Routle

I have added a dedicated settings page where players can alter the following game rules:

• Difficulty: Changes the size of the player circle.

• Priority: Determines which city of the same name is picked. One of:

  • Proximity: The closest city always (default).

  • Population: The most populous city always.

  • Hybrid: The most populous city inside the player circle, and the closest city outside of it.

• Holes: This adds inaccessible holes to the map to give players a challenge. You can modify the number of holes and the size of the holes. Holes will be generated at random if enabled.

A new map has also been added by request:

• The USSR

Although it has been a while since the last update, I have been busy behind the lines! Much of Routle's internal logic has been refactored to be more decoupled and simpler, and I am quite proud of it! A fun side-effect is that now the rare firefox bug is fixed!

I have also begun writing automated end-to-end tests using a cool framework called Cypress! From now on I will be taking a more test-driven approach when adding new features as having that extra safety net of tests is really helpful. A good indicator of how many tests I have been writing is by checking the percentage of languages used in Routle here on github. All the tests are written in JavaScript, and as of writing this, that number is now at around 38%! However, whether they are effective or not is up to you!

This post would be pretty boring without adding new content, so I'll start with the small addition first. The Åland islands have been added to Europe! Previously they were not included because I forgot to add their ISO code to the list of allowed countries.

Now since that is out of the way, onto the big additions. Bless the rains! New Maps have been added! The following maps are now available to play:

• Africa

• Scandinavia

• Balkans

Whilst Routle could be visited and played on mobile phones before, it still wasn't as user friendly. Now Routle will alter some of its layout based on screen size and if the user is on a mobile phone to overall create a better experience.

This post covers a few fixes and quality of life stuff but to make it more interesting, I will first introduce to you 3 new maps!

• China

• Switzerland

• Asia*

* Defining the borders of the Asia map was quite a challenging decision. I currently use the Web Mercator projection for the maps, which makes countries like Russia massive! Therefore, to make this map less challenging and sparse, I have decided to remove Russia and Kazakhstan from the map, even though they may typically be considered to be part of Asia. Turkey is also excluded from Asia as I felt that turkey already plays a nice part in the Europe map anyway.

On the topic of map improvements, Gibraltar has been finally added to the Europe map! It was previously missing due to a mistake on my part but that is now resolved.

I also resolved a minor bug with the input placeholder (the 's' bug), and in the process changed the placeholder just a tiny bit. A line has also been placed under the input box for a bit of visual clarity.

Finally, I have begun the process of adding basic shortcuts, and the first one added is the enter key for the 'Play again' button. Pressing enter once you complete a map is now equivalent to clicking 'Play again'.

routle-nextjs.vercel.app is a mouth full to be honest. Therefore, Routle is now also hosted on 👉 routle.vercel.app 👈 too! I personally recommend using that link as well as the original long link will probably get taken down later in the future.

Previously I kept the code locked away from the public eye on my github as it wasn't the best looking code. However, after some touching up, I think it looks good enough to present. The source code for this website is now publicly available here!

This very page is new! I'll post any significant changes or updates here.

Gone are the days of escaping from the US into Canada or Mexico. Cities entered in the USA map now only return cities in the USA. This was just caused by a small mistake in the US map metadata.

A rendering issue with the circle has also been fixed! No longer will cities within the circle be marked as 'too far' on some maps. The circle is the hard definition, the single truth, the one absolute.

The delay in entering the first city on newly opened maps has also been vanquished! Well, not really vanquished but rather ✨optimised✨ so that delay is not really noticeable.

Some new maps have also been added!

• France

• Greece

• Fife (Hard!)