Sector Creation

[pasuuli]

I use a 3d6-2 to generate planet size, before I roll that, I roll a 2d6, and if I get "snake eyes" (2), that means their is an asteroid belt their instead of a planet, I didn't want asteroid belts to be 1 in 216, I like 1 in 36 better. Maybe the system which generated that planet used 3d6-3 Size G worlds aren't very common, perhaps their scarcity can be justified by their tendency to turn into gas giants.

I get it. That's reasonable. I'd be tempted to check for snake eyes on the 3D roll, but that might skew sizes too much.

I roll size as usual, and if the size is 10, I reroll as 9 + 1D.

 

[enderra]

My two sectors are growing to nine sectors, so I have the borderlands worked out. Inkscape now refuses to export the entire drawing presumably on account that it's too big. Ah well.

StarBase is a free, open source desktop application specifically designed for setting creation.

[...]

Edit - I see from your web site you're a Unix/Mac user? Me too, but initial StarBase development predates my adoption of the Mac. It's written using PySide, a Python wrapper of the Qt library, and I've never quite got it working properly on the Mac. However the source runs perfectly well on Linux once you have the PySide and other required packages installed. If you need a hand getting it working, please get in touch.

Was this addressed at me? I use everything, really, and as a consequence have become completely multi-platform. Actually, I think I saw Starbase and for some reason I decided not to look at it in depth, just for the life of me can't recall why.

Looks actually quite interesting, especially with the custom rules. Need to check further. It handles multiple sectors from what I can see? Would it be tons of work to add SVG export?

Nowadays, I generate new sectors using my online Perl script (http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/survey/t5-prog/t5sysgen.pl), then I copy and paste the generated header line and UWP data directly into the PosterMaker on Travellermap.com (http://travellermap.com/poster). Then I hand-build the Travellermap metadata to add routes, empires, and colors, etc.

That's pretty nifty. Thanks. I don't own Pocket Empires, but might pick it up some day. Will definitely look into using travellermap.com though, that does make a lot of sense.

I have an excel spreadsheet that does the stats for a subsector.
here is one subsector:

Impressive, you are a more patient man than I am. I tried to set something up in OpenOffice and pretty much immediately decided that real scripting was easier for me (shell wrapper around AWK in my case).


Thanks for the feedback guys, nice to see how everybody is coping with this.

 

[simonh]

Was this addressed at me? I use everything, really, and as a consequence have become completely multi-platform. Actually, I think I saw Starbase and for some reason I decided not to look at it in depth, just for the life of me can't recall why.

Looks actually quite interesting, especially with the custom rules. Need to check further. It handles multiple sectors from what I can see? Would it be tons of work to add SVG export?

It does handle multiple sectors. You select the map dimensions in sectors when you create the project. For performance reasons I wouldn't go above about 9 sectors and on a low-mid range system I'd stick to 4 or 6 (2x2 or 3x2).

I tried SVG output before and decided the results weren't good enough to be useable, but it was a while back. I don't actually produce PDF map output directly, using Qt's built in PDF writer to produce PDF vector output, because the results are so poor. Instead I generate a PNG and then write that to a PDF, which produces very nice results (aside from the direct PNG output).

In general Qt's built in rasterization is excellent because it has to be in order to produce good screen and print output. However the built in vector output options are much less mature and don't provide much in the way of configurability.

Simon Hibbs

 

[simonh]

Just been doing a bit of poking around at various SVG libraries for Python.

There's some good stuff out there. Adding SVG output would be doable.

The code I have to generate PNGs just renders a section of the application's main canvas directly to the PNG writer. It just takes about half a dozen lines of code, plus the code for the dialogue box and such.

To write to SVG and have it not look crap, I'd need to explicitly draw the SVG. That is more work, but not impossibly more. It's just ~200 lines of code instead of ~20.

Simon Hibbs

 

[enderra]

Well, I obviously don't expect you to add to the svg output just for me. I do think it's a good idea because it would help re-use the material elsewhere, but either way I will likely stick to my current tool chain for now.

 

[zero]

I rolled up a subsector by hand and drew the map all out, having seperate sheets to note the UWP... I then decided which was the capitol system by how much of a hub a system seemed and wrote about how trade worked with the worlds... It was days of work and me and my friend (yep, singular) never got that Traveller game going for it. I still have it all though. There's about 36 systems in there... I really could not do a whole sector like that... My hands would fall off! :lol:

I do plan to do a subsector based around a star list, much like a poster said above, based on real systems and how they are in relation to Earth, so Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star will be there as the closest systems to get to (both J2) and then headed out into the yonder. Gleise 667 Cc being a J8 worth out and such (of course it'd take a few Jumps to reach it).

Mainly it's for a small game set no higher than TL 11 and dealing with a more limited and harder version of Traveller based somewhat closer to home than normal.