Developers use Google Maps data for game environments
26 posts across 6 communities in the last 60 days; 42% from r/IndieDev.
“This is Sangimon, the game I’m working on. The clip starts above Pisa and zooms down to the Leaning Tower, then moves through some of the other cities. I’m trying to keep the actual street layouts, squares and landmarks recognizable, right down to the smaller details. You can…”
“Hey People! I'm a solo indie developer from Italy, and I've just launched WHEREHUMANS (TODAY) , this little hybrid geography game I've been working on. I think it's pretty cool haha. It started with the idea of Headcount: you're given a population target and have to draw areas…”
“Hi there. Is there any easy source of getting a rough map structure that I can turn into data for a game? Let's say I want my game world to roughly resemble earth with its countries, major cities, major roads, biomes, and land shape. I just want a few files. It doesn't have to…”
Multiple developers are incorporating real-world map data from Google Maps into their games, particularly to represent roads or landscapes. This indicates a trend towards realistic or geographically grounded game design and potentially simplifies environment creation.
SOURCES (33)
“You know how the cars on ride-hailing apps like inDrive move around the map, and how they look like tiny glossy toys from above? I liked that more than I should have, so I asked myself why it couldn’t be a game. Now it is…”
“This is Sangimon, the game I’m working on. The clip starts above Pisa and zooms down to the Leaning Tower, then moves through some of the other cities. I’m trying to keep the actual street layouts, squares and landmarks recognizable, right down to the smaller details. You can walk around with other players and follow quests that lead you to places around each city. It runs in the browser. You can try it here: https://www.sangimon.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sate”
“Hey People! I'm a solo indie developer from Italy, and I've just launched WHEREHUMANS (TODAY) , this little hybrid geography game I've been working on. I think it's pretty cool haha. It started with the idea of Headcount: you're given a population target and have to draw areas on a world map to get as close as possible. There's standard Classic, Survival, 1v1 duels and Ranked . But I didn't want to stop there, so I mixed in some GeoGuessr! In REAL MODE , you also expl”
“Hi there. Is there any easy source of getting a rough map structure that I can turn into data for a game? Let's say I want my game world to roughly resemble earth with its countries, major cities, major roads, biomes, and land shape. I just want a few files. It doesn't have to be perfect. I don't need lidar or anything crazy like that. I just want the rough interpretation of the planet. I want to sample an area, and have access to: This area is in Northern Ontario, Thunder Bay. It is”
“I’m building a game that is going to be based on a small town in Colorado. I’m replicating the town exactly, exact road structures, buildings facades, even interiors of buildings using the floor plans, built to scale. This is all built on publicly available information that I have found online, but what are the chances someone gets pissed their house is in a game? The game is going to be focused around exploring so it’s going to encourage players to go in houses. More than likely I’m overthinkin”
“Inspired by living in NY for a few years. Short clips from the first area I’ve been working on. submitted by /u/cyniko [link] [comments]”
“Hey everyone, I'm building simple Android apps on the side. Whero isn't an original concept — it's my own implementation of the GeoGuessr-style idea (guess the location from a street-view panorama), just as a small standalone game rather than a full clone. Google requires new developer accounts to run a closed test with at least 12 opted-in testers for 14 days before the app can go live on the Play Store. That's where I need help. What's needed from you: Join the tester group”
“Just tried it, my geography is worse than I thought and now I'm getting side-eyed by my plant named Zeppelin.”
“I've been building Nooks, a browser-based voxel viewer for the entire Earth. The world comes from geographic data rather than a manually modelled scene (though some of it was made with manual help). Lighting and atmosphere help make the result feel like a place rather than just a dataset. The screenshot is Paris. Try the viewer: https://app.nooks.place/ If something breaks, the browser/device and what you were doing would be useful. I'm the creator. This preview is for exploration; editi”
“I'm thinking of creating a friendslop pvp game using Google Earth imagery. I've tried importing google earth to racing games in the past and gotten as far as driving a couple of feet down the road, but it was too much work. I need ideas for a game where people pvp in a small area somehow, like what characters are controlling (birds bugs or whatnot) that fully utilize the janky symmetry of Google earth footage. Also, any ideas for areas I could use where the playable characters complement”
“Hello, I've been working on this for the last few days. I've got the inspiration from a game called Songless and I wanted to replicate that feeling of starting with minimal information and building up, but for geography. This is the game I came up with. You start with a map zoomed in to 500m and every wrong guess zooms the map further out. The map is stripped of street names and everything else. Link to the site: https://www.geographygames.net/guess-the-city Hope you guys like it. If you”
“it would make more sense if you prompted users to click the start and end locations. For all we know it's just randomly wandering and saying solved for a fake path”
“My friend group was playing a janky version of this game in Google Drive and it was a ton of fun, so I’m turning it into a video game for my first ever game. submitted by /u/Ogskive [link] [comments]”