Oolite Bulletins

Nemoricus wrote:

Trade with other galaxies would be fairly limited any way. It's an expensive 5000 Cr investment for one jump. One jump. That's it. Also, travel is one way, so you have to be able to make a significant profit in all eight galaxies in order to make intergalactic trade worthwhile.

I think refugees, spilling out of G4, into G5 could be wheedled into the G5 back-story though - are there any Anarchic clusters in G5 that could be explained by floods of people bringing with them their baggage (both physical and metaphoric) from G4...

What is the minimum tech level that a gal drive can be bought at? Chances are as soon as you buy one, you wouldn't hang around.

ClymAngus wrote:

What is the minimum tech level that a gal drive can be bought at? Chances are as soon as you buy one, you wouldn't hang around.

TL 11 according to the Oolite Reference Sheet. Dunno if any OXPs mess with that, though.

we'll work on the assumption that they don't,

OK so a fair number of places can be exited from in this map:

37 systems are tech level 11 or over. So there are a fair number of places to leave G4. I'd map them but yeah, that and Map 5 is being delayed due to flu.

I hope you feel better soon, ClymAngus.

I'm fine, wasn't on monday
anyway spun up a quick map of 10 and 11 or above;




so there are a fair number of places a ship could buy a jar of custard from.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Sweet - I like "The Cakewalk"

BTW, "Sanctuaries" is plural - did you mean "Sanctuary's"?

How you found any routes this Lord only knows! Bravo!

(Glad Razor's Edge survived - mostly)

Diziet Sma wrote:

In the G4 Credits, you've spelled Ahruman as Ahuman. (which he may well be, but one never knows... )

Also, G3 Credits still list P.A. Groove as Pagroove.

OK these fixes will be uploaded tonight. On to g5.

Wow! That is one very well done map. It's probably the best and most thought out so far.

Excellent work, ClymAngus, for making it. And everyone who contributed ideas to it also did a fine job.

ok fixes to g3 and g4 updated. Does someone want to post number 4 on the wiki? I've given up trying to get my name cleared so I can do it.

Done - assuming you meant here:
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_planet_list

zevans wrote:

Done - assuming you meant here:
http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Oolite_planet_list

Nice! OK on to 5, right after I've finished my new business cards.

right 5 is getting there. routes have been plotted and systems are about half done.

GALAXY5

@ClymAngus

Gal 5 seems to be coming along nicely.

I was wondering now you have been doing the maps. I suspected that you did it by hand and It seems that I was right. (That's dedication!) Personally I would have used a spreadsheet to export the data to XML and used XSLT on that XML to create a SVG map with the worlds and the links between them. Only then would I modify it to add special features such as regions and routes in Inkscape and export to PDF.

But then again writing XSLT is not the easiest of things so you could argue that would take just as long.

Keep up the good work!

PhantorGorth

Well partially by hand. Illustrator 10 has a number of short cuts that make things easier. To properly explain the process I'll need to break it down into it's constituent parts.

1) Map base.
This is a one time design, as the basic map doesn't change, (minor tweaks in the key but that's about it. So that's just a copy and paste from a template.

2) The system points. Took the raw web data. ran it through a reformatter . Basic foreach loop using about 2 lines of sed & awk.
That list of x;y coordinates can be plumed straight into illustrator 10 (of course you have to minus the values to get it to draw right). So that was really quite easy to do. (and I know it's right because I'm not involved in the actual process, eg no human error). The major bonus is that you can individually select the points and move them around if you have to (if say 2 points are so close that pasting the system information would overlay)

3) Drawing the routes. This is easily the most tedious part of the whole job . I usually work from a high res image of the number maps in photoshop star mark all the systems each system is connected to in different layers and call that layer that specific number. I can then use that as a template to mark up the lines on the illustrator file.

I took a look at getting the chart function to draw them automatically in illustrator. But it just didn't have the functionality to do it.

4) The system information is the part I'm most proud of. Illustrator has an xml template input option. Writing a programme to alter the website output, it was quite easy to create an xml list that would turn off and on specific layers. So you end up with a list of systems in illustrator that you can navigate to, highlight, copy, paste and place. All you really need to know is what number goes where.

5) From there we do the extra bits (recolouring routes, marking up areas of interest, that kind of thing)


So why bother? Why not use excel?

Illustrator is a dedicated graphics package. It's also got vector outputs, which is perfect for a "blocky" job like this. Vector outputs show a lot of information in relatively small files and they don't loose quality with zoom.

It future proofs the project. These files can be printed ANY SIZE, and will eventually (with a little luck) become fully interactive flash maps. If your making a bedrock product you've got to go with what you know.

Sure it would be great to just have a bit of software that turns wiki webpage txt into working vector maps.

But I'm not that smart.

PhantorGorth wrote:

@ClymAngus

Gal 5 seems to be coming along nicely.

I was wondering now you have been doing the maps. I suspected that you did it by hand and It seems that I was right. (That's dedication!) Personally I would have used a spreadsheet to export the data to XML and used XSLT on that XML to create a SVG map with the worlds and the links between them. Only then would I modify it to add special features such as regions and routes in Inkscape and export to PDF.

But then again writing XSLT is not the easiest of things so you could argue that would take just as long.

Keep up the good work!

PhantorGorth