Traveller Map News

Trying out Trello

2012-02-13T20:42:00.000-08:00

I'm giving Trello a go as a shared/hosted bug tracking / wish list tool.

Go to the TravellerMap.com Wish List Board

Does this work for you? Try adding some items and comments. To much structure, not enough? My other options include a shared Google Spreadsheet, or a the bug tracker in a code.google.com/p project. (even though the site's code is not hosted there).

What are your thoughts?

Rendering Fixes

2012-02-01T21:08:00.000-08:00

Two quick rendering fixes.

With "World Colors" checked, white-on-white worlds (e.g. Spinward Marches 0622 in Print style) should now have an outline
Borders are now rendered as closed paths, which means small gaps near the "start" of each borders should be gone

The latter one was actually a substantial effort, but it's been sitting unpublished on my dev machine for some time now and I think I'm happy with the change.

CORE / Stellar Data

2012-01-31T22:57:00.000-08:00

The data for a number of sectors was based on Jo Grant's CORE data repository. Unfortunately, they were not taken directly, but from another map site, which had filtered out the stellar data. I've gone back and pulled data from the original sources for:

Aldebaran (with Home 1009 added)
Amdukan
Arzul (Ingukrax)
Astron
Banners
Canopus
Esai'yo
Faoheiroi'iyhao
Ftaoiyekyu
Fulani
Hkakhaeaw
Iphigenaia
Langere
Neworld
Star's End
Theta Borealis
Touchstone
Ustral Quadrant

The following sectors are based on the CORE data but already had stellar data, and also had trade codes/comments generated so I left them alone:

Hlakhoi
Iwahfuah
Staihaia'yo

Beta Appearance Options

2011-11-18T19:05:00.001-08:00

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.

Small tweaks and fixes

2011-11-16T20:36:00.001-08:00

Just fit and finish:

The Spinward/Rimward galactic direction display indicators are now rotated to match the Imperium Map poster (tested in IE8, Chrome and Firefox)
Double-clicking now correctly centers what you double clicked on. Previously, it was off by 15 or so pixels (half a parsec)
The Credits display at the bottom now shows the subsector name (and index) for the targeted location..
Some macro-scale labels were cut off too early as you zoomed in. I fixed that, but also tweaked the scale thresholds for various elements. The new thresholds are documented in the info page

Subsector names vs. clutter

2011-11-14T08:23:00.001-08:00

Subsector names no longer render at 64 pixels/parsec scale (that's the standard zoomed in level). The map was seeming too cluttered to me. This does mean less information will be available on sector posters, so I may revert this change.

Macro Routes and Label Cleanup

2011-11-13T21:20:00.001-08:00

I've added "macro scale" routes - the Jump-5, Jump-4, and Zhodani Core Routes, visible at low zoom levels. These aren't visible if you zoom out too far because they make the map ugly. They also disappear if you zoom in, well before the micro-scale routes, because they don't line up well. I'll try and fix that - I've already tweaked K'kree Outpost borders in Gn'hk'r/Gelath slightly.

Other changes and bug fixes:

Polity labels now wrap correctly in PDF Posters (example)
Added CORS note to API docs - short version: modern browsers make the JSONP hack unnecessary
Fix glyph layout in the side-bar Legend
Smaller names at the macro scale (e.g. J-5 Route) now show by default. This changes the map's default option value to 1015. Older permalinks won't have this set, adjust if necessary.

Sneak Preview: Filled Borders

2011-11-12T15:58:00.001-08:00

Sneak preview of the "filled border" functionality:

This is still only a 99% solution - there are tiny gaps when using "candy style" borders near sector boundaries, where a few pixels inside the border might not be filled. Only noticeable if you go looking, and fixing that would be extremely computationally expensive, so I probably won't bother. Other minor issues include overlapping polities such as the Vegan Autonomous District (Spinward Marches), Ral Ranta (Hinterworlds), and the sub-polities of the Julian Protectorate - the translucent backgrounds blend. Also, world names (and the worlds themselves) have a black background - I may try and fix that.

This will be controlled by an option/parameter, but I haven't hooked that up yet.

One issue is that this makes the polities without micro-scale borders - namely, the Hive Federation and Two Thousand Worlds - more glaringly incomplete. I could toss in "make this entire sector purple/green" placeholders like I did for Stiatlchepr. Opinions?

Credits Links

2011-11-06T20:34:00.001-08:00

A minor tweak I've been meaning to do for a while now: in the "credits" area at the bottom, the sector name is now a link to the LBB generator page, and a link to the PDF poster generator is added after the sector data link.

I've also started some substantial modernization work to the HTML/CSS/JavaScript behind the page. If anything broke please let me know, as I'm not being as diligent as I could be in testing on all browsers.

Completely unrelated: I've also started experimenting with shaded regions as a rendering option, but while a 95% solution was easy the 100% solution will require more thought and effort - dang hexes! This is not enabled yet.

Metadata Tweaks

2011-11-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

Some minor cleanup:

Tweaked label positions for: Foreven, Beyond, Touchstone, Riftspan Reaches, Reaver's Deep, Dark Nebula, Ustral Quadrant
Tweaked borders for: Reaver's Deep, Daibei, Dark Nebula
Tweaked polity names for: Reaver's Deep (per Sector Sourcebook)
Added travel zones to Reaver's Deep (per Sector Sourcebook)
Made the sector.htm demo page show polity names on the "centerfold" map

Polity Labels / Reaver's Deep

2011-10-30T20:06:00.001-07:00

I did a pass around the edges of the Imperium and tweaked the polity labels (yellow names) that appear when zoomed in. I tried to position them in non-horrible location. I also tossed one in for the Islands Cluster. Additional suggestions welcome.

Sectors away from the Imperium still need editing. Also, the government names I have for Reaver's Deep are in terrible shape. What should I use as the source for those?

Leave a comment if you see labels that could be improved.

New Legend

2011-10-30T00:39:00.000-07:00

A comment inquired about an updated legend to include more of the base types. After playing with updating the Legend Sector I realized that far too much space was being taken up that way. So I went back to the trusty old Spinward Marches poster and based a new legend on that. It's visible by a link in the control panel on the right.

You may notice a few consequential changes:

The layout UI and rules for the panels have changed - you can now expand/collapse any of the sections - Styles, Search, Legend and Scroll - by clicking on the header.
To implement efficiently required dropping support for IE6. Sorry, it's just not worth it.
The JumpMap API now takes an optional border parameter which allows you to drop the border. This is used by the legend to render the images "live", matching your current style.

Cleanup & Border Updates

2011-10-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

Mish-mash of updates:

At some point recently I broke the default state of the flag controlling rendering of local polity names so they should now by default to rendering again.
I dusted off the border calculation code (doc, demo):

Added a page that will generate borders for a map sector considering the 8 adjacent sectors. Try it. Sorry, doesn't work with uploaded sectors yet, but that should be easy to make work.
Fix border walk termination logic (would leave in a duplicate hex if the polity had a vertical left edge)
Added heuristic for bridging 1pc gaps in polities

The SEC API now optionally accepts sx/sy coordinates instead of sector (name)
Work around what looks like a Chrome 14 bug with object creation. var o = {}; o.x = 'foo'; was claiming that the property was read only in some cases.
Updated borders for: Fa Dzaets, Trenchans, Gvurrdon, Tuglikki, Mendan, Amdukan, Deneb, Corridor, Solomani Rim

Bits Not Atoms!

2011-10-22T13:10:00.001-07:00

As an FYI I've just put all of my hardcopy Traveller materials into storage. There is a slight chance that this could impact my ability to update the site, so I wanted to give everyone a warning. I haven't had to refer to them in a while but you never know.

While I was packing I did notice that the Vegan region borders on a printout of the site map did not match the Solomani Rim supplement, though. I'll try to fix those soon!

Deneb, Ziafrplians, SectorMetaData, bug fixes

2011-09-12T19:57:00.000-07:00

A few recent updates, tweaks and fixes:

Updated data for Ziafrplians from Don McKinney. This is the same data as used for the Zhodani Alien Module recently published by Mongoose, now a canonical part of the OTU. Check out the book for many more details about the sector, of course.
Updated data for Deneb by Robert Eaglestone, including a few X-boat route tweaks. This is part of the ongoing T5 data cleanup project. Expect the rest of the Domain of Deneb to follow at some point soon.
A new SectorMetaData API
Tweaked Candy Style rendering. Now includes UWP at high scales, and scales a little more nicely.
Fixed behavior of the experimental touch version when moving from "pinch" to "drag" (i.e. letting go of one finger while the other is still touching)

Bug Fix: Response Content Types

2011-08-03T21:08:00.000-07:00

In a recent change I accidentally made the "Data" APIs (Coordinates, Credits, JumpWorlds, Search, Universe) produce JSON instead of XML unless otherwise requested if the default was XML. This has been corrected - the default content types should now be as documented in the API page.

While I don't intent to change the default data format for any API call - to maintain compatibility - new APIs may default to JSON... at least, until the Next Great Format comes along. To be robust, make sure you're requesting a specific format using the HTTP "Accept" header. Currently supported formats are:

XML: text/xml
JSON: application/json

New Printer-Friendly Style

2011-03-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

Based on a handful of requests, I've added a new style, "Print" (a.k.a. "print" in the API) which is better suited for color printing than either "Poster" (which consumes black ink) or "Atlas" (which is grayscale-only).

The colors for routes, borders and bases should be left alone unless they're close to white, in which case a default color will be used, unlike "Atlas" style where fixed colors are used everywhere. This was a bit of a rush job so I may have missed a few cases (where I need to explicitly override a color) or introduced bugs, so let me know if something doesn't look quite right.

Minor fixes, interface tweaks

2011-02-13T14:23:00.000-08:00

In order to increase the screen area available for search results, I've increased the section of the right-hand control panel that expands/collapses to include all of the style/appearance options. Previously this included only the label options. Also, to make the "Scroll Map" buttons more useful they now scroll the map by a much greater distance, and the scrolling is animated.

Feedback appreciated. I'm still trying to retain the visual style of the GURPS Traveller mockup that was the inspiration for the site. Is that holding the map back too much? Should I move to a more modern appearance with controls overlaying the map? (I'm planning to do that anyway for the touch-based version)

A handful of tiny bug fixes:

legend popup once again shows using current visual style
blue zones (for TNE) now render as gray in Atlas style (thanks to Alvin Plumber for the bug report)
Cleaned up metadata glitches in the XML (thanks to Mark McSweeny for the bug report)
Prevent overlapping map animations

Allegiance Fixes

2011-01-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

Minor tweaks:

Included allegiance table in SEC.aspx (example)
Fix TY allegiance in Chit Botshti and Ghoekhnael
Fix Ef allegiance in Ktiin'gzat (sorry about the label placement; need to work on that)
Fix VW allegiance in Tuglikki

Blue Zones and Research Stations

2011-01-24T00:13:00.000-08:00

Two tiny changes based on recent requests:

At the request of Alvin Plummer I've added support for "Blue Zones" the convention in Traveller TNE for Technologically Elevated Dictatorships. Since the map site is nominally 1100-era, there shouldn't be any of these visible but if you upload custom data that contains "B" for the travel zone (as opposed to "A" for Amber, "R" for Red, "F" for Zhodani/Forbidden and "U" for Zhodani/Unabsorbed) it will be rendered with a blue circle.

It was pointed out by Peter Darton that the Legend is missing a description of the Research Station glyphs. I've added this, although it's probably still not clear that the "Gamma" symbol Γ is only used if the actual station identifier is not known (e.g. Research Station Epsilon shows Ε).

Any suggestions for other trivial tweaks?

