2011-11-18

Beta Appearance Options

There are now some "hidden" appearance options. Scroll down the controls on the top left and you'll find three new "beta" options. All of these are experimental and could change or disappear at any time.

Force Hexes

This forces hexes to always be rendered... as hexagons. This applies at the 16 and 32 pixels/parsec scale. The map usually renders hexes as squares (well, rectangles) to match the Atlas of the Imperium and route maps printed in the Travellers Digest.

World Colors

An attempt at providing more information about worlds. This currently only applies at the 64 pixels/parsec and up. The color codes are currently:
  • Rich and Agricultural: gold 
  • Agricultural: green 
  • Rich: purple  
  • Industrial: gray  
  • Corrosive/insidious/etc: rust 
  • Vacuum: black 
  • Liquid water: blue 
  • Otherwise: white

Filled Borders

As previous discussed. It's pretty, you should try it out. This only applies when micro-scale borders are rendered - i.e. 4 pixels/parsec and up.

These features haven't been extensively tested and may not make sense in all styles. Feedback is very much appreciated.
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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Force Hexes: Love It!

World Colors: Like it, but it doesn't work for worlds with no water. Look at Spinward Marches 0622, it disappears with World Colors checked.

Filled Borders: Love It! Need to try later with my custom Swords Worlds pre-5th Frontier War data.

-Swiftbrook

LeperColony said...

Love the new content! A few requests though.

World Colors: Personally, I'd prefer it if the color were displayed as a border around the world dot, with the world dot's original color preserved. That way you still depict the water/no-water information in addition to new information.

In fact, you could display multiple "rings" around the dot, to convey each category the system qualifies for.

Sector Borders: It would be pretty neat if there were an option to display sector borders, so that when you are zoomed in to the subsector level, you can tell when you have crossed into another sector. Maybe at subsector level zoom, sector names can be displayed in a similar way as polity names (3I, Sol Confed, etc) are displayed near border zones.

Filled Borders: I think you've missed a few planets, like Anaxis/Delphi.

Legend: Love the improved legend! But it doesn't have any information for Solomani symbols. For instance, are those really Aslan clan or Vargr Naval bases on Avalon and Moibeal in Falhnar/Reaver's Deep?

Subsector Capitals: Many Imperial subsectors seem to lack capitals. For instance, almost all of Verge sector lacks subsector capitals. Is that due to insufficient detailing in canon sources?

Thanks, love the map!

Joshua Bell said...

World Colors - interesting ideas. I'll play with that.

Sector Borders - yeah, I've been meaning to make these more obvious at high scales.

Filled Borders - rules for borders are inconsistent. I've avoided borders for single isolated worlds like Anaxias. Del hi's borders are really weird anyway - most of subsector O is non-Imperial, but the borders would look really funky if routed around those. It's subjective.

Legend - I plan to use allegiance colors to disambiguate bases going forward.

Subsector Capitals - insufficient data. The routes in Verge are also my invention.

LeperColony said...

I get what you're saying about Delphi, but by not giving them borders it makes it look like they aren't in the Imperium. Anaxis is a pretty important world too.

If you look at the way Traveller Atlas does it, I think he's managed to make it work. Just my 2 cents.

LeperColony said...

I hope I don't annoy you too much with my constant feature requests, but here goes...

World Colors: I was thinking that rings might get a little busy. Instead, you might have a "color bar" or something, between the dot and the name. It could be made up of several small squares in a row, each one a color with a specific indication.

Subsector names: I miss them when zoomed in. Maybe you can make it a toggle, to accommodate both preferences?

Travel time: It would be cool if you could pick a system and then another system, and it would tell you how long it would take to get there with various jump rates.

Travel routes: Sort of merged with the above, it would be cool if you could generate a travel route, and the route would be displayed in a similar manner as an xboat route.

Anonymous said...

Love the new beta features!

The world colors are great. Beats the blue/not blue - I wouldn't change that.

BTW: Assuming the circle border color (.NET?) is 'free' - it could indicate atmo type (even density with line width), but might create some color clashing.

Really like the filled borders, but was wondering if they could be made to work without drawing the border lines?

Border lines always seemed too thick when zoomed in. If they were simply 1~2 px bigger than hex lines (i.e. not scaled), the start/final line disjoint would also not show so much (P.S. would a GDI+ linejoin/endcap option in .NET fix that?).

As always - Awesome Work and Thanks For Sharing!

Joshua Bell said...

The site currently uses PDFsharp for all rendering - both bitmaps and PDFs. But yes, circle borders are easy. At the very least I need to add a black border for white worlds when the background is white!

Re: Filled borders w/o edges - I'll play with it. That might wait until I allow custom stylesheets, just to avoid the number of options exploding.

Re: border line thickness - I'll play with it. The site is inconsistent about scaling lines - some have consistent pixel widths, some are locked to the scale. I've been meaning to clean that up.

Re: start/final hex border line disjoint - that's due to rendering the borders as non-closed paths, which is important for out-sector borders which actually extend one hex into neighboring sectors. However, to implement filled borders I added precise sector-edge clipping (that follows the jagged hex edges), so I have TODO to play with using closed paths again. Candy style usually ends up making things harder than they'd seem, though.

I've had no time to work on the site lately, so I'm afraid these TODOs continue to pile up. Keep the feedback coming, though!

Anonymous said...

Ok, more feedback ;)

Love the post option - awesome for making custom maps - including ship routes!

Ability to add a simple, generic, spaceship silhouette marker to a hex (ala 'We are Here!') would be great!

Also, ability to position a label on the 'edges' of hexes. I.e. centered on /\ upper and lower.

dragoner said...

Everything is great, but it seems now stellar data is being omitted from the post feature?