to suggest we could contribute
| fixes back to OSM if that was the issue :)
| ape4 wrote:
| I am missing something. It started me in Ireland - I am in North
| America
| adamlynch wrote:
| It must not have been able to detect where you are located. You
| can zoom out and click/tap the map to choose the location. And
| it'll remember that location next time.
|
| It defaults to Ireland in this case because I'm Irish.
| ape4 wrote:
| Thanks. Using Firefox on Windows laptop, FYI.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks. It's a third-party server-side API I use so it
| would be just based on your ID address I think. You can go
| here to see where it thinks you are: https://cloudflare-
| pages-geolocation.pages.dev. However, this can change if
| you reload it minutes apart or if you turn on/off WiFi,
| etc. It's not 100% reliable
| ape4 wrote:
| That give me a very accurate location! Not using any VPN,
| etc.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Try https://backofyourhand.com/ again please, it should
| work. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734844
| for why
| zamfi wrote:
| I was also started in Cork in-game, while this link
| showed me the right location.
|
| I think your integration may have a bug?
| adamlynch wrote:
| Maybe. It uses the geolocation information Cloudflare
| provides. In general, it isn't extremely accurate and it
| doesn't always return the same location, so this doesn't
| surprise me too much.
|
| If it consistently works in one and not the other (at the
| same point in time), then the only difference I can think
| of is that Back Of Your Hand uses their "edge handlers" /
| "functions" and I made that other URL with their
| "workers". Hmm.
|
| ---
|
| Maybe I could inform the user somehow when it cannot find
| a location at all. I really want to avoid a browser popup
| asking for the user's location though
| slobotron wrote:
| Submitted lino includes hardcoded location, maybe that's
| what's tripping people up?
| adamlynch wrote:
| That's it!
|
| I could've sworn I made sure not to include it when
| submitting. It does redirect to that if there's no
| location found so maybe HN updated the link to the
| redirect destination?
|
| I'm pushing a change now to ignore this specific lat-lng
| combination and fallback to geolocation
| adamlynch wrote:
| Try again please, it should work. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734844 for why
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Same here. Cloudflare link gives me a pin accurate to a
| couple of hundred metres, the link in the submission
| takes me to Ireland.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Try again please, it should work. See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30734844 for why
| noamchomsky1 wrote:
| map not loading for me.
|
| latest version of chrome. have tried incognito
| adamlynch wrote:
| Yes but it should be back now? My hosting provider (Cloudflare
| Pages) seem to have a limit on "functions" I cannot increase.
| I've worked around it for now but it might open at Cork for
| everyone. If so, you can zoom out and tap the map to select
| somewhere else.
| khendron wrote:
| Why does it insist I live in Cork, Ireland when I live in Canada?
| adamlynch wrote:
| There were issues with my hosting provider. Try again and it
| should be fine. Hard refresh to be safe
| marc_abonce wrote:
| Great game!
|
| One time I got a the same avenue twice in the same round, but I
| don't know if it was a bug in the game or if the data is
| duplicated in OpenStreetMap.
|
| Still great, though.
| iamtedd wrote:
| In each of the two games I played it asked for the same street
| twice, but it's not like there are less than five streets to
| choose from.
| [deleted]
| laurent123456 wrote:
| Not sure the selected area is suitable for a city like London -
| there are just too many small streets in every directions to be
| able to know them all, or even half of them.
|
| It's possibly more suitable in US cities for example that are
| divided into large blocks and large roads.
| sapphire_tomb wrote:
| Oh I don't know. I'm going to send this to a friend of mine
| who's an ex black cab driver. If he doesn't get full marks I'll
| be amazed.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Report back :)
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks. I'm considering adding an option to change the radius
| and or difficulty modes which filter out streets by length.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I noticed that some areas pop up more than others. Is there
| like a difficulty score that you are calculating in the back?
| Making it easier is definitely a challenge, I'd guess. The
| major landmarks simply matter more.
|
| But, I LOVED playing round after round in Amsterdam, learning
| more about a city I definitely don't know like the back of my
| hand!
|
| MCQs for marked areas would be nice-- guessing the name of a
| place given a location.
|
| Keep going!! This is really awesome.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Nah it's pretty dumb right now. All I do is filter out some
| names like "Alley" and join same-named streets.
|
| I don't want to make it too easy but I have gotten a lot of
| feedback today about difficulty (area boundary/radius,
| street length, etc) so I'll make some changes and hopefully
| I can keep going in the right direction.
|
| Another idea I had was to add hints like maybe you could
| have a special button you could press once per round that
| would shrink the circle for the given street and then go
| back to the normal size next round.
|
| Thanks for the feedback!
