Core Route - Literally

I'm playing with sorting out allegiances at the moment and there's nothing to see yet. But along the way I reviewed the Clifford Linehan's Zhodani Core Route data which I'd previously incorporated. And of course he actually charted out the routes in Galactic. So I rejiggered my SAR-to-SEC+XML converter and now I have the core route in it's full glorious detail. Ω

Routes: Massilia, Antares and Fornast

Jeff Zeitlin's work on the Antares and Fornast sectors has been incorporated, at least as far as routes go. Massilia routes are from TD #11.

So as far as routes go, things are getting pretty complete. A little bird told me that someone is doing development in the Gushemege/Dagudashaag/Ilelish/Zarushagar areas, so maybe those will be pieced in soon. Really, that just leaves Delphi, Diaspora and Verge as 3I sectors without routes.

Of course, then there's actually making the routes make sense and/or line up. Ω

Atlas Rendering

I finally got around to doing something I'd intended from the start - Atlas-scale rendering.

The styles at the various scales are roughly:

• 2 px/pc - Imperium poster
• 4 px/pc - Large scale dotmap
• 8 px/pc - Domains
• 16 px/pc - Sectors / Travellers' Digest-style route maps
• 32 px/pc - Atlas of the Imperium-style
• 64 px/pc - Supplement-style (Spinward Marches poster, specifically)

Before today I simply had world glyphs (belt/water/no water) and HiPop names for 32 px/pc. Now it renders: starports, bases, gas giants and allegiances. This scale suddenly becomes much more attractive to work with.

Ω

Old Expanses and Daibei

Routes are up for Daibei (TD #15) and Old Expanses (TD #12). The Old Expanses routes are derived from FASA's work in High Passage and other early sources - they're pretty... um... busy. Picture little xboats hopping around like jumping beans. Ω

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?

Ω