Parameter Update - Styles

2011-01-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

Previously, specifying the visual style of the map ("Poster", "Atlas", or "Candy") was done via the options query parameter. To simplify this and allow room for future expansion, a style parameter has been added. This takes one of the values "poster", "atlas" or "candy". Examples:

Legacy URLs that embed the style via options bits will continue to be supported indefinitely, but new "permalinks" will use the new parameter. The API documentation has been updated to reflect the new usage.

Campaign Cartographer Traveller Maps

2010-05-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

As seen on the interwebs: a preview of Cosmographer 3, which will include Traveller mapping capabilities and maps. Looks very pretty!

Stylish Changes

2010-05-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

No substantial changes, but some minor tweaks:

Zones now show at scale 32 pixels/parsec (example)
Routes now show at scale 8 pixels/parsec (example)
In the latest Firefox/Safari/Chrome/Opera browsers, the neighbor subsector labels from the "little black book" generator are rotated (e.g. The Spinward Marches). The subsector capital is also called out in the blurb.
Lots of internal code cleanup in the HTML/JavaScript. One of the intentions of building this site was to learn modern Web development circa 2005, and I hadn't really gone back and applied the knowledge I've picked up since then.
Made the legend center correctly (oops - it's been broken since I fixed the hex ratio)
Permalink coordinates are now rounded 3 decimal places.

I broke some functionality in IE for a day before noticing; please let me know if anything still seems awry in any browser.

Touch Map

2010-05-08T12:06:00.000-07:00

There's an experimental version of the map optimized for the iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch) at:

http://travellermap.com/touch

Pinch and swipe to your heart's content. It's tested on the iPad and iPhone. It also works as Web Application: tap "+" then "Add to Home Screen" in Safari and you'll get an icon to launch the map with no browser UI.

There is no credits/metadata display, option panel, or search box - yet. Performance isn't what I'd like it to be, either. At some point in the future the main URL will auto-detect iThingies and automatically serve up this version, but I'll keep this URL alive until then.

It's worth visiting from your a "real" computer using Safari or Chrome (or Firefox, though I haven't tested it) and using the mouse wheel to zoom, since it implements intermediate zoom levels which makes zooming in and out really fun. Performance is also far better.

I'd be interested to hear if it works on Android or other modern devices that mimic Apple's touch API.

C#3.0 / .NET 3.5 and search tweak

2010-04-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

I updated the server-side code to C# 3.0 and have it using the .NET 3.5 runtime now; this should result in precisely zero changes, but it's possible that I broke something. Let me know.

I also made two extremely minor search tweaks:

? and _ now work as wildcard characters, matching exactly one character. This in addition to * and % which match zero or more characters.
Using uwp: prefix and wildcards are now mentioned in the "tool tip" when you hover over the search field. Previously these were mentioned only in the API docs.

PNG and DOM

2010-03-16T22:21:00.001-07:00

Two hopefully invisible changes today, but scream if anything breaks:

I've changed the map to generating PNGs by default instead of GIFs. This is to work around a bug in embedded WebKit (seen in the Second Life Viewer 2.0 Beta) where it may not display GIFs correctly.
I've rewritten the event handling code for the map to more correctly manage DOM events, in both the W3C and IE models. This is to try and make dragging work correctly in the IE9 Platform Preview (I'll test tomorrow), clean up the code (this was my first interactive web site!), and as a side effect it fixes mouse wheel support in Chrome.

I've tested in IE8, Safari (Win), Firefox 3.6 (Win), Chrome 4 (Win), and Opera 10 (Win). Looks good, but I'm nervous and ready to roll back if anyone sees any issues.

Minor tweaks

2010-03-07T15:53:00.000-08:00

Nothing big, just for reference:

I've been correcting the routes for Dagudashaag as Signal GK issues are appearing online.
Malorn data has been refreshed from BeRKA's copy
I tweaked the glyphs used for bases and the font used on the map (slightly narrower now)
I validated the links on the info page - unfortunately, many older sites are dropping offline.

Whither Dando?

2010-02-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

Sharp eyed visitor Andrew Storey noticed that Dando (Verge 2123) had vanished, leaving an orphaned xboat stop.

This is one of the locations that was identified as a mismatch between the Atlas of the Imperium and the GEnie data during the COTI cleanup - there's no world in that hex in AOTI!

As such, the world was removed, but the route remained. Fortunately, the xboat routes in verge are my own creation (pretty much the only one on the map!) so it was easy to reroute those lost couriers through nearby Turin.

Nifty Online Map Generators

2009-10-24T13:49:00.001-07:00

IsoMage has some nifty random map generators over at http://axiscity.hexamon.net/users/isomage/maps/ including subsectors, worlds, wilderness and caves. It uses seeded pseudorandom numbers for repeatability, just like the Elite universe. Check it out!

Now Serving PDFs

2009-08-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

It's live. (Be gentle!)

The API docs have been updated, but here's the short version:

For Poster.aspx, Tile.aspx or JumpMap.aspx, either pass an HTTP "Accept" header with "application/pdf" or include "accept=application/pdf" in either the query string (GET) or form data (POST).

Since it took a whopping 10 seconds, I also added a checkbox to the post example if you want to generate PDFs from your custom data.

Once any bugs are shaken out of this update I plan to add a link to the bottom of the main map page which offers "give me a printable version" of whatever you're looking at. I could make it either "smart" and offer Charted Space, Domain, Sector, Quadrant or Subsector depending on scale, or "dumb" and spew out exactly what you see on screen but in PDF form. I lean towards "smart".

PDF Generation, Continued [SNEAK PEEK]

2009-08-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

I have almost everything functional again under the PdfSharp code. The time consuming bit is that I was using GDI+ TexturedBrushes for a couple of things and PdfSharp (wisely) doesn't provide this, so you have to implement this manually. This actually ended up simplifying the code in several places. The only gotcha is that I was using it in a somewhat complicated way for rendering pseudo-random stars within the galactic arms at certain scales.

The old algorithm went like this:


if (inside charted space)
  draw a bunch of pseudo-random stars on the tile
else if (inside the galactic bounds)
  construct a tile-sized bitmap
  draw a bunch of pseudo-random stars on the bitmap
  load a path describing the galactic arms
  on the tile, fill the path using the bitmap as a brush

The new code looks like this:


if (inside charted space)
  draw a bunch of pseudo-random stars on the tile
else if (inside the galactic bounds)
  load a path describing the galactic arms
  use the path as a "clipping" region
  draw a bunch of pseudo-random stars on the tile

Simpler, huh? Well, yes, but it turns out that (1) it's a whopping huge path with lots of curves and segments (and I reduced it as much as I could), (2) bitmap-based clipping is heavily optimized, and (3) it's a single clip against a region, rather than once per star.

After pondering the importance of this (i.e. not very) I decided to simply ditch the pseudo-random stars away from charted space, and turn on the pretty galaxy image instead if you zoom out.

So... I'm pretty close to flipping the switch on this to make it live, but want to double check all of the changes first. But to whet your appetites, here are few more previews:

Spinward Marches - Eye-Candy - this one is a bit big (1MB) due to all the images
Charted Space

Enjoy!

PDF Generation [SNEAK PEEK]

2009-08-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

I'm playing with the PDFSharp library which provides PDF generation capabilities for C# with a liberal license and can be used with ASP.NET handily enough. The library nicely supports using the same rendering primitives to output via GDI+ or PDF, so I can actually just convert the site's entire rendering stack onto PDFSharp (which looks a lot like System.Drawing anyway) and then simply pass it either a bitmap or a PDF into which to render.

After a couple of hours of playing, here's sample output from the Poster API:

http://www.travellermap.com/tmp/spinward_demo.pdf

Warning: don't blithely hit "print" - I'm not doing anything clever with units yet, so I don't know how many pages it will try and span. Examine the print options carefully. :)

This is not live yet - there are several things not working yet and I'm concerned about performance when suddenly have the main map site running through this code. But so far, it looks promising.

When it is live, you'll be able to use the Tile, Poster and JumpMap APIs to generate PDFs by specifying either a Content-Type HTTP header or a query string parameter in the URI (since we can't always control header generation).

Scale and Content Fixes

2009-08-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

A handful of bug fixes

Fix ParsecScaleX constant from 0.868 to cos(30°). (Reported by Joachim Pfaff)

This has been wrong since the site was created - I must have estimated the number (or it was a typo - it's closer to 0.866) and never corrected it. This unfortunately means that permalinks - which encode a non-scaled x/y - are now slightly off. Given that the coordinate system starts at Reference, this means the farther you get from the center of the Imperium the more the old permalinks will be off.

Fortunately, this isn't far - compare Regina - new permalink, old permalink. Since it's less than a parsec, I'm not going to call on Plan B, which would be to honor old permalinks and tag new permalinks in some way (additional argument, changed coordinate names, etc.).

Fix erroneous inclusion of invalid neighbor subsector labels. (Reported by BeRKA.)

Stupid logic glitch on my part - I was allowing the "neighbor subsector" calculation to wrap around.

Fix subsector name for Zhodane (from Zhdant to Gaval) per Supplement 11. (Reported by Thomas Jones-Low.)

Dunno where "Zhdant" came from as the subsector name - probably an older sector file. But it's now corrected, per Supp 11.

IE problems?

2009-06-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

Long time user Alex Ingram reported a few months ago that the map tiles weren't fully loading for him in Internet Explorer.

I finally had a chance to put together a prototype page that reduces the number of map tiles loaded at once, which may address this problem. If you've experienced this, try the following URL and let me know if it improves the experience for you:

http://www.travellermap.com/index_pool.htm

(NOTE: That URL will go away at some point so don't get used to it!)

Traveller Map in Second Life

2009-04-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is pretty sweet.

About a year ago I took advantage of Second Life's "Parcel Media" support to build an in-world map browser of TravellerMap.com in SL. This basically just sets the media URL of a parcel (a chunk of land) to a map URL, and built an object that is textured with that media URL, along with controls to pan and scale the map. Here's what I came up with:

(I'm that attractive sea creature, by the way.)

Today I got a link from Corro Moseley pointing me at another in-world build by Daden Limited:

I believe it supports multiple map sources, not just TravellerMap.com, and wow is that integration nice. Look, look! I'm standing on Utoland! Look at the text board in the upper left corner - it's showing the RSS feed from this blog, and you can click to read articles!

JSONP and XSS

2009-04-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

Allen Varney asks:

...doesn't this functionality leave the map site open to -- at the very least -- cross-site scripting (XSS) hacks? The whole procedure sounds quite insecure.

Short answer: no (but read on)

But it's an excellent question, so let's analyze the potential security vulnerability.

First off, Wikipedia has a reasonable Cross Site Scripting (XSS) overview.

The short version is that a vulnerability in some site allows an hacker to add content that, when viewed by a victim, executes the hacker's code using the victim's data.

For example, let's say VulnerableForum.com allows evil hacker Eve to post arbitrary script code. When victim Alice visits the site, the web page loads and Eve's code can execute within the context of VulnerableForum.com. That means it could do things like make forum posts in Alice's name, change Alice's password, modify Alice's profile (perhaps to include additional copies of Eve's code, turning this into a viral worm), and so forth.

The Wikipedia article lists several variations of this beyond simple persistent content modification, e.g. Eve sends Alice a URL to VunerableForum.com that includes parameters which induce bugs in the forum software, allowing code injection.

The "classic" form of XSS was what led to the Same Origin Policy (SOP). In the old days, Eve's web site (EvilHacker.com) could load up AlicesBank.com in an IFRAME. If Alice visited EvilHacker.com, the IFRAME would load AlicesBank.com - and possibly log in automatically. The scripts from EvilHacker.com could then reach into the IFRAME and manipulate the now-authenticated bank pages to steal money. In response to this, browser makers implemented the SOP, which means that the scripts can't reach into the IFRAME if the content is from a different site.

