Data Overview 2020

Another quiet year.

• Updates to K'kree space by Jim Kundert, including X'kug placeholders and metadata.
• Updates to Hiver space by Mark Humphreys, including regions and stellar data.
• Demnan subsector and other region names from Deepnight Revelation.
• Updated Kaa G!'kul data by Chris Griffen.
• Reduce number of bright stars in Crucis Margin.
• Route fixes throughout space, c/o observations by Vareck Bostrom.
• Tweaks to Far Frontiers world data to align with FASA publications, c/o Graham Donald.
• Distant Fringe (Faraway/ATU) sectors moved to a new location.
• Apocryphal sectors Rigel and Nowhere, c/o Graham Donald
• Worlds from Alien Realms added to Waroatahe subsector N.
• Updates to SoCf worlds in Aldebaran, Canopus, Langere and Neworld, c/o Randy Dorman.
• Updates to subsector names in Magyar, c/o Randy Dorman.

Non-data updates include:

• Route markers show for canned search results (e.g. Log of the Grayswandir)
• Info cards: Click to zoom in to world map.
• Info cards: Add link to route planning.
• Info cards: Show research station, prison, and exile camp more prominently.
• Better layout on modern smartphones.
• Add Mongoose map style.

Detailed updates can always be found in the GitHub commit log.

Ω

In Review: Cano, Alde, Newo, Lang, Tien, Gash and Tren

Similar post made over on Citizens of the Imperium.

After a long break, I can announce some progress on the T5SS effort.

Marc continues to have a high level mandate to create a stable, consistent data set for the OTU as a tool for authors. This allows him (and others) to e.g. understand the impact of the Wave on charted space from 1105 to 1900, or figure how how the Vilani formed the Ziru Sirka along J-1 mains thousands of years earlier.

The canonical data set resides in Marc's hands. I've spent time over the last few weeks reconciling it with changes made by DonM between October and December 2015 that never made it back to Marc, as well as a handful of corrections applied directly to the site. We now once again have a consistent basis for the T5SS, and I can resuming make updates to the site from it.

Over the last few days I tackled three big additions to the T5SS data set. These are all now considered "In Review":

• Randy Dorman's Solomani sectors: Canopus, Aldebaran, Neworld and Langere
• Jim Kundert's Zhodani sector: Tienspevnekr
• Jeff Zeitlin's Julian sectors: Gashikan and Trenchans

Feedback should be directed to the COTI T5SS thread.

Ω

Another T5SS Data Drop: many new sectors In Review

The Vargr Extents and Julian Protectorate get some love in the latest T5SS data drop, with the following sectors newly "in review":

• Tuglikki (by David Drazul)
• Provence (by David Drazul)
• Windhorn (by John G. Wood)
• Meshan (by Michael R. Mikesh)
• Mendan (by Michael R. Mikesh, from Challenge #49)
• Amdukan (by Michael R. Mikesh, from Challenge #52)

Also, way off on the Spinward edge of charted space, Group One's Theta Borealis – the last of the GDW "land grant" sectors – is now in review.

Some data corrections elsewhere as well. As always, check the sector data history on GitHub for the gruesome details, and provide feedback on the data on COTI.

Ω

T5SS Data Drop - March 2015

DonM sent out a new T5SS data drop, adding Spica to the set of "in reviewed" sectors, and graduating the Aslan sectors like Riftspan Reaches, Ealiyasiyw and Dark Nebula out of review to "official".

Other tidbits from the drop:

• Hive Federation now has T5SS allegiance code: HvFd
• Embassies have have base code E
• Base code X, previously reserved for Zhodani Relay Station, is slated to be replaced by W, which will indicate any Way Station, not just an Imperial Scout Way Station. That's not entirely reflected in the data yet.

Enjoy!

Ω

Judges Guild Gateway Quadrant Sectors

Before the Atlas of the Imperium, in the days of GDW's land grants, the prolific publisher Judges Guild published four sector supplements defining the Gateway Quadrant:

• Crucis Margin
• Glimmerdrift Reaches
• Ley Sector
• Maranatha-Alkahest Sector

While the quality of the publications was not necessarily up to the standards of GDW's Supplement 3 and Supplement 10, or necessarily of other licensees, it was a unique look at the wilds on the Trailing edge of the as-yet ill-defined Imperium.

The Atlas and other later works decanonized the Judges Guild sectors - only the names of three of the four sectors were retained (with Maranatha-Alkahest replaced by Gateway). But that doesn't mean that they're not fun places to explore!

