Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

geo-racers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#81

Post by parkersweb »

Nextgrid wrote: post #53
butlike wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really like the game so far. Here's what I noticed and what I'd like to see after my first play though: 1. There should be an 'easy mode' where your money goes into the red, but you're still allowed to spend whatever to get to the end. It would be nice to see I'm $-14,952 in the hole, but I made it (with the ultimate objective to get to the destination while in the black). 2. The bottom overlays overlap. I was taking…

I think the "limited budget" mechanic should be scrapped - instead make the budget unlimited but rank the submissions based on the lowest budget.

One of the best constraints of the TV show is the limited budget (along with the lack of mobile phone). It's frequently the case that teams panic spend in order stay ahead, but are hurt by those decisions later in the race.

Over the series people have also developed strategies within those constraints - so it's quite frequent to see teams earning money in the penultimate leg and taking the time hit in order to splash out in the final leg.

It's a great show if you're able to get hold of it.

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#82

Post by parkersweb »

Love this! One piece of UI feedback - on mobile particularly I often found it very difficult to access the departure timetable once I'd arrived at a station. I walked to Bercy Seine in Paris (so I could try and find a bus out) - but even when I had arrived I couldn't trigger the departure timetable....

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#84

Post by scrumper »

Fun, if buggy. There's a real-world version of it as a British reality TV show, it's entertaining.

I crapped out in my first play: I boarded a bus in London taking me to Dover, it went to Folkestone then travelled at warp speed to Doncaster which is more or less the opposite end of the country.

The lack of information about routes from your destination adds a nice bit of randomness and luck. Quite liked that part.

EDIT: I'll definitely play again, sorry if my tone sounded negative because it really wasn't supposed to.

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#85

Post by reedlaw »

seanhly wrote: post #73

Great work! This is seriously addictive. I did some QA for you (after playing the game for more hours than I'd like to admit): - Bristol Airport (bus station) is somehow located in Milan. This makes it possible to get a £6 ticket to the stop after Bristol Airport on the Bristol-Plymouth route. Then when you see the bus glitching its way towards Milan you can cut the journey short before passing Bristol Airport, and h…

Great feedback. On the Inverness to Gibraltar race the leaderboard has impossible times, including some negative numbers. According to Google Maps the best time is 1 day 8 hours, but this requires leaving Inverness at 6:44. The race starts at 9:00. Then the earliest arrival time in Paris is 22:19. According to Google Maps the best time from Paris to Gibraltar at this time of night is 1 day 2 hours. Despite all this, there are several 1 day records. The best I can do is 2 days 5 hours. Of course I may be missing some better route, but I suspect cheating, especially from names like AdolfHitler.

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#86

Post by madcaptenor »

netsharc wrote: post #66
cornichon622 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, yes the Gare du Nord (ie North Train Station) mainly has trains going to the north. For the south, you'd have to go to the Gare de Lyon, Lyon being a city in southern France :)

In Moscow there's the Kazansky, Yaroslavsky and Leningradsky stations. They're next to each other but serve lines going to different cities.

From Leningradsky station you can go to St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad); unsurprisingly, that train arrives at Moskovsky station.

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#87

Post by tekkk »

pattle wrote: post #43
tekkk wrote: post #40

Just remove the work part man. It's incredibly frustrating when you run out of money. Add some credit card loan or something and your final score is the amount of money you have left. Also, add teleport button—I clicked the big red button thinking it would transport me instantly. Only to be dropped off to in the middle of nowhere. And when you select a departure from train station, it should auto-select the end-stop,…

The reason you have to work is because the game is based on a BBC show called "Race across the world" where you have to race from point A to point B with the money equivalent of an air fare for the journey. If you run out of money in the show or your funds are running low you can work to earn more money. So that's why I added that feature. I do think it adds a extra layer to the game as it's something you always have…

It's good to follow an example but what works in a TV show can make for a bad game mechanic. Games like geo-guesser are nice because they focus on the fun part, figuring out locations. And leave the rest out. Learning real routes and prices is cool, playing fictional waiter is IMO not.

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#88

Post by martimchaves »

Very fun game, thanks. When you try to change the speed of the game on mobile using firefox, it glitches and keeps opening the speed modal. Pretty much crashes the browser. Also +1 to the taxi fare not being paid in the currency of the country, but in some other currency. More jobs would be great! Appreciate the difficulty of not knowing exactly where you'll be taken, but without consistent jobs sometimes it's really punishing (or at least feels really punishing). I was thinking it might be cool to add stamina, and fancier hotels may replenish more stamina. An incentive to splurge ah.

Re: Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass

#89

Post by PaulRobinson »

A great idea with quite a few bugs. I would suggest watching people who have never played this game before try and play it and you'll notice a lot of things are going wrong that you've not seen before, and you're going to figure out how to make a lot of things a lot better. Really fun idea though, I'd love to try it again when it's less glitchy and the UX has had some work.
Post reply on HN