Play the new FanDoku game!

Question

Check out the first ever Genealogy Game available on WikiTree (unless you count the game of finding your relatives and connecting to cousins a game, which it is .... but I digress ...).   Allow me to introduce to you FanDoku!

If you're a fan of Fan Charts, and a solver of Sudoku, then you'll love FanDoku!  (Actually - if you like genealogy at all, I think you'll enjoy it.)

You find it by going to the Dynamic Tree - click on the WikiTree ID menu and choosing Dynamic Tree.  Then, when that loads, choose FANDOKU GAME from the drop down list.

The goal of the game is to fill in your Ancestors in the empty Fan Chart provided.  Click on an Ancestor's name then click on where they belong in the Fan Chart. DING - you got it right!  Complete the Fan Chart to win!

In Fan Chart mode, you have a traditional Fan Chart to fill in.  

However, for a real challenge, switch to FanDoku mode - and in this game, the parents of any child could be in any order! Luckily, each generation is consistent in their ordering.  See this partially started FanDoku game - for this one, I've used the Gender colour hints to help us out a bit - so you know where the male / female ancestors go. 

As always - let me know if you find any bugs. Also - if you have suggestions for improvements / features - please share those ideas too!

Enjoy!

Answer 1

Greg, I love it! Totally having my family play with this (I might have a leg up on them...possibly...)

Comments

...more generations, please!

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1. Hints for some, but not for all that appear in the radial before they are placed - based on categories or stickers maybe, things like "Sgt in PA infantry, Union", "schoolteacher/farmer", "had 12 children", "emigrated from/immigrated to", etc. Heck, put their picture in the spot and you have to place the right name on the picture.
2. Tree-doku, where you have to fill in all the family members in the hierarchical tree view
3. Map-doku, where you have to put the right ancestors in the right place for birth/death

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I considered that ... but thought I'd better start with a manageable number so as not to scare people off !  I think I could change the limit from 5 to 7 and still make it manageable in terms of playability and screen real estate - much beyond that though could be too daunting I fear.

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suppose I could just re-up with the outermost ancestor and accomplish the additional generations, too.

Answer 2

when I played it I only got the names of my mothers side of the tree to fill in.  The names of my fathers side were no where in sight. Still fun to play it.

Comments

Hmmm ... that's either because your father's side is private - OR - I didn't properly check for spaces or special characters in their WikiTree ID and it didn't load his side properly  .... I'll check that out for you!

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only my fathers profile is private - he is still alive - but his ancestors are not.

Answer 3

Well.

Several things.

I'm not clear on what "consistent within each generation" means. Does it just mean that all the generation-1 ancestors are guaranteed to be in the generation-1 circle?

I don't see the point in randomizing the order of mothers and fathers. It just makes it harder without making it more challenging, since there's no way to deduce the correct order. (And if you use the coloring hints it's no different from the base game.)

I can't figure out how to increase the number of generations in the fan chart. Three generations should be pretty easy for most people, let alone genealogists.

I have two ancestors with the same name (one Jr, one Sr). No way to know which is which without guessing.

Comments

HI Matthew,

I think if you watch the end of my WikiTree day presentation (last 10 minutes), it might be a bit clearer, but basically - in FanDoku mode, "consistent within a generation" means that for any given ring of the fan chart (say the grandparents ring), the order of the parents will be consistent.  SO .. if the first two cells are Paternal GrandMother / Paternal GrandFather, then the next two will have to be Maternal GrandMother / Maternal Grandfather.

To increase the number of generations, at the top of the screen in the middle of the orange button bar,  there is a generations stepper - looks like this:
-1 [ 4 generations ] +1
Click the +1  to increase the # of generations - currently I have the limit set to 5, but I have been asked to increase it, and I will shortly allow it to go up to 7.

Two ancestors with the identical name will match in either location in the Fan Chart, so you won't be penalized for guessing "wrong".  However, if their names are different at all (Joe vs Joseph in FirstName field), then you have to get them right on.