Useful resources:

• Jeff Rients Gateway Quadrant Wiki
• Gateway Quadrant on RPGGeek
• Classic Traveller - The Apocrypha II (CD-ROM by Far Future Enterprises)
• Judges Guild Bundle from DriveThruRPG

To preserve these for posterity, I've added them to the TravellerMap.com site. And to avoid overwhelming the UI with "which setting are you interested in?" clutter - and honestly, to make it easier to implement - I've simply placed the sectors far away from charted space. They're visible in search, or you can jump right to them:

Judges Guild Sectors - Gateway Quadrant

Notes:

• Data for Ley Sector from Galactic - transcription and corrections were done by Andrew Moffatt-Vallance 
• Data for Maranatha-Alkahest Sector from Gateway Quadrant Wiki - transcriptions done by Jeff Rients, with additions and corrections by Joshua Bell
• Data for Glimmerdrift Reaches Sector from Galactic - transcription and corrections were done by Andrew Moffatt-Vallance 
• Data for Crucis Margin Sector from Galactic - transcription and corrections were done by Robin Ludbey

Ω

T5SS Data Update - April/May 2014

The new data is now live!

Summary of changes:

• T5SS sectors now have 4-character allegiances; these are visible on the map and in tab-delimited and column-delimited data files. The new allegiance codes are mapped to 2-character codes when "SEC" files are output or at low scales. Codes are documented at http://travellermap.com/doc/secondsurvey
• T5SS sectors now have 1- or 2-character base codes, e.g. NS for Naval Base and Scout Base, when shown in tab-delimited and column-delimited files. They are mapped to 1-character codes when "SEC" files are output. Codes are documented at http://travellermap.com/doc/secondsurvey
• Booklet and World Data Sheets now use the newfangled allegiance and base codes
• The following sectors are under review as part of the T5SS. The data is updated to conform to T5SS formats, but the data is still subject to heavy change.
• Aktifao
• Dark Nebula - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium and DGP's Solomani & Aslan
• Ealiyasiyw - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium and DGP's Travellers Digest #18
• Hlakhoi - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium
• Iwahfuah - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium
• Riftspan Reaches - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium and DGP's Travellers Digest #19
• Staihaia'yo - as seen in GDW's Atlas of the Imperium
• Uistilrao
• Ustral Quadrant
• Tab-delimited files are now assumed to be UTF-8 (previously, was Windows-1252)
• And, of course, nearly all of the sectors covered by the T5SS have had some tweaks.

This will doubtless have introduced issues visible on the site (e.g. borders and routes that need tweaking) and due to the extensive code changes it's likely bugs have crept in that will affect booklet/poster creation. Let me know here or via email and I'll try and get them fixed ASAP.

Ω

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

Hive Federation Completed

Mark Humphreys has submitted the sector data, borders and routes for the last of the hitherto uncharted sectors of Hiver space, as well as updates to the other sectors, so it's all filled in on the map:

• Avereguar - new!
• Blaskon - new!
• Centrax
• Folgore - new!
• Gzirr!k'l
• Kidunal
• K'trekreer - new!
• Nooq - new!
• Porlock
• Ricenden
• Wrenton

Awesome work, Mark!

Ω

Data Updates

Just some data updates:

• c/o Mark Humphreys, updated data for Ricenden, Gzirr!k'l, and Centrax, and new data/metadata for Wrenton and Porlock in Hiver space
• c/o the newly relocated Traveller Wiki, added subsector names for Itvikiastaf and Tuglikki

Ω

Labels, Retina, and Theta Borealis

Some minor but shiny stuff:

• Display updates and animations now use requestAnimationFrame if supported, and I used Chrome's developer tools to look for hot spots and removed some inadvertent forced layouts in loops, which should mean lower CPU load and "reduced jank" when panning the map.
• Thanks to 77topaz for pointing out that I'd broken the map in older versions of IE. A quick fix to my requestAnimationFrame polyfill and the map should be happy in IE9 again.
• I tweaked the presentation of polity labels seen when you first load the page - they wrap so they're a little more readable now. Sector names now wrap too, which more closely matches the Imperium Map poster. I was also able to bump up the font size. In summary: the initial view of the map should be prettier.
• If you view the map using a modern browser that supports devicePixelRatio on a device with a high-density ("retina") display, such as an iPhone 4S/5, iPad 3, newer MacBook, Android, or even the shiny Chromebook "Pixel", the tiles are now rendered with higher quality. Summary: more pretty!
• On a retro kick, I swapped in the data, borders and routes from Group One's Theta Borealis Sector supplement. Watch out for the Zerp! Note that the double worlds in the original's hexes 2901 and 2118 are not shown on the map and won't appear in the data.



Original - Group One	TravellerMap.com

Ω

Get your Hiver on

Thanks to exploration work by Mark Humphreys, three new sectors in Hiver space have come online including world data, borders and routes:

• Gzirr!k'l - straddling the Two Thousand Worlds and the Federation with a buffer zone of client states between. This sector bore the brunt of the Hiver/K'kree War in ages past, and bears the lingering scars.
• Ricenden - home to Guaran, the Hiver homeworld
• Centrax - home to Glea, the Federation capital

These aren't the final data or metadata, so expect some refinement over the coming months, and perhaps a few new sectors nearby.

