RISK The Game On Google Maps

axonis writes "ZenChi has created a Google Maps API project based on the popular board game RISK on Google Maps. While Zen is developing a multi-player version, you can play a game right now with others huddled around your computer."

Can Google maps get more geeky?

[Trigun]

Call Newman and Kramer. And can someone program an API to find my keys?

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[Cave_Monster]

And can someone program an API to find my keys?

I had a look on google earth and when I zoomed in to the maximum, I noticed your keys are on your front lawn near that little garden gnome. You must have dropped them while walking from your car to your front door :)

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[corpsiclex]

oh noes! i just saw some geeky looking guys with laptops drive up and snag em.

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[nath_de]

You live on the moon?

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call Newman and Kramer.

A game of world domination played by two guys who can barely run their own lives.

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[boazr]

Call Newman and Kramer.

A game of world domination played by two guys who can barely run their own lives.

This applied to our world leaders as well, no?

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[Spy der Mann]

Yes, they can.

Enter your Google Earth search:
[ Carmen Sandiego ]

Your search returned no matches.

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[Legion303]

Your search for "where's waldo" around this map area did not match any locations.

Suggestions:

        * Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
        * Try different keywords.
        * Try more general keywords.

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[CodeBuster]

Ahhh....but the Ukraine is weak...WHAT?!? I am from Ukraine...Ukraine is not weak! (breaks the board in half with a karate style chop)

Re:Can Google maps get more geeky?

[T-Ranger]

foreach $key (keys %HASH) {
$value = $HASH{$key};
# do something with $key and $value
}

Happy?

Careful....

[Scott7477]

Newman: I'm not beaten yet. I still have armies in the Ukraine.
Kramer: Ha ha, the Ukraine. Do you know what the Ukraine is? It's a sitting duck. A road apple, Newman. The Ukraine is weak. It's feeble. I think it's time to put the hurt on the Ukraine.
Ukrainian: I come from Ukraine. You not say Ukraine weak.
Kramer: Yeah, well we're playing a game here, pal.

Ukrainian: Ukraine is game to you?! Howbout I take your little board and smash it!!

Newman and Kramer

[Scott7477]

Maybe slashdotters already knew about this but I found this website http://www.seinfeldscripts.com./ [www.seinfeldscripts.com] It appears to have the full text of transcripts from every episode. This is fantastic...IMO one of the big reasons for "Seinfeld"'s success was the quality of the writing; toward the latter half of the show's run some of the episodes could legitimately be considered literature in the high-falutin' sense of the word.

There goes my life...

[DogDude]

As soon as this thing gets into online leagues, I'm afraid that my social life will be finished. This rocks.

Re:There goes my life...

[Browncoat]

What's a social life? Is it when a ton of people stand, sit, huddle and squat around a 15 inch monitor and play RISK? Cause if it is...well...mine's gone.

Re:There goes my life...

[HoboMaster]

Being as you're a poster on /., I'm calling BS on your use of future tense.

In Soviet Russia...

[countchoc12]

Google API Project maps Risk on YOU!

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Deekin_Scalesinger]

*snort* - this was surprisingly funny to me for some reason. Come on Mods, have a heart for the poor guy.

Want to play a game, Professor Falken?

[Argonne]

With all the news about Google's great power these days, I know that when I play this I'll turn on CNN when I sent Alaskan forces against Kamchatka. On second thought, maybe not. I really don't want to have to hear George W. Bush try to pronounce "Irkutsk".

Re:Want to play a game, Professor Falken?

[Browncoat]

Irk-tusk, Irk-utusk...I can only imagine the possibilities.

It's WarGames, Google-style! I can see George Lucas' hamster wheel spinning. "The Google Wars"

Re:Want to play a game, Professor Falken?

[schon]

You know he already plays, [deadtroll.com] right? :o)

That's Friggin Brilliant...

[CptTripps]

...now does anyone remember how to play Risk?

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[YrWrstNtmr]

...now does anyone remember how to play Risk?

Yes, courtesy of Lux [sillysoft.net].

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[YrWrstNtmr]

Plug? I have zero connection with sillysoft.com. I just like their iteration. As for eyecandy....the slightly earlier versions are more visually loyal to the boardgame. I currently have v4.52 on my machine, as opposed to the latest release of v5.1.2.

