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Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

backofyourhand.com

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Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#71

Post by bwanab »

TimPC wrote: post #54
adamlynch wrote: post #2

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.…

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.

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.

Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#72

Post by TimPC »

adamlynch wrote: post #62
TimPC wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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.

Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#73

Post by function_seven »

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.

Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#76

Post by jedberg »

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.

Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#78

Post by Twisell »

fuzzybassoon wrote: post #75
alistairSH wrote: post #74

No map loading for me - too much traffic? Safari on iOS.

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).

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.

Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#79

Post by jwagenet »

adamlynch wrote: post #2

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.…

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.

Re: Show HN: A game that tests how well you know your local area

#80

Post by jimmaswell »

adamlynch wrote: post #2

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'm only getting a blank background on Firefox, both Android and desktop.

Edge too, is the service just down?

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