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Find the Tube Game

jfowkes

jfowkes

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20 Jul 2017
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897
Hi all,

Mods: please delete or move if you feel this is not appropriate.

I've written a game where you have to find all the rail stations on the TfL network (Underground, DLR, Elizabeth Line, Overground and London Trams): findthetube.com. I'd love for people to try it out and let me know what they think! It's completely free, no ads, I just made it because I wanted to.

You can play it in "easy" mode (you get given random station names) or "hard" mode (you have to type in each station name). You can also select which of the five networks you want to have in the game. There's a few more options and things, all explained by clicking the "?" icon on the map.

I'm a programmer but not a web developer (especially not a front-end/UI developer) so please take into account when providing feedback!

I should mention that I was inspired to write this by playing the recently-gone-viral London Tube Memory Game.

Oh, and it renders terribly on a mobile. Use a large tablet, laptop or PC!
 
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etr221

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10 Mar 2018
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I've given it a go... a nice bit of fun, thanks.

My one issue is over how station names are displayed in relation to the matching icon: looking at just Tramlink, they can easily be closer to the wrong icon. And zoomed out to show the whole network, they overlay to give a black mess. But how to resolve this is not going to be easy - even at the level of working out what's wanted.
 
ThameslinkUser

ThameslinkUser

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Rather fun, I must admit. I would advise against using the roundel and use a circle akin to the memory game. They used to use the roundel and suddenly changed it one day, probably after TfL got in contact...
 
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etr221

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As a follow up, I would suggest that you might like to add words (to the help page?) to say that it is just for fun, and no other purpose; and that it is a personal offering, unconnected with TfL, and that you are just using the roundel as it is the widely common symbol for TfL stations. And perhaps a pointer to the TfL website.
 
jfowkes

jfowkes

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Joined
20 Jul 2017
Messages
897
etr221 said:
My one issue is over how station names are displayed in relation to the matching icon: looking at just Tramlink, they can easily be closer to the wrong icon. And zoomed out to show the whole network, they overlay to give a black mess. But how to resolve this is not going to be easy - even at the level of working out what's wanted.
Click to expand...
Yeah that's why I added the "hide found stations" option in the settings - I couldn't find any easy way to make it look neat except by getting rid of them entirely!

ThameslinkUser said:
Rather fun, I must admit. I would advise against using the roundel and use a circle akin to the memory game. They used to use the roundel and suddenly changed it one day, probably after TfL got in contact...
Click to expand...

etr221 said:
As a follow up, I would suggest that you might like to add words (to the help page?) to say that it is just for fun, and no other purpose; and that it is a personal offering, unconnected with TfL, and that you are just using the roundel as it is the widely common symbol for TfL stations. And perhaps a pointer to the TfL website.
Click to expand...
Good advice from both of you! Though if the game gets popular enough that TfL are interested, I will be seriously amazed.
 
Egg Centric

Egg Centric

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I would change the background colour of the station name as it implies it's on the picadilly line

Also, your source map is publicly accessible. This would usually be server misconfiguration but may be deliberate.
 
jfowkes

jfowkes

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Messages
897
Egg Centric said:
I would change the background colour of the station name as it implies it's on the picadilly line.
Click to expand...
Good point - the background is meant to be "TFL blue" and somehow I've copied the Piccadilly blue RGB values instead!

Egg Centric said:
Also, your source map is publicly accessible. This would usually be server misconfiguration but may be deliberate.
Click to expand...
As in, the react app source map? It's not deliberate, but the source is public anyway (https://gitlab.com/jamesfowkes/tube-station-game) so I'm not bothered about it. I don't think it's exposing anything horrible...
 
jfowkes

jfowkes

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20 Jul 2017
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897
bluegoblin7 said:
TfL blue and Piccadilly blue are one and the same.
Click to expand...
Hm. In that case the colour of my TfL roundel is wrong and now I am very confused. It's correct in the wikimedia source I got it from, so I must have changed it, but no idea why I would do that.
Anyway, a simple fix. Not sure what I'll do to avoid the ambiguity - I suppose the obvious question is: what do TfL do?
 
M

mangyiscute

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I really enjoyed it, but then for some reason the top bar telling me what station to click on just disappeared and I'm not sure why - I'm on firefox so perhaps its browser incompatibility?
 
jfowkes

jfowkes

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mangyiscute said:
I really enjoyed it, but then for some reason the top bar telling me what station to click on just disappeared and I'm not sure why - I'm on firefox so perhaps its browser incompatibility?
Click to expand...

Uzair said:
Same for me.
Click to expand...

Anything else you can tell me about when it happens? I've just had a quick try with firefox and it's OK - at least to begin with!
 
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mangyiscute

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jfowkes said:
Anything else you can tell me about when it happens? I've just had a quick try with firefox and it's OK - at least to begin with!
Click to expand...
I just went on it again - it happened again after i answered about 10 stations, I was moving up from Crystal Palace into the centre and I think I dragged my mouse over the taskbar at the bottom of my screen, the map then moved slightly downwards and the top bar was gone.
It happened quite quickly but I think that's roughly what happened.
 
E

Enthusiast

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18 Mar 2019
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jfowkes said:
Good spot, thanks! Fixed.
Click to expand...
Excellent! I'll start again.

I was doing just the London Underground. I'd got up to just over 200 without error. Up came Stonebridge Park. I'd already identified Maida Vale so I simply counted six stops up from there (without taking any notice of the map itself) to find I was wrong! :'(

mangyiscute said:
I really enjoyed it, but then for some reason the top bar telling me what station to click on just disappeared and I'm not sure why - I'm on firefox so perhaps its browser incompatibility?
Click to expand...
I found the top bar disappeared if you resize the map (either + or -), but this was easily fixed because the "slide bar" on the far right was still visible and it was a simple job to slide up and make the top bar reappear.
 
E

Enthusiast

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Shepherds Bush seems to have disappeared from the Central Line. It only appears on the Overground.

I'm sure this was not a problem yesterday because I completed all 268 tube stations (yes I know, I should get out more - but it's too bloody cold!).
 
jfowkes

jfowkes

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Messages
897
Enthusiast said:
Shepherds Bush seems to have disappeared from the Central Line. It only appears on the Overground.

I'm sure this was not a problem yesterday because I completed all 268 tube stations (yes I know, I should get out more - but it's too bloody cold!).
Click to expand...

Thanks again! It looks like that's been missed singe the beginning. It makes sense, there are 272 individual tube stations, but three (Hammersmith, Edgware Road, Paddington) share the same name, so there are only 269 with unique names. There are now 269 unique station names in the game when only "tube" is selected so I think we've caught them all...
 
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