[HN Gopher] Show HN: Learn where countries are on the world map ...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Learn where countries are on the world map with Spaced
Repetition
Hi HN, I made a web game to practice country locations a while ago
and HN liked it, so I thought I'd post my updated version as well.
As for how the game works and feels, I'd really recommend you
checking it out for yourself, it's free, no signup, no ads. The
tech stack is Vue + ts + Tailwind/Daisy for the looks. The learning
algorithm is a slight modification of the ts version of FSRS. If
you have anything to add, it's open source as well
(https://github.com/koljapluemer/learn-worldmap), although not well
documented yet. In the end it's just a little sideproject, but I
hope you enjoy it -- any feedback welcome :)
Author : blackbrokkoli
Score : 111 points
Date : 2025-03-17 21:35 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (map.koljapluemer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (map.koljapluemer.com)
| grimgrin wrote:
| nice job! particularly glad when you close/open tab it continues
| where you left off
|
| I am your classic american who would embarrass themselves if
| publicly tested on this. Never done spaced repetition outside of
| index card analogs, and I like the idea
|
| I'll have to click more to experience the `spaced repetition`
| bit, just getting an early comment in to cheers you
| vladde wrote:
| I am really enjoying this! I'll continue to use this for a while,
| and I really hope I'll learn more countries in the long term
|
| Also, I absolutely love that it's so easy to start playing (no
| signup, no popups, etc)
|
| Question: For the countries I know and select first time, I get
| them multiple times between countries. It's a bit odd to have to
| select England a couple of times, but the countries I don't know,
| I seem to get less often, or no repeats at all. Is this intended?
|
| (edit) Question 2: Is there any scenario where you'd actually
| guess wrong more than once? After the first miss click, the
| country is highlighted. I don't see I'd ever get "You found
| country in 3 clicks".
| i_am_a_squirrel wrote:
| As someone who uses Anki, and has also made a country learning
| game, this is soooooo smart! Great job! Thank you!
| Graziano_M wrote:
| I find it surprisingly effective how you have to get it closer
| when it zooms in and you have to do it with less context. There
| were a bunch of countries that I could point general on a map,
| but that I might mix up with a neighbour, e.g. Guyana and French
| Guyana. With this method, I got it on the first try, and each
| time it zoomed in I was able to remember more specifically.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Wow. This is really cool. After reading the headline, I was
| expecting to see it and think 'meh, why not just use Anki and the
| Ultimate Geography deck'.
|
| I was wrong!
|
| But the fact I get credit for knowing roughly where a country is,
| and then it zooms in, is a great idea. And well implemented.
|
| I am going to try this for a bit and, if it works well, I'll ask
| my son (8yo) to consider adding it to his daily habits.
| tiktaktow wrote:
| This is fun!
|
| I can identify all mainland countries but have really hard time
| with the island nations in Oceania and the Caribbean. Would love
| to have an option to select which specific area I want to
| practice with.
|
| Also for countries that I can identify with first click, I have
| to keep clicking until the cycle is complete. It make sense to
| zoom and ask to identify the countries again, but maybe stop
| after getting it right continuously ~3 times?
| scottmcf wrote:
| This is an absolutely excellent way to learn, I am surprised at
| just how effective it was. I'd love a "manual" mode that let me
| discard countries/mark them to stay in rotation.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| Yeah, one of the first countries I was asked to identify was
| "USA" and......that's just a waste of time
| floodfx wrote:
| Love this! Played Worldle (https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/) for a
| while and this would have been helpful.
|
| Great application of spaced repetition beyond cards.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| Try out travle.earth
| codethief wrote:
| Came here to mention Travle. Such a fun game! I've learnt a
| ton of geography through it in recent months!
| kelseydh wrote:
| This is a great idea, though I feel like if you guessed the
| country accurately the first time I would like it move on to
| another country. That or a button that lets me skip to new
| countries. I know where Australia and it's a bit tedious to be
| forced into spaced repetition for it three times.
| imglorp wrote:
| +1
|
| Also: After you guess one, a button to jump to Wikipedia to
| learn more.
|
| Today I learned Lesotho is the largest sovereign enclave; there
| are two smaller on the Italian peninsula.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| -1
|
| I'm surprisingly bad at the first 5 countries suggested but I
| managed to guess the general region well enough to hit it
| correctly on the global map.
