Scenic Routes in Plates Across America®

In the Plates Across America® game, you (virtually) travel across and throughout the country.  There are the country-spanning routes that serve as the main travel options, but as you travel these longer routes, you will unlock shorter ones, most of which are famous scenic routes and byways.

The Scenic Routes

There are over 180 different scenic routes in the game. These were chosen from some of the popular and most scenic highways and byways that exist across the United States.  Here's a sample of some of the scenic routes available in the game:

Beartooth Highway Blue Ridge Parkway Catskill Mountains Scenic Byway Connecticut River Scenic Byway Country Music Highway Dalton Highway Flint Hills Scenic Byway Going to the Sun Road Great Basin Highway Hamakua Coast Drive Michigan Gold Coast

Natchez Trace Parkway Ohio River Scenic Byway Overseas Highway Pike's Peak Highway Red Rock Scenic Byway San Juan Skyway Selkirk Loop Seward Highway Texas Hill Country Top of the Rockies Utah Route 12 Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway

Scenic Route Signs

One of the main goals of designing our game was to instill a sense of traveling. One way we have done that is to reproduce the type of signs you would see along the way. We have a Blog Article that discusses the road and route number signs we added, but for the scenic routes and byways, they often have their own special sign designs. 

For example, the Texas Hill Country Trail scenic route includes these road number signs:

However, you will also occasionally see these special signs along the way which look like this:

In the game, we reproduce this experience by also occasionally showing the special signs instead of the road sign numbers.

State-wide Scenic Route Signs

For many scenic routes, like the Texas Hill Country Trail, they are special enough that to have a dedicated sign, but not all scenic routes take this approach.  Many states will have their own scenic highway designation with a corresponding state-wide sign. For example, in Colorado, many of the scenic routes, like Top of the Rockies, will use the the same sign as shown at right.

National Park Road Signs

Some of the game's scenic routes are road inside National Parks. These do not usually have any special designation along the road, but we did create a sign for them that fits in with the other signage you typically see along the roads in the parks (see image at right).

Conclusion

We hope this gives you a little extra insight into Plates Across America®.  There's a lot of game design work that went into creating these route signs and though this is not a prominent feature of the game, we feel that these subtle additions are important to give the players a better sense of the traveling dynamics of the game.

If you have not played our game before, try it out here for free:

Play Plates Across America®

Happy Travels!

Lightning Rounds

With the revised version of Plates Across America®, we introduced a new feature we call "Lightning Rounds".  This gives you 5 additional puzzles to solve to get some extra points, but there is a catch: you have a limited time in which to solve each puzzle. The effect of adding a timer changes the dynamics of the game considerably.  The brain is a funny thing: time pressure tends to reduce how well it works.  

History

Before we released the game to the public, the timed puzzle concept was in consideration for use in the entire game. We experimented with various timer durations and found as they got shorter, the anxiety it produced for players was sometimes overwhelming. Some people would get visibly upset and seriously stressed and this was just playing a demo of a game.

We eventually abandoned the timer for the main single-person game, though we retained it for the two-player game. A timer is necessary in multi-player games or else you potentially have one player getting frustrated with the slow play of the opposing player. However, with our latest redesign, we have re-introduced the timed feature for the single-player game, though in this limited way with these Lightning Rounds.

Lightning Round Triggers

The Lightning Rounds will show up when you reach some types of interesting locations: tourist towns, quirky roadside attractions, hot springs, etc. You can now choose to accept this adrenaline charged challenge, or decline it each time it is triggered. By playing the Lightning Round, you can accumulate more "ride points", which you can use to customize your vehicle. You can also choose to stop the Lightning Round notices from appearing to you.

Duration of a Lightning Round

You are given the choice of 3 levels for the Lightning Rounds from hardest to easiest, where the amount of time determines the difficulty.  The less time you choose, the more ride points you can earn.

If you have not played our game before, try it out here for free:

Play Plates Across America®

Happy Travels!

Dictionary Improvements

We recently made some big improvements to the Plates Across America® dictionary. Our game's dictionary is the critical starting point for the word puzzles that appear on the license plates.

Starting State

Before the latest refresh, our dictionary had 99,857 words. This generated 14,900 unique word puzzles with a little over 8 million possible solutions across them. These numbers sound relatively good, but as you will see below, we needed an even better game dictionary.

We formed the initial dictionary from multiple non-commercial sources since we had a very limited budget when we first started creating the game. These "free" dictionaries all had some quality problems, so we opted to use them all in a "voting" scheme where we (conservatively) only included words that we saw appearing in multiple dictionaries.

