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My First Duck

1 points by rdj ↗ HN
Too often, I catch myself thinking, just one more feature, or bug fix, or design change, before I tell anyone about a project. However, I became quite inspired by the post by patio11: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=448842

So, I've started making my duck (a location-based, social gaming platform). Right now, this consists of a lot of little experiments and mini-projects. The first of which I call "The Booking Desk" (http://10balloons.com/bd/index.php?y).

This app allows you to view mugshots and try to match it to the crime (listed in one of the options on the right). Right now, I'm at Duck 1.0, but hopefully I can build off the momentum and make it to Duck 1.2. For now, thanks Patio! And I hope someone has fun playing with this.

4 comments

[ 154 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] thread
chaosprophet
Are these real mugshots of people actually convicted??? If that is the case, then I have a big ethical problem about this 'game'.

The purpose of a game should be to provide fun and put a smile on the player's face, and it should be done in such a manner that others are not being demeaned in the process.

Sorry if this sounds rude, but this is absolutely disgusting to me.

EDIT: According to your help link, these aren't even convicted people, only those who have been arrested, which makes this even worse.

rdj
I have no problem with your disagreement and I certainly appreciate that you took the time to say something.

The issue you highlighted is interesting. We have someone who has been accused of a crime, but not convicted yet. Is it right or wrong to post their photo and info? Is it worse that it was turned into a game? Part of this experiment was to test some of those assumptions and I won't try to persuade you one way or another. I will say, the photo and text came from a source that posts these bookings online, full name, age and date of arrest.

barry-cotter
That isn't bad. It should automatically move to the next mugshot when I click on a charge though. Also allowing retries is lame, give right or wrong, and only reuse if they've gone through all the images. Finally, it'd be more cracktastic if it was always one more, just one more... As it is, you have to make a decision to do another 5 after the first five. And another thing, if you implement that then I want a moving updated percentage of my performance.

I think you've got the seeds of an FB app here. Good job.

rdj
The auto-change is actually in the code, but the first beta-testers complained. Sounds like I may need to make it configurable, or redesign the was transitions happen.

Your ideas about "just one more" and updated percentages sound interesting. Definitely 1.2 material.

Thank you for the feedback.