[HN Gopher] Show HN: Name That Nation
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Show HN: Name That Nation
I made this map game. react, material ui, hosted on vercel cdn, no
back end.
Author : andrewtbham
Score : 168 points
Date : 2024-02-05 23:04 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.namethatnation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.namethatnation.com)
| ukuina wrote:
| Well done!
|
| What are these types of web apps that have no backend called?
|
| You still need the CDN, so they're not classically serverless
| (https://www.sqlite.org/serverless.html)
| jarofgreen wrote:
| Static?
| franky47 wrote:
| Jamstack https://jamstack.org/
| austinjp wrote:
| Website, not web app. Static website if it has no backend.
| Strictly speaking, 'static' used to mean no JavaScript either,
| so perhaps 'jamstack' is the appropriate neologism.
| wscourge wrote:
| Cool one, especially for kids. It'd go well with naming the
| capital city, too.
| Zecc wrote:
| You might like Worldle and Flagle too.
| https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://www.flagle.io/
| mkl wrote:
| Clickable: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/,
| https://www.flagle.io/
|
| These both seem to be one per day, so you can't sit there and
| do a whole bunch in a row.
| midasuni wrote:
| What do the colors mean Why was North Korea in dark green and
| South Korea in light green, and which should I name?
| allywilson wrote:
| I assumed it was areas contested by that country, could be
| wrong.
| midasuni wrote:
| I think Germany was orange.
|
| Certainly not clear if I should put North Korea or South
| Korea.
| the_origami_fox wrote:
| The pictures come straight from Wikipedia. From the picture for
| North Korea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea):
| Territory controlled by North Korea shown in dark green;
| territory claimed but not controlled shown in light green.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| China isn't in light green for Taiwan. Is that situation
| different in some way?
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| yeah, very different power imbalance and influence :)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| How so? Where's North Korea's influence? If anything,
| Taiwan has _more_ ability to enforce its territorial
| claims.
| rob74 wrote:
| But Taiwan is in light green for China...
| agapon wrote:
| Does Taiwan claim sovereignty over mainland China?
| mkl wrote:
| It did historically, and has not formally renounced its
| claim (which included Mongolia).
| jowea wrote:
| Technically speaking yes. It's complicated.
| youngNed wrote:
| Its good, but I was expecting a rotate/zoom
|
| I _really_ like travle.earth: https://travle.earth/challenge/
| monsoon49 wrote:
| I've made an account right now just to say thank you for
| introducing me to this game!
| DylanSp wrote:
| I've been playing Travle for a while, didn't know it had a
| dedicated URL for the challenges, that's nice. I wish the
| challenges had an infinite play mode like
| https://travle.earth/practice/, but oh well. Thanks for linking
| that!
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| Thank you for highlighting my ignorance of geography :)
|
| Keep up the great work.
| adithyassekhar wrote:
| You can make this more educative by showing 4 or 5 options to
| choose from for a particular country.
| rob74 wrote:
| That would be the easy mode... you could also vary difficulty
| by picking nearby countries to make it a bit more difficult.
| Aachen wrote:
| Five at random would be fairly trivial, do you mean giving the
| five adjacent or nearest countries? Then one would learn to
| tell them apart, or even if not, at least you'd learn to
| associate the area whenever hearing about that country on the
| news or so. That would be a nice improvement probably!
| benjijay wrote:
| Fun! A little too easy to check the filenames of the images if
| stuck for an answer but I imagine most people aren't dirty cheats
| like me :P
| pvinis wrote:
| Nice! One thing to note is that typing on the search is case
| sensitive. Please make it insensitive, so I don't have to type M
| instead of m.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Oh irony is that first country I had when visiting the site was
| Palestine.
| AJ1998 wrote:
| Can you explain how that makes it ironic?
| toyg wrote:
| Because it's not recognized as a State by Israel and a few
| other countries.
| tempestn wrote:
| And because that fact is quite salient in current
| geopolitical affairs.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| It's a big game of cat, mouse, pride, and political points.
|
| -> Around 30 member states of the UN also fail to recognize
| the statehood of Israel...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| There are couple of entities in the game whose statehood is
| debated / contested.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Taiwan and Kosovo would be some other examples.
| input_sh wrote:
| I mean, there is no "objective" list of countries everyone
| agrees on, nor how many are there in total. You're gonna
| upset some people regardless of which definition you
| choose.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Absolutely
| trurl42 wrote:
| Keyboard accessibility could use some love.
