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Building in Public

Follow along as we build Ping Hunt. Updates, milestones, and behind-the-scenes insights.

Dev Update

Maps, Polish, and a Cleaner UI Throughout

Today's update is all about refining the experience. The radar is gone — replaced with an interactive map on the play screen that gives you real spatial context while hunting. Beyond that, a round of polish has landed across hunt cards, waypoint detail views, the hunt details page, and the header.

Nothing here is a headline feature on its own, but together these changes make the app feel meaningfully more complete and consistent.

Map & Navigation

Interactive Map Replaces Radar

The radar view on the play screen has been replaced with an interactive map. You can now see your position and the surrounding area in full, giving you real spatial context instead of a directional sweep.

Consistent Map Styling

The map used during GPS adjustment and the map used during waypoint guidance now share the same visual style. Everything looks like it belongs to the same app.

Cleaner Distance Display

Removed the navigation icons from the hunt total distance display. The distance figure reads cleanly on its own without the visual noise.

Waypoint Experience

Updated Waypoint Reached Message

The confirmation message shown when a hunter reaches a waypoint has been updated. The new wording is clearer and better fits the tone of the app.

GPS Coordinates Removed from Waypoint Details

Raw GPS coordinates are no longer shown in waypoint detail views. They weren't useful to players and added visual clutter to a screen that should stay focused on the hunt.

Hunt Cards & Details

Distance on Hunt Cards

Hunt cards now display the total distance when a hunt has multiple waypoints. At a glance you can tell whether you're signing up for a short loop or a longer adventure.

Reorganised Hunt Details Page

The hunt details page has been tidied up. Distance now appears prominently, and the action buttons have been reordered into a more logical sequence.

Icons Added to Hunt List Cards

Hunt list cards now include the same icons used on the hunt details page, making the two views feel connected and giving the list more visual structure.

UI Polish

Company Logo in the Header

The Ping Hunt logo now appears in the app header and is visible across all screens. It's a small touch that makes every screen feel properly branded.

Account Icon Fixed

The account icon in the header was showing a letter instead of a person icon. It now correctly displays a user icon, consistent with what you'd expect.

What's Next

With the map in place and the UI tidied up, the next focus is on getting a build ready for real-world playtesting. More updates coming soon.

Dev Update

v0.2.0: Sharing, Google Sign-In, and a Full Rebrand

Twenty-four hours of heads-down building and v0.2.0 is out. This update is the one that turns Ping Hunt from a personal toy into something you can actually hand to a friend: hunt sharing, nearby discovery, deep links, Google sign-in, and a full rename from "Scavenger Hunt" to "Ping Hunt" everywhere it still said otherwise.

There's also a stack of image-matching improvements and bug fixes that make the core experience noticeably smoother. Here's everything that landed.

New Features

Hunt Sharing

You can now share a hunt directly from the app. Recipients get a link that drops them straight into the hunt, with no searching, no guessing. This was the most-requested thing from early testers and it's finally done.

Nearby Discovery

Browse hunts created near your current location. Whether you're in a new city or just curious what's around the corner, the nearby feed surfaces hunts ready to play right where you are.

Deep Links

Hunt share links now open directly in the app if it's installed, skipping the browser entirely. The whole handoff from link to play is seamless.

Auto-Named Hunts

Hunts no longer need a name before you can save them. The app generates a sensible default name automatically, so you can focus on building the hunt instead of staring at an empty text field.

Full Server-Side Hunt Data

Hunt details are now fetched entirely from the server rather than being bundled at build time. This means updates to a hunt are reflected immediately for everyone playing it, and the foundation is in place for collaborative and social features.

Image Matching

Square Viewfinder

The camera viewfinder is now square. This brings it in line with how waypoint reference photos are captured, so what you frame is what the matcher actually compares, with no more cropping surprises.

Better Accuracy & Adjusted Thresholds

Tuned the matching algorithm for more reliable results across different lighting conditions and angles. We also adjusted the pass/fail thresholds based on real playtest data, so the matcher is more forgiving of small differences and less likely to false-positive on wrong locations.

Bug Fixes

Google Sign-In Flow, Import Errors & Metro Crashes

Fixed a broken redirect in the Google sign-in flow that left some users stuck on a blank screen. Squashed import errors that caused Metro bundler crashes on cold starts. Navigation issues that could leave you on the wrong screen after completing a waypoint are also resolved.

Auth & Branding

Full Google OAuth Integration

Google sign-in now works end-to-end, including the OAuth callback handling on the server side. Users can create an account and sign back in reliably across sessions.

Scavenger Hunt → Ping Hunt, Everywhere

The old "Scavenger Hunt" name was still lurking in screen titles, labels, and copy throughout the app. It's gone. Every string, every label, every screen now says Ping Hunt. The rebrand is complete.

A personal note

My 9-year-old has decided that Ping Hunt is his new favourite game and will not stop asking to play it on my phone. The problem: the app isn't publicly released yet, and I need the phone for testing. We're at a standoff. The sooner I ship a public version, the sooner I get my phone back. Consider that extra motivation baked into every commit.

Dev Update

We're Live, We Placed, and We Shipped a Ton

Big day for Ping Hunt. The website is officially live at www.pinghunt.com, and we're thrilled to share that we won Runner Up in the Replit Buildathon, earning $1,000 in Replit credit to keep building.

The core app is working: you can create GPS scavenger hunts with photo-matching waypoints and guide hunters with a real-time map. Next up: social features (sharing and discovering hunts near you) and figuring out monetisation. But first, here's everything we shipped today.

What We Shipped

Live Hunt Timer

Added an elapsed time display to both the map and camera screens during an active hunt. It starts ticking the moment you begin a hunt and shows mm:ss or h:mm:ss format, so you can race your friends or just see how long that "quick" lunchtime hunt actually took.

Removed Play Limits

Stripped out the 2-play-per-hunt cap entirely, including all related UI: play count badges, the "Upgrade to Play" locked button, and the maxFreeCompletions data field. Play as much as you want. The architecture is ready for account-based limits later when we implement monetisation properly.

Streamlined Waypoint Creation

The intermediate "open camera" confirmation screen is gone. Tapping "Add Waypoint" now goes straight to the camera with permissions requested automatically. One less tap, much smoother flow.

GPS Map Fix

Fixed the bug where the map displayed a fake "999 m to target" on first load. The display now shows "- / locating..." until a real GPS fix is acquired, and we relaxed the accuracy filter so real readings arrive sooner. No more misleading distances.

GPS Header Indicator

Removed a redundant GPS overlay from the hunt camera screen. The app header (visible on all screens) now displays the live accuracy figure (e.g. ±12m) next to the signal bars. Cleaner UI, same information.

Branding Refresh

Updated the splash screen and home screen empty state to use the new Ping Hunt logo at full opacity. Previously it had a 35% opacity overlay muting it. Now the brand pops the way it should.

Map Pin UX Overhaul

Reworked the waypoint location adjustment map from a draggable pin model to a pan-to-place model. A fixed centered pin stays on screen while you move the map beneath it, which is far more intuitive on mobile, especially for fine-tuning positions.

GPS Delay Eliminated

Killed the "Getting location..." pause that appeared after taking a waypoint photo. Instead of making a new one-shot GPS request, we now read the already-streaming position from context. The flow feels instant now.

Camera Overlay Layout

Swapped the GPS indicator and close button positions in the waypoint creation camera for a more natural layout. Small change, big difference in how the camera screen feels.

What's Next

Social features are the big focus: sharing hunts with friends and browsing hunts near you. We also need to figure out monetisation. More updates coming soon. If you want to be first to play, join the waitlist.