And as far as 'most' eyecandy...there was an official Risk game that had not quite 3D (very annoying), waving flags, actual marching armies...same basic gameplay, but waaaay too much eyecandy.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[tomhudson]

WEll, yu could set it to skip most of the eye candy (even though it was funny to watch people get shot and die, and the other side going "Aye, Karamba!" or whatever they were shouting...

My beef was that it would crash with 8 players.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[Knetzar]

Yeah, I really wish they'd remove all the new eye-candy...I upgraded and am not sure how to downgrade again.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[guinsu]

You mean Civilization 4? :)

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[fishbowl]

"However, nothing beats the satisfaction of the good old cardboard + plastic style world domination."

The good old set had counters made of *wood*, youngster.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[rjshields]

The good old set had counters made of *wood*, youngster.

Wood? You had wood? When I was a lad our counters were fashioned from dried turd.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[Milican]

1. Its fast. Most games are played in 30-min or less. Regular Risk can take 1 - 1.5 hours at least.
2. Easy to join network games
3. Online stats [sillysoft.net]
4. Easy chatting with other team players
5. You can play multiple games at once

I actually have the PC CD-ROM game of Risk, but the online play sucked and I got good enough where I could beat the computer AI every time. Lux is way faster and alot more fun to play. They add a few rule variations from standard Risk, but those rules speed up game play and fun considerably

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[Zenmonkeycat]

Of course I remember how to play; I used to play Risk with my friends all the time when I was younger. First you pick what country happens to be the most "totally awsome." (I happen to prefer "the Russkies" because those guys from down the street always say that they're "retarded" and "gay," and that makes me empathize with the Soviet bloc.) Then, you make up some crazy rules (such as "No, you can't move there, because Australia is stupid,") spend about 30 minutes looking at all the weird cards, and fina

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[patio11]

All I remember is owning Australia is key to world domination. You get to deploy your hordes of Crockodile Dundee, Jeff Corwin, and Mel Gibson in his before-he-got-religion period (well, OK, Passion is probably more violent than Thunderdome, but in a different way). And the beatdown commences.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[zxnos]

i always found that having the americas was key. only three avenues to be attacked from. then you can move into europe or africa while fortifying your position in the americas with bonus troops. just stay out of europe at the start if you want a chance.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[Red Flayer]

Depends on the game. Typically, Australia is much easier to conquer early in the game, when 2 armies per turn is very significant & can't be busted by a card trade-in.

The Americas are typically hotly contested, plus everyone is aware how powerful someone holding them is once they get settled -- so the other players will make sure you can't hold it.

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[kaoshin]

I used to play regularly, and almost every time there would be like these gigantic bloody civil wars being fought on aussie soil, and also over the americas. Getting sandwiched in the middle was usually a bad idea. Our games would end up with lots of fighting over really stupid diplomacy (you don't attack me here, and I won't attack you there). Sometimes treaties would be violated and there would be fistfights or board throwing. More often however, people would "go suicide", which basically meant that s

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[raoul666]

Basically, you just wait until everyone gets tired of it, then you knock down their pieces with yours. Some helpful hints:
1. Take as long as possible deciding troop placement, using obscure algorithms
2. To decide where to attack, make a large probability diagram with all possible outcomes
3. Roll all dice one at a time, saying a short prayer over each one of them. In Elvish, if possible

Using these, and other patent-pending ideas, World Domination(tm) can be yours!

Re:That's Friggin Brilliant...

[The Wooden Badger]

Looks like the guy that put this together doesn't remember how to play. What's up with every army in the territory moving to the one just conquered? Another good one was when I was trying to reposition troops, I clicked on where I wanted them to go rather than where they are moving from. I ended up having a territory without an army. WTF?

Now for some robots....

[Roguelazer]

Now all we need to do is combine this with giant Internet-guided robots and we'll be all set for World War

Re:Now for some robots....

[Cliff]

Naw....

Global Thermonuclear War

"Shall we play a game, Professor Falken?"

Wargames wouldn't have anything on that puppy! ;)

School

[saskboy]

I wonder if this would be a good way to encourage students to learn the geography they are so sorely lacking? What better way to learn where Uzbekistan is, than to invade Iran from it?

Re:School

[Trigun]

I hope that you've got luck on your side, because you should never start a land war in Asia.

