6 ms·

Making a game to memorize facts about every country

91 points by carltheperson 5y ago

johannes_ne 5y ago
Thank you. I think I'll actually use this. A small suggestions: when asking to recall a country name (or flag), only show choices from the already presented countries.
criddell 5y ago
I watched Cheers religiously when it was on and there was an episode where Coach was helping Sam study for a geography test. His trick was to remember facts with songs and because of that episode, I know Albania borders on the Adriatic, is mountainous, and chief export is chrome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F_tT-q8EF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F_tT-q8EF0
- jbergens 5y ago
  Their chief export is a web browser?
- yorwba 5y ago
  13.2% of Albania's exports in 2019 were leather footwear, 54.8% of which went to Italy, just across the Adriatic. Chromium ore was only 2.2% of exports (and 96.6% went to China). https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/alb/all/show/2019/ https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/alb/all/...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - criddell 5y ago
    Also, if you look closely at that video you can see that "Sam" is actually Ted Danson who is an actor and not a retired alcoholic baseball player who owns a bar.
seszett 5y ago
Just a little remark, a few times I was just clicking "memorized" for several countries and didn't notice when it was actually a question, and clicked "submit" by error. I think there should be more difference between the "memorized" and the "submit" buttons. The game also considers French overseas territories as "countries" and uses some local flag for some.
dotancohen 5y ago
The Anki deck Ultimate Geography is pretty much this game and more: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812 It works on the phone with AnkiDroid too.
- tra3 5y ago
  I was going to link this as well. The app in the link is nice, but Anki is way more conducive for this task.
- addingnumbers 5y ago
  If you frame it as witnesses and informants giving you clues where a criminal has fled, this would also be essentially the same as the first Carmen Sandiego games.
- sundarurfriend 5y ago
  I didn't know about Ultimate Geography and have been using https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2915332392 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2915332392 deck instead. UG looks like a moderate upgrade over this deck. I do prefer the maps in the deck that I linked to though. Both have their pros and cons, but I get a better feel for the location of the place from these maps compared to the UG ones (at least the ones in the sample notes).
  - dotancohen 5y ago
    Very nice, thank you!
slingnow 5y ago
Here's a tip: You should never have a button suddenly change functions underneath a user's cursor without any warning -- ESPECIALLY while doing a repetitive task.
- carltheperson 5y ago
  Noted. Thanks for the tip (:
cupofcoffee 5y ago
Cool project, you can also add the option to guess the population and have a scoreboard of who was the least wrong.
mgoetzke 5y ago
Why do the Flags not show up ?
- rhyswallace 5y ago
  The default font for emojis on Windows doesn't support flags — they're replaced by the national identifier letters. Frustrating! https://newbedev.com/flag-emojis-not-rendering https://newbedev.com/flag-emojis-not-rendering
  - hollozilla 5y ago
    newbedev just copies from stackoverflow, see original: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54663926 https://stackoverflow.com/a/54663926 Ignoring CC-BY-SA for profit...
ilamont 5y ago
In grad school in a class on the Semantic Web, we created a very simple iOS flashcard game that used flags, animals, monuments, and a few other details to help kids remember details about countries. It was a good exercise to pull all of these bits together using Linked Data, although I am not sure how well it would have scaled. I have a video of it somewhere ... ETA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vev_2MATqNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vev_2MATqNQ
mountainboy 5y ago
Kinda fun. A couple suggestions: 1. It would be great to add Capital Cities and perhaps population numbers also. And make each data-type optional. Eg, so that one could learn/quiz about Countries and Capital Cities only (no flags, location, or population) if desired. 2. The map needs to zoom in when showing a country. Sometimes I couldn't even see the country.
nedimm 5y ago
Here is similar project https://youtu.be/sLqXFF8mlEU https://youtu.be/sLqXFF8mlEU
Dylanotron 5y ago
Does anyone remember a 90s Encyclopedia CD-ROM that featured a game where the player is presented with photos from different countries and has to guess the origin? That game was foundational for me and I can't find any reference to it.
OisinMoran 5y ago
This is great Carl! Glad I follow you on Twitter as I missed this on HN. I too have really wanted something like this for a long time (have some ideas about extra difficult parts like learning to draw the outline of a country) and really enjoyed playing it! I just did one round and got to a score of 123 but had a wonderful time. Well done on the great game! A few suggestions: 1. This is mentioned already and I see you're aware, but it can be very hard to find somewhere like British Indian Ocean Territory 2. The dropdown options seems to be correct on the default option a good bit more than you would expect by chance. 3. The app doesn't seem to keep a long term history of ones I've seen, so got shown some—Comoros and Papau New Guinea were particular offenders for me 4. Sometimes I think you can cheat using the hover tooltips? 5. Dropdown options are sometimes pretty easy as there is only one option that you have actually encountered. 6. The flag dropdown could be bigger—some flags are hard to distinguish when they're small And the final suggestion that is (presumably, though I could be wrong) out of your control: There are too many Guineas! C'mon planet earth, get creative. I also did really enjoy hunting for the small (but not too small) islands and think that will lodge them better in my brain! And thanks again for making and sharing your game—really appreciate it and I learned a lot!! :) Think I'll be coming back for more!
micvbang 5y ago
Keep up the awesome work, Carl! I absolutely also loved your house building post. For people that didn't read it yet: https://carltheperson.com/posts/my-house/ https://carltheperson.com/posts/my-house/ Your world view is awesome and I especially admire it from a person your age.
a_c 5y ago
Suggest to make small countries more discoverable. There are some countries I couldn't locate during the "memorized" phase. I'm on mobile so the screen size may be limited
- AStrangeMorrow 5y ago
  I agree. I was on a big screen an some of the smaller countries were still impossible to see for me. Like some of the smaller islands are probably just a couple pixels. A dot of color or a circle around them would probably work better than a simple yellow fill.
  - carltheperson 5y ago
    I fully agree. It is currently very annoying to get a small island nation.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I like the concept. Even though I wouldn't bother with flags, but trying to locate a country based on its name is a very good exercise for everybody.
- oxfeed65261 5y ago
  I would really appreciate an option to skip flags and only ask about name and location. That said, this is a really cool project. Thanks a lot for making and posting it!
  - zeke 5y ago
    That is something I have been working on. qquiz.com