|
| At the same time, I feel like a lot more people know where
| Australia is compared to (say) Laos.
|
| I love the zooming in; Did I just know that country was in
| Europe or did I really know which map-feature was the country?
| dwringer wrote:
| I had the same experience. I played for a few minutes, and the
| only repetitions I got were countries I already identified on
| the first guess. I didn't get repeats of _any_ country that I
| missed initially.
| ananmays wrote:
| very cool - it would be fun to load more detailed outlines at
| higher resolutions using map tiles or someing. at high zooms some
| of the shapes are quite blocky
| ks2048 wrote:
| What list did you use for the list of "countries"? (I only ask
| because the first one I got was Northern Cyprus which is only
| recognized by Turkey and not a UN state).
|
| edit: I see the code is fetching from the following, which has
| 177 features:
|
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/holtzy/D3-graph-gallery/ma...
| radicalcentrist wrote:
| Interesting, thank you for the link. This answers a few
| questions I had about preferred country names while trying out
| the game, such as Czech Republic/Czechia, Swaziland/Eswatini,
| Turkey/Turkiye. I also found the partially recognized states
| curious, especially Palestine being reduced to "West Bank".
| netsharc wrote:
| Ah, geo-politics meets technology. Imagine flying into a
| country, and the border guards tell you "Did you make this
| website? Well, the depiction of our country is a few pixels
| off, that offends us. Hands behind your back.".
|
| Or that that body of water is "Gulf of America" now...
|
| C.f.: https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/7/13/23791805/barbie-
| map-ni...
| poizan42 wrote:
| It also has Greenland which is just an autonomous region of
| Denmark, but not the Faroe Islands which is our other
| autonomous region. I guess Greenland is just more visible due
| to its size (both regions actually have about the same
| population)
| nebalee wrote:
| Neat, but England is wrong. The area highlighted when clicking is
| the United Kingdom.
| sciencesama wrote:
| Dockerize it to easy selfhost !
| jmole wrote:
| This is so cool. I modified the script so that the countries are
| a bit darker (#777), and I found that it helped the borders pop a
| lot more. It would probably be equally interesting to play this
| game with no borders at all.
|
| Not to scope creep, but it would be great if users could pick
| from 1 or 2 themes. Or maybe just refactor it so that changing a
| global var from the javascript would let you change the colors.
|
| edit: also the collective north and south poles take up about 60%
| of the zoomed out map. I bet you could crop most of antarctica
| and a significant portion of the upper northern hemisphere
| without degrading the experience.
| cschneid wrote:
| A few thoughts after ~5 minutes:
|
| * I like how the map moves around. It helps nail down
| relationships to neighbors * I don't mind a few extra "Where's
| canada", even though it's not that useful * I'd like the pause
| between answers be shorter. * Small countries are impossible to
| see when zoomed out on the first exposure, even when selected
| right. I find myself knowing the area it's in (ie, central
| america) but not which exact country. So selecting it right when
| zoomed out doesn't get me the correct answer.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| There seems to be a bug with Fiji. It moves the map around, but
| never zooms in on it.
| ks2048 wrote:
| That's what they get for putting their country on the
| international date line.
| sdotdev wrote:
| I like how the position of the map changes to center another
| place or zooms in to really make you think.
|
| only slight thing is that i wish the map had more contrast, apart
| from that this is great
| radicalcentrist wrote:
| This is awesome, I got way more sucked into this than I expected.
| If you're open to adding more features, a "custom playlist" would
| be really cool. I'd love to drill myself on the Balkans or West
| Africa, for instance.
| avvt4avaw wrote:
| Some Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish people may take issue
| with your definition of "England"
| butshouldyou wrote:
| So does this english person! That's the UK.
| codethief wrote:
| Nice job!
|
| A few observations & thoughts:
|
| - With remote islands somewhere in the oceans, the last zoom
| level isn't very effective since the map will essentially only
| show the island you're supposed to identify.
|
| - The map's resolution could be higher.
|
| - The challenge (top right) doesn't work for me in Firefox for
| Android. It always tells me I have guessed wrong (as if I had
| accidentally tapped somewhere on the map) when in reality I
| haven't even made a guess in the first place and was waiting for
| the game to tell me which country to identify.
| deadbabe wrote:
| This may seem odd but I don't like knowing where countries are,
| it makes the world seem like a much larger more mysterious place.