In Game Improvements

Because we took a conservative approach, we knew the dictionary had gaps, so we added a feature to allow users to suggest new entries from within the game. If the game flagged your answer as not matching (because it was not in our dictionary), you could click a link to notify us and we would then review it. We built tools and a process to review player suggestions and add them to the dictionary. We even added a special "badge" (at right) to recognize the player's contributions.

As more players joined the game, our queue of suggested dictionary additions got busy. Reviewing these confirmed our suspicion that we had gaps. We realized that the gaps might be bigger than we expected. The dictionary issues were becoming our biggest problem to address.

Dictionary Improvements

Since we first built the dictionary, we have found a few other freely available dictionaries. The best one we found had some issues of allowing some hyphenated words and capitalized words (proper nouns), which are not valid answers according to our game rules. However, the number of good words it had was significant, so we decided to take the bad with the good. We'll eventually remove the bad words, but we felt being more liberal about what is included in the dictionary was a better decision. Our first attempt was way too conservative.

Our resulting dictionary has 172,584 words. On first glance it looks like we added 72,727 (172,584 - 99,857). However, during the dictionary upgrade process, we detected 21,072 "bad" words in the original dictionary. Thus, this new dictionary source effectively added 93,799 new words: double the size.  This new dictionary bumped up the number of possible word puzzles to nearly 16,000 and the total solution count across them to just shy of 15 million.

Conclusion

All in all, our dictionary was significantly transformed and improved with our latest efforts. For those that played our game and were flagged for wrong answers for valid words, we wish we could go back in time to prevent that, but at least we have made some strides to prevented it in the future.

If you have never tried our game before, please try it out here:

https://platesacrossamerica.com

Happy Travels!

Designing the Vehicle Avatars for Plates Across America®

The vehicle styled avatars in our game was one of the last big features we added before we undertook our recent, major redesign. Not only can you choose which type of vehicle you want other players view for you, but you can also customize your avatar with different paint colors, accessories and modifications. Many players liked the vehicle avatars so we did not change it at all when we recently relaunched with our new version of Plates Across America®.

Back when we added this feature, we created 16 vehicle types since we wanted to give you a wide variety of avatars to choose from. We still have a long wish list of vehicles we want to create and add. In the coming weeks, we plan to add a number of new vehicle types, so stay tuned as we roll them out. These will all be fun additions to our vehicle avatar choices.

Below, we give a brief "behind the scenes" look at the process we use to create these vehicle avatars.

Designing the Avatars

Idea Phase

Cars, bikes and trucks are rich areas for ideas, especially when you consider not just the contemporary offerings, but all the vehicles throughout history. There are also appearances in popular culture to add to the richness of choices. Thus, coming up with the initial ideas is easy, but there are some limitations to consider:

• Variety - we do not want to have avatars that are highly similar, so we try to find a "category" or "type" that is distinguished from the others.
• Copyright - as much as we would like to offer avatars like the Batmobile or other vehicles from popular culture, we also very much like not being contacted by lawyers with cease-and-desist letters or seeking royalty payments.
• Priority - we needed to consider which vehicles will have the most appeal and interest for players.

Sampling Phase

Once we have settled on the type of vehicle, we hunt around the Internet (usually using Google's image search) for examples fitting this genre. We do not use these images directly, but they serve as inspiration for our avatar drawings. We look for images showing a nice clean side profile as that is how all our avatars appear. We sometimes need to horizontally flip the images as our avatars face to the right.

Drawing Phase

We use the open-source program Gimp to do the design (it's like Photoshop, only better). The trickiest part of the design work is planning the "layers".  

We use the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format to render the avatars on our website and Gimp supports this with its "path" feature. The SVG format is more flexible that using plain old GIF, PNG or JPG images and it allows us to more easily provide the customization feature. We actually use multiple SVG images, one on top of the other, so that we can "insert" an accessory or change color. For example, look at our convertible avatar below:

Notice the black door guard band across the body. When you change the color of the car, we want only the body to change color and not the door guard, i.e., we want this:

We achieve this by putting the body drawing on one layer and the door guard on a layer above it. Then we can change only the body color, redraw and the black body guard is rendered over the body's yellow coloring.  

This layering approach is a common pattern used in most design software, including Gimp, so we are able to create each SVG layer in its own Gimp layer. Notice that the rear view mirror of the vehicle is also in the upper layer and gets drawn over the body color too.

We also have to consider the customizable accessories for the vehicle when we plan out the layers. For example, adding purple stripes like this:

means we need another layer between the body and the door guards since you probably would not paint stripes over the rubber door guard in real life.  When a vehicle has lots of different accessories, the layer planning gets more complex.

