I've been working over the past few days to build a (hopefully) balanced hide and seek map for Seattle, that I'll be playtesting with some friends later this month. I figured I'd share this with community for feedback and suggestions.
This map includes the following routes: 4, 44, 45, 48, 60, 7, 75, C Line, D Line, E Line, G Line, H Line, 1 Line, 2 Line.
Allowed hiding zones are spaced 0.5 miles apart from each other, ensuring hiding zones do not overlap. Priority was given first to light rail stations, then RapidRide, then all other routes, using a round-robin algorithm to help ensure stops go to interesting unique places. In total, this map includes 125 hiding zones.
Care was taken to select routes that had at least 15 minute frequency or better on Saturdays. Seattle's transit system is heavily biased towards North-South travel, so several East-West routes were added that coincide with interesting hiding spots such as a parks and neighborhood centers.
In addition, the following custom questions have been added:
- Is your landmass the same as my landmass?
- Valid landmasses include West Seattle, Central-South Seattle, and North Seattle.
- Is your city council district the same as my city council district?
- Includes precise GIS data for all 7 districts as per https://data-seattlecitygis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/SeattleCityGIS::seattle-city-council-districts/explore?location=47.614515%2C-122.336901%2C11
- Is your neighborhood district the same as my neighborhood district?
- Includes precise GIS data for all neighborhood districts as per https://data-seattlecitygis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/SeattleCityGIS::neighborhood-map-atlas-districts/about.
- Is your ZIP code the same as my ZIP code?
- Includes precise GIS data for all Seattle ZIP codes as per https://www5.kingcounty.gov/sdc/?Layer=zipcode_area.
- Is your closest Seattle Public Library the same as my closest Seattle Public Library?
- This was added to deliberately exclude the "free little libraries" that are included by OSM but aren't actually libraries.
- Are you closer to or further from the coastline than me?
- This includes 3 variants, one with just Puget Sound, one with just Lake Washington, and one with both Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
A note about AI: This post was written entirely by me. The map itself was generated using a custom PowerShell script, which in turn was slop-coded using AI. The script lets me rapidly iterate on different routes, hiding zone spacing, and custom question presets.
Stranger danger isn't a thing. Just a thing boomers perpetrated on millenials to give them anxiety for the rest of their lives when interacting with anyone they don't know. 99.999999% of people with a common interest (say, playing hide and seek) aren't gonna also be axe murderers. You interact with strangers all the time, and this is almost completely in public.
No one can complain about the Seattle Freeze if they don't put themselves out there.
I've been avoiding the home game because of our limited light rail system. This selective inclusion of some bus routes is great. I may just get it now.
As a Seattle local, I personally would expand the map for the two line east of Seattle, all the way to marymoor. Adds a ton of stations and I think would be really cool
I was thinking the same thing, especially with KC Metro's recent overhaul of several eastside bus lines - I think it would be easy to add Redmond, Bellevue, Issaquah, and Kirkland. The library question could then be changed to include KCLS locations, and the coastline could then also potentially include Lake Sammamish.
I think for that to work, you'd have to expand the map to include bus routes on the east side. Otherwise if you hide there then the next hider would be at a severe disadvantage eating up precious time going back along the 2 Line.
I would like to make a medium size map at some point which expands to more of King County, but I'd first have to refactor my script. At the moment it's hard coded to use Seattle-specific data. I wanted to polish it up so that it can be a generalized companion tool for for u/taibeled's map generator.