| It's cool to stumble across some country you never knew existed
| in some part of the world you barely thought about. Knowing where
| a country is in the world has little use these days, since
| transcending physical borders is pretty trivial. It's mostly a
| useless fact or piece of trivia now.
| butshouldyou wrote:
| Nice little game! One correction: Swaziland has been called
| Eswatini since 2018. Lots of websites still use the old name,
| unfortunately.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| Eish, even as a South African (who later emigrated) I didn't
| know that, and now need to learn this new name. So much for
| "Swazi Gold"...
| aquafox wrote:
| I boosted my geography knowledge by playing Sporcle, e.g.
| https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/world
| rafram wrote:
| I'd prefer if it did what Anki does -- give me 10-20 new
| countries before cycling back to ones I've already done. Just
| switching back and forth between two countries I already know
| over and over again is pretty boring.
|
| Also, why is Antarctica on there?
| kazinator wrote:
| Although that's a decent UI and gamification with the circles and
| all, if I seriously wanted to memorize this information, I would
| just want the data as an Anki deck.
|
| Front of card: country name, plus possibly: recognizably large
| segment of world map containing that country, without
| highlighting.
|
| Back of card: same graphic, with that country colored.
|
| Determining whether you got it right is self-evaluation in Anki;
| if you thought of the correct map shown in by the back of the
| card, you hit the good button, otherwise bad.
|
| This clever paradigm in Anki means that deck authors don't have
| to develop UI for the user to specify correct answers.
|
| Say you want to go from dog breed names like "Yorkshire terrier"
| to photographs (rather than photo to name). How would you develop
| a UI by which the machine could test you and confirm that you
| know? Probably multiple choice is all we have. Multiple choice
| with too few choices gives the answer away to some extent. Too
| many choices will overwhelm your mobile device screen. You could
| ask the use to draw the animal. That would be time consuming and
| require talent not directly related to memorizing dogs.
|
| With self evaluation, you don't need it. You just imagine a
| Yorkshire terrier as best as you can. Then if you think the back
| of the card is close to what you were thinking off, you hit Good.
| If you imagined a Westie, or German Shepherd, so that you are
| surprised and dismayed by the unexpected Yorkie image, then you
| hit Bad.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I've done that. You need variations though, or you learn that
| specific map framing. I like that this has rotations and zooms.
| Should generalize better.
| straffs wrote:
| This is something i'll make my kids play when they are older!
| LouisSayers wrote:
| Nice work! It's quite cool.
|
| Feedback: - It'd be great to be able to move the
| map around, zoom in / out - staying in one place feels a bit
| restricting. - For some smaller countries you can't
| actually see where they were once the ring is put over them
| - Once a country has been identified it'd be handy to see their
| neighbouring countries to add some more context to where a
| country is. - It'd also be nice to learn a bit more about a
| country (e.g. unique things about it) that may help further
| cement the idea of a country so that it's more than just a name
| on a map.
| neither_color wrote:
| This is fun. I'd appreciate a way to select only certain
| continents/regions. At the very least let us mark a country as
| known. As it is there are too many reps when it's a country you
| already know.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| Pretty cool, I like how it moves around, and the mechanic for
| guessing your way to something you don't know.
|
| I did a lot of sporcle grinding back in the day to learn all the
| countries of the world. Memories unlocked!
| wildzzz wrote:
| This is really fun but the challenge mode seems to be messed up
| for me on Android Chrome. When I click the country, it gives me
| the point but seems to take that same input for the next country
| as well which is usually a failure. It's like it's using my
| finger lifting up as the next input.
| mreichhoff wrote:
| cool! what modifications did you make to the default FSRS
| algorithm?
| whiterook6 wrote:
| I'd like to play this on my phone but everytime I try to zoom or
| pan it thinks I'm making a guess in the middle of the ocean. Also
| it often gives me a success when the country is definitely not
| within the chosen circle. Sometimes it starts a new view with the
| circle already in the right place.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| I love this! A couple little points:
|
| - After someone selects the right country, you should add country
| labels to the map for a second or two before transitioning so
| that context can reinforce the learning ("oh it's right next to
| Chile!") - Maybe show sattelite view for the same reason? So
| people can learn to ID countries by mountain ranges, lakes, etc?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-19 23:00 UTC)