91 points by carltheperson 5y ago

Thank you. I think I'll actually use this. A small suggestions: when asking to recall a country name (or flag), only show choices from the already presented countries.

criddell 5y ago

I watched Cheers religiously when it was on and there was an episode where Coach was helping Sam study for a geography test. His trick was to remember facts with songs and because of that episode, I know Albania borders on the Adriatic, is mountainous, and chief export is chrome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F_tT-q8EF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F_tT-q8EF0

jbergens 5y ago
Their chief export is a web browser?
yorwba 5y ago
13.2% of Albania's exports in 2019 were leather footwear, 54.8% of which went to Italy, just across the Adriatic. Chromium ore was only 2.2% of exports (and 96.6% went to China). https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/alb/all/show/2019/ https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/alb/all/...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- criddell 5y ago
  Also, if you look closely at that video you can see that "Sam" is actually Ted Danson who is an actor and not a retired alcoholic baseball player who owns a bar.

seszett 5y ago

Just a little remark, a few times I was just clicking "memorized" for several countries and didn't notice when it was actually a question, and clicked "submit" by error. I think there should be more difference between the "memorized" and the "submit" buttons. The game also considers French overseas territories as "countries" and uses some local flag for some.

dotancohen 5y ago

The Anki deck Ultimate Geography is pretty much this game and more: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812 It works on the phone with AnkiDroid too.

tra3 5y ago
I was going to link this as well. The app in the link is nice, but Anki is way more conducive for this task.
addingnumbers 5y ago
If you frame it as witnesses and informants giving you clues where a criminal has fled, this would also be essentially the same as the first Carmen Sandiego games.
sundarurfriend 5y ago
I didn't know about Ultimate Geography and have been using https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2915332392 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2915332392 deck instead. UG looks like a moderate upgrade over this deck. I do prefer the maps in the deck that I linked to though. Both have their pros and cons, but I get a better feel for the location of the place from these maps compared to the UG ones (at least the ones in the sample notes).
- dotancohen 5y ago
  Very nice, thank you!