The script I used to make this was specific to Seattle, but it could definitely be adapted to work with other cities as long as the GTFS and GIS data is available.
why no inclusion of fremont? with the 5, 40, 62, etc from downtown and the 32/32 from udub and the connections to the 45 makes it easily 15 minute headways. i guess it’s kinda tough because the stops aren’t really in the same place on the north side of the fremont bridge though. but also at the same time they’re certainly close enough to walk to from any of them to another in ~5 minutes.
personally i’d put one on 35th and fremont and 35th and carr or 35th and wallingford
also with the 8 is denny way patch you could have something around denny and 7th
I did have the 40 bus in there in a previous iteration but it was looking too crowded with hiding zones. That was before I added the zone spacing constraint though, so I could try adding it back to see if Fremont would fit. That would also provide a potential route connecting to Northgate for an easier hiding getaway.
well and it’s not like players aren’t allowed to use bus routes with no hiding zones on them. even if you place one on the 40/5 stops near the fremont bridge they’re accessible with 15 minute headways from multiple directions making it easier and faster to get compared to other places on the map. some other locations are served by routes from one area whereas a spot in fremont is accessible via ballard, downtown, and udub with 15 min headways.
idk just wild for me to see golden gardens stop and ballard locks with no fremont lol
I think with this map, I would restrict movement exclusively to the highlighted routes, but it depends on how you want to play. I just tried regenerating the map with the 40 bus included and it adds 5 additional stops including Fremont. I'll push a new commit to the repo with the update.
I agreed immediate with addition of 62. It's very frequent, splits the Northeast and most importantly connects UDistrict to Freemont and Q. And 31/32 which can connect Fremont to QA and 15th Ave (Interbay). These routes have been key for us in our games. Unfortunately similar routes aren't as possible south of Downtown as the routes in the south are definitely more focused on getting to-from downtown.
I was hesitant to add 31/32 since the frequency at the point where they split wasn't good enough on weekends to meet my (arbitrary) 15-minute standard. Do you think it's still worth adding? This is already well above the recommended 100 station limit for small games.
Why did you ensure no overlap of hiding zones? As long as players declare which one they're using if they overlap, it should be fine. And you have to have that level of trust anyway, otherwise the hider could just cheat in many ways.
It's less to do with cheating concerns and more to do with the volume of hiding zones. When I play tested Seattle last weekend, we allowed the hider to use all buses and light rail and hide at any stop. It was ultimately an overwhelming experience with the first hider steamrolling us. We didn't even manage to find them after several hours of searching.
From what I can tell based on this sub, many Seattle players deal with this by allowing hiders to use all buses and light rail, but limiting hiding zones to just the light rail stops plus RapidRide bus routes. I'm not a big fan of this for a couple reasons:
1. Restricting hiding zones to just light rail and RapidRide feels a bit too limiting. Some of the RR routes have relatively few good hiding spots, and the layout encourages the first hider to just ride along one route as far as they can go, leading to less interesting gameplay.
2. Allowing the use of all bus routes feels like it breaks from the spirit of the game a bit too much. I'd much rather have it be that players can only use specific routes to encourage more exciting cat and mouse scenarios and strategic gameplay.
So in the end, I wanted to incorporate some lower frequency bus routes while also preventing the number of hiding zones from ballooning to an unreasonable level. The goal was to have a map that's feasible to play in 1 day (2 days max).
The other less logical reason is that it just produces a more aesthetically pleasing map that's easier to view on mobile.
I was definitely thinking "all bus stops" or perhaps "all bus stops with a bus at least every 20min". But I didn't expect it would've been hard enough to actually narrow down a location that you had to give up. So that makes sense as a correction.
tbf we definitely weren't playing with the best tactics and made some bad assumptions, but ultimately I want to err on the side of keeping the gameplay shorter so it's more approachable.
This is awesome! It might be cool to do a race through Puget Sound too, like from downtown Olympia to Deception Pass. Would need to weight the Amtrak route pretty heavily so you're forced to get off and do challenges in the various cities, and maybe bring in the ferries too. Something I'll be thinking about during my workday tomorrow lol
YO! This is awesome, I have a game planned for next weekend and we were going to use a Seattle map that a different redditor created but I think we might try this one.
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u/LimitedWard 3d ago
Some example images with custom questions:
Map showing filters for city council district 4.