Re:School

[Browncoat]

You should also never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. See? You can learn International Policy and Diplomacy from Princess Bride!

Re:School

[daeley]

You can learn anything and everything from Princess Bride. :)

Re:School

[CodeBuster]

Truley you have a dizzying intellect...perhaps you are just getting warmed up?

Re:School

[Gulthek]

"Wait 'til I get going!"

Re:School

[wizrd_nml]

I hope that you've got luck on your side, because you should never start a land war in Asia.

It's obvious George Bush doesn't play risk, otherwise he would have invaded Australia first.

Re:School

[hachete]

No. Not Australia.

"This is supposedly a true story from a recent Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by the head of the Australian DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division."

"They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ on this sort of thing are ex- (or future) computer game programmers. Anyway, as part of the reality pa

Re:School

[NMerriam]

I still think that Kamchatka doesn't exist, and that mapmakers just put it there because everyone KNOWS that's where it is supposed to be.

Re:School

[Danny Rathjens]

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
                            -- Ambrose Bierce

Re:School

[richdun]

What better way to learn where Uzbekistan is, than to invade Iran from it?

Damn CIA leaks...

Re:School

[HD Webdev]

I wonder if this would be a good way to encourage students to learn the geography they are so sorely lacking? What better way to learn where Uzbekistan is, than to invade Iran from it?

What's the point?

I'm pretty sure that GWB has already has new easy-to-pronounce names for all of those places we'll be liberating soon.

Re:School

[Phisbut]

What's the point? I'm pretty sure that GWB has already has new easy-to-pronounce names for all of those places we'll be liberating soon.

And based on most of the stuff he renamed in the past, it will probably sound like Freedomland or something like that...

Re:School

[joelsanda]

What better way to learn where Uzbekistan is, than to invade Iran from it?

What? There's a country other than the United States?

Re:School

[LittleBigLui]

What? There's a country other than the United States?

It's called yurop.

Re:School

[rxmd]

What better way to learn where Uzbekistan is, than to invade Iran from it?

I guess you haven't played enough, then :) Uzbekistan doesn't have a land border with Iran. Not that that's an absolute necessity for invasion, but it's usually considered a good idea. Afghanistan would be a better choice.

Re:School

[TwistedSquare]

Especially if you have troops stationed in Afghanistan already ;-)

Isn't it

[The-Perl-CD-Bookshel]

kinda creepy around my little Fujitsu P Series?

Shall we play a game?

[oskard]

Apparently the server was located in Quebec because as soon as I defeated the troops stationed there, the web site crashed.

Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?

remember old school risk players

[circletimessquare]

always start in australia ;-)

Re:remember old school risk players

[Malc]

Nah, it gets boring always winning. Much more fun to try to win from Ukraine or Mongolia.

Re:remember old school risk players

[Malc]

Err, that's the point of my comment. I guess I've won risk too often. I'd rather just have a laugh with my friends (who are sick of losing), and set myself a challenge in the process.

Re:remember old school risk players

[hackstraw]

australia

Yeah, that was an easy way. However, you had to get a decent number of armies to shield yourself in Australia and grow that number at a constant rate to defend against attacks and store up for the charge across the World (or just be very patient).

That is definitely the most conservative way to play, but there are many ways of defeating it.

Re:remember old school risk players

[fishbowl]

I'm trying to write an AI player for Risk. For placing armies and reinforcing borders, I've started with a heuristic approach that weighs the least number of fronts, the least continental fronts, the continent value, and maybe a continental affinity in the event of a tie. Depending on how you weigh the continent value against the number of continental borders, this always picks Japan or Argentina first, assuming the theatre is the original map.

I'm thinking there must be a "one true" next correct territory to put a unit, regardless of how many ready units there are, what the current state of the map is, etc. Likewise for attacking. Right now my AIPlayer attacks anywhere he has 3 or mor troop strength regardless of the opposition (very stupid, I know :-)

Trying to figure out this troop placement thing made me realize I don't actually have a working strategy as a human player. I've always basically just tried to get a connected map wherever my opponents weren't, or else just placed units randomly. But the more I look at it, the more I think the best early strategy is to take and hold South America. Trying to generalize the reasons for that strategy into something that would work for any map.

