/go/ links and history

Two tidbits:

First, I added support for /go/ links, which can take the form:

http://travellermap.com/go/sector - e.g. http://travellermap.com/go/deneb

or

http://travellermap.com/go/sector/hex e.g. http://travellermap.com/go/deneb/0406

These are really shortcuts for the ?sector=sector&hex=hex form, but should be easier to type.

Any other such shortcuts you'd like to see?

Second, for those who are bemoaning changes to any of the data, just a reminder that all changes are tracked on Github at https://github.com/inexorabletash/travellermap/commits/master/res/Sectors - you can drill further into a particular file and see the changes over time.

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Foreven - placeholders or not?

Should I replace the Foreven data that I'm using (by James "GypsyComet" Kundert, Dylan Lee and P-O "BeRKA" Bergstedt, original here) with placeholders per the Foreven Sector Reserve doc?

I'm leaning towards "yes". What say y'all?


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Dotmaps/Placeholders

I recently introduced a trade code (Dotmap) - yes, parentheses included - for worlds where we only have position and allegiance information and no other system details, i.e. a dotmap, like those found in various DGP publications. If present, the world is rendered with an asterisk (*) for the world symbol, with no other details. This same symbology is used in Adventure 4: Leviathan for worlds in the Outrim Void that the players are expected to explore for fun and profit. This has been added to the map legend (in the new UI).

UPDATE: Support for (Dotmap) was dropped in June 2014. Use ? for unknown fields in UWP and PBG instead e.g. ???????-? ??? and see Foreven sector data for an example.

I implemented this for Luretiir!girr which I recently reconstructed from a dotmap. 

I also went back and imposed this on sectors I'd reconstructed from DGP's Megatraveller Alien: Solomani and Aslan: Ahkiweahi, Aktifao, Etakhasoa, Fahreahluis, Heakhafaw, Hfiywitir, Irlaftalea, Kefiykhta, Ohieraoi, Teahloarifu, Uistilrao, Yahehwe. Those sectors were totally randomly generated with no data checking, and I felt bad having them on the site. To make it clear that they were really uncharted and ready for someone else to detail, I removed the random data and marked the worlds as (Dotmap) in the data.

There are a few rough edges - I should filter these out in the data display and the booklet generator should add support for these.

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Poster Maker

The old post.htm and jpost.htm pages were really API documentation about the poster and jumpmap services, with built-in demos that could be used to generate images. But they were decidedly non-friendly.

To go with the new UI on the main page (still in test!) I've spun up a new "Poster Maker" page that aims to be user-friendly. It handles sector, subsector and jumpmap images, and offers a "quick preview" mode. It also defaults to PDF since that's the best format to print if you don't know what you're doing.

Try it out, send me feedback!

http://travellermap.com/poster.html

(The "options" box rather obviously needs to be replaced with a slew of checkboxes for the individual knobs. I'll get to that when I can.) - done!

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Zoom

I made a bit of a video:


I wrote a Python script which generated Tile API URLs centered on Regina at various scales. Piped that through to curl to fill a directory with images, then used ffmpeg to assemble them. Once I had the kinks worked out it only took about 10 minutes to render.

(I used the live site rather than my development machine. If you attempt something similar, be gentle and don't request more than one image at a time!)

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Luretiir!girr

I found an old dotmap, possibly by L. W. L. Guatney, that included a portion of K'kree space including one sector that no-one has tackled yet - Luretiir!girr.

I've generated a dotmap sec from it (i.e. only world positions, worlds are all nameless and X100000-0), and drew borders / picked allegiances based on the Imperium Map poster. This is totally unofficial but I thought it was worth preserving the dotmap data in case anyone decides to tackle the sector in the future.

I arbitrarily decided that the large polity jammed into the Spinward side of the Two Thousand Worlds was the Dominate of the Lords of Thunder, but it will be up to whoever officially defines the sector to identify the local governments and decide which, if any, is the Dominate. Ω