←back to thread

Show HN: Time Portal – Get dropped into history, guess where you landed

(www.eggnog.ai)
497 points samplank2 | 4 comments | 12 Mar 25 20:23 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Hi HN! I love imagining the past, so I made Time Portal, a game where you are dropped into a historical event and see AI video footage from that moment. You have to guess where you are in time and on the map. It’s like GeoGuessr (and heavily inspired by it!) but for historical events.

The videos are all created with AI. It’s a pipeline of Flux (images), Kling (video), and mmaudio (audio). The videos aren’t always historically accurate to the last detail. They might incorporate elements of folklore or have details from popular beliefs about the way things looked rather than the latest academic research on how they looked.

I’m thinking a lot about how to make the game more interactive. One thing that makes Geoguessr so fun for me is that you can move infinitely and always find more details to help you pinpoint the location. I want Time Portal to have a similar quality. I have a few ideas to try soon that will hopefully make the game more interactive and infinite.

Show context
lelandfe ◴[13 Mar 25 00:05 UTC] No.43349042[source]▶
> The videos aren’t always historically accurate to the last detail

Are they ever?

> They might incorporate elements of folklore or have details from popular beliefs about the way things looked rather than the latest academic research on how they looked

Like the one of the age of castles man loading an American civil war cannon by holding another cannon up to it: https://www.eggnog.ai/timeportal/37e02fea-bbb2-4b88-ae8c-0a3...

I must have missed that folklore.

replies(4): >>43349108 #>>43350373 #>>43352679 #>>43365313 #
hot_gril ◴[13 Mar 25 00:13 UTC] No.43349108[source]▶
Still more accurate most of the time than a lot of historical video games at least.

I got a trippy one that was supposed to be about Da Vinci painting the Last Supper, but the people were moving, so I thought it was supposed to be the actual supper: https://www.eggnog.ai/timeportal/56571c14-8f13-48ba-b60f-d82...

replies(1): >>43349349 #
slg ◴[13 Mar 25 00:57 UTC] No.43349349[source]▶
>Still more accurate most of the time than a lot of historical video games at least.

This game is much closer to Trivial Pursuit than it is Assassin's Creed. The importance of accuracy depends on the type of game and when the point of the game is specifically testing the player's knowledge, a lack of accuracy is game-breaking.

replies(1): >>43351037 #
1. Cthulhu_ ◴[13 Mar 25 07:31 UTC] No.43351037[source]▶
And where the creators are on the spectrum between historical accuracy vs politics vs target audience; Asscreed is one that tries to balance it, sometimes it works, their most recent example has had major criticisms. Kingdom Come focuses on historical accuracy but since they found no records of e.g. Black people in medieval Bohemia they didn't include them in the first game, which did trigger some criticism - the game director being outspoken on the issue probably didn't help.
replies(3): >>43355092 #>>43356156 #>>43356664 #
2. yomismoaqui ◴[13 Mar 25 16:53 UTC] No.43355092[source]▶
They did "fix it" on Kingdom Come 2 and personally think they did a good job about how the reaction would be when meeting a dude with dark skin on that specific time and place.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/_OksWkD0VaY

3. h2zizzle ◴[13 Mar 25 18:49 UTC] No.43356156[source]▶
The most recent example has had "major criticisms" because it centers a historical figure who happens to be black. (There was almost zero bellyaching about accuracy when the same figure showed up as a boss/side character in more fantastical takes on medieval Japan, including one in which he sics a ghost Atlas Bear on the PC.) There is a kernal of virtue wrt the issue of representation and appropriation, but most of the raging is driven by racism.

I do want to lend support to the idea that he series tries to balance accuracy with its gameplay/narrative foci, though. IIUC, they get a lot of details that Hollywood movies and even documentaries get wrong (by virtue of digital production). Origins and Odyssey included modes that allowed player to move through the world as if it were a living museum, reading passages about people and places as they were encountered.

Overall, it's nice when artists dealing with historical subjects understand that they're presenting imperfect models of the past, and state so, so that viewers can consider what might be accurate and what might not be.

4. hot_gril ◴[13 Mar 25 19:52 UTC] No.43356664[source]▶
I haven't heard of this, was mainly thinking about how Rome Total War (the original at least) misrepresented most factions and units in it, especially the Egyptians. There wasn't even an enjoyable reason for it.