6 ms·
Show HN: Name That Nation
I made this map game. react, material ui, hosted on vercel cdn, no back end.
- adithyassekhar 3y agoYou can make this more educative by showing 4 or 5 options to choose from for a particular country.
- rob74 3y agoThat would be the easy mode... you could also vary difficulty by picking nearby countries to make it a bit more difficult.
- Aachen 3y agoFive 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!
- personjerry 3y agoWhy'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.
- midasuni 3y agoWhat do the colors mean Why was North Korea in dark green and South Korea in light green, and which should I name?
- allywilson 3y agoI assumed it was areas contested by that country, could be wrong.
- midasuni 3y agoI think Germany was orange. Certainly not clear if I should put North Korea or South Korea.
- the_origami_fox 3y agoThe pictures come straight from Wikipedia. From the picture for North Korea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 3y agoChina isn't in light green for Taiwan. Is that situation different in some way?
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoyeah, very different power imbalance and influence :)
- thaumasiotes 3y agoHow so? Where's North Korea's influence? If anything, Taiwan has more ability to enforce its territorial claims.
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoNorth Korea appears as a territory of South Korea, not the opposite
- rob74 3y agoBut Taiwan is in light green for China...
- agapon 3y agoDoes Taiwan claim sovereignty over mainland China?
- mkl 3y agoIt did historically, and has not formally renounced its claim (which included Mongolia).
- ukuina 3y agoWell 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 https://www.sqlite.org/serverless.html)
- jarofgreen 3y agoStatic?
- franky47 3y agoJamstack https://jamstack.org/ https://jamstack.org/
- austinjp 3y agoWebsite, 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 3y agoCool one, especially for kids. It'd go well with naming the capital city, too.
- Zecc 3y agoYou might like Worldle and Flagle too. https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://www.flagle.io/
- mkl 3y agoClickable: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/ https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/, https://www.flagle.io/ 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.
- youngNed 3y agoIts good, but I was expecting a rotate/zoom I really like travle.earth: https://travle.earth/challenge/ https://travle.earth/challenge/
- monsoon49 3y agoI've made an account right now just to say thank you for introducing me to this game!
- DylanSp 3y agoI'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/ https://travle.earth/practice/, but oh well. Thanks for linking that!
- getwiththeprog 3y agoThank you for highlighting my ignorance of geography :) Keep up the great work.
- benjijay 3y agoFun! 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 3y agoNice! 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 3y agoOh irony is that first country I had when visiting the site was Palestine.
- AJ1998 3y agoCan you explain how that makes it ironic?
- toyg 3y agoBecause it's not recognized as a State by Israel and a few other countries.
- tempestn 3y agoAnd because that fact is quite salient in current geopolitical affairs.
- rrr_oh_man 3y agoIt'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 3y agoThere are couple of entities in the game whose statehood is debated / contested.
- trurl42 3y agoKeyboard accessibility could use some love.
- progval 3y agoI'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 3y ago+ 1 The need to click "submit" was my biggest bad UX moment
- frereubu 3y agoYep, I'd play this a lot more if I was able to use only the keyboard.
- skor 3y agoNice, 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 3y ago> 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 3y agoThat is correct. It is a feature. It is a challenge how to make it more clear to the user.
- bluetomcat 3y agoThe 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 3y agoLithuania, Latvia and Estonia are easy - they go in alphabetical order from north to south.
- dvh 3y agoGive partial score for close guess, I called Benin a Sierra Leone, or art least show my guess and target country
- rrr_oh_man 3y ago"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 3y agoYeah, I was pretty good in Asia, except for the various ex-USSR "-stans" (I just know Kazakhstan is the biggest one).
- mason55 3y agoIf you know Kazakhstan is the biggest then you can get the rest. They're alphabetical going clockwise from Kazakhstan -> Kyrgyzstan -> Tajikistan -> Turkmenistan -> Uzbekistan
- tempestn 3y agoYou 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.