(This is all unofficial data, of course. That will be obvious to long time visitors, but I'm going to try to be more explicit going forward given that I'm hosting both official and unofficial data without much distinction.)

Ω

T5 Second Survey Data

As part of an ongoing development process for Traveller 5 the data set for all worlds in the Imperium are getting reviewed. With help from Don McKinney, the latest data is now live on the site. Thanks to everyone who's been contributing nitpicks and reporting errors - this information has been fed back into the process to help make sure the new data set is as high quality as possible.

The following sectors have been updated, baselined at 1105:

• Alpha Crucis
• Antares
• Core
• Corridor
• Dagudashaag
• Daibei
• Delphi
• Deneb
• Diaspora
• Empty Quarter
• Fornast
• Glimmerdrift Reaches
• Gushemege
• Hinterworlds
• Ilelish
• Ley
• Lishun
• Magyar
• Massilia
• Old Expanses
• Reaver's Deep
• Reft
• Solomani Rim
• Spinward Marches
• Trojan Reach
• Verge
• Vland
• Zarushagar

In addition, the following tweaks have been made:

• Added "Reavers' Deep" and "Reavers Deep" as aliases
• IFRAME no longer steals focus (which fixes the API page to not scroll down on load)
• Speaking of the API page, it now links to the correct AotI coverage area
• Fix Egyrn Subsector's name (thanks to Makoto MACHIDA for commenting)

Many of the data changes will be intentional, but obviously with this volume of cleanup there will be further glitches, so start the bug reports coming!

Ω

Sector Data Additions

A handful of new sectors have popped up on the map.

First, Katoonah, a sector rimward of the Hive Federation. Katoonah was explored by Dale Jenkins and his sons over the course of a year of gaming. They completed the exploration of the sector a scant two months before the tragic death of Dale's son Thomas. The sector is dedicated to the memory of Thomas W. Jenkins and his love for Traveller.

A brief summary of the sector polities and species, provided by Dale:

The Geanak Republic is populated with Geanaks. They resemble the minions in the game Overlord, except they are more intelligentand far less suicidal. The Human League is a Solomani extremist union. The Sylvan Alliance is a melting pot of Sylvans (Space Elves), Drea (Space Dwarves), Suerrat (Space Halflings), Kkang (Space Knolls) and Griznak (Space orcs). The Draconian Empire is based off a Solomani Asian Dynasty, and for the most part peaceful. The Reaver Bands are a mottley collections of Psycopathic Space pirates much like those found in the Hardtimes Data provided by GDW.

Thank you for sharing, Dale, and my sincere condolences to you and your family. I hope others can enjoy the sector as well, and keep Thomas in their thoughts.

Elsewhere on the edges of charted space, prolific explorer 77topaz (and nitpicker!) has opened up explorerbase and provided details for the following sectors

• Amderstun - a busy looking sector rimward of the Solomani Rim
• Tar'G'kell'p and Grikr!ng - on the Vargr edge of the Lesser Rift
• Harea and Tlyasea - to Spinward, in the Great Rift

Ω

Spinward Marches 1105

The Spinward Marches has been updated (backdated?) to 1105 to match the other data updates, bringing it in line with the T5 Spinward Marches poster by FFE. The updated data is courtesy of Marc Miller, Donald McKinney and Robert Eaglestone. This includes the sector data and metadata (routes and borders).

In addition, where the "Sector Data" link was at the bottom of the map has been replaced by two clearer links: "Source" which takes you to the published source of the data (if any), and "Data", which serves up the SEC data used by the site itself.

I'm sad to report that, as part of this cleanup, the anomalous jump-5 X-boat route between Tenalphi and Strouden that's been with us since Supplement 3 is no more. It's been replaced by a jump-4 route between Tenalphi and Persephone. Gone are the days of envisioning it as everything from an experimental route to a spatial anomaly. At least in the OTU...

Ω

Stellar Data

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! Ω

TODO List

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? Ω

Data Overview, Gushemege Routes, Keyboard Controls

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.

Ω

Updated Data

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

• Eikhilua (Dark Nebula 1236)
• Ererashir (Fornast 0501)

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:

• Added Iimashirer (Antares 0501)
• Added Kamkishu (Antares 0634)
• Removed (Antares 0834)
• Added Karnika (Core 0901)
• Added Halimaa (Dagudashaag 0301)
• Removed (Dagudashaag 0835)
• Added Aandimar (Delphi 0840)
• Added Prestwick (Diaspora 1639)
• Added Biremeruun (Diaspora 1640)
• Added Forgotten (Diaspora 2438)
• Added Ererashir (Fornast 0501)
• Removed (Verge 2123)
• Removed (Verge 2920)

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. Ω

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

Custom Posters

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. Ω