Oolite Bulletins

http://flashexplained.com/design/making ... untry-map/

I saw this and thought hang on isn't this the kind of thing a good oolite steering group could sort out. If you've got a group of people who know their flash then vector graphics could sort out a lot of problems and be infinitely expanded upon.

Maps for instance. Imagine a flash application that opens (as flash can be) by any browser, has selectable maps of all 8 galaxies. The individual worlds can be zoomed in on which yields key information about those worlds. Each map is also searchable. This is all doable. And could be built up function by function so the tools just get better and better.

You could add ships. keyboard information. Basically we're talking an easy access Don't Panic! application for oolite.

None of this is impossible or even difficult just time consuming.

I completely agree - and what a resource that would be!!!! Oolite is very interesting - with this it would be fascinating.

Mike

OK I may not be good with flash yet but I can and am putting together a pdf totally vector based galaxy 1 map, with names, tec, politics, and economy. as a vector map it will be zoomable and as a pdf it should be name searchable.

Any one want to help? (and has illustrator)?

I'm up for it. I don't know yet what help I can be (but I'm pretty good with graphics and databases) - I'll have to do my homework on Flash. But certainly - I'm in.

Mike

Now that would be something for the F4 key ...

I'm just seeing a lot of galaxy maps that do some but not all. With vectors we can fix this without the map being insanely large, impractical or fuzzy.

The idea for starters is just to produce the vector pdf. Because vectors are point based not pixel based you can zoom to your hearts content. PDF will do that. vector Pdf will also allow people to search by name. Flash works with vector graphics. So after the basic pdf has been made there's no reason why any one at any point can't import the graphics into flash and add functionality to the maps.

It's the graphic equvalent of oxping. It's good at a basic level but it can be made a lot better with a little effort.

It would make tracking down those bounties a little easier wouldn't it?

I'm going to do a small test around the far end of gal1 to show you the sort of thing that's possible. (I'm just finishing off the graphic template so I can mark up systems quickly and easily).