| progval wrote:
| I'm having issues with keyboard navigation on Firefox:
|
| * Typing a few letters then pressing tab closes the dropdown
| instead of selecting options in the dropdown
|
| * when the text box is selecting, pressing enter does nothing; I
| need to press tab then enter to submit the answer
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| + 1
|
| The need to click "submit" was my biggest bad UX moment
| frereubu wrote:
| Yep, I'd play this a lot more if I was able to use only the
| keyboard.
| skor wrote:
| Nice, enjoyed seeing how I don't know the political map as good
| as I thought.
|
| If I click "Check" without typing anything and then click
| "Correct" my score goes up.
| isametry wrote:
| > If I click "Check" without typing anything and then click
| "Correct" my score goes up.
|
| I believe that's a feature. If you can't find the actual answer
| (or don't want to) you can just say or think the answer for
| yourself, then check and honestly choose if you got it right.
| That way you still get to keep track of your score, without
| having to input the name every time.
| andrewtbham wrote:
| That is correct. It is a feature. It is a challenge how to
| make it more clear to the user.
| bluetomcat wrote:
| The hard ones for me were countries in mainland Africa, island
| nations in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and small adjacent
| countries that you associate in a group - say Lithuania, Latvia
| and Estonia, or Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
| Kyrgyzstan.
| LfLxfxxLxfxx wrote:
| Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are easy - they go in
| alphabetical order from north to south.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Also, Estonia is closest to Finland, which makes sense
| since the languages are close.
| 130e13a wrote:
| and it makes sense that lithuania is the bottom one (ie,
| closest to poland), since there used to be a polish
| lithuanian commonwealth
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Also Lat-via as in lateral makes me think of it in the
| middle.
| baryphonic wrote:
| For the 'stans, I remember TUTK (west to east), and that
| Turkmenistan is closest to Turkey.
| mason55 wrote:
| The other way to remember is, if you can remember that
| Kazakhstan is the biggest, then it goes alphabetically
| clockwise.
|
| Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
| Uzbekistan
| dvh wrote:
| Give partial score for close guess, I called Benin a Sierra
| Leone, or art least show my guess and target country
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| "Mexico" -> "USA, close enough"
|
| Also possible with Russia + either one of those:
|
| * Ukraine
|
| * Norway
|
| * Poland
|
| * Estonia
|
| * Lithuania
|
| * North Korea
|
| * China
|
| * Latvia
|
| * Finland
|
| * Georgia
|
| * Mongolia
|
| * Kazakhstan
|
| * Belarus
|
| * Azerbaijan
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, I was pretty good in Asia, except for the various ex-USSR
| "-stans" (I just know Kazakhstan is the biggest one).
| mason55 wrote:
| If you know Kazakhstan is the biggest then you can get the
| rest. They're alphabetical going clockwise from Kazakhstan ->
| Kyrgyzstan -> Tajikistan -> Turkmenistan -> Uzbekistan
| tempestn wrote:
| You could do easier difficulty by making the questions multiple
| choice. (I mean, technically it's already multiple choice, but
| say 5ish choices.) Potentially could have multiple levels of
| difficulty by varying the number of choices, or by selecting
| options by proximity.
| imadj wrote:
| Nice project
|
| Gameplay wise, I find the feedback loop to be lacking tho. Right
| now, there's no much feedback other than "You got it wrong,
| actually, it's X. Anyway, moving on...". This makes it less of an
| educational game and more like a test.
|
| For me, I'm always close, so revealing neighbor countries on the
| map along with the answer (especially for small countries) can
| add a "spaced repetition" element to the game, it help your brain
| connect the dots and feel more productive and fun
| amenghra wrote:
| This. There used to be a fun geography game on the Commodore 64
| where you had to fly a helicopter over countries/capitals. It
| was fun because when you had no idea where a country was, you
| just kept flying in circles. They got the gameplay right to
| some degree.
|
| Screenshots: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/maps-usa-n4v
| billfruit wrote:
| Or atleast uncover the names of countries already answered,
| feels like slowly colouring in the map of the world.
| miggol wrote:
| Absolutely!! Some more suggestions of mine:
|
| * Show the incorrect guess you just made on the map, even if
| not close
|
| * Repeat countries that you got wrong within the next 10 turns,
| to learn by repetition
| andrewtbham wrote:
| It does keep a list of countries you got wrong and you can go
| through them again.
| asimpletune wrote:
| I love it, my only feedback was the I didn't really understand
| which I was supposed to pick when it showed me N. Korea. Because
| all I saw the Korean Peninsula, and the north was dark green and
| the south was light green.