This SOP has been extended to all web technology - Flash, AJAX calls, and so forth. Unfortunately, this means that sites that want to cooperate - say, your site and TravellerMap.com - don't have a way to share data. Flash exposes a cross-domain mechanism (where receiving second site can explicitly allow requests from requesting first site). For JavaScript there are some cross-domain-enabling proposals. But for now, JSONP is a workaround. JSONP requires that both sites cooperate – the requesting site must specify a JSONP parameter in a URL request, and the receiving site must understand the JSONP parameter and create an appropriate response.

So…. back to the question of security.

Does accepting JSONP requests expose TravellerMap.com to XSS attacks? No – the site does not interpret the content of the JSONP parameter beyond %-decoding. It is simply pre-pended (along with "(" prefix and ");" suffix) to the data being returned.

Does using JSONP requests expose your site to XSS attacks? Ah, there’s the rub. By making JSONP requests you are allowing TravellerMap.com to inject script and data into the execution context of your web pages. Let’s analyze how this could be exploited:

(1) TravellerMap.com could THEORETICALLY add malicious script to the JSONP results. In that case, instead of emitting "callback(…);" the site emits "make_forum_post(…);" or something. Since the script is executed automatically (via the JSONP mechanism) and the data can’t be filtered (it appears as a script tag which executes the content, not data you can deserialize with paranoid JSON parsing code), there is no simple defense against this. If TravellerMap.com is compromised (or I turn to the dark side…) then your site is vulnerable.

Note that this vulnerability is restricted to XSS behavior, that is, users of the site would have code executed in the context of the web site. This doesn’t allow arbitrary code execution on the victim’s machine (it’s still in the web page sandbox), or on the web server (it’s all client-side). So this isn't a "pwn'd your machine" exploit, but it is a (theoretical) "pwn'd your account" exploit.

Also note that sites like Flickr expose JSONP APIs with the same risks, so it’s not a flaw in the design of the TravellerMap.com API. Either you trust the site you’re calling into with JSONP or you don’t.

For the paranoid (i.e. you want to use the TravellerMap.com JSONP APIs, but don’t trust the site to remain exploit-free), one mitigation would be to sandbox any use of the JSONP APIs. For example, your main site might be mytravellerforum.com, and create a sandbox.mytravellerforum.com subdomain that doesn’t do anything with users' forum accounts. And of course, if you are implementing server-side functionality, you can call directly into the non-JSONP versions of the APIs, in which case you’re parsing the data yourself.

(2) TravellerMap.com could THEORETICALLY expose a vulnerability that allows JSONP requests to include arbitrary content.

Here’s how a hacker might exploit that:

Your site exposes a "make a map for sector X" form. The user can type the sector name into a form, which causes a JSONP request to TravellerMap.com
A hacker crafts a URL which makes your site make that request automatically (due to the architecture of your site, possibly a redirect). The URL includes the sector name as: "); do_evil(…); void("
Your page turns that into a JSONP request
The TravellerMap.com site THEORETICALLY blithely outputs that as part of a valid response, un-escaped
Your site executes that script with the do_evil() content (which, say, makes a forum post)
The hacker posts this nasty URL to a forum. Any user that clicks on the link ends up with do_evil() running within their authenticated context.

It’s a bit convoluted, but that’s how these XSS attacks happen. A further THEORETICAL vulnerability would be if the TravellerMap.com site allowed users to post arbitrary data which could then be retreived by a third-party site, but it does not. (No submitted data is retained by the site beyond the lifetime of the request.)

So how to mitigate it?

Sanitize user input on your site – don’t make arbitrary requests to external sites
Ensure JSONP logic exists in a sub-domain sandbox (see above)
Perform your own security audit – try the TravellerMap.com JSONP-enabled APIs and send test data. To the best of my knowledge, all data from successful requests are properly escaped (user data would appear as strings within JSON data) and errors are returned as 404s (the scripts should not execute).

Again, the same issues exist with any JSONP API - you must trust the site you're calling both to not return malicious scripts intentionally and to be hardened against vulnerabilities that would allow someone to cause malicious script to be returned.

So... an excellent question with a non-trivial answer. Feedback, as always, appreciated!

SEC/MSEC go JSONP

2009-04-18T20:34:00.000-07:00

You can now slap a JSONP parameter to SEC and MSEC calls to get data in cross-domain-friendly format.

Add something like this to the code in your page, triggered (for example) after the user clicks a link or fills in a form field:

   var sector = "Spinward Marches";
   var url = 'http://www.travellermap.com/SEC.aspx' +
       '?q=' + encodeURIComponent(sector) +
       '&jsonp=myfunction';
   var script_tag = document.createElement('script');
   script_tag.setAttribute('src',url);
   document.body.appendChild(script_tag);

This adds a new <script> element on the fly, filled in with "source code" by TravellerMap.com. The script it generates will look like this:

    myfunction("# Spinward Marches\r\n# blah blah\r\nRegina    1910 ...";

The script will run immediately when it is done loading. So you add a function called "myfunction" (or whatever) to your code and it will be called with a whopping huge string containing the sector data, ready for your parsing needs.

JSONP - It's what's for breakfast

2009-04-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Good news, everybody!

I've added JSONP support to the data APIs (the image APIs don't need it). JSONP allows web pages living on your sites to call APIs on the TravellerMap.com site without any server-side work - it's all in the JavaScript.

More details: JSONP in the TravellerMap.com API Documentation

Here's a short introduction to using JSONP from jQuery which is my favorite JavaScript framework. (You'll note that I don't use any frameworks on the TravellerMap.com site; I was loathe to touch them when I started, and the site was a grand experiment in building everything from scratch. But I digress...)

Spinward Marches Data Update

2009-04-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Despite numerous updates to the bulk of the Imperial data (thanks to the CotI cleanup crew), the Domain of Deneb has suffered in comparison. There has been so much attention paid to this area that there are multiple updates and contradictory canonical and quasi-canonical publications (Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches, The Spinward Marches Campaign, MegaTraveller Journal, Regency Sourcebook, etc). Of course, between the Second Survey (1065) and Rebellion (1116-) there was also the Fifth Frontier War (1107-1110) that redrew borders. So even if you set your campaign on the eve of the Rebellion (not coincidentally the end of the Classic Traveller era and the branch point with the GURPS Traveller alternate timeline) - which is ostensibly the era of my map - it's tricky to get the data just right.

A few weeks ago I sent email to Jerry R. Mapes asking if I could include his cleaned up Spinward Marches data in my site. He granted permission, with a warning that there was additional cleanup to do and that his failing health precluded spending time on it, but that he was optimistic for the future. Sadly, reality intervened, and Jerry passed away a few days ago. (

I've taken his SM 1105 file and made some further corrections by comparing it with other extant data files to turn up anomalies, and set the allegiances to Post-5FW which match the borders on my map.

Here are the specific changes:

0605 name "Algeblaster" --> "Algebaster" (per S3:SM, RSB) - this is consistently mis-typed in SEC files, but is consistently "Algebaster" in print.
3228 name "Fen's Gren" --> "Fenl's Gren" (per S3:SM text) - the alternate "Fen's Gren" name appears on the S3 map and in SMC and RSB. I have no particular attachment, but I saw no big reason to deviate from S3:SM
2125 pbg "725" --> "723" (per RSB) - probably just a typo
2519 name "Plannet" --> "Pannet" (per S3:SM, RSB) - another consistently mis-typed name in SEC files, but consistently "Pannet" in print
0234 name "Andory" --> "Andor" (per SMC, RSB) - this is contraversial. In S3:SM this "Andory" in both the data and map but later sources use "Andor". As this is a fairly well-known world (one of the few multi-world Droyne states in Charted Space) I kept "Andor".
1110,1209,1210,1311 alleg --> "Fa" - the Federation of Arden worlds, post-5FW
1324,1325,1522,1523,1524,1525,1526,1529,1626,1627,1628 alleg --> "Bw" - the Border Worlds, post-5FW
0236,0336 alleg "Im" --> "Dr" - S3:SM left these as Imperial, but later sources annotate these as trade code "Dw" (Droyne world) or allegiance "Dr" (Droyne). Again, since these are Significant in Charted Space, I decided to make them stand out on the map.

As always, comments appreciated.

Stellar Data

2009-03-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I slipped out a file format page, adapting Marc Miller's article in Challenge #26 describing the first standard sector data file format. It's pretty bare bones at the moment - just what's in the article so it is preserved for posterity - but I plan to grow this over time to document other sector data file formats that have appeared over the years. Call this "Version 1.0".

(Honestly, posting it was inspired by site users wondering what the various base codes in the data meant. But everyone seems to love file format discussions...)

Then, inspired by Yet Another Thread on sector data file formats on CotI I decided to finally tackle stellar data.

Stellar data now output by SEC.aspx API when present in source data. The following grammar is used:


// Basic:
//   system     ::= star ( w+ star )*
//
// Extended: (Malenfant's Revised Stellar Generation Rules)
//
//   system     ::= unit ( w+ companion )*
//   companion  ::= near | far
//   near       ::= unit
//   far        ::= "[" system "]"
//   unit       ::= star | pair
//   pair       ::= "(" star w+ star ")"
//
//   star       ::= type tenths w* size main?
//                | dwarf
//                | unknown
//   type       ::= "O" | "B" | "A" | "F" | "G" | "K" | "M"
//   tenths     ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9"
//   size       ::= "D" | "Ia" | "Ib" | "II" | "III" | "IV" | "V" | "VI" | "VII"
//   dwarf      ::= "DB" | "DA" | "DF" | "DG" | "DK" | "DM" | "D"
//   unknown    ::= "Un"
//
//   main       ::= "*"
//
//   w          ::= " "

"Un" in stellar data is from Mendan 0221 in Challenge #46 (by Mike Mikesh). That could be a typo, but I'm interpreting it as "Unknown" (mysteries abound!). Note that the world is an Amber zone, so it's a navigational hazard at least!
Like other SEC.aspx output, the data is normalized - that is, it's been parsed and then re-output. In some cases this may filter the data. You get what you pay for. In particular, although Malenfant's revised stellar generation data is now consumed by my site, only basic star data is output. Anyone have a link to Malenfant's rules?
SEC.aspx output now has a sector header, similar to the GEnie data. The field lengths are NOT guaranteed to remain fixed, however. Consumers that rely on fixed width fields (rather than Regular Expression or Grammar-based parsers) should parse this header to determine the field lengths.


 1-25: Name
27-30: HexNbr
32-40: UWP
   42: Bases
44-68: Codes & Comments
   70: Zone
72-74: PBG
76-77: Allegiance
79-98: Stellar Data

I tidied up some bogus stellar data: Night (Core 0839) "K8 VI M4" to "K8 VI M4 D" (presumably a truncation); and Tender Mercy (Ley 0314) "2 V A6 D" to "K2 D M6 D" (ditto); in both cases I used older GEnie data as the source
While I was there, I fixed a couple of O/0 (oh/zero) typos: Kaskar (Vland 1933) stellar "MO V K6 D" to "M0 V K6 D", and Zdienjbats (Far Frontiers 1801) PBG "BO4" to "B04". The latter actually inhibited the world from showing up on the map - oops!

That's it for now!

Two Cool Maps

2009-03-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Two non-traditional renderings of some of our favorite subjects.

First up, a Traveller subsector, created and illustrated by Merxiless over on CotI:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=18839

Second, the Milky Way... in logical "subway map" form:

http://arbesman.net/milkyway/

(When we moved back to San Francisco a few years ago we noted that it the light-rail Muni lines finally had "logical" maps - just like a real grown-up city!)