Re:remember old school risk players

[rcastro0]

Having played way more games of risk online on the web than Id care to admit I have rationalized the following principles as the usual strategy for playing with/against humans in the "conquer the world" usual rules. I think it describes very well the plot in most games among experienced risk players, and unfortunately for the sake of the fun it also means these games draag until someone loses their patience and either abandons the game right away or does it by breaking principle number 4 below.

1) Pick a co

Re:remember old school risk players

[Sir Holo]

The Risk-clone Lux from Silysoft [sillysoft.net] has an active developer community, including AI writers, and provides an SDK for them. There are some great user-made bots to check out - Nefarious, Killbot, BotOfDoom, Boscoe. Some bots will even play team-style, just like humans.

Uh-oh

[kramthegram]

If Bush finds this game he'll be calling for an all out assult on the green guys attacking from Mexico, America needs that continental bonus for our troops in Iraq!

Diplomacy

[lamasquerade]

I'd love to see a version of Diplomacy [wikipedia.org] made to work the same way - that is my favourite boardgame of all time and I believe Risk is based on it. Diplomacy's major strength though is the lack of die - it's all strategy and negotiation, chance plays just about no role (the allocation of countries at the beginning being the only exception).

I'd love to see an Axis & Allies Google API

[masterpenguin]

I think Axis and Allies [wikipedia.org] would be another fun version of google maps. Hell if someone did a true to the board game port to Google Maps, it would be more fun than that pc game they put out a while ago (IMO of course).

Are there any tutorials on how to play with google map's api?

Re:Diplomacy

[Hast]

And since Diplomacy relies so heavily on discussions you could make it a plug-in for GoogleTalk or GMail.

Another one, Supremacy

[The Wooden Badger]

I would love to see this done with Supremacy. That game is the bomb (pun intended).

Re:Diplomacy

[Dwindlehop]

http://snowplow.org/ [snowplow.org] has an online Diplomacy implementation.

Hello Professor

[Kortec]

Hello Professor; would you like to play a game of Search Engine War?

This would be fun...

[Donniedarkness]

If I had any friends to actually play with :(

Isn't the purpose of the computer to replace them?! Then why are there no bots!

a waste

[romit_icarus]

Cute, but i can't help thinking that if risk uses google just to get access to a world map, then it's such a waste of resource to use google maps...

Re:a waste

[Soporific]

What I think would be interesting is if you could take a section of say California and play with the city lines of your county or something to that effect. Or any country in the world for that matter. I think if you could incorporate that it might be more worthwhile.

~S

Re:a waste

[NeoThermic]

I get Sepulveda Boulevard because it sounds evil!

NeoThermic

GoogleEarth

[emjoi_gently]

I'd love a more dynamic api for GoogleEarth. At the moment it's fairly static. You can place things on the Earth, but you can't make them move. Too be able to have ICBMs flying between the US and the USSR, with little mushroom clouds....

I can't resist...

[markhb]

Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

That's nice, but I'll stick with warfish.net

[Futaba-chan]

Well, it's pretty, and all... but warfish.net [warfish.net] has a perfectly functional multiplayer play-over-the-web Risk implementation, using a stylized map, including several variants. The picture on the map doesn't matter nearly so much as the gameplay does....

Crap.

[Timewinder]

C'mon now, I haven't even managed to finish the last game of RISK I started...

It's been 3 weeks, dear god someone help me...

Great Free Online Risk like game

[mikapc]

Check out globalcombat.com , it is an excellent improved upon version of risk that I've played for years on and off. It is web based and allows multiplayer games of anywhere between 2 and 32 players. Turn rates can be anywhere from 1 minute to 72 hours. Check it out.

Perfect

[oncebitten]

So now Rimmer can blog his Risk campaign book *and* play at the same time.

Then again, he's too much of a smeg head to multitask like that.

Hear that?

[aspjunkie]

What's that awful sound?
The collective squeal of thousands of nerds in excitement of a Google/Risk mashup.

Gentlemen! Grab your tin hats!

[The Philosophers Cat]

People dont be fooled! This isn't a game. . .

It's Google's simulation

. . .for world domination!!

ARGHHH!!!! Run for the Hills!!

Not very realistic...

[areve]

...everybody knows New Zealand isn't on the real map.

