Real Atlas of Space

I've always liked this Atlas of the Universe site. It's fun to compare the Traveller Universe's take on the Orion Arm with something a little more realistic.

(Note that in the case of the Traveller map, coreward is up; in the other, coreward is down.) Ω

Mobile maps - not just a joke any more!

I added two features to the mobile map page.

The first is simple - it now remembers your map size preference using a cookie, so if you visit on a PDA you can select the size you want and it'll remember. (If you have cookies disabled it should just remember within the session, but I haven't actually tested it.)

The second is actually useful - search! This is handy when you have a PDA at your disposal but not a full desktop computer and want to check on something. For example, I'm reading Gateway to the Stars (a Traveller novel) right now and I wanted to see if places they referenced were on the map. (They aren't.)

The UX is a little clunky. Suggestions? Split it into two pages? Put search results at the top? Ω

Empty Quarter (literally)

Thanks to Jason "Flynn" Kemp I have much more reasonable data for the Empty Quarter sector - the old "Sunbane" data was based off of the Atlas but didn't have credits associated with it. Worst case with the new data: we know who to blame. Fortunately, it's excellent, so I don't think we have any worries. And thanks to his excellent fanzine Stellar Reaches, I also have xboat routes - at least, for three of the four quadrants so far. (Hence the title.)

I've also added subsector names for the Old Expanses sector from High Passage #3. Four different names were published in Challenge #39 along the edges of the Hinterworlds maps, but the Old Expanses data matches the 3 subsectors I have from High Passage #3 and #4, so I figured I might as well keep the same data source for the sector.

I can still glean some routes from those 3 subsectors, but otherwise - ulp! - I'm dry. I really need Travellers' Digest #11 (Massilia), #12 (rest of Old Expanses) and #15 (Daibei) to fill in the big missing chunks in the Grand Tour data. #8 and #9 would also be nice to round out Core.

Anyone want to help? Ω

Ealiyasiyw, Corridor, and more

Yay - Travellers' Digest #10 and #18 arrived, along with The Early Adventures, which has the important bits from issues #1-4.

Travellers' Digest #18 gives us Ealiyasiyw, which bridges the gap between Reaver's Deep and Riftspan Reaches. If you squint, you can almost see the fastest route to run away from the rats and (most importantly) the cats back to Mora.

Corridor is somewhat filled in by both #18 and #3. #18 gives the full sector, but its circa Year 1119, and the Vargr incursions have swept through most of the spinward parts of the sector. This cuts off the Domain of Deneb - by severing the xboat routes! Since my map is nominally CT (Year 1112) this sucks. However, #3 gives us a Year 1101 map of subsector E, which at least lets us fill in the edge against Deneb.

Issue #10 gives us the subsector names for Core as well as subsectors M (Cadion) and K (Chant), so those have routes now. Don't look too closely at the worlds, though. As Robert Eaglestone points out the data I have isn't great - it's the M0 data from T4 which doesn't match DGP's data - which only covered a few subsectors anyway. We're trying to reconcile the data.

Up next: The Empty Quarter, c/o Jason "Flynn" Kemp and Stellar Reaches. And possibly parts of The Old Expanses from High Passage. Ω

Hinterworlds and Next Steps

That's it - I'm dry. I added Hinterworlds routes from Challenge #39. Note that if you look at the maps in that resource, you'll find there are two distinct sets of routes - the large "trade runs" that span the sector shown on the full sector map, and smaller communication (?) routes in the subsector maps. I went with the communication ... but I'm still pondering the decision.

(As an aside: the sector map is really poorly put together, which is surprising given who worked on it and who published it. I'll write that off to a bad month.)

I (hopefully) have Travellers' Digest #10 and #18 inbound, which means bits of Core and all of Corridor and Ealiyasiyw's routes should be in soon - assuming my favorite source is correct.

So what's next?

I'm thinking I'll spin up a quick web service and have the page ping it when you scroll (after a short delay, of course). It'll pull the credits for whatever is centered - subsector names, world data, route data, dates, etc - and display it as an overlay in the corner of a map. Ω