slingnow 5y ago

Here's a tip: You should never have a button suddenly change functions underneath a user's cursor without any warning -- ESPECIALLY while doing a repetitive task.

carltheperson 5y ago
Noted. Thanks for the tip (:

cupofcoffee 5y ago

Cool project, you can also add the option to guess the population and have a scoreboard of who was the least wrong.

mgoetzke 5y ago

Why do the Flags not show up ?

rhyswallace 5y ago
The default font for emojis on Windows doesn't support flags — they're replaced by the national identifier letters. Frustrating! https://newbedev.com/flag-emojis-not-rendering https://newbedev.com/flag-emojis-not-rendering
- hollozilla 5y ago
  newbedev just copies from stackoverflow, see original: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54663926 https://stackoverflow.com/a/54663926 Ignoring CC-BY-SA for profit...

ilamont 5y ago

In grad school in a class on the Semantic Web, we created a very simple iOS flashcard game that used flags, animals, monuments, and a few other details to help kids remember details about countries. It was a good exercise to pull all of these bits together using Linked Data, although I am not sure how well it would have scaled. I have a video of it somewhere ... ETA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vev_2MATqNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vev_2MATqNQ

mountainboy 5y ago

Kinda fun. A couple suggestions: 1. It would be great to add Capital Cities and perhaps population numbers also. And make each data-type optional. Eg, so that one could learn/quiz about Countries and Capital Cities only (no flags, location, or population) if desired. 2. The map needs to zoom in when showing a country. Sometimes I couldn't even see the country.

nedimm 5y ago

Here is similar project https://youtu.be/sLqXFF8mlEU https://youtu.be/sLqXFF8mlEU

Dylanotron 5y ago

Does anyone remember a 90s Encyclopedia CD-ROM that featured a game where the player is presented with photos from different countries and has to guess the origin? That game was foundational for me and I can't find any reference to it.

OisinMoran 5y ago

This is great Carl! Glad I follow you on Twitter as I missed this on HN. I too have really wanted something like this for a long time (have some ideas about extra difficult parts like learning to draw the outline of a country) and really enjoyed playing it! I just did one round and got to a score of 123 but had a wonderful time. Well done on the great game! A few suggestions: 1. This is mentioned already and I see you're aware, but it can be very hard to find somewhere like British Indian Ocean Territory 2. The dropdown options seems to be correct on the default option a good bit more than you would expect by chance. 3. The app doesn't seem to keep a long term history of ones I've seen, so got shown some—Comoros and Papau New Guinea were particular offenders for me 4. Sometimes I think you can cheat using the hover tooltips? 5. Dropdown options are sometimes pretty easy as there is only one option that you have actually encountered. 6. The flag dropdown could be bigger—some flags are hard to distinguish when they're small And the final suggestion that is (presumably, though I could be wrong) out of your control: There are too many Guineas! C'mon planet earth, get creative. I also did really enjoy hunting for the small (but not too small) islands and think that will lodge them better in my brain! And thanks again for making and sharing your game—really appreciate it and I learned a lot!! :) Think I'll be coming back for more!

micvbang 5y ago

Keep up the awesome work, Carl! I absolutely also loved your house building post. For people that didn't read it yet: https://carltheperson.com/posts/my-house/ https://carltheperson.com/posts/my-house/ Your world view is awesome and I especially admire it from a person your age.

a_c 5y ago

Suggest to make small countries more discoverable. There are some countries I couldn't locate during the "memorized" phase. I'm on mobile so the screen size may be limited

AStrangeMorrow 5y ago
I agree. I was on a big screen an some of the smaller countries were still impossible to see for me. Like some of the smaller islands are probably just a couple pixels. A dot of color or a circle around them would probably work better than a simple yellow fill.
- carltheperson 5y ago
  I fully agree. It is currently very annoying to get a small island nation.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I like the concept. Even though I wouldn't bother with flags, but trying to locate a country based on its name is a very good exercise for everybody.

oxfeed65261 5y ago
I would really appreciate an option to skip flags and only ask about name and location. That said, this is a really cool project. Thanks a lot for making and posting it!
- zeke 5y ago
  That is something I have been working on. qquiz.com