Coding Phase

We then use the "export path" feature of Gimp to output a separate file for each SVG layer. These files will become part of our source code. Inside our code, we maintain a list of all available vehicle types and what accessories it has. We add the new type to that list, its accessories and include the names of all the new SVG files. We also set the game cost for the vehicles (in "ride points") and decide at what point in the game the new vehicle will be "unlocked" and available. Vehicles get unlocked in groups as you reach milestones, so here we determine which group it should be in.

We have a special vehicle test page which allows us to view the result and visually verify it before we make them part of the next game release.  An important part of this visual verification is to make sure the left-facing, mirror image looks correct.  In our two-player game, we render the player's avatar in the default right-facing view, but their opponent is mirrored so that the avatars appear facing one another.

Conclusion

We hope this glimpse into the design process for our vehicle avatars was interesting. It can sometimes be a tedious chore to draw out all the layers of a new vehicle, but it is always exciting at the end when it all finally comes to life as a new avatar choice in Plates Across America®.

If you have never tried our game before, please do here:

https://platesacrossamerica.com

Happy Travels!

Why Sign In to Plates Across America®?

Plates Across America™ provides a demo of its single-player game so that you can know if you would be interested in playing. We know that signing up for a new, possibly unknown service makes a lot of people nervous. However, the two-player racing game is not available in the demo and requires signing into our game. Why? 

There's a much longer article that could be written with the technical details, but the short answer is:

to improve security and prevent abuse. 

Once you provide the ability for more than one person to interact on a website, the potential for it to become a problem grows significantly. You would not be playing our game for very long if people started harassing you, whether it be with malicious intent, offensive content or trying to sell you something. 

Requiring people to log in, and verifying their email, provide a first defense to prevent anonymous people from doing bad things. As a second line of defense, even if some "bad actors" do sign up and begin to behave badly, we have the ability to block their account to ensure the abuse is stopped. Our terms of service outlines what we will not tolerate and ensures we have the right to deny access to abusers.

We hope this explanation gives you a better understanding of why we require signing up to play the more compelling two-person race game. If you are ready to sign up and try out the race game, just visit: 

Plates Across America™ sign-in page

Happy Travels!

Head to Head Race Game

We just finished deploying the most significant release since we first launched Plates Across America™. We'll cover all the changes and new features in a series of short articles. The most important addition in this release, by far, and the one that this article covers is the new "Race Game" feature.

Play Plates Across America ® here

Original Race Game Concept 

The first version of the Race Game feature existed long before we released Plates Across America and it was quite different from what we now have.  The original feature allowed up to 8 players and offered in-game chat messages.  It was set up to be much more like a "live" race with entry fees and prizes for the top 3 finishers. This was a pretty interesting "race-like" idea, but not very practical for this type of (somewhat leisurely) word game.

Requiring all players to be on-line at the same time and to remain for the duration of the game was a bit too constraining for a word game.  We ditched this idea before the first release and decided to launch the game with just the solo "Travel" mode.  Meanwhile, in the background, our game designers were re-thinking how to reintroduce a multi-player version back into the game.

2 Person Race Game

For the publicly available race feature we just released, we now have a 2 person race game which allows you to play a specific person, or you can allow us to find a matching race partner (we'll discuss how we pick partners in a future article). For fairness, each player will get the exact same sequence of puzzles in a race and they can completed it at their own pace. The winner of the Race is the person who completes the route in the fewest possible puzzles. If there's a tie on the puzzle count, the percent correct score is used as a tie-breaker, and if that too is the same, the game ends in a tie.

Choice of Race Game Length

Another nice feature is the ability to select your preferred race length. The choices are: short, medium, long and extra long.  The race route will be chosen randomly from the routes based on their distance and your preference.

We are very excited about the release of this new Race feature. We have known this would be an important addition to Plates Across America and have worked hard to get this out as soon as we could. We hope you are able to try it out and that you find it enjoyable.

Why Do I See an Alaska license plate?

Want to know how Plates Across America™ decides which license plate to show in the game? If so, then read on for all the nitty-gritty details. First, we will give you a some hints on some upcoming features since they are directly related to license plates.

Which License Plates?

Every state (and D.C.) can have multiple license plates. Further, each license plate has two important attributes: 1) what years the license plate was in use; and 2) how common the license plate was during that time.  In our early versions of the game, neither of these is much of a factor since we only have a single plate for each state. However, we are working on extending the set of license plates in the game and will be working this into some interesting new route concepts.

With that as some background, when a new puzzle is displayed, exactly what happens to decide which license plate to show? First, we look at your avatar's current location in the game. Most of the time, you get a plate from the state your avatar is in (and eventually the "time" you are in). If there is more than one plate for the state (and time), then we'll randomly pick one based on how common it is. To simulate what you might experience in the real world, we look at your immediate location (in the game) and a few mile radius from where you are. When you travel in real life, as you near the borders of states you tend to see plates from the neighboring states more often then if you were in the interior of the state. In the game, the likelihood of seeing a plate from the current state or neighboring state depends on how close you are to the border and the relative populations of cities in that area.