- _xivi 3y agoNice 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 3y agoThis. 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 https://www.myabandonware.com/game/maps-usa-n4v
- billfruit 3y agoOr atleast uncover the names of countries already answered, feels like slowly colouring in the map of the world.
- miggol 3y agoAbsolutely!! 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 3y agoIt does keep a list of countries you got wrong and you can go through them again.
- asimpletune 3y agoI 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 3y agoIt 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 3y agoThat 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 3y agoYes, pictures are loaded directly either from Wikimedia: File: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Venezuela_Orthographic_Map.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Venezuel... Page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venezuela_Orthographic_Map.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Venezuela_Orthographic_... …or from … CIA.gov "World Factbook" site (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/), e.g.: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/f7ce629bc057da92e3b31bf9673e0591/0b96f/LO-locator-map.jpg https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/static/f7ce629bc057da...
- ta1243 3y agoAt the very least include a legend so we know they mean
- 3y ago
- praveen9920 3y agoGood work. I couldn’t name 98% of the countries. Realised my geography sucks
- namphibian 3y agoVery cool. Are you collecting data on guesses? Would be interesting to see a ranking of countries by how many people can ID them
- Tainnor 3y agoI 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 3y agoYou can practice here! https://www.youdontknowafrica.com/ https://www.youdontknowafrica.com/
- Tainnor 3y agoI 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 3y agoThat 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 3y agoMy 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.
- Aachen 3y agoI'm at 27/45 when I ran out of available time (IRL), which is pretty depressing for someone who once knew them all :( The ones you never hear about slip the mind. Sure I can still say Zambia is near South Africa, but which one is Mozambique, which one Botswana, and which one Zambia? Hard I even had trouble remembering Yemen! Always found that easy for some reason, especially after I remembered that the order is "YO!" (Yemen, then Oman). Again not a country much news comes from
- mkl 3y ago155/195. Struggled with Pacific and Caribbean island nations, and some of Africa.
- poulpy123 3y agonice ! I have a big problem with pacific island, central america and subsaharan africa
- tiktaktow 3y agoHey 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 3y agoI am adding Mauritius
- sabzetro 3y agoThis 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 :)
- lloydatkinson 3y agoFun game! That material UI looks dated and clunky though.
- john-radio 3y agoExcellent! 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- geoelkh 3y agoNice game :)
- baryphonic 3y agoGreat 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoThis 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 3y agoThis 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 3y agoNeighborle 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).
- pmontra 3y agoThe 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.
- hasty_pudding 3y agoyou 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 3y agowhy is south korea another shade of green when the question is north korea?
- SalimoS 3y agoBtw on safari on iOS long press the image will show the name of the country from the Wikipedia link
- BeetleB 3y agoI'm guessing this was inspired by the following thread (by Derek Sivers)? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39169197
- ruggeri 3y agoI 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 https://github.com/ruggeri/world-map-game. Yours is a lot better.
- ruggeri 3y agoOh, another suggestion: show the country and let them name the capital!
- vehemenz 3y agoHow 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 3y agoGood example but what adult doesn’t know all the countries of the world?
- tacone 3y agoVery nice and well executed. Would love to be able to zoom in a bit.
- crvdgc 3y agoFor those who want to learn map, capital, and flag: https://github.com/anki-geo/ultimate-geography https://github.com/anki-geo/ultimate-geography
- StopTheTechies 3y agoThis seems to conflate the idea of a nation (ie a people) with that of a country or state, which I find pretty odd. Many countries are composed of many constituent nations, many of which will cross state borders.
- fastaguy88 3y agoAn 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%.
- S_Bear 3y agoA hint with the capital would be nice, especially for the tiny island nations. Otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it! (129/195)
- retwertett 3y agoOn Firefox if I type the answer and tab to the continue button, It's counted as correct, even if it's false.
- AdamH12113 3y agoFor learning geography, I like: https://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/how-many-countries-can-you-name 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/ https://andys.org.uk/countryquiz/
- KomoD 3y agoI wish the dropdown didn't cover the entire map when you focus the text box, another nice feature would be being able to select multiple regions (e.g. just Europe and Asia)