Mismatch Resolved (For Now)

2009-03-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

I've settled on a solution to the galaxy scale mismatch discussed in the previous post.

I analyzed the Mikesh map and, while the horizontal/vertical parsec ratio is only 0.9, that's closer to the actual ratio than 1.0 which is the ratio of the Linehan map.

So I've decided to keep the Mikesh map as the primary data source. The galactic structure is now scaled to fit it, which means the Galactic Rifts line up. The change is subtle enough to be pretty much unnoticeable unless you zoom in to where the Core Route and the Galactic Rifts line up - then they are off by several sectors. But honestly, these were wonky anyway.

BeRKA suggested dropping some of the Core Route sectors, but they actually have route metadata winding through them. Honestly, I think they're mostly just a "cute" addition to the site and don't take them particularly seriously, but enjoy having them. So I might as well keep them intact.

By the way, the horizontal/vertical parsec ratio is noticable in Classic Traveller material as well. If you compare the shape of the Imperium presented in the Atlas of the Imperium (by, say, photocopying each page and laying it out like a poster... not that I ever did that...) with the shape of the Imperium as presented in the Alien Module maps you'll see that it's "squashed" in AotI. This is because the AotI-style maps use square hexes. The "Atlas"-style rendering on the site uses rectangular hexes. I believe this "squashing" infected the DGP dotmaps as well (in Vilani & Vargr and Solomani & Aslan).

Galaxy Scale Mismatch

2009-03-15T21:00:00.001-07:00

Hrm... my two sources of data for the Traveller galaxy structure don't quite equate, leading to fairly dramatic mismatches.

If you measure the Local Arm's girth at the Ray 0 i.e. through Reference (Core 0140) on the detailed map from Security Leak by Mike Mikesh, you get a distance of 1600 parsecs. If you measure the distance on the detailed map by Clifford Linehan - which he used to construct the Zhodani Core Route - you get a distance of 1760 parsecs.

Composite of the two maps.

That's about a 10% difference... and it's going to bother me. I dug a bit further and it looks like the Security Leak #5 map is the original source, per this conversation between Marc Miller and Clifford Linehan. Mr. Linehan took Mike Mikesh's original, scanned it, cleaned it up, and handed the results back to MWM who took it under the FFE fold. This would indicate that either Mr. Linehan corrected the size (to fit known dimensions of the galaxy) or accidentally scaled it up. (Charted Space doesn't quite line up either.)

Since Traveller parsecs are based on a hexagonal grid, it's actually easy to introduce an error of around 14% - hexes pack more tightly horizontally than vertically, with a ratio around 0.868. This is factored in when I map from image-space to world-space (and you'll see residue in the API). Here's a sample - the red square is precisely 10 parsecs tall, but more than 11 parsecs wide - yet it's a perfect square if you count the pixels.

If I had to guess, I'd say that one of the two galactic-scale map authors was unaware of this, and and used a horizontally-biased parsec scale for determining the number of sectors between Charted Space and the galactic core.

Bleah. :(

2009-03-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

That article on rifts from Security Leak fanzine was too good to pass up, so I've incorporated Mike Mikesh's speculation on the extent of the local rifts. Check it out:

Rift rendering using vectors has been dropped, and it now relies on a bitmap - this gives softer edges which IMHO is an improvement. If you zoom out the rifts gradually fade as they become insignificant relative to the overall Galactic structure. If you zoom in they fade in, then disappear at the same point where the map stops rendering "background" stars - now at 4 pixels/parsec. In between they're quite pretty - and look somewhat like an absorption (or "dark") nebula.

The effect is present but not particularly visible in non-Candy styles as well, most notably now as dark shading in the "Atlas" style which mimics (crudely) the shading of the rifts shown in the Alien Module maps. The edges of the rifts are a bit coarse, and I'll probably tweak them over time.

As always, comments appreciated.

Far Out, Man!

2009-03-14T12:39:00.001-07:00

Start at Reference in "Candy" style - and then zoom out. A lot.

Go ahead, I'll wait for you.

Nifty, huh?

Okay, if you're lazy, here's the image:

Well, I think it's nice, at any rate. This is inspired by the latest renderings of the real Milky Way galaxy, such as the one over at the Atlas of the Universe:

(Milky Way image © Richard Powell, c/o Atlas of the Universe.)

However, the TravellerMap site is a map of the Traveller galaxy, not the real Milky Way, so I had to pull out the image editor and build it from scratch. This is based on the Traveller galaxy map first introduced to the site back in 2005, courtesy of Clifford Linehan from his (now defunct?) Zhodani Core Route site, sourced by Marc Miller:

(Traveller Galaxy image © Far Future Enterprises, c/o Clifford Linehan)

There are definite differences between the real and fictional galaxy. For example, in the real Milky Way, Earth's sun is part of the Orion Arm, which is mere spur off of the Perseus Arm, next to the Sagittarius Arm. In the Traveller galaxy, Terra appears to be in the main body of a major arm. The real Milky Way is a distinctive barred spiral, whereas the Traveller galaxy is not notably barred (although I rendered a subtle bar in anyway). In a real galaxy, there are nearly as many stars in the rifts between arms as there are in the arms themselves - the arms are slowly propagating gas density waves that induce more star formation, so they are full of bright young stars. In the Traveller galaxy, the rifts have much lower density, which makes things trickier for the Zhodani core expeditions. I don't have a problem with this difference - after all, space in Traveller is 2D. I view this as a perfectly acceptable simplification for the game universe, and don't attempt to fit it to reality. To me, it's a lot like chess. Real battles between opposing armies rarely take place on a perfectly flat 8x8 grid, but that doesn't mean chess isn't a fun game that teaches real strategy.

To create the image I took the galaxy map (isolated to a white-on-black mask), the pseudorandom stars from the map site, Paint.NET and experimented with various layers, blurs, and mixing functions. The cloudy arms were created by blurring the map, rendering in clouds, then using a twist filter. This had various densities of galactic structure and stars layered on top. The core was generated with several overlapping gradients to get an overall white glow, the rosy core, and the bright bar.

If you zoom in, the "Galaxy" image will gradually fade to the "Nebula" background used for candy-style rendering (c/o Wayne Peters). The only really grody bit is that the local rifts fade in as well, and they have abrupt edges. I'm pondering what to do there. Classic Library Data states:

Situated in the center of the Imperium, Capital's astrographic location has proven of prime importance, as it controls the only gap in the Rifts for thousands of parsecs. Besides being a communications hub, Capital is a cultural center, and educational focus. - Adventure 3: Twilight's Peak (emphasis mine)

The emphasized portion is not present in Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M) and later updates of the Library Data for Capital, possibly because the Traveller universe was more refined. However, looked at on the scale of hundreds of parsecs, it is true that the Imperium - centered on Capital, does control the only large gap in the rifts... if the Great Rift and Lesser Rift are presumed to continue on for a thousand parsecs in each direction.

w00t! Google just found me an issue of Security Leak Magazine where Mike Mikesh analyzes the local rifts in the context of the overall Traveller galaxy - sweet! Well, I guess I know what I have to do next...

Data Overview 2009

2009-02-27T21:33:00.000-08:00

At the start of 2008 I posted a data overview, showing how much things had changed since 2006. This should probably become a yearly tradition, so here's the official 2009 overview:

Not a whole lot of change. So far as I can tell by doing a "blink compare", at this scale the only differences are:

Anything else I can plug in, dear readers?

(I used TortoiseIDiff to do the blink comparison. I used a similar technique while doing the Solomani and Aslan Dotmap Reconstruction.)

More search tweaks

2009-02-20T21:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, a few more tweaks:

The handling of multi-word searches is now "Web-like". Multiple words in a search turn into multiple AND clauses. So "so ri" would find Solomani Rim sector.
You can specify exact: as a prefix to force an exact name match of that term. So "exact:sol" will find only Sol subsector.
You can specify uwp: as a prefix to match a UWP. (Searching only for XXXXXXX-X remains as a shortcut for a UWP search.)
If you use wildcards, the "prefix search" functionality is turned off. That is, normally "reg" would match "Regina" and "Beta Regilis". "reg*" will only match names starting with "reg"

And you can combine these, for example:

t* uwp:*f - find worlds starting with T with Tech Level F
exact:terra uwp:a* - find worlds named Terra with Class A starports

Limitations:

Searches are performed on specific item data only, not the context of the item. By that I mean: you can't search on "solomani rim uwp:a*" since it would only search for worlds named "solomani" and "rim".
Search results may include alternate languages or spellings that are known to the site metadata but aren't shown. For example, Solomani Rim is known as Kushuggi in Vilani, so "kush*" would find it, although it won't be apparent why.

Search: Now with UWPs

2009-02-19T21:23:00.000-08:00

Has this ever happened to you?

Damn... where did I leave that world?!?! I know it's UWP is A7899B9-B but I can't for the life of me remember where I left it! Well, I'm not sure... maybe it was B7899B9-C or A7899B9-C... ugh...

If so, your days of trouble are over! You can now search for UWPs. Here's how it works:

By default, search still only looks for names (sectors, subsectors, and worlds), matching starts of words (so "sol" matches "Solomani Rim", "Sol", and "Nowa Sol")
If your search term has the pattern XXXXXXX-X (7-1) the search looks for exact matches of UWPs instead (not prefixes)
You can also make it explicit and use a uwp: prefix on the search to force UWP matching

And for added bonus:

Wildcard searches are supported, using either the % or * character. They mean the same - match zero or more characters. So you could search on R*g*a to find Regina. Note that searches have an implicit wildcard at the end, so that's the same as R*g*a*

You can combine wildcards with the uwp: prefix as well. The Search API documentation has been documented to reflect this.

A cookie to the first commenter that finds my missing world!

Search: Better, Faster, Stronger... Geekier

2009-02-18T21:44:00.000-08:00

I've taken the plunge - the search feature (and back end of the Search API) is now powered by a real honest-to-Turing database engine. Yes... I've entered the 1970s!

If you were playing with the site for the last hour or so, you may have noticed that search went wonky. As usual, code that worked fine in my staging environment (my laptop) ran into scaling/performance issues when in the production environment - 130k separate INSERT statements took longer than ASP.NET likes to wait. A little fiddling with DataTables and SqlBulkCopy and now a rebuild of the database takes under ten seconds. Hooray!

What you'll find:

Search is better. Instead of exact word matches it will now do stem matches. So "Sol" will find "Solomani Rim (sector)" and "Sol (subsector)"
Search is faster. Previously, the search was done by creating an in-memory hashtable-based index that could be disposed of at ASP.NET's whim. So the first search on a cold index would take >10 seconds; subsequent searches would be faster... until the server decided to reclaim memory. I don't believe my hosting provider executes the site across multiple hosts, but that's now feasible at least.
Search is stronger. The database can be rebuilt in a few seconds from the raw data files (and ginormous metadata map) but that will only be necessary on data updates.

Now, all that said...

It's not going to give any additional result data back just yet, nor allow searching on other fields. The outstanding request - that should now be easy to service - is to allow searching by UWP. I have the data ready, I just need to write the glue, but I'm out of time for tonight.
The results are fairly arbitrary - matching sectors, matching subsectors, then matching worlds - and a max of 20 results total. Previously that wasn't a problem, but with the looser matching it could be less than idea. Feedback?

What else do you want? What problems have you noticed?

It's Just Not There

2009-01-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

I was pondering the X-Boat route from Tenalphi to Strouden in the Spinward Marches - which, as everyone knows, is 5-parsecs long despite X-Boats being J4 - and settled on an explanation IMTU.

Spinward Marches 2127 doesn't exist.

Jump Space goes non-Cartesian for that parsec. You can't jump to that hex. Jump distances measured across that hex are one parsec shorter than they would appear to be. It's like... oh, I don't know... someone cut out that hex and stretched the map around it in to fill in the gap.