| Tainnor wrote:
| It seems to be showing the recognised territories in dark green
| and contested areas in light green (e.g. for Russia, Crimea is
| also in light green, although interestingly not Eastern
| Ukraine, and IIRC the West of Guyana was shown in light green
| for Venezula).
|
| These things are always slightly arbitrary, e.g. why include
| Taiwan but not, say, Somaliland (both are unrecognised by most
| other states but de facto independent).
| andrewtbham wrote:
| That is correct about the green colors work. Most of the maps
| are from wikipedia and that's how they do show contested
| areas in light green. I think I will change them though to
| another source because it is confusing.
| myfonj wrote:
| Yes, pictures are loaded directly either from Wikimedia:
|
| File: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/V
| enezuel...
|
| Page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venezuela_Orthog
| raphic_...
|
| ...or from ... CIA.gov "World Factbook" site
| (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/), e.g.:
| https://www.cia.gov/the-world-
| factbook/static/f7ce629bc057da...
| ta1243 wrote:
| At the very least include a legend so we know they mean
| acheong08 wrote:
| That confused me as well
| MrResearcher wrote:
| Yep, when North Korea is selected, both North Korea and South
| Korea are highlighted and it's not clear which country is
| requested. Same goes for South Korea.
| praveen9920 wrote:
| Good work.
|
| I couldn't name 98% of the countries. Realised my geography sucks
| namphibian wrote:
| Very cool. Are you collecting data on guesses? Would be
| interesting to see a ranking of countries by how many people can
| ID them
| Tainnor wrote:
| I got 128, which I guess isn't too bad. I'm just totally hopeless
| when it comes to most of Africa, and there's just way too many
| small island states.
| frereubu wrote:
| You can practice here! https://www.youdontknowafrica.com/
| Tainnor wrote:
| I think the better way for me would be to form some (really,
| any) kind of association to more African countries, most of
| which are a total blur to me. Most other countries I could
| say something about.
|
| It doesn't help that most of Africa is basically only in the
| media if there's a disease or war or something.
| frereubu wrote:
| That does help for sure - I have friends who are from or
| have been to Kenya, Zambia, Mali, Gambia, South Africa,
| Egypt, Morocco, Somalia and a few others, so perhaps I've
| got a bit of a head start. If you're starting from scratch,
| one enjoyable way is to read their Wikipedia articles when
| they come up in the news, that way you don't just get the
| sensationalised news stories and can form more rounded
| associations with the country.
| thih9 wrote:
| My score was 7/20.
|
| I enjoyed it; I like that you can use this without entering the
| country name, i.e. do just "Check" -> "Correct"/"Wrong". This is
| such a fast and rewarding loop, reminds me of flash cards or
| spaced repetition apps.
| mkl wrote:
| 155/195. Struggled with Pacific and Caribbean island nations, and
| some of Africa.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| nice ! I have a big problem with pacific island, central america
| and subsaharan africa
| tiktaktow wrote:
| Hey you are missing Mauritius!
|
| Nice game. Would be great if the gameplay moved on to the next
| country after a correct or wrong answer, without the need to hit
| the "Continue" button.
|
| Got 182/195! Hate the Oceania and Caribbean for always making me
| lose points in quizzes :D
| andrewtbham wrote:
| I am adding Mauritius
| sabzetro wrote:
| This is legitimately great! Would love it if there was some sort
| of session persistence (even if it's just an array in
| localStorage of countries I've already covered.) that way I could
| play through all the countries without having to keep the window
| open. Simple and effective game! Nice job :)
| personjerry wrote:
| Why's it so slow? When I press Continue it takes like 1 second to
| load the next country?
|
| It's like 195 jpegs, just pre-load them please. I can't continue
| like this after 3 countries, it's too tedious.
| john-radio wrote:
| Excellent! Small bug: null responses are considered "correct" in
| the right/wrong counter. I've skipped 3 and gotten 3 wrong, and
| it's showing 3/6 correct.
| geoelkh wrote:
| Nice game :)
| baryphonic wrote:
| Great work! Only feedback would be to make the drop-down search
| aware of the abbreviations for various countries. For example,
| St. Lucia rather than _Saint_ Lucia, DPRK for North Korea, or
| even CAR rather than Central African Republic.
| forinti wrote:
| I liked it. Maybe you could add some facts about each country as
| a tip or after the answer was checked.
|
| And the tiny countries such as the Vatican or the Pacific Island
| states could be zoomed in.
