The Equinox is Nigh: Candy and Eggs

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:

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

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. Ω

It's been a while...

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. Ω

New Features: Options, Styles, and Eggs

While moving to the new host I snuck in a few more features:

• Simplified options - there's really no need for the "minor borders" and "minor names" label options, and it just made the page harder to use.
• New rendering style - toggle the Poster and Atlas radio buttons at the top to see the map in the "Imperium Map"/"Spinward Marches" Poster-style (color-on-black) or the Atlas/LBB style (black-on-white).
• One new easter egg added: type "(Arrival Vengeance)" (with parenthesis, but no quotes) into the Search box and you can retrace the last epic journey before night fell on the remnants of the Third Imperium. (And see some glaring examples of sector data issues.)

I haven't tested the map in Opera or Safari for a bit, so please report any issues encountered.

[Update: January 25th, 2008]

D'oh... I'd spelled "Vengeance" as "Vengance". Fixed in the blog and on the site.
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Lots of little things

I've trickled in a lot of things since the last update. Some have been live for a while, others just went in tonight.

Mobile:

• Updated the UX of the mobile page - you can search, but there's a new "jump" button that's like Google's "I Feel Lucky" - it takes you to the nearest matching world, without bothering to show you search results. Saves a few round trips... if you don't misjump!

I grovelled through HIWG sources at the MU Archive for a few things:

• Subsectors for Gvurrdon by Roger Myhre
• Subsector names for K'kree and Hiver homeworlds/capitals

I updated the following sector data files to match the GEnie/Sunbane data, which matches DGP and GDW data more accurately:

• Core (TD #8, #9, #10)
• Corridor (TD #18)
• Deneb (MTJ #3)
• Ealiyasiyw (TD #18)
• Hinterworlds (CH #39)
• Mendan (CH #49)
• Reft (MTJ #3)
• Riftspan Reaches (TD #19)
• Trojan Reach (MTJ #3)
• Zarushagar (TD #21)

And finally, added routes for:

• Core (TD #9)
• Old Expanses (partial, High Passage #3 & #4)

I have Travellers' Digest #12 and #15 inbound, which almost completes the Grand Tour xboat routes, with Old Expanses and Daibei respectively. That just leaves Massilia in #11. So close!

But one last treat - I decided to AJAXify the page a little bit more. Instead of embedding the initial search results, I now query them from the server. There's a special search term "(default)" that will return them. Now give "(grand tour)" a try.

Any other suggestions?

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Rendering Change: Galactic Structure

Added Galactic Arms/Rifts & Intergalactic Rift to the pseudo-random stars; if you explore out far enough you'll run out of stars. Ω