
Show HN: WikiMaze - gleitz
http://www.wikimaze.me
======
gleitz
I loved playing Mindmaze, the trivia game inside Encarta '95, and was upset
that I couldn't find a similar game anywhere online. Distraught and a little
nostalgic, I recreated it as WikiMaze in HTML5. I've tried to keep the game
true to its classic form with a slightly updated take on the graphics and
gameplay.

The questions are generated on the fly from Wikipedia. For any folks that are
looking for an easy place to get trivia questions, check out the API (e.g.
<http://www.wikimaze.me/api/v1/get-questions/?limit=5>)

Give it a spin and let me know what you think!

~~~
gojomo
Can you talk more about how you create the questions?

I'm guessing the answers are always article titles, and you look for articles
that have a neat leading summary which is easy to perform anaphor-substitution
on. But, how do you pick the candidate wrong answers, and have you developed
any other tricks for handling problematic/ambiguous summaries?

~~~
gleitz
I'll be writing a series of blog posts about the architecture of the game as
well as more info about the API at <http://blog.wikimaze.me/>

At a high level you are mostly right. The incorrect answers are generated
using <http://www.freebase.com/> (now a Google product)

Lots of pages have to be thrown out, but after analyzing thousands of articles
it was relatively straightforward to know when you had a good page versus a
bad one.

------
ConstantineXVI
I'd love to see a more interactive, "HTML5-y" (sorry) Wikipedia, like Encarta
back in the day. More prominent audio/video; interactive maps, charts, etc.
Sure, we essentially have the same content on the Web now, but not tied
together like it could be.

And of course, more MindMaze couldn't hurt.

EDIT: Processing[1] seems like a perfect fit for such a thing. Open, fairly
easy to use, focused on interactive graphics, and compiles to JavaScript so it
works with most browsers (and Java too, so can even include IE6 in the party)

[1] <http://www.processing.org/>

~~~
gojomo
Qwiki[1] aims for a more interactive (albeit Flash-dependent) presentation of
mostly the same information that's in Wikipedia.

There's also a site called 'Ultrastudio' that aims to supplement encyclopedia
articles with illustrative applets.

[1] <http://qwiki.com>

[2] <http://ultrastudio.org/>

------
jcurbo
This is amazing, thanks for putting it together. Really fuels my already-
intense Wikipedia addiction - I was one of those kids that read encyclopedias
for fun and still get into Wikipedia reading sessions with dozens of tabs
open.

~~~
gleitz
I hope this will be a fun way for you to discover new and interesting
articles.

------
josscrowcroft
This is great! But when I get 3 wrong in a row it just goes to a black screen
and nothing happens. Is that supposed to happen?

~~~
gleitz
If you guess incorrectly twice, it will show you the right answer. If you
click a third time, it will take you to the Wikipedia article for that answer.
Sounds like you got sent to the Wikipedia article but it didn't load?

~~~
josscrowcroft
Looks like it, yep. I'm having the same problem on other sites though so it
might be a haywire Chrome extension or something. Still may be worth looking
into (latest stable Chrome on mac osx) - good luck!

afterthought - perhaps open the wikipedia article in a new tab.

------
pavel_lishin
Does it work when you're offline? Or does it require a connection to grab data
from Wikipedia?

~~~
gleitz
There is cache manifest support, so after initially loading the game it will
save a bunch of questions and you can play offline. When you reconnect to the
net it will sync your score and maze progress.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Does it save a bunch? Like, can I play for an hour without repeats?

And does it use cache manifest to store the questions, or localStorage?

(I've been working on both lately at work, so I'm curious how yours works!)

~~~
gleitz
It saves between 10-20 questions, but it could easily go much higher. The
cache.manifest says "even if I am offline, still load the page". The
localStorage is a database that holds the questions.

I'll be writing a series of blog posts about the architecture of the game, as
well as more info about the API

<http://blog.wikimaze.me/>

~~~
pavel_lishin
Cool, that was going to be my next question. /me subscribes

------
libraryatnight
Will there be a way to play via browser that breaks it out of the phone
interface? I'm having a blast, the only thing that bothers me is playing in
the small area inside the iPhone.

~~~
gleitz
Sure! You can go to the iframe directly at <http://www.wikimaze.me/app>

~~~
libraryatnight
Awesome, thanks a bunch :)

EDIT: I just made the leaderboard.

------
abhimishra
Mindmaze was a favorite of mine in my younger days; I'm glad to see it
revived. This is just for my nostalgic needs, but I'd love to see the original
music here :P

~~~
gleitz
Great suggestion! Will add that in the next version

------
semenko
Is it just me, or is this hosted out of Google?

    
    
      $ dig +short wikimaze.me
       216.239.32.21
       216.239.36.21
       216.239.38.21
       216.239.34.21
    
      $ whois 216.239.32.21
       ...
       GOOGLE, INC
       ...
    
       $ dig +short -x 216.239.32.21
        any-in-2015.1e100.net.

~~~
gleitz
AppEngine all the way!

~~~
semenko
Whoops - just saw that!

I guess I always figured Google would give AppEngine some separate
allocation/reverse DNS like EC2.

~~~
gleitz
I would have thought that too, but I know there are some superfast edge
servers that reroute to their datacenters.

------
peter_l_downs
Do you scrape wikipedia as questions are asked or are you working from a
static data set?

~~~
gleitz
The questions are pulled live, but I save old q's so I don't have to crawl the
same page twice.

------
quizipedia
This brings back memories of Encarta, brilliantly executed.

Very interested to see how the API develops, would love to use it for
<http://quizipedia.org>

~~~
gleitz
I'll be writing a blog post on the API soon. Stay tuned to
<http://blog.wikimaze.me>

------
kilovoltaire
Very cool, I like the timed release of further article context.

And the maze part is surprisingly fun given that it is basically pointless /
orthogonal to the rest of the game.

------
thimmy
Make sure you use a unique name. Otherwise you'll get into others accounts
with their scores. Good idea, poorly implemented.

~~~
gleitz
If you want to keep your account "secure", login with Facebook, Twitter, or
Google. I know that might turn some people off so I included the username
login as well.

Future versions will let you set an optional password to "save" the username.

~~~
thimmy
Meh. You could also tie the user to the device or browser and avoid a first
time user entering the game with 2k points and the map nearly complete. Give a
new user a good experience and maybe they will use your login mechanism and
become a repeat user. Otherwise they might just think the game is broken and
never return. I wondered why it said I had answered over 40 questions when _I_
only answered 2. Makes for a poor user experience.

~~~
handler
ooh harsh

thimmy is right though gleitz, he is wayyyy better than you

------
user24
fantastic app. Well done on a great product, I hope it makes you filthy rich
:)

~~~
gleitz
I hope it makes everyone filthy smart! It is running on App Engine so the
server costs aren't too terrible.

Half of all the proceeds go to Wikipedia for providing such great questions.

[https://venmo.com/gleitz?txn=pay&note=for+awesome+trivia...](https://venmo.com/gleitz?txn=pay&note=for+awesome+trivia+from+WikiMaze&share=vtf)

------
handler
awesome. unlimited trivia questions generated by wikipedia.

~~~
handler
also of note is that dynamic generation of "similar topics", so that the
multiple choice remains difficult. +1 for freebase!

------
cmercando
this rules.