Now... who could do a think like that? And why would they want to erase an entire hex in the Spinward Marches?

Bigger Smaller Maps

2008-11-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

By request, I've replaced the Large/Small checkbox on the Mobile Map page with a drop-down containing four size choices, for mobile devices with bigger screens.

Minor Poster tweaks

2008-09-20T21:34:00.001-07:00

Per request, I've added the ability to specify style options (and other parameters) from the post.htm demo page. As a convenience for web authors, the Poster API now handles options passed in as POST parameters, not just GET parameters.

Minor Updates - Uisilrao, Theron, Delphi, Kaa G!'kul

2008-07-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

Some minor updates, hopefully nothing breaks:

Data

Replaced Tealou Arlaoh worlds in my Dotmap Reconstruction of Uistilrao sector with data from BeRKA
Added Uistilao as an alias for Uistilrao
Replaced custom-generated Theron data with BeRKA's
Incorporate xboat routes for Delphi from the JTAS Delphi Discussion (subscription required)
Updated Kaa G!'kul sector data based on Mike McKeown's redux of Leroy Guatney's HIWG data

Rendering

Ley Sector has IL (Imperial - Luriana Cultural) and IU (Imperial - Ursa Cultural) allegiances - map to "Im" for the purposes of rendering for map consistency (cultural regions are not generally called out on my map)

API

Coordinates API now takes sector[/hex] OR sx/sy[/hx/hy] and returns (World-space) x/y in addition to sx/sy/hx/hy
API docs now validate as HTML 4.0 Transitional
Added Universe API for fetching high level data about the universe - list of known sectors

Here There Be Dragons

2008-06-06T21:13:00.000-07:00

"Right now, our map of the Milky Way still has large areas marked 'Here there be dragons.' Ten years from now, those areas will be filled in," said Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. - Universe Today

A realistic rendering of a two-armed Milky Way is to be had at Astronomy Picture of the Day in lovely mouse-over format, or the originals at the Spitzer Space Telescope site.

Somewhere on the TODO list is to make the map look something like this in Candy style when you zoom out all the way.

JumpMap and Credits tweaks

2008-03-28T21:43:00.000-07:00

Three slight tweaks:

Further cleaned up coordinates documentation in the API docs
While doing that, added support for sector/hex and sx/sy/hx/hy in addition to x/y for specifying the location for the Credits API.
After bludgeoning at GDI+ with a pointy stick, made the JumpMap API spit out transparent PNGs, so the bit outside the border will blend more appropriately with hosting sites. Sorry, transparent GIFs are too much work.

Coordinate Systems

2008-03-26T00:30:00.001-07:00

Thanks to API users, I realized my documentation of coordinate systems used by the site and various APIs was horrible.

Please take a peek at the new Coordinate Systems documentation and let me know if it makes any more sense.

The Equinox is Nigh: Candy and Eggs

2008-03-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

Wayne Peters dropped me an updated background image for the Candy Style rendering. The old image was a JPEG, and since you always see it zoomed in the artifacts were noticeable. The new image is a PNG and so no more artifacts. The tiles themselves are still JPEG, but you don't notice the compression. (example)

Also... it's that time of the year again. My wife has broken out her pysanky-making tools again and chickens are looking nervous. While decorating some she glanced at some of my Traveller maps laying about (I finally picked up copies of the Judges Guild sectors), and said "you should do a map egg - you design it, I'll do all the work". So here it is:

Border Generation

2008-03-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

I've written up a paper and demo page on the updates to the allygen algorithms by J. Greely I used to generate most of the borders that weren't previously documented.

The modified allygen code I used isn't terribly pretty, but is available on request. I'd like to clean it up before publishing it. The demo version is reimplemented in JavaScript and is much easier to read. I encourage you to check out the source.

Would a full blown web app that lets you copy/paste .SEC files and interactively generate border descriptors (useful for sec2pdf ) be useful for anyone?

Bug Fix: Opera/Safari Searching

2008-02-21T21:47:00.000-08:00

David Somers reported an issue with searching on Opera and Safari - odd, since I tested those browsers!

It turned out that search worked, but the options panel didn't reconfigure to make more room for the search results, so on small screens the results would be hidden. I think this dated back from the browser compatibility work from a while back... and I just assumed those browsers were buggy. Oops - turned out to be a subtle JavaScript issue - comparing an uninitialized parameter against null instead of undefined. It only worked because IE and Firefox apparently would report that state as === null and === undefined, even though null !== undefined. Weird.

Anyway, fixed.

Beta: Overlay Rectangle

2008-02-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

On request, I've added a follow-on to the You Are Here feature in Beta for iframe:

Overlay Rectangle:

Specify ox, oy, ow and oh as the x, y, width and height of an overlay box in map coordinates.
This is rendered as a translucent overlay on top of the map. The appearance is hard-coded.
This is supported for IFRAME only. There is no option for the user to move or remove the overlay.
The details of this API are subject to change without warning.

Atlas of the Imperium coverage area:
http://www.travellermap.com/iframe.htm?ox=-111.95&oy=80&ow=166.614&oh=200

Spinward Marches:
http://www.travellermap.com/iframe.htm?ox=-112.104&oy=80&ow=27.776&oh=40

Afachtiabr (Far Frontiers)

2008-02-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of James Kundert (a.k.a. GypsyComet), the coreward half of Far Frontiers, a.k.a. Afachtiabr, is now filled in. This is based on his work originally published in The Traveller Chronicle, rounding out Dale Kemper's rimward half originally developed for FASA.

Also, I improved the rendering of asteroids at high scales. I played with a few algorithms for "random, but not actually random" positioning.

Jump Maps, You Are Here, and More

2008-02-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

I was out of town for several days with my computer but no Internet connection and evenings to myself, so I did a fair bit of work on the site. A lot of the work went into fielding requested features.

What's New:

Added JumpMap API - generate a Jump-N map for any location

Keyboard scrolling is now enabled in IFRAMEs

You will want to specify SCROLLING="no" in the IFRAME tag on your site

Asteroids are now rendered as semi-random clusters of ellipses at high scales
Add MapOptions.ForceHexes (add 8192 to always draw hexagonal parsecs, not squares)

[UPDATE 2008-02-03] Fixed use of ForceHexes for the main page and IFRAME - it was being masked out. Should work now.

Tweak min scales for features to support 24 & 48 pixels/parsec more nicely
Lots of API documentation cleanup

Beta:

iframe.htm now takes "You Are Here" parameters (yah_sx, sah_sy, yah_hx, yah_hy) that define a sector/hex pair to put a marker on - example. There can be only one such marker, and there is no UI (or finalized script API) to set, move, or clear it.

Fixes:

Combat client-side memory bloat by:

Clearing tile cache after following a non-animated link

Request metadata with a time threshold, to avoid hundreds of aborted HTTP requests

Fix candy background tiling for legend (caused by a floating point underflow issue in GDI+)

Plus lots of (hopefully) invisible internal changes.

TODO List

2008-01-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

Here's my "To Do" list for the site. Many of these are probably incomprehensible, but I thought I'd share anyway

FEATURE: Support custom data for sector.htm LBB generator
LOC: Detect language setting "Accept-Language:", serve Japanese version (it turns out a lot of the site traffic is from Japan. Go figure!)
IMPL/FEATURE: Style object that's data only

Cache object for brushes, etc
Allow passing in via parameters (options and scale are presets)
Scale is just a seed - use next-highest scale

FEATURE: Search by regex on (UWP, PBG, ...)
BUG: Terra should look like Earth in Candy style
BUG: iframe doesn't show if "Disable script debugging" is unchecked (WTF?) - IE bug? Maybe cookies can't be loaded or something?
IMPL/PERF: Add more condensed route storage (perf, size)
QUALITY: Investigate DrawClosedCurve for candy borders
FEATURE: Style options - hexes at every level
QUALITY: Up the JPEG quality for Candy a bit
DATA: Incorporate Theron sector from BeRKA (?)
DATA: Incorporate Uistilao sector from BeRKA (?)
DATA: Use Kaa'G!kul data from HIWG (?)
DATA: Incorporate MWM's new T5 data
IMPL: Reconsider JavaScript class/object style

Use Class.prototype.func = function() ... rather than this.func, and other extern logic

Verify that inline functions for event handlers aren't leaking memory

FEATURE: Support different data sets (Judge's Guild, etc)

What else should I have on the list?

Traveller Wikia Links

2008-01-26T15:01:00.000-08:00

Thomas Jones-Low over at the Traveller Wikia has started a project to update the structured data elements of the wiki (which are rendered using "infoboxes" in mediawiki parlance) so that they generate IFRAMEs pulling from the map site, where appropriate. w00t!

Data Overview, Gushemege Routes, Keyboard Controls

2008-01-26T13:57:00.000-08:00

It's time for another look at the map's data/metadata coverage - the last one was back in 2006. Here is a dotmap render at 2 pixels/parsec showing all parsec-level borders and all routes:

Notes:

The rendering and encoding pipeline doesn't guarantee a single pixel per world, or even uniform brightness, so the dotmap should not be analyzed too closely - just gauge data density (i.e. "this is a rift" or "there's no data for this sector")
This does not include Chtierabl or the Zhodani Core Route which, let's face it, is just a long, mostly straight line.

I've also made two additions:

Routes for Gushemege were added based on Traveller 1248 Sourcebook 2: Bearers of the Flame (download sector map in PDF format). I figure the Fourth Imperium xboat routes are probably pretty close to the Third Imperium xboat routes at least within the sector, since the backstory is that Usdiki Pocket fared pretty well. The edges of the sector - outside the 1248 4I borders - have sparse routes.
You can now use the I, J, K and L keys to scroll the map as well as + and - to zoom in and out. This only applies to the main map page, not IFRAME embedded versions.

What's Missing?

2008-01-25T09:50:00.000-08:00

Apart from dorking around with experiments, the actual content of the site is reasonably stable. So I was pondering... what's missing? What are the gaps in the data that we should endeavor to fill in? Let me throw that question out to the readers.

Off the top of my head:

Borders in K'kree space
Borders in Hiver space
Coreward half of Far Frontiers (I have an email out to James Kundert)
Routes in Ilelish, Zarushagar, Gushemege, Delphi, Alpha Crucis

What else?

This is a subtly different question than "what should I do next?" - I'll post an updated roadmap soon for comments.

Blogger Template Updated

2008-01-24T23:18:00.001-08:00

I kinda accidentally updated the blogger template for the actual blog site, and had to frantically edit it back into the classic TRAVELLER style (Optima/Univers, black-on-white). Let me know if anything isn't readable.

No changes to the map or the RSS feed.

LBB Generator

2008-01-20T22:14:00.000-08:00

I played a bit more with the sector.htm page - adding a title page, tweaks to the layout, and so forth. The page code is also slightly more interesting to peruse - to make it easier to modify I wrote a JavaScript Template mechanism that defines the transform using XSLT-like constructs (if, foreach) embedded in the HTML as attributes (jt_if, jt_foreach) itself, and JSONT-like expression embedding sequences ({$.index}, {$.title}), and operates over a JavaScript data construct. The expression language is JavaScript itself and "$" is set to the current object as the parse descends. Check the page source for details.

It ended up working pretty well, once I sorted out some cross-browser issues (IE doesn't have a convenient mechanism for enumerating explicitly specified attributes, alas). Tested in Firefox 2, IE7, Opera 9 and Safari 3 on Windows XP.

Yiklerzdanzh Routes

2008-01-13T22:15:00.000-08:00

Browsing through the HIWG CD I came across a bitmap of the Yiklerzdanzh sector including routes, so I added those.

