Geofinder

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

Description

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.

Disclaimer

ALL CONTENTS IN THIS REPO ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.

Getting Started

Dependencies

• See requirements.txt

Usage

Clone it!

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

Go into the project directory and run the command:

flask run

Database

Tbd

Notes on Google Maps

For the embedded maps to work, you need to use your own 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

Environment Variables

Set up the following environment variables using your preferred method.

SECRET_KEY=<Your_Flask_Session_Secret_Key>
MAP_API_KEY=<Your_Google_Maps_API_Key>
GEOFINDER_DB_HOST=<Your_Database_Host>
GEOFINDER_DB_PORT=5432
GEOFINDER_DB_NAME=<Your_Database_Name>
GEOFINDER_DB_USER=<Your_Database_Username>
GEOFINDER_DB_PASSWORD=<Your_Database_Password>
NEW_REGISTRATIONS=TRUE

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

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