Fwurg

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Hi everyone. I have just finished the first beta version (beta 1) of the new and improved galaxy map.

Please visit http://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~brend/fwurg/map/ and add your comments, advice on missing features, or general remarks. Once we think the new map has enough features, it will replace the old map.

(Note: The map has been tested on Firefox 5.0, and it should work on Safari and Chrome. If it does not work on your browser of choice, you might try to convince me (actual fixes go a long way to doing so) -- just don't knock on my door about Internet Explorer.)

(Note on the Note: This map version uses SVG extensively, if your browser of choice has no support for SVG I can not help you.)

[The Lifebringer Clans]

Looks stylish. Featurewise, is it possible to load sector info from the wiki to display in some sort of side-panel, or will this be as slow as the tax calculator thing?

I see the dokuwiki data plugin uses an SQLite db as a backend, but I have no idea how easy it is to access directly.

Another idea. When people are negotiating, they often want to reference the map to illustrate their proposal. (see the Veolian calculations for Bozzy Spine route optimization) It might might be helpful to facilitate this kind of thing. I think marking routes would be the most useful.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Someone else also suggested using a side-panel for the display of extra information, so this will most definitely happen. How to obtain data for the display is a bit of a question though. The tax calculator also uses accesses the wiki data, and this is slow mostly because of a combination of factors, for instance. When I ran the data export plugin on my own wiki it became a lot faster (but it had less data to chew through, so that test is somewhat skewed). Direct access to the SQLite backend is one of the alternatives I'm considering to speed things up -- it's not really a clean way to do things though.

You can already highlight a single sector by indicating it as a fragment with http://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~brend/fwurg/map/#sector_10_-5. Other projections of interesting things are easy code-wise, but hard to do with a good user interface; for now I could implement some kind of half-scripted thingy, but that would still be rather technical. I'm interested what the opinions are on this, and what kinds of things people want to indicate on the map.

(@developers: Should you want to give a better data export from the wiki a try, the custom (and modified) DokuWiki plugins (except for the sqlite plugin, which is used verbatim) can be found at http://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~brend/fwurg-wiki-plugins/. You can also have a look at https://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~reikanna/ the development wiki.)

[The Lifebringer Clans]

I've got two scenarios in which the map has been used:
First, the Veolians showing alternative Bozzy Spine routes.
Second, planning trade routes with business partners, such as different possible Holonet routes between me, Gerben and Niom. In this case, I didn't use the map, but simply named the sectors.

Here's a first idea for a UI: You draw some trade routes through sectors, maybe color and label them, and the tool builds you a querystring for this, that you can send others. A route would simply be a list of sector coordinates or indices with some additional info (name, color?)

I might mess around with the data plugins a bit this weekend, I'll let you know if I do anything productive.

[Mercury]

Map looks really cool! I'm impressed by the speed, though unsure if that's because your machine has a better connection.

[The Lifebringer Clans]

If you add sector/planet links, this does everything the current map does, but faster. Can it be added yet?

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I plan to add the links somewhere today, but I can not guarantee that it'll still be faster when it's hosted on the official server though. The background image is roughly 2 megabytes, and the official server is not known for it's serving speed.

We'll just have to see I'm afraid -- if it's to slow, I could crop the background to serve only the part we need, but that would diminish one of the really cool powers of the map; it can show you any part of the known galaxy at this moment (although there is no way of requesting a different slice of galaxy at the moment )

I'll keep everyone posted on the progess.

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Links have just been implemented, not really happy with their behaviour though. (I'm currently using the official SVG linking method, but my browser (FF5) does not acknowledge ctrl+clicks so I can't 'open in a new tab'. Sort-of annoys me, cause this whole project started out because I could not ctrl+click.)

[Veolian Commonwealth]

Beta-2 of the map is now live! The only feature not copied from the original map are the planet images.

You can find it on the official server: http://83.163.184.178:81/map/ or through the links in the menu.


I'm still very interested in your ideas about new features in the map. So far I've heard some interesting features:

1) Information boxe next to the map, showing information relevant to the selected sector.
2) Custom content on the map (this one is already halfway there, since it would be very beneficial for discussions)
3) Display of holonet relays on the map
4) Showing faction logo's / colors on the systems

If you have anything else, just post it and continue the numbering. I'll implement them mostly ordered by my interests, but if any one point seems very popular, I can be persuaded to give those priority.

[Mercury]

To put it in the words of Fluttershy: "Yay!"

All links should be up to date! If anyone still gets linked to the old map, refresh your browser

[Iladriel]

It looks very nice,

I only found one little problem, the names sometimes gets in the way of the grid coordinates. Like at 11, -4.
So as a feature request, being able to toggle the names of the systems without removing the systems itselfs.
Or maybe making the names appear when you mouse over it.

iladriel

[Veolian Commonwealth]

So as a feature request, being able to toggle the names of the systems without removing the systems itselfs. Or maybe making the names appear when you mouse over it.

Added to list:

5) Toggle system names independently / show system name on hover

[Veolian Commonwealth]

I have resolved issue #5. Systems names can now be toggled on/off independent of the actual systems layer.

However, I can not easily update the map on the official server, so you have to make do with my own hosted version: http://tempest.student.utwente.nl/~brend/fwurg/map. My own version might be out of whack at times, as I'm currently working through some of the other issues for the map.