Monday, May 27, 2013

the world is large...

...and has a lot of very straight, very empty roads on it.

MapTag tips (which are really StreetView tips):

There is really no easy way to move a long distance in a single click using StreetView. The step distance seems to depend on how fast the car was going at the time.

The circle, which helps you take the largest step possible, is imperfect. You can't just leave the mouse on the same spot onscreen and keep clicking.  Eventually it will fuck up.  It seems if you move it a bit between each click, that will reduce the chances of it thinking you want to zoom, or adjust the view.  Occasionally I have seen it spin me 90-180 degrees off from where I was headed, so keep half an eye on your general heading in case that happens.

I find it rather interesting, after writing the game, that it's still fun to play.

At some point I may try to increase the chances of hitting urban/suburban areas.  Right now the valid random places are based on about 8 circles of varying sizes: Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, continental US/Canada/Mexico, Alaska/NW Canada, Hawaii, Europe, Japan, and Brazil.  Each has a probability, initially based on area size, but also hand-jiggered a tiny bit based on how much empty expanse it has.  I should tweak them more to have a stronger bias toward Europe, Japan, and such places that have less empty space.  I could specify urban areas (e.g. the US coasts) and give them a bit more probability of being selected.  Other places that should be added: Moscow, Israel, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore.

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