I Tried Creating a Game Using Real-World Geographic Data

A little experimental game I've been working on recently, where you fly around a tiny version of the world and deliver packages to various cities. Would love to hear any ideas you might have about how this could be taken further!

Earth data from:

Music:
Faith - Michael FK
It Will Come Back - The Stolen Orchestra
Icicle Caverns - Cast of Characters
On Earth - We Dream of Eden
Nightingale - Emorie
Heart Caligraphy - Cody Martin
Cosmic Waves - Michael FK
Living - Borrtex
Wonderland - Shimmer
Falling Through the Hourglass - Sid Acharya
The Art of Loneliness - ANBR
Another Time Another Place - Sounds Like Sander
Summit - Gray North
Parachutes - Michael FK

Chapters:
0:00 Intro (feat. Ori)
0:36 In Which a Cube Becomes a Sphere
2:06 Topography and Bathymetry
2:38 Latitude and Longitude Conversions
3:24 A Vertically Exaggerated World
6:10 Flying About the Planet
7:35 Frustum Culling Optimization
8:20 Generating a Normal Map
10:09 A Splash of Colour
10:39 Countries and Cities
12:06 Drawing Borders
13:07 Country Highlights
15:37 Drawing the Oceans
18:01 Some Gigantic Boats
20:05 Cloud Experiments
24:08 Custom Shadow Casting
25:39 Atmosphere Test
26:44 Parachuting Packages
28:00 Let's Play!
31:27 Outro (feat. Ori and Beemo)

[Jabrils]

30 mins? damn the gods are shining down on us today boys

[GrowingGhosty]

This would be an INCREDIBLE learning tool to educate on geography. You could even add difficulty levels, such as displaying major roadways for an easier challenge.

[taxfraud]

Expectation: coding a game from scratch

Reality: developer teaching us geology every second

[jaimeferaer]

He’s like the bob ross of coding he’s voice is so comforting along with the music

[ThaCodeFreak]

I consider myself an advanced coder, having a degree in computer science and working in the field, even spending my time outside of work expanding my knowledge base in personal projects. HOWEVER, when I watch Sebastian Lague videos I cant help but feel an overwhelming sense of awe. This content contains the absolute highest quality of storytelling, production, and visuals that fully immerse the viewer into the thought process of building these magnificent worlds. As always a great experience, keep up the hard work!

[kentabenno]

This game could become really engaging if you added some "learning" mode, where players are guided to the destination (with some form of arrow, minimap or whatever) for the first few flights, so they have a chance to memorize the locations of the countries/cities. And this could get gradually more difficult, starting with the big, well known countries and proceeding to smaller countries along the way.

[tymz-r-achangin]

I'm 48yo, built my own computer, have no idea how you find all that technical information that you needed to put those things together, but I'm fascinated enough that I watched your video twice

[lilitbeglarian]

If you reskin this with Santa Claus this would be such an AMAZING Christmas game. I've been subbed to your channel for a few years and I'm constantly in awe of you, you are a massive inspiration.

[Mekose]

This would actually be a fantastic and marketable Geoguesser type game. Have settings for difficulty like population of city, city lights, compass, name of country on the map, etc. I could see this being a full game or program for students to learn geography.

[MizManFryingP]

"I've been playing around with this built-in trail renderer effect but I struggled to get it to do exactly what I wanted, so I decided to write my own trail renderer, and now, several hours later, I'm struggling to get *that* to do what I want instead."

I think every programmer ever relates to this haha

[dl]

18:20 "Strange, apart from the boat being about 150km long" That made me lol

[jraulc]

Logic analytic, sense of humor, creativity and humbleness in this dude are far beyond the imagination...

[esdenaze]

This is so immensely humbling, that there are people out there who can make something like this in their 'spare time'.

[lwouisYT]

@Sebastian Lague: there is a large community of people playing a game called Geoguessr. Your game's gameplay could cater to them. There doesn't need to be fighting and shooting. Exploring the world is a great adventure in and off itself, especially with more details/specifics to explore (e.g. you could introduce landmarks, vegetation, buildings, roads, etc)

[BuhdaPunk]

You have a huge opportunity to turn this flying delivery app into an educational game used to teach geography, history, math, science, communication skills and economics all in one app.

[JustKeigA]

This is absolutely Beautiful!
Even i didnt understand most of the codes. it was so fascinating to watch this !
Thank you.
Greetings from a Newcomer in Gamedev =D

[skulliam]

When you added the boats, I was silently hoping you'd use real trade route data to generate the paths

[DaedalusYoung]

So, here's a suggestion: you can have different difficulty levels. Some cities are better known than others, so on the easier difficulty settings, you get big cities, like London, Paris, Barcelona. Everyone will know where these cities are. Then when you move to a higher difficulty, you add smaller cities to be found. This gives the player a sense of progression. Maybe on day 1 of playing, you can only complete level 1, but as you learn where the smaller cities are, on day 2 you might complete level 2.

[AstorSkywalker]

When you find a video that mixes coding, NASA and tectonic plates you know you are in for a treat! 😊

[potsuaye]

There's something about watching a dude with a calm voice and calm editing while making my own game that is such an enjoyment