Geofinder

An online game that's like Where's Waldo? but for houses

Description

Note

ALL CONTENTS IN THIS REPO ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

Geofinder is an online scavenger hunt game. Its gameplay is simple: Given a photo of a house somewhere in the world, your task is to look for that house inside a marked area on a map. While that may sound straighforward, how you will go about looking might not be.

Geofinder comes in two modes.

1. In the Wordle-like default mode, you are given one house a day and have until the end of the day (CST time) to find it.
2. In the Netflix-like challenge mode, aka Geo50x, you are given 50 houses at once.

Geofinder is inspired by such childhood games as Where's Waldo? and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. And the simple pleasures of looking out through vehicle windows and just gazing at the passing landscapes and cityscapes.

More screenshots below.

Table of Contents

TODO

Features

TODO

Project Structure

TODO

Prerequisites

TODO

Getting Started

Dependencies

• See requirements.txt

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/ggeerraarrdd/geofinder.git

2. Navigate into the project directory:

   cd geofinder # For example

3. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python -m venv venv
   source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows use `venv\Scripts\activate`

4. Install the dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt

5. Set up a PostgreSQL Database:

   TODO

6. Set up a Google Maps API Key:

   For the embedded map to work, you need to set up an API Key. Before you can create one, you will need to create a Google Cloud project, for which you need a Google Cloud account.

   • Set up a Google Cloud account
   • Set up your Google Cloud project
   • Using API Keys

7. Create an .env file and set the environment variables:

   Create a file named .env in the app directory of the project and add the following variables:

   TODO

Usage

1. Go into the app directory and run the command:

   flask run

2. Open the film series website:

   Copy and open the URL displayed after 'Running on' in the terminal.

3. Register an account:

   TODO

4. Login:

   TODO

Author(s)

• @ggeerraarrdd

Version History

Release Notes

• See https://github.com/ggeerraarrdd/geofinder/releases

Initial Release

The initial realease of Geofinder, as Geo50x, was submitted as the final project for CS50x: CS50's Introduction to Computer Science (HarvardX, 2023). Read the project brief as of September 2023.

Future Work

Development is ongoing.

License

• MIT License

Contributing

TODO

Acknowledgments

• The distribution code for CS50's Finance problem served as a template for the app.
• The documentions for the Google Maps Platform were a daily, often hourly, read.
• Too many StackOverflow Q&As and Medium articles to mention but a couple proved immensely useful in developing two key functions
  • Offset Latitude and Longitude by some meters accurately - Reverse Haversine
  • Algorithm for offsetting a latitude/longitude by some amount of meters
• The folks at CS50 for a mind-altering course.

Screenshots

Frontispiece

Screenshot of Playing with Geofinder web interface. Image taken from web-based game interface (Personal Collection, 2024). In the public domain.