What about Random Out of State License Plates?

Most of the time we look at your avatar's current location, but not all of the time. Ever see a car with an out of state license plate from far away? We simulate this in the game by occasionally picking a state from the other states. In the real world you are more likely to see plates from places like New York, California, Florida, Michigan, etc. because those places simply have more people which increases the likelihood that a visitor is from there. It is much less likely to see a plate from North Dakota given how few people live there.  Therefore, when the game does decide to pick from other states, it does so based upon the relative populations of the states.

So there you have it, the full details of how the license plates get picked in Plates Across America™.

Mileage Signs in Plates Across America®

We release a minor update of Plates Across America® today which adds road mileage signs. On some of the longer routes, this helps break up the trip and give you a peek into the upcoming cities.

Frequency of Mileage Signs

We tried to make these to increase the sense of travel of the game without being a distraction. This is a balance in how frequently these signs should show up. We also did not want to manually generate these signs across all our routes, so we needed some sort of algorithm. We wondered if real civil engineers face a similar problems when they have to decide the signage to put on roads.

We settled on putting the first sign about 10 miles into the route and spacing them about every 30 miles. We think that provides a good distance between them and matches our intuition about what our real-world experiences have been on the road.

Which Cities to Show on Mileage Signs

After we decided where to place the signs, we approached the somewhat more complex decision about "what" should appear on the signs. Which cities warrant being on there and which ones do not? The size of the city certainly matters, but so does its proximity to the current location.  This initially seemed like it could get complicated with a lot of nuances and edge cases. In the end, we found something relatively simpler that seems to do a decent job of mimicking the real world.

We use a two pass solution, looking for major cities first, out to the fixed distance of 120 miles, and then filling in minor cities between the the current location and the first major city. A major city is defined as one that has a population over 250,000.  If there are no major cities in the next 120 miles, we simply take the next 3 largest cities to show.  Simple, but seems to be effective.

Click here to try Plates Across America for free and let us know what you think. 

About Plates Across America®, Our Travel Themed Word Game

Plates Across America® is an online game that combines solving word puzzles which appear on license plates with traveling across the United States along some of its most famous routes.  We provide a free demo which does not require signing up and a free trial of the full game if you register.

Free Plates Across America® Demo

Respect For Privacy

The Plates Across America game is being developed by a family-based startup. We are trying to buck the "free game" trend where the cost is "free" only if you put zero value on your privacy. This might be a tall order in today's Internet environment, but we are going to try. In a world where "Spying on You" is replaced with jargon such as "Analytics" and "Re-targeting", we deliberately avoid tracking your every move. This decision limits the types of data we have access to, but when weighing the value we (the company) get against the cost to our customers of surrendering their privacy, we feel the answer is quite clear.

Word Game with Virtual Travel

We began software development of the game in the Spring of 2019, though the genesis of using license plates as a source of word puzzles goes back many years in our family. By 2019, we thought the clever word puzzle idea combined with aspects of virtual travel would also have some entertainment value for others. Here in the Spring of 2020, as we were getting ready to put out our first release, the global pandemic has hit hard and the world is a very different place. If anything, the popularity of "virtual travel" has increased. Maybe this will increase the value some people find in the game, or at least help them pass their quarantine time more enjoyably. For us personally, developing the game as a family has been much more fun than watching the constant, and often depressing, news cycle.

In its current web-based form, the game is enjoyable for those who like word games. We will be continuing to improve the game play to make it more enjoyable, accessible and hopefully to broaden its appeal. We have a long list of exciting future features and only wish we had enough time to work on all of them.

Happy travels and stay safe!

Notes from Our First Release of Plates Across America®

We reached an important milestone today in the development of the Plates Across America (TM) game. With today's release, we added a very useful interactive free demo and we've completely redesigned the user interface.  Although the first "soft release" happened a few weeks back, today's release is the first one that is ready for more than just friends and family. Feel free to check it out here:

Game Screenshot

Plates Across America Free Game Demo

For those that might be interested in the game's history, the basic premise on the word puzzles stretches back years. This seemed novel and catchy enough that we saw potential. Somewhere around March 2019, the word puzzle idea was combined with the travel theme and the game started to take shape. Initial prototypes and algorithms were developed in the ensuing months, and work toward building the web-based version started in the Summer of 2019.

The web-based version is just the starting point to help us get up and going quickly so we can refine the ideas. Once we feel it is refined enough, we will be creating mobile app versions.

If you try our game, we would love to get your feedback.