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| This is fantastic. My gf and I have been playing it in a cafe,
| and doing abysmally - but just sent it to our parents who will
| greatly enjoy quizzing themselves! Thanks, you've made our day a
| little bit funner and help keep our families a little bit closer.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Glad to hear it! My older family members love it the most.
| Maybe because they didn't grow up with Google Maps
| todd3834 wrote:
| This worked great in my area. It was hard enough to make it fun
| but not too hard. I got a score above 90% so I'm stoked
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Fun "game", but asking you to identify one of the main roads, vs
| some minor, three-house road makes it very luck-based.
|
| Also, I clicked directly on the (correct) road, and it took the
| points away, because the hitbox was off
|
| https://i.imgur.com/yKONWUk.png
|
| (Topniska ulica, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
| adamlynch wrote:
| OK I can try to come up with better randomization.
|
| About the road, this is due to a discrepancy in the
| OpenStreetMap data and the actual map tiles I'm using. Hmm. Not
| sure what I could here. Maybe I can be more lenient when you're
| two pieces of the same road
| ladberg wrote:
| Pretty cool! As a suggestion it might be a good idea to copy one
| of Wordle's simple-but-genius features and make it easy for users
| to share a text based summary of their results with others.
| adamlynch wrote:
| That was a great idea. I'll have to come up with a nice way of
| representing your results
| baliex wrote:
| You could have a look into how https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/
| does it. I'm sure there are better ways but might spark some
| inspiratino at least!
| adamlynch wrote:
| Thanks. Looks like this:
|
| #Worldle #57 X/6 (69%) \ https://worldle.teuteuf.fr
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| This is wonderful.
|
| I used to be a Lyft driver, and something that seemed would be
| interesting at the time is a system, not unlike this one, for
| learning a city. In London to drive a cab you must do this super
| difficult test, and this means cabbies are very knowledgeable
| about the city. This is something in that vein, love it.
| adamlynch wrote:
| Great, thanks!
| divbzero wrote:
| Reminds me of this study [1] from awhile back where brain scans
| revealed that "part of the hippocampus grew larger as the taxi
| drivers spent more time in the job".
|
| [1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/677048.stm
| jdavis703 wrote:
| This game was fun, but it's way too easy. I suspect 90% of
| players score over 90 points. Do you have any data on this?
| adamlynch wrote:
| Damn, I should've tracked that. Judging by the responses here
| today, it's both too easy and too difficult simultaneously :/
| planb wrote:
| Scary. From the hundreds of streets in my hometown it asked for 2
| of the 4 where I have already lived.
| adamlynch wrote:
| I made it for my dad for Christmas and the very first time he
| played it was the tiny street where he grew up. He didn't
| believe me that it was random
| _michaelll wrote:
| Very fun! I managed a score of 450 in the area I grew up in and
| learned to drive in. Definitely the best case scenario for me.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| This is great!
|
| > The map tiles are loaded in from two OpenStreetMap tile
| providers (one with street names, one without).
|
| You probably don't need to do that. You can use the same tiles,
| the same stylesheet even, and just hide the street names layer in
| code:
|
| https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/example/toggle-layers/
| adamlynch wrote:
| I'll look into this. Since I wrote that initially, the no-
| streets OSM map was discontinued so I switched to Mapbox &
| Maptiler. But I do use two full layers (one custom one without
| street names) rather than doing what you suggest. Hopefully
| it's not a paid feature.
| bredren wrote:
| Well done! Sent it to my pal who likes to go on long walks and
| another who enjoys bicycling the city streets.
| l2silver wrote:
| I love it! Is there anyway to reduce the search radius?
| adamlynch wrote:
| Great! Not yet, but I am looking into it. A lot of the feedback
| has been around the difficulty and the radius. So I might add
| difficulty modes and or a way to change the radius.
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(page generated 2022-03-19 23:00 UTC)