| fifticon wrote:
| This is already written elsewhere, but this game screams to work
| efficiently with the keyboard, so one can just type country names
| and hit 'return'. I can already mostly navigate it with TAB +
| shift-TAB, but as the game loop is simply 'type name, get
| feedback', it seems weird the keyboard flow has not been polished
| in its otherwise quite polished design. I am at two minds about
| the drop-down matches covering the beautiful prompt map. I
| realise I should be able to carry on typing even though I then
| can no longer look at the country shape, but for the design
| purity of it, I would prefer the drop-down to not cover the
| prompt. Maybe by allocating less space to the candidates, at max
| showing 2-3 options, or showing them _beneath_ the map. Still,
| very beautiful compared to a version I made 20 years ago for my
| private use (CIA world database map says hello!).
| ghaff wrote:
| This is more interesting than the one that came out around the
| time of the initial Wordle craze. That was only an unscaled
| shape which was really hard even if you were pretty good at
| geography. (Most countries don't have a very distinctive
| shape.)
| mason55 wrote:
| Neighborle is an ok daily geography game. If you're really
| good at geography then it's probably too easy but every
| couple days one of the puzzles actually makes me think
| (usually stuff on the Atlantic coast of Africa).
| ghaff wrote:
| This was the one I was thinking of.
| https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/
|
| Yeah, it's mostly African countries or random islands that
| gave me the most trouble.
| bradwood wrote:
| Right. Plus all the central Asian "*stans"
| andrewtbham wrote:
| I have tried to get this to work. The problem has to do with
| the material UI Select component used. I think the problem is
| that the return key is already used to select an item from the
| select.
| pmontra wrote:
| The positions of the Pacific islands and the smallest nations of
| the Caribbean are difficult to remember. For Central America it's
| hard to remember the north to south sequence and the same for the
| equatorial region of the coast of western Africa. Everything else
| is pretty easy.
|
| Considering how many countries are there in those regions I
| expect that I should achieve at least 50% but not close to 75%.
| That's surprisingly bad for an European that thinks to know
| geography.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Fun game! That material UI looks dated and clunky though.
| hasty_pudding wrote:
| you lost me at the drop down on mobile.
|
| I'd suggest on mobile just having a selection of four to eight
| options that you can touch with your finger.
| croisillon wrote:
| why is south korea another shade of green when the question is
| north korea?
| SalimoS wrote:
| Btw on safari on iOS long press the image will show the name of
| the country from the Wikipedia link
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'm guessing this was inspired by the following thread (by Derek
| Sivers)?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169197
| ruggeri wrote:
| I liked it a lot, especially the UI.
|
| I disagree with any suggestion that makes the game easier. There
| are a lot of websites with name-that-country games. For people
| who are _pretty good_ at locating and naming countries, they want
| to improve their ability, and they need a tougher game to do
| that.
|
| It would be fun if there were some country factoids or images,
| probably. But for people who are trying to get _really good_ at
| locating countries, they probably already do know facts about
| various countries, so there isn 't a lot of value there.
|
| Spaced repetition of mistakes would be valuable. Very few
| alternatives offer this.
|
| Maybe you could also offer to filter on a population cutoff? I
| frequently cut off countries with less than 200k population,
| because I am not that interested in the various island countries.
|
| Here is my very half-assed version I built once upon a time:
| https://github.com/ruggeri/world-map-game. Yours is a lot better.
| ruggeri wrote:
| Oh, another suggestion: show the country and let them name the
| capital!
| vehemenz wrote:
| How about a hard mode that doesn't tell you what the answer is
| until you're done?
|
| Process of elimination makes the last 50 pretty easy if you look
| through the dropdown.
| Halan wrote:
| Good example but what adult doesn't know all the countries of the
| world?
| eitally wrote:
| troll much?
| tacone wrote:
| Very nice and well executed. Would love to be able to zoom in a
| bit.
| crvdgc wrote:
| For those who want to learn map, capital, and flag:
| https://github.com/anki-geo/ultimate-geography
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| An interesting demonstration of the difference between number
| averages and mass/size averages. Did great on the big countries.
| No idea where San Marino was, so lots of relatively smaller
| countries pulled my average down. By mass/size, probably 90+ %.
| By number, only 70%.
| retwertett wrote:
| On Firefox if I type the answer and tab to the continue button,
| It's counted as correct, even if it's false.
| S_Bear wrote:
| A hint with the capital would be nice, especially for the tiny
| island nations. Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it!
|
| (129/195)
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| For learning geography, I like:
|
| https://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/how-many-countries-can-you-n...
|
| I ran across it years ago and decided to use it to practice
| naming countries. For a harder challenge, try this one, which
| doesn't give you a map:
|
| https://andys.org.uk/countryquiz/
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(page generated 2024-02-06 23:01 UTC)