There's no distinction between Zhodani "xboat" routes and others... some were easy to interpret (the Meichntid Ibl and Talpaku Communality have obvious self contained networks) but the long chain of routes into the L and O subsectors is a bit odd. I'm interpreting the routes as a continuation of the Zhodani routes into unincorporated territory to bolster the Consulate's influence in the area. Oddly, it avoids the Consulate outcropping that seeps into the Vanguard Reaches.

If anyone has more data on this I'd be glad to clarify.

Border Cleanup

2008-01-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

A minor bit of cleanup:

Found and fixed a bug with candy-style border rendering along sector boundaries. Most notable in the Vargr Extents
Regenerated borders for Khoellighz, Windhorn, Mendan, Vland, Lishun, Antares, and tweaks in a few other sectors to make edges line up

Since I was playing around in a Win98 virtual machine I also made the map function in IE5. Search and the data display show mangled results, but I know the cause (it's using a newish feature of Javascript) so it's fixable; at least now you can still explore the map. Anyone care?

I have reports that dragging is no longer working in IE6 on WinXP since an update circa Jan 1st, but I can't reproduce the problem. Can anyone else? If so, tracking down the problem should be easy.

Updated Data

2008-01-08T23:40:00.000-08:00

A sharp eyed user noticed that the following worlds were missing:

Some digging revealed that in some cases the data I had which was indicated as being sourced from the GEnie upload was, in fact, post-processed and had lost some data. I wrote some tools to look for other inconsistencies and found one more Dark Nebula world that had gone missing.

After some soul searching, I decided to pull in updates to the data which had been made by a project led by Robert Eaglestone and Jim Fetters on the COTI board in 2005/2006 which analyzed the parts of the Atlas of the Imperium containing Imperial worlds as a run-up to scrubbed data for T5. This resulted in updated data for:

Alpha Crucis
Antares
Core
Corridor
Dagudashaag
Daibei
Delphi
Diaspora
Fornast
Gushemege
Ilelish
Lishun
Magyar
Massilia
Old Expanses
Reaver's Deep
Verge
Vland
Zarushagar

(Empty Quarter was also updated, but I kept the Stellar Reaches CT version.)

In theory, this process deleted 5 worlds but added 12. Let me know if you notice any new AotI inconsistencies.

[Update 2008-01-09]
The changes are:

No, I can't count - that's +9 -4, not +12 -5. The difference is the Empty Quarter (+3 -1) that I didn't incorporate.

Research Stations and Subsector Pages

2008-01-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

A few quick additions:

Research Station glyphs are now rendered (example). This is based on having "Rs" or "RsX" trade codes where X is some transliteration of a Greek letter (A, B, G, D, E, Z, H, T). There are very few of these in the dataset I have (Spinward Marches is missing them, for example) so they're spotty at best. If just "Rs" is specified, Gamma (Γ) is used (it's the first Greek letter that is distinctly non-Latin, it is used in the classic Spinward Marches poster for the map key, and it kinda looks like an "r")
Base codes beyond N, S, W, A, B get a little more special treatment than previously (they got a generic diamond). Depots are called out with boxes, Zhodani, Vargr, Aslan, Hiver and K'kree codes are distinguished slightly. You can tell a Clan base, Tlaukhu base, or both apart... but not from a Vargr Corsair base. You'll still have to look at the allegiance.
I did a quick experiment to play with the APIs: you can now pull up http://www.travellermap.com/subsector.htm?sector=Spinward+Marches&subsector=C and get a LBB-style page of the specified subsector.

Mobile fixes

2008-01-01T17:50:00.000-08:00

Mobile-related changes:

Fixed searching in Mobile page - I'd accidentally broken it when doing some code cleanup
Made Enter key in search box work on the Mobile page from within Firefox
Added Mobile link to main page
Added tooltips to Mobile page
Slightly changed how you scroll (was a factor of 0.5 of the width/height, now it's 0.4)

Also, fixed a data error causing Hicongengiso to not appear, and fixed the IFRAME API docs

API Documentation

2007-12-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

I created a page to keep the API documentation in one canonical place:

http://www.travellermap.com/api.htm

Bug Fix: Searching

2007-12-29T22:08:00.000-08:00

Minor fix here for an issue I noticed myself - if your search results included a sector, when you clicked it wouldn't be centered or scaled reasonably. A little digging found that when I switched from XML to JSON search result processing I'd dropped some of the logic. Clicking the search results now behaves as it did previously.

I also noticed that I wasn't "stemming" words at all, so I threw in a simple rule to drop 's when indexing - try searching on "trin" and you should get 3 results.

We're out of beta - we're releasing on time!

2007-12-27T22:04:00.000-08:00

I'm calling the credits experiment done, and out of beta. Shipped!

You'll now see metadata in the page footer for the area on which the map is centered - including world data if you're over an occupied parsec. The data shown will include:

Sector Name
World Hex
World Name
World UWP
Sector Era
Author
Source
Publisher
Hyperlink to source of data

Although not present in the beta, I've added in the Era ("circa 1117") if this is known for the particular dataset - corrections welcome!

Another feature that was in beta was a map legend, a new link in the lower left. This launches a popup window (your browser might block it) which uses the current map style to explain the details. (Question: with J-6 and unlimited fuel, how long would it take to get from Regina to Tertius?)

Also, I've added an experimental new API: /SEC.aspx?sector=SECTORNAME - this dumps a standard SEC file for the specified sector. The column widths are undefined - you'll want to use a regular expression to parse it.

Finally, per request on COTI, you will now see UWPs when zoomed in to 128 pixels/parsec.

Custom Posters

2007-12-24T11:54:00.000-08:00

I've added HTTP POST support to the Poster API - including documentation and sample forms.

In English:

If you have a .SEC file you can now upload it and have it rendered for you, including optional XML metadata. However, the sample form is raw - you can't specify rendering options. It should be possible for someone to write a form that exposes all of the rendering options/scale parameters as check-boxes.

Map API Updates

2007-12-23T22:07:00.000-08:00

A bunch of internal cleanup and refactoring, which will hopefully have no noticeable impact on the site, and three subtle changes to the Poster API:

Extra-sector worlds no longer rendered - borders and routes will be shown, but the worlds themselves will not be.
Added an optional subsector=X argument where X is the A...P index of the subsector. If specified, only that subsector is rendered.
If no render options are specified, by default a sector poster elides the sector grid lines and a subsector poster elides the subsector grid lines as well.

This should make it easier to use the site as an API for static navigation. For example, the following image is embedded in the blog via the following markup:

<img src="http://www.travellermap.com/Poster.aspx?sector=Spinward+Marches&subsector=C&options=2928&scale=64" border="4" />

The API documentation in the last post was incomplete, so here's another shot:

/Coordinates.aspx?sector=SECTORNAME[&hex=XXYY]

Maps a sector name (and optional hex coordinate) into sector/hex coordinates
Results are in XML, or JSON if Accept: application/json is specified
example

/Credits.aspx?x=XCOORD&y=YCOORD

Looks up the data and credits for a given location, including UWP if available
Coordinates are in tile-space coordinates (optimized for tile rendering, not navigation); conversion functions are in the script
Results are in XML, or JSON if Accept: application/json is specified
example

/MSEC.aspx?sector=SECTORNAME

Generate a plain tes.MSEC file for use with the sec2pdf utilities
example

/Poster.aspx?sector=SECTORNAME[&scale=N][&subsector=X][&options=O]

Generate a GIF or JPEG image of the specified sector (or just subsector). Scale (pixels/parsec) and options can be included
Image format depends on selected options ("Candy" produces JPEG, otherwise GIF)
Options are defined in the script
example

/Search.aspx?q=QUERY

Perform a free-text search of names for matching sectors, subsectors and worlds
Results are in XML, or JSON if Accept: application/json is specified
example

/Tile.aspx?x=XCOORD&y=YCOORD&scale=N&options=O[&w=WIDTH&h=HEIGHT]

Generate a GIF or JPEG image of the specified region.
Coordinates are in tile-space coordinates (optimized for tile rendering, not navigation); conversion functions are in the script
Image format depends on selected options ("Candy" produces JPEG, otherwise GIF)
Options are defined in the script
example

In case it isn't obvious, the map page itself works by calling these APIs from JavaScript (primarily Tile, but also Coordinates and Search depending on user actions; use of Credits is still "in beta")

Please feel free to make use of any of these APIs. If you encounter any issues with them, let me know!

Nothing to see here (almost)

2007-12-07T00:10:00.000-08:00

Well, hopefully no changes. I've done some behind the scenes tweaks recently though:

Can now parse other data file formats. This is in anticipation of new data files for T5. Not used yet.
The web services now provide either XML or JSON data, depending on the HTTP "Accept" header (specify "application/json" to get JSON data, default is still XML). For the curious, the services are:

/Coordinates.aspx?sector=SECTORNAME[&hex=XXYY] example
/Credits.aspx?x=XCOORD&y=YCOORD (in internal map coordinates) example
/Search.aspx?q=QUERY example

The Beta Page now uses JSON instead of XML for smaller queries and faster parsing
The Beta Page no has switched from using XML/XSLT to JSON/JSONT and should now work in Safari 1.3 (e.g. MacOS X 10.4)

I've also cleaned up a few label positions around the edges of the Imperium, but nothing special.

Metadata and Legend

2007-08-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

Updates to "beta" version of the page that includes data and credits for location the map is centered on:

Click on Control box just inside the border to hide it
Tweak the formatting of metadata
Added a link to a Map Legend - feedback appreciated!

Other fixes:

Fix location of Lesser Rift label
Tweak UWP parser regex to catch travel zones w/ no base or codes - Clan (1103 Spinward Marches) wasn't showing as an Amber Zone
Added subsector names for: Provence, Windhorn, Meshan, Astron, Fulani, Theta Borealis, Theron, Iphigenaia, Touchstone, Delphi, Karleaya, Alpha Crucis, Spica, Uistilrao, Aldebaran, Neworld, Banners, Hanstone, Malorn, Hadji, Storr
Labels now render on top of routes (doesn't obscure the text)
Precise borders are now shown at scale 4 and higher (i.e. as soon as you zoom in)
Borders are now thicker at maximum zoom

[Update, January 2008]

The "beta" version of the page mentioned here is out of beta.

Recent Feedback Feedback

2007-08-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

Candy looks great, but can you get more images so they don't repeat?

Sure, you render them and I'll include them. 120px x 120px, 24-bit PNGs with 8-bit alpha. Let me know what UWP ranges they should represent.

Can you add a secret parameter to make the candy-style images have higher image quality?

I'll try. I tried making them PNGs to get really crisp results but the compression blew out the memory available for the server process.

Can you make a version I can take with me?

Alas no. Actually crafting a local version isn't that hard, but the overhead of maintaining a desktop application is not something I'm willing to take on. I've shipped widely used desktop applications professionally for many years, and it's not trivial to get something that's decent quality. I took on the web site because it was easy!

Can you add a key? I like Traveller, but I don't know what all of these symbols mean!

Urk, I can't believe I didn't do that. It's on my To Do list. For now, though, here's the cheat sheet.

The circles in the middle represent the "mainworld" of a system (most important). White = no easily available water present (all in ice caps, desert world, etc), blue = liquid water present (easy refuelling), 4 diamonds = asteroids (it's the easiest thing to draw)
Small white circle in the upper right indicates a Gas Giant in the system, for fuel skimming
Symbols in the upper left and lower left indicate bases. Triangles are scout bases; red are scout way stations. Stars are naval bases. (I don't think I render non-Imperial bases at all correctly at the moment.)
Letters at the top indicate starport class - A = Best, E = Worst, X = nothing
A circle around the system indicates the travel code; yellow = amber zone (Danger!), red = red zone (Interdicted by the Navy)
Two letter code in the lower right indicates allegiance (Cs = client state of the Imperium, Zh = Zhodani, So = Solomani, etc)
Capitalized world names indicate a population >= 1 billion
Red world names indicate a local capital

Browser Compatibility Changes

2007-08-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Testing in Apple's new Safari 3 Beta for Windows*, I found some issues with the map. They turned out to be caused by some layout hacks I had in the page code to handle the dynamic layout of the page.

