Escaper

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  The Game in action with the UK map

Inspiration

I was recently using this website, iafisher.com, to see how many cities I could name, and so I felt inspired to create a project around databases and naming cities. I was also inspired by train routes across Europe, especially considering the theme of murder mystery and the famous example of Murder on the Orient Express

What it does

It acts as a small game where the aim is to navigate across either the UK or Europe, yet only through naming cities that are in close proximity to each other

How I built it

The city data was gotten from simplemaps.com, and the image of the maps where edited screenshots of google maps.

I used SQLite as a database to contain the cities and Java for the main program. I used JSwing to create the graphics and JDBC-SQLite to connect the database

Challenges I ran into

The hardest and most unexpected challenge was the difficulty of representing latitude and longitude on a 2d image as they technically refer to a position on a globe.

I eventually solved this through researching the projection used by google maps, and then adjusting the coords using a mathematical formula to match the projection in a 2d format

Of course, not having that much experience with JSwing, I found the visual aspect of the program to be quite challenging to create as well.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am really proud of my incorporation of databases with maps as I found it quite a cool a feature to implement despite the difficulties

What I learned

Well among other things, I learnt about JSwing, Mercator projections, and connecting to databases via java.

What's next for Escaper

In the final moments of the competition, I was able to incorporate a Europe map, however there is the possibility of introducing many more maps.

Additionally, I was thinking of expanding the database with more cities as well as adding more mechanics such a pursuing detective for example to create tension.

Built With

• google-maps
• java
• jdbc
• jswing
• sqlite