Hi everyone,

I am pleased to announce that my helper as advance enough to be called "usable". It's still far from full featured, but it has enough feature to be used already.

Important: Please remember that this is in development, it is not error safe and it's quite possible it will die in everyday use. Please use cautiously.



v0.1 features
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Configurable connection host (TWX or another proxy)
Display normal and one-way warp
Display port type
Sector organized automatically in a "logical" fashion using force-based algorithm
Depth of warp to render control number of sector displayed at once
Gather data as you move around
Recenter map around current sector automatically
Text field allow you to focus around another sector than current one
Can save and load gathered data
Its possible to change background image

Can import data using

CIM warp and port report
TWX warp data file export (useful for ZTM data)


Keyboard and Mouse usage:

Ctrl: stop re-centering map around focus
Single click: change map focus
Double click: move to sector (express warp) (use ctrl key to make your life easier)
Drag: move sector around
Mousewheel: Zoom the map

Looks nice.

I agree.. looks very nice.. wonder if it's possible to fill the whole screen with the display?

SD doesn't appear to have a Back Door? is that accurate, or am I'm not seeing it?

It does look very nice. This game has a lot of one-ways and I'm not seeing that in your map.

Keep working on it! I think you have something there

Yes, the windows is resizable, and there is a zoom bound to mousewheel. The slider in the top right control the number of warp the renderer go through before stopping. It is totally possible to display the whole universe at once tho it would look like a mess


I did a pretty basic ZTM on swath when I started, but I don't use it anymore (trial expired). I never fully explored the universe either. Currently it can only populate on the fly (as you travel) or throught CIM warp info. Thats why the backdoor doesnt show. I do plan on parsing ZTM, importing TWX at one point, as well as saving the data for persitence between session.


I havent got around displaying one way warp, thats why However I already store the information in a way that I can easily determine where they are so its just a matter impleting a different draw method for them.

oh btw, is there a way to have attachement show as thumbnail rather then full size?

The problem with most mappers is that the map will get more confusing as you zoom out further.

Very nice, it's good to see someone working on pieces with more visual appeal. I'm glad to see your progress. Ditto on what the other commentators said about using the ZTM data and backdoors.

indeed. Force-Based algorithm help a bit but it quickly get unable to produce anything as it struggle to compare all the sector together. There is interesting technique to speed this up that I might try implementing. Also clustering algorithm might help with that, so I will look into it at some point.

Its a nice challendge to try to map the un-mapable, and we might have to wait TWv4 with "real universe" bigbang option, but I'll keep trying until then

I'm struggling against the urge to just enable realspace for v3. I mean, really, it's just a Bigbang toggle.

Is that where we have more than 6 warps per sector? If so, that would break a lot of stuff.

If it's where you have 6 warps per sector by default, that would make it really difficult to
build bases and keep them hidden. It would also make it very easy for me to find ppl.

Changes to the universe can have some pretty profound data mining implications.

I have actually been thinking about this a lot lately. What happens if you start with the outer edge of the universe and place all the sectors 40-45 warps from SOL on the edge of a grid and try to uncross the paths that lead out to them?

Maybe play with a smaller universe at first, and a max course length of 15-20.

It's a hex-grid universe with many wormholes that can carry you to a distant sector. So it's not as bad as a true flat map where you have to move from sector to sector across the entire map. You can still keep maximum travel distance below a target threshold. And you can still have lots of interesting structure like bubbles, tunnels, dead-ends, etc. It doesn't have to be flat and open like real space.

This was prototyped in about 1997 in several games and had a favorable response. I lost track of the code and reimplemented it recently. Sure, it would change things quite a bit, but change isn't necessarily bad, just different. Variety is good. That's what options are for. I'm not saying replace the current Bigbang algorithm, just provide an alternative. Now, maybe TWv4 would be only flat maps, making it possible to always graph them out.

BTW, if you go back to the origins of the game, with the original TW, TW100, TW500, etc, they were always flat maps. See the maps at this link from early TW games, for example: http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?tit ... ector_Maps

My tests suggest that the algorithm I'm using is playable, but of course we'd do plenty of testing before opening it up.

I'd be really curious to see how my code handle a realspace bigbang...

would you be able to put one up on the server?

Sure, I could do that. Not right this second, but soon.