The page is composed of resizing (map) and docked (controls, footer) boxes containing other resizing elements (label controls, search results). Ideally, each element should be sized by the content - i.e. the area taken up by the footer is defined by the size of the elements in the footer, and so on. The page did that using old-school HTML <table> elements, but had some issues I'm still not sure of. (Short version: a relatively sized div set to overflow: scroll, inside a relatively sized table cell makes the cell expand if the content overflows, even if the cell and div size correctly with non-overflowing content.) To overcome the issues I had to have some script that would fix the sizes of some elements when the page size changed. These hacks - often browser specific - worked in IE6, IE7, Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0, Opera 9, and Safari 2. But they caused Safari 3 to stop performing layout correctly - everything looked great, but you couldn't drag the map!

So... not wanting to layer on further hacks I redid the page entirely using modern CSS, and the end results were beautiful. Worked like a charm with IE7, Firefox 1.5 and 2.0, Opera 9 and Safari 2 and 3. Unfortunately, they didn't work in IE6. After much teeth gnashing I found a workaround. (Short version: even in standards compliance mode IE6 can't correctly size elements having top and bottom or left and right defined; however, you can use CSS expressions to compute the width or height.)

(Aside: when CSS was young and fresh, Microsoft took the interpretation of "width includes margins, borders and padding" whereas everyone else took the interpretation of "width excludes margins, borders and padding", and it was the latter which eventually became codified in the CSS standards. You can tell that Microsoft was in the "web developer" mindset rather than the "web designer" mindset. When you are designing for the look of content, you want to frame items (text, images, etc) so the exclusive width makes sense. However, when you are developing a UI, you often compose and nest relatively sized boxes. The CSS notion of "width: 100%" when nesting items is absolutely useless when combined with exclusive margins, padding or border, since the element will end up offset and overlapping its parent's right edge!)

Anyway, the map it all appears to work now... but it's probably broken in some obscure browser. If the map suddenly broke for you (boxes everywhere! oh the huge manatee!) I have the retro version available here: http://www.travellermap.com/index_classic.htm - I'll try to keep it working, but I might break it by accident with future changes to underlying shared components such as styles or code. And please let me know what platform and browser you're using - I might be able to bludgeon the page into shape.

* Safari for Windows is a subtle but effective ploy by Apple to encourage Windows-using web developers who haven't shelled out for a Macintosh to do more testing on their platform. Worked for me!

[Update: January 2008]
Given that the old version works in browsers as old as IE5 and no-one has screamed and complained, the "classic" version of the page is no longer available.

Candy! Candy! Candy!

2007-07-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

Based on some artwork by Wayne Peters (and used with permission), I've done an "eye candy" style treatment for my map site (to augment the colors-on-black style of the Spinward Marches poster and the black-on-white style of the Atlas and LBBs). Pick "Candy" in the drop-down in the upper right.

Check out the area around Regina.

It looks best when zoomed in to 128 pixels/parsec, and looks horrible when
zoomed out significantly.

And now that the rifts are much more visible in the "Candy" style (they used to only be drawn as voids in the fake stars visible when zoomed out). I've also updated the rift boundaries to correspond to star densities rather than the macro-scale borders. They match the micro-scale borders, and so look much better when zoomed in. I've also added the rift near Zhdant and details on the Lesser Rift taken from the Third Imperium fanzine's Map of Charted Space Insert.

Enjoy, and feedback welcome.

Routes for Dagudashaag

2007-04-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Based on the excellent Traveller fanzine Signal-GK, I've added routes for Dagudashaag.

The routes are based on the sector xboat route maps printed in Issue #1. One of the routes shown there are missing from the subsector map in #4 (1409-1709), but the route is logical so I left it in.

Hats off to Leighton Piper for the reprinting work, Andrew Pickford for the original subsector map work and the rest of the Dagudashaag Development Team: J.Duncan Law-Green, Adie Stuart, Stuart Machin, Jae Campbell and Alison Nash.

I tweaked inter-sector routes into Vland and Core to join things up. I'm still not happy with the mess in Laraa near Reference (Core 0140) but I guess I need to wait for the rest of the reprints.

PS: Where's Telura Subsector, in issue #7 according to the Traveller Bibliography?

Metadata/Credits Preview and other Minor Updates

2007-04-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

I've updated the code behind the site (both the server side and the client side). There aren't any dramatic changes noticeable by users, but there might be bugs - so let me know!

New stuff:

You can now specify ?sector=name&hex=xxyy, for example: http://www.travellermap.com/?sector=Verge&hex=2612 - the page will automagically navigate for you, if it can find the sector. You can leave out the &hex=xxyy part too.
MSEC.aspx and Poster.aspx now return an HTTP 404 error if they can't find the target sector, instead of defaulting to Spinward Marches
Ran jslint.com over the client side scripts, and did some cleanup.
Added preliminary sector data and metadata for Kaa G!'kul/Numbis based on work by Mike McKeown
Created routes, cleaned up borders for Verge
Trojan Reach, Riftspan Reaches and Ealiyasiyw borders cleaned up a bit
Canopus subsectors added

The big pending change can be seen in-progress here:

http://www.travellermap.com/index_creditstest.htm

As you scroll/zoom the map, world data and sector metadata (author, source, URL, etc) will be shown at the bottom of the page. The metadata isn't formatted in a particularly attractive way at the moment, nor is it complete, but this is the direction I'm planning to take with metadata. I may overlay the data on the map itself (lower right corner) rather than having it outside the frame - I'm not sure

Not forgotten!

2007-02-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a break from work on the site. I've been working on a few unrelated hobby projects and generally just relaxing.

The site is not abandoned! On deck for future updates are:

Kaa G!'kul sector recreation by Michael McKeown
Finer rendering style control, such as hex (instead of boxes) at lower scales
Credits visible on hover
System data (UWP, etc) data visible on hover
Different settings/milieus - including Judge's Guild retro versions of the Gateway Domain, Paranoia Press retro versions of The Beyond and Vanguard Reaches
Use of precise/generated borders at lower scales

But don't hold your breath - it's probably a few months before the next update.

Third Imperium fanzine

2006-12-03T21:45:00.000-08:00

A very preliminary secret project is ready to see the light. Head over to:

http://www.travellermap.com/thirdimperium/

(Short summary: trying to get copies of an awesome Traveller fanzine from the 1980's available online.)

UPDATE: The project is complete as of 2007-01-11, with all issues and supplements available for download. Thanks to all of the contributors!

Waroatahe... anyone?

2006-10-26T22:11:00.000-07:00

I finally picked up a copy of Alien Realms (one of the last Classic Traveller publications by GDW) for a not too hideous price on eBay, and lo and behold it has a map!

Okay, it's a tiny little map, 8 parsecs by 6 parsecs. But it's of the Waroatahe sector deep in the Aslan Heirate. Cool! It even has tidbits (not UWPs) of several worlds:

Eauahkusoilr
Ra'akhtaisaaoeah
Ewew
Aihuarouea
Hlaiheih
Suisahruistalal
Eaausaarai
Haiftakh (on the map, but no details)

Interestingly, none of these show up in Google, although several links to Waroatahe data do. The version my map has was "...created from the dot-plot in Solomani & Aslan by jaymin@maths.tcd.ie"

Has anyone taken a stab at reconciling the dotmap with the Alien Realms map? I'm not seeing anything that matches.

Vargr Allegiances and Rimward States

2006-10-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

Done! I've now generated borders for every sector. Of course, some still need tweaking... but I think I'll take a break now.

Most recent changes:

Added borders for: Ohieraoi, Fahreahluis, Hfiywitir, Irlaftalea, Teahloarifu, Ahkiweahi', Iyiyukhtoi', Banners, Hanstone, Malorn, Hadji
Added allegiance codes from Vilani and Vargr
Show labels for regions even if they're standard allegiances (e.g. "Im", "Zh", etc)
Added labels for J-4 and J-5 rift spanning routes (micro-scale)
Added allegiance code for Regency of Muirimi (Theron and Iphigenaia)
Corrected allegiances of Eha and Yuhoahtiyol (Hanstone Sector) to match Solomani and Aslan

Oh, and I wanted to share this quote about the Julian Protectorate:

"The borders of the Julian Protectorate are not easy to define..." - Michael R. Mikesh, Challenge #49

No kidding!

Take a peek at how I did it, and let me know what you think.

Vargr Extents - Borderific!

2006-10-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

No hyperlinks today - find your own damn sectors!

Borders for:

Vargr Extents: Khoellighz, Dhuerorrg, Ngathksirz, Fa Dzaets, Gzaefueg, Gvurrdon, Tuglikki, Provence, Windhorn, Meshan, Rzakki, Listanaya, Ksinanirz, Zao Kfeng Ig Grilokh, Knaeleng, Kharrthon, Oeghz Vaerrghr, Kfazz Ghik
Gashikan Empire: Gashikan, Trenchan
Julian Protectorate: Mendan, Amdukan, Ingukrax (Arzul), Antares, Empty Quarter, Star's End
Vargr Enclaves: Ktiin'gzat, Mugheen't
Zhodani Consulate: Zhodane
Spinward States: Fulani, Theron, Iphigenaia, Touchstone

Um... I think that leaves a few things scattered rimward of the Aslan Hierate. I do need to still transcribe the actual allegiances for a lot of these, though.

Parser changes (i.e. look for corrected allegiances):

Force PBG to be digits (0-9, 0-F, 0-F) to avoid matching stellar data "G5V DM" as PGB/Allegiance
Tweaked regex to match "JP/" prefix on allegiances (Julian Protectorate)

Colors:

"olive" back to "olivedrab" (used for Vargr regions)

Data Cleanup and K'kree/Hiver borders

2006-10-12T23:20:00.000-07:00

A few more borders in Hiver and K'kree space:

Added borders for Gn'hk'r (Gelath) and Gh!hken
Added allegiances and generated borders for Leonidae and Extolian
Reworked Hinterworlds borders to connect with Leonidae

...and then some data cleanup that I realized was necessary when I got there!

I noticed in some of the “outlying” sectors (i.e. non GEnie data) that the UWP parser was misinterpreting some worlds (e.g. thinking the PBG was a trade code, the allegiance was PBG, and the stellar data was the allegiance) or missing some worlds entirely. This is because when I started I used a very loose pattern matching system to try and incorporate lots of different data sets without editing the sector data itself. This turns out to be intractable, so I’ve given up and tweaked the data in some sectors to be a little less quirky, and tightened up the parser. The site should also be marginally faster in loading data (i.e. if no-one has viewed a region in a few seconds).

It's possible that a few worlds have now suddenly popped into existence elsewhere. If you notice borders that are shy a few parsecs of a world, let me know!

Data tweaks:

Replaced blank allegiances with -- in Leonidae
Fixed badly generated PBGs for Uu (Teahloarifu 0319) and Ukhihesi (Teahloarifu 1431)
Added spaces to Extolian and Ktiin’gzat sector data for correct Zone and PBG parsing
Fixed PBGs for Foreven (blank B to 0)

While I was there, I wrote some tools to validate the data and corrected some simple typos or missing digits in other sectors:

Arkadish (Mendan 0515)
Unnamed (Zhdant 1206)
Khipge (Zarushagar 0914)
Strand (Gushemege 0237) - missing digits in GEnie data; used Core data
Ninkhur Sagga (Solomani Rim 2222) - replaced blank PBG with 100

How is the metadata coming?