Gratuitous

[CowboyRobot]

Using Google Maps is totally gratuitous here. Zooming in to get more detailed terrain actually inhibits gameplay rather than enhances it. A really good free, online, multiplayer game of this sort is Conqueror! [conquerorgame.com] - which is not Risk, but takes some of the ideas of Risk and Axis & Allies and uses them in the context of Medieval Europe.

Konqueror support?

[wikinerd]

It doesn't support my favourite Web browser [konqueror.org], so I guess if I want to play it I will have to wait until they (Google Maps and everyone else who uses AJAX) fix their website.

Re:Konqueror support?

[Fuzuli]

or maybe it's time you should accept the fact that your favorite browser is not used by necessary number of users, and therefore is not considered worth working on by google.
if you don't have a very special connection to your browser(and i can't imagine what would that be), i suggest you to check out firefox.
you may have to wait for a loooooong time ...

It's not as if nobody saw THIS coming...

[constantnormal]

While it's obviously way early in development, I think it needs to be fleshed out with an econometric AI (something like the one that runs Sim City), time controls (game time and real time) on making moves, and the ability to zoom in (Google Earth style, of course) to a fictional society based on the data from the econometric model. Here is yet another field for Google to sashay into and dominate, providing a hosting environment for subscriber-based private/public games.

I can see a modern civil war game (c

Satellite-image Maps? Nothing new.

[Sir Holo]

Lux from Sillysoft [sillysoft.net] has tons of user-made maps based on satellite images. And not just the "standard" Risk world map, but many others, too. It's a generalization of Risk-type game play, allowing just about any kind of map.

Of all of the Risk clones around, Lux probably draws the most tweakers and programmers. Users make maps, AIs, and random-map generators. Players rate them. Ranked online play, too, just in case you had a social life you needed to get rid of.

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[YrWrstNtmr]

Talk about a 0.1 alpha version. Give it time.

GoogleRisk - 2010
Played in realtime, lifesize, via mobile phone, in one or more major cities in each 'territory'.

Risk is quite possibly the classic 'world war' game. A few hundred years of seasoning, and it may be equivalent to chess.

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[lamasquerade]

You know I really wonder about comments like these. Is there some sort of negative Slashdot commenter's club that you join or are you guys just a bunch of unhappy people? I mean, someone goes out and creates something pretty cool, he/she announces it on a mailinglist for some feedback, and you just give this incredibly negative why-even-bother type comment. Not criticism either, no real points are raised, just a bashing of the effort. I just don't get it - why, in fact, do you bother?

For the record I think it looks pretty cool and no doubt will only get better. Oh and as for making it on an API that 'clearly isn't meant to support such a game' - isn't that the hacking mentality? Go out and create something that wasn't even envisioned... just for fun!

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[B1ackDragon]

Are you familiar with the greater internet fuckwad theory [penny-arcade.com]?

Re:Anti-slash

[Quattro Vezina]

Exactly. Those fucktards are exactly why I think the editors should ban more people.

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not only is it single terminal only, but your forced to play..."

Me fail English? That's unpossible.

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[Anonymous Coward]

...made on an api that clearly isnt meant to support such a game.

That's exactly why it's cool! Don't you understand hack-value?

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[mrchaotica]

made on an api that clearly isnt meant to support such a game.

On the contrary, making a Risk clone has been obvious ever since the Google Maps API came out.

Re:Talk about google infatuation

[mrchaotica]

Search the Slashdot discussion about the "Carmen Sandiego" Google Maps game -- somebody else mentioned implementing Risk in that thread. Me and the guy who actually implemented the idea aren't the only ones who've thought of it.

Re:wiki /. warning

[Phroggy]

Wow... the wikipedia has a "warning, we've been slashdotted" template... Are there that many trolls?

Yes.

Re:I wonder how long before Google....

[wootest]

There's an official Google Maps API which I believe this is using. However, if Risk is actively protected to the extent that he's being sent nastygrams, he'll probably have to pull it or Google will have to retract his API key (I don't think the license allows for that kind of usage).

Re:I'm waiting for Diplomacy...

[Cochonou]

Here is an introduction [diplomacy-archive.com] for people that don't know (yet) the fantastic game called Diplomacy [wikipedia.org]. It is available as a board game [wizards.com], a computer game [diplomacy-pcgame.com] , or you can just play it by email [diplom.org]. Highly recommanded !