Finally - the most challenging mode is to put it in FanDoku mode, with only 1 pre-filled ancestor, gender colouring hint turned off, and the full number of generations (currently 5) ... then from there, can you work backwards, figure out where everyone goes without missing once ? (And if so - how long did it take?)

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Gotcha, I understand it now. (I was looking for the generations dial after starting the game, which in retrospect doesn't make sense.) Thanks for the reply.

I did the most challenging mode with one miss due to similar (but not identical) names between a father and son. 3:43, but I was taking my time.

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Hi Greg,

I have the same issue with my family with a "Jr." and a "Sr.", my father and grandfather.

These are part of their names. The suffixes matter. They need to be displayed in the fan chart to avoid ambiguity. Same with the fandoku game. Either that or show birth + death year to avoid ambiguity. Otherwise it just gives me a negative view of the chart as a whole.

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Eric, traditionally suffixes like "Junior" and "Senior" were not part of names. In fact, they changed when the elder person died, with the "Junior" then becoming "Senior" if he has a same-named son.

It's only been relatively recently that those suffixes have been considered "permanent" and part of one's name.

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I'm very well aware of that. The point is they are being left out. It creates artificial ambiguity.

Answer 4

Once I hit start, it tells me I won but haven't placed anything. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Comments

Maybe it's reading your mind where you've placed them all correctly without even trying?

But seriously, maybe you hit the Start and then the End game buttons in quick succession, and it's registering both at the same time?  I've also noticed there's a bit of a bug in the program that if you click on the chart before the game officially begins, sometimes it will fill in a cell for you in advance !  I wonder if this is what's happening?

Let me know if you figure it out.

Answer 5

I find it real fun, and will make use of it during Christmas when we have family get-togethers! 

Comments

Thanks Maria!  Glad you're enjoying it - and - yes - I do hope it's something that whole families can enjoy!  

One suggestion was made that if there was a Timer Limit option, you could set this up in a booth at a family reunion, and see how well family members do, and how quickly they can solve it, for a prize at the end of the reunion. (Not in the current version, but something I can add)

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Greg, I played it with my mom last Saturday and we had a good time, actually quite interesting to use logic when your ancestors had patronymic "surnames" "she's called Larsdotter, so her dad must have been one of the Lars'" 

We for example played it with the main person being a great grandmother, and noticed she had 3 ancestors called Lars Nilsson. When we turned on "show lifespan", it didn't add to the names, so we had to guess which one was which. I have now tested, and if I switch on the lifespan before playing, it adds it, but not if I do it during the game.

Great fun, thanks again!

Answer 6

I don't have a mouse, & don't know what key combo on my Windows 10 laptop will allow me to scroll the view. My usual ctrl & + or - just squeezes the chart into a smaller portion of a mostly blank screen. I have the same problem with using a previously promoted view in wikitree that also referred to using the mouse.

Comments

Oooh .... EXCELLENT question C.

On my Mac, if I use the up / down arrows, that scrolls the whole window up and down (I need to do this sometimes if I've zoomed in too far on the Fan Chart and can't see the controls at the top).

AND ... I have the TAB key enabled so that when you hit that it highlights one of the Ancestor's names (though - after a while the highlight leaves the game and jumps to the URL location bar at the top of the browser window .... so you have to keep hitting TAB until it returns.

BUT ... I don't have any keyboard only support built into the empty cells in the Fan Chart (to highlight the drop zone of the highlighted ancestor name) .....

I'm also not sure if our Settings panel is keyboard-only friendly.

Sorry - I don't have a solution for you right now if you are truly mouse-less and don't have a touch device - but - you raise an excellent point regarding accessibility that we need to consider in this and current and future apps.

Thanks for asking this question, C.!

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Umm.. OK, my arrow keys will let me scroll up & down but not side to side.

I think what I really meant to say I had trouble with was zooming.  The fan takes up more than a screen.  I can drag the image around, but get kind of lost trying to click on a name, drag the image which might take several click-drags if it is on the opposite edge from the name, and each click-to-drag gives me a new error count.

My bad for trying to write the first comment when I had a deadline to get out the door!