2006-10-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

I made a tweak to the renderer to use the "micro-scale" borders at macro-scale to create the above picture, which shows how many borders have been generated so far. My goal is to switch to using the generated borders (sufficiently smoothed and merged with hand-drawn borders) at some point. They'll stay red at the large scale.

I'm actually farther along that it looks - very little of the Hive Federation or 2000 Worlds has been mapped out. There are a few more sectors in the Spinward and Trailing client states that need border generation, and of course the Vargr Extents.

The Lion, the Routes and the Borders

2006-10-08T22:58:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe not the routes. But the Aslan borders are now complete (ish).

Generated borders for: Ftaoiyekyu, Afawahisa, Hlakhoi, Hkakhaeaw, Esai'yo, Waroatahe, Yahehwe, Kefiykhta, Heakhafaw, Etakhasoa, Aktifao, Uistilrao
Tweaked Ustral Quadrant borders for Tealou Arlaoh to align with Uistilrao
Tweaked Canopus borders for Solomani to align with Ustral Quadrant.

And since there were only a few, I generated Hive Federation borders for Phlask, Lorspane, and Drakken (sectors by Bari Z. Stafford, Sr.)

I also noticed and fixed a PBG glitch for for Hfualael - a "Solomani and Aslan Dotmap Reconstruction" world which had a (had a bogus G caused by an overflow in the ancient C code generator program)

Zhodani Borders - Done! (I think)

2006-10-07T23:02:00.000-07:00

A few quickie routes and borders:

Generated borders for Zdiedeiant
Added routes for Chtierabl and Zdiedeiant(from BeRKA's data)
Generated borders for Chit Botshti (Ugoede), Ghoekhnael (Anzsidiadl), Khoellighz/Knoellighz(?) (Tlabrieish)
Added subsectors, routes, allegiances and borders for Ziafrplians (Usingou)
Added borders, and allegiances for Yiklerdanzh
And to round close out some open Aslan borders on the Coreward side of the rift, generated borders for Touchstone

Apart from a few rough edges I think that brings the Zhodani Consulate borders to completion - not counting the Core Route, of course.

Mnemosyne Principality

2006-10-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

Quick edit for tonight - I've switched to "Mn" for the Mnemosyne Principality allegiance code in Far Frontiers - Dale's manuscript predates two letter codes, so I decided to follow BeRKA's lead.

While I was there, I made sure the borders lined up. I waffled on this - Dale's manuscript actually has closed borders for the Principality, unlike the Trelyn Domain which clearly extended outside of the sector. In the end, I decided to go with merged borders with Foreven.

If I ever had to waffle back the other way, I'd explain that the Principality is divided into two administrative provinces with a division along the sector boundaries. Or something.

(Some day I'll have to tackle the Julian Protectorate. That's going to be a lot less fun.)

1100, here we come!

2006-10-04T22:43:00.000-07:00

I'm much more of a fan of the Classic Traveller era (1100) than the earlier or later eras, and I'm attempting to have the map match that. To that end, I've "rolled back" the Trojan Reach and Reft sectors to match the Atlas of the Imperium allegiances. The data remains the same - based on DGP's Travellers' Digest #20.

I've also done a handful of additional border generations and route reconstitutions (from existing data). Here's the full list of changes;

Foreven: Added routes, allegiances and borders
Spinward Marches: Tweaked an outsector route from 2140, outsector border
Vanguard Reaches: Added subsectors, allegiances and borders
The Beyond: Added allegiances, routes and borders
Trojan Reach and Reft: Added 1100-era data, borders and routes
Far Frontiers: Border tweaks to align with Vanguard Reaches, Krobob allegiance corrected to Zh, Sorens added based on Trail of the Sky Raiders, corrected location of Afellahlah, Sorens allegiance corrected to Td
Poster.aspx: Show friendly error if no matching sector
MSEC.aspx: Show friendly error if no matching sector
MSEC.aspx: Group output by allegiance

Any requests for sectors to tackle next?

It's been a while...

2006-09-22T23:02:00.000-07:00

A smattering of updates I wanted to put on the live site. Nothing too fancy. So, in no particular order...

Classic-era xboat routes for the Diaspora sector have been added, c/o Mark "Geo" Gelinas, Sr. from his Geo-verse site. These were originally printed in the Terra Traveller TIMES, Issue #27 - Mark has done an awesome job in putting issues of his fanzine on-line to keep the data alive. Mark was the HIWG sector editor for Diaspora and went on to help create the Astrogator's Guide to the Diaspora Sector for GDW. The Astrogator's Guide only has Rebellion-era maps and hence no xboat routes. Yay - this fills a hole... and it's semi-official to boot!

I've added client side imagemaps for the mobile map. Clicking in the middle of the map zooms in. Clicking towards an edge scrolls. Probably not useful on phones, but great on a Pocket PC.

I've made additional corrections to the borders and worlds in Far Frontiers, including correct Zhodani Consulate borders.

Small government labels can be placed a little more sensibly now. Right now this has only been done for Far Frontiers, but I can manually place government names now instead of auto-generating them in the center of a polity. I may get around to manually placing more in the future.

Speaking of metadata, the MSEC generation now produces labels - either the auto-generated ones or manually placed ones.

I've snuck in an easter egg (does it count if I write about it?) - double-click the Traveller logo to hide it and get a little more vertical room for the map.

Behind the scenes, I've refactored a lot of the rendering code to separate out the rendering styles (e.g. what colors and fonts to use) from the rendering logic (e.g. for each world in a sector...). There should be no visible change, but this will make it easier to add different rendering styles and tweak the visual appearance in some cases (e.g. show hexes instead of boxes at 32 pixels/parsec). I'm still not finished with the code but I don't think I broke anything. If you see anything odd, let me know.

Solomani Borders

2006-08-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

After a hiatus while moving my family down to San Francisco and lots of unpacking, I have cycles to do a little more work on the map now.

Now that I have my copy of Supplement 10 unpacked I've tackled borders for the Solomani Confederation, passing through the Solomani Rim, Alpha Crucis, Old Expanses, Spica, Langere (hello, Hivers!), Neworld, Aldebaran, Canopus, Ustral Quadrant, Dark Nebula, Reaver's Deep, Daibei and Magyar. I still need to tweak Daibei a bit.

For Aslan/Solomani and Solomani/Hiver borders I followed the conventions of Supplement 10 - the polities claim empty hexes between border worlds. This makes for more attractive borders, but at the expense of hand-tweaking.

Speaking of hand-tweaking (or wanting to avoid it), I've been playing with a different algorithm for allygen. Instead of starting with worlds within an allegiance and expanding outwards (which creates blobby regions of empty hexes), it starts big and contracts each region, snipping off "bad" hexes - empty hexes with three empty neighbors, and breaking up straight spans of 4 empty hexes, repeating until a minimal border is achieved. This yeilds very natural looking results. I'll publish a page on the algorithm soon.

For those sec2pdf fans out there I've added an MSEC generator - browse to http://www.travellermap.com/MSEC.aspx?sector=Solomani%20Rim and it'll spit out a rough .msec file for the specified sector based on my data. I haven't tested the result, yet, and it could use more work - e.g. grouping based on allegiance, etc.

Far Frontiers! Borders! And more!

2006-07-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a bunch of different pieces, some of which are "close enough" to roll out, others need additional work. But I need to get things out for users to try out and comment on, so here's an intermediate step.

Far Frontiers Sector

Before FASA lost its license to publish Traveller material, Dale Kemper was working on a manuscript for a supplement for the Far Frontiers, the setting for most of the FASA adventures like the Sky Raiders trilogy, Ordeal by Eshaar, etc. Didn't know that's where they took place? That's 'cause the supplement never came out! Parts were published in Ares magazine and somewhat more in the Traveller Chronicle, but those are hard to come by.

Dale has recently started selling copies of the manuscript on eBay (seller id: sbgames999) and I picked one up. Nice stuff, and it’s a shame it never saw the light of day. I asked Dale if I could include his Far Frontiers work in the map site, and he agreed!

(Note: Dale's manuscript covers just the lower half of the sector - the top half is mostly Zhodani space. For now I’ve just left the top half of the sector empty. Also note that the data is slightly inconsistent with other publications – Traveller Chronicle, Trail of the Sky Raiders, etc. – I’ve left it as close to Dale’s original manuscript as possible, rather than incorporating other sources or corrections. Those may come later.)

Borders

At long last (and thanks to pioneering work by J Greely over at http://dotclue.org/t20) accurate micro-scale borders are starting to see the light of day! Zoom in to 16 pixels/parsec or lower and the hand-drawn borders will disappear and (if you’re in the right place, e.g. near the Domain of Deneb or Gateway Domain) you’ll see hex-level borders. Yay!

Now for the down sides:

The border generation is not complete. Although J Greely’s allygen is an amazing tool, it does only a single sector. Rather than modifying it to handle multiple sectors I’ve been adding outsector hex runs by hand. (And if that sentence made sense to you, please volunteer to help!) So it’s been slow – about 20 minutes per sector.
Most of my resources are in storage – all of the DGP Travellers’ Digest issues I paid far too much for on eBay and classic sources are unavailable to me right now, so I have to go on guesswork and automated border generation.

But worst of all: the map is now a hideous amalgam of different eras:

Some of the data files are Rebellion-era (1120 or so)
Some of the data files are Classic-era (1100)
Some of the data files are Gateway-era (M1000)
Routes are whatever I could find, so mostly a mix of CT and RT
Borders are based off of the data for the sector at hand

Data files from different eras aren’t immediately obvious – you have to drill in and notice that the Vargr really made a dent in Deneb but hardly touched Corridor! Even Routes are usually not obvious, unless there’s a gap. But mismatching borders stick out like sore thumbs. Bleah.

Poster

Someone on COTI mentioned that he stitched together the tiles for the whole Spinward Marches by doing screenshots of the site. Ouch! To prevent that necessity in the future, you can now ask for a render of a sector in one shot. Just do:

http://www.travellermap.com/Poster.aspx?sector=Spinward%20Marches

You’ll get a GIF of the whole thing at 64 pixels/parsec resolution. Change the sector name (replace spaces with %20 or +) or tack on &options=nnnn – use a permalink in the main map to figure out the combination you like. I like 833, which turns off the subsector names.

Other changes

Added xboat routes for the Corridor sector from the map in FFE04 The Short Adventures - the Memory Alpha adventure reconstruction includes the routes on a hex grid of the sector (circa 1111), in addition to the Atlas of the Imperium sector copy - w00t! The Imperial xboat network now actually connects the Spinward Marches to the core!
Since I was dorking around with Corridor, I used the data from FFE04 to "regress" the sector to the classic era. This makes the borders mismatch (especially with Deneb) but my goal for the map is Classic Era (or Second Survey) so I actually want the DoD connected!
In Firefox/Safari/Opera, when dragging the map, you can now drag with the mouse over the non-map parts of the page and the mouse won't freeze. Just stay inside the page itself - there appears to a bug (feature?) afflicting all W3C event model browsers such that they stop giving you mouse events outside the page, if you started the drag over an image.
I moved the Map Style options to the top, and slightly compressed the control options, to give more room for search results.

Bugfix: Oh, sectors are forty hexes tall?

2006-06-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

Sharp-eyed user "alx alx" noticed that a search for "Herod" wasn't finding Hinterworlds 1940. I was out of town so I couldn't look at the code, but I played around and discovered that no worlds in the xx40's were being found by a search!

Turns out to be a simple off-by-one error in the enumerator code - I had a "y < 40" where there should have been a "y <= 40". Fixed!