Route Finder
Draw the route yourself. Much harder than picking one, and it shows.
Route Finder gives you a map crop with a start and a finish and no drawn alternatives. You draw the route freehand, and it is scored against the shortest legal path — computed over the map's own passability, so it is a route that could actually be run.
This is a different skill from route choice. There, the candidates are handed to you and you evaluate them. Here you have to see the route before you can evaluate anything, which is what you actually do in the terrain.
Scoring
score = min(lengthScore, tooShortCap) − endpointPenalty − terrainPenalty
clamped to 0–100
Four components of unequal weight. Length is the score; the other three guard against a good length figure without a real route behind it.
Length — the score itself
Fifteen per cent longer than optimal is free. Past that the penalty grows with the square of how much longer you are, so small detours cost almost nothing and gross ones cost everything.
| Your route | Length score |
|---|---|
| up to 1.15× optimal | 100 |
| 1.5× | 97 |
| 2× | 82 |
| 2.5× | 54 |
| 3× | 14 |
| 3.15× or longer | 0 |
The tolerance accounts for a line traced freehand, so the score reflects the route rather than the drawing.
The too-short cap — the strict one
Nothing can be shorter than the shortest path, so a drawn route below 95 % of the optimal length means you cut through something. That is capped hard, and the cap falls fast:
| Your route | Score cap |
|---|---|
| 95 % of optimal or longer | 100 — no cap |
| 94 % | 80 |
| 92.5 % | 50 |
| 90 % or shorter | 0 |
The one uncapped penalty
Endpoints
There is a free margin around the start and finish — the larger of 150 pixels or 10 % of the optimal length — then a per-pixel cost capped at 25 points. A route drawn correctly but started slightly off the marker loses little; a line that does not connect the two controls loses the full 25.
Impassable terrain
Your line is sampled against the map's impassability mask. You are allowed the larger of 200 pixels or 20 % of your drawn length inside impassable ground before anything is charged, then a small per-pixel cost capped at 30 points.
The allowance exists because the mask is derived from map colours and is imprecise at boundaries: a line along the edge of a lake clips it. Cutting across a building exceeds the allowance.
What counts as correct
A score of 70 or above is recorded as a correct attempt. Below that it is recorded as incorrect. Both are recorded with your response time.
The Route Finder leaderboard ranks by accuracy first and then by speed, not by the combined formula the route choice game uses. It is a separate board with its own attempts.
Feedback
After each attempt you get the optimal route revealed, your own line over it, and a verdict:
| Score | Verdict |
|---|---|
| 95+ | Near-optimal route |
| 75–94 | Good route, slightly longer than the shortest |
| 40–74 | Much longer than the shortest path |
| 1–39 | Way too long — try a more direct path |
| 0 | Impossibly short — did you cut through obstacles? |
The warm-up round at the start of a session is not recorded, same as in the route choice game.
Draw the route, not the line