The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release => General UQM Discussion => Topic started by: Juffo on March 11, 2006, 06:29:05 pm



Title: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Juffo on March 11, 2006, 06:29:05 pm
As some of you may know, the paper manual for the original game included
a detiled starmap based on the information known at the end of the war,
in particular the spheres of influence for known alien species, but also
constellation patterns and names.

A scan of it can be found here:
http://www.abandonia.com/games/144/download/StarControl2.htm (http://www.abandonia.com/games/144/download/StarControl2.htm)

Since I'm working on a translation project I decided to remake it from scratch using screenschots of the ingame starmap at 2x zoom.
Here's the pogress so far:

(http://img127.imageshack.us/img127/8885/starmap04ne.th.png) (http://img127.imageshack.us/my.php?image=starmap04ne.png)


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Christopher on March 11, 2006, 06:34:06 pm
Excellent, juffo! Keep up the good work.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: MasterNinja on March 13, 2006, 12:16:06 am
Great, keep up the work

I also thought about something like that, but I won't do it, since I don't have much of free time (and I will rather spend it playing then making things for a game, which I play less and less, because I always do some things for the game and don't have any time for playing itself left ;) )

I thought about a more printer-friendly-style map, but with as much information as possible... perhaps even greek letters for alpha, beta, ...

So you can print it out without wasting your ink and use it while playing, making notes on it, etc.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: JHGuitarFreak on March 13, 2006, 01:25:35 am
I thought about a more printer-friendly-style map, but with as much information as possible... perhaps even greek letters for alpha, beta, ...

So you can print it out without wasting your ink and use it while playing, making notes on it, etc.

that would be the printer friendly yet ginormous white starmap which you can find in pdf format somewhere


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Captain_Smith on March 13, 2006, 07:04:55 am
http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/maps.shtml (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/maps.shtml)


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Novus on March 13, 2006, 09:44:44 am
The best starmaps I've seen so far are the ones by tomt (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2043.0) and VileRancour (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2496.0). tomt's AD 2134 map is a pretty good substitute for the original SC2 paper starmap, while VileRancour's map is prettier but contains too many spoilers to give to newbies.

The ideal UQM starmap, IMHO, would pretty much be VileRancour's map with all information not present on the original SC2 map removed. That could be included with future versions of UQM.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: GeomanNL on March 13, 2006, 09:50:51 am
This topic is about a printer friendly star map (on the ponaf forums).

http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=933.0 (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=933.0)


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: fwiffo's elder brother on March 13, 2006, 07:07:33 pm
I have all the original PC packaging from Accolade.  In the box my younger brother has an even more detailed map called "Deluxe Map of Hyperspace" which is NOT listed on the 'ingredients listing in in the box.  I have access to a scanner and could probably make a reasonable facsimile if I tried.

The map is black and white (with a few spots he markered in blue/purple) and about 1meter wide by 3/4 of a meter tall.  It has a quasispace portal list, and a constellation list.

I have seen some really bad scans of this before on fileplanet and whatnot.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Juffo on March 13, 2006, 07:56:40 pm
VileRancour's map is impressive.
I've been fascinated by the way the original map looks so I tried to reproduce something like that:
[img=http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/7332/image13133iu.th.png] (http://img151.imageshack.us/my.php?image=image13133iu.png)


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: fossil on March 17, 2006, 02:53:17 am
We are actually currently working on a starmap image generator for UQM. And one of the goals is to make generation of translated maps a breeze, as well as to make generation of various sized and colored maps much easier. The generation is entirely driven by a script, and just about every aspect of the image can easily be changed. The project is not finished yet, but you can take a look at the progress by checking out the module tools from CVS (see this (http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/index.php?title=The_Ur-Quan_Masters_Technical_FAQ#Where_do_I_get_the_game.3F) and use cvs co tools). The map generator is filed under map. You will need SDL, SDL_image and SDL_ttf to build the code, and also Microsoft Internet fonts if you are on Linux and such.
This tool can already do a little more than what Juffo has done so far on his map, and I now I feel guilty about not mentioning the tool earlier (did not read this thread in time).

This test image 4 (http://www.bpvn.com/sc2/map-test4.png) was generated by the tool. The gfx style used by the script for this image is heavily derived from VileRancour's with his blessing  8). In fact, the star images used (and present in CVS) were supplied by him, so thank him first!


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Novus on March 17, 2006, 09:21:04 am
We are actually currently working on a starmap image generator for UQM.
Looks good so far. I see the cluster name positioning is still a bit of a problem.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: fossil on March 17, 2006, 09:09:29 pm
Looks good so far. I see the cluster name positioning is still a bit of a problem.

Indeed, the only piece left till its functional enough are the cluster names and star designations positioning algos. I am working on that at the moment, so expect the linked test image to change ;). I cannot promise when it will be finished, however, as my free time got severely slashed recently.
On the other hand, this is open source, so anyone willing and capable is welcome to take a whack at it.

EDIT: The positioning algorithms are more or less done (somewhat crude versions), but anon cvs needs to catch up, of course. The test image 4 (http://www.bpvn.com/sc2/map-test4.png) is updated. I guess this is the first beta  ;D


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Novus on March 18, 2006, 09:35:08 am
EDIT: The positioning algorithms are more or less done (somewhat crude versions), but anon cvs needs to catch up, of course. The test image 4 (http://www.bpvn.com/sc2/map-test4.png) is updated. I guess this is the first beta  ;D
Looking good. A few minor points:
  • Linux doesn't have stricmp, it's called strcasecmp. This also applies to BSD and possibly other Unix variants.
  • The font handling code is hypersensitive to missing fonts. I had a great time tracking down segfaults.
  • Arial Narrow is not in Microsoft's free fonts, so I use Arial instead. Also, it helps a lot on Linux if the filenames are in lower case for the fonts.
  • free called from SDL_FreeSurface crashes when trying to free outimg in drv_end; looks like you've already freed that image at the end of drv_write.
Here's a patch (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/mapdiffs.patch). I'd put this in Bugzilla, but I don't think cluttering it with lots of tiny niggles that aren't really part of UQM is a good idea.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Juffo on March 18, 2006, 10:55:56 am
Quote
EDIT: The positioning algorithms are more or less done (somewhat crude versions), but anon cvs needs to catch up, of course. The test image 4 is updated. I guess this is the first beta  Grin

There's an error in the constellation lines for Crateris.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: fossil on March 21, 2006, 10:05:10 am
  • Linux doesn't have stricmp, it's called strcasecmp. This also applies to BSD and possibly other Unix variants.
Right. Take a look at port.h in the project. It defines stricmp to strcasecmp or the other way around depending on your config. Is it not working for you?

  • The font handling code is hypersensitive to missing fonts. I had a great time tracking down segfaults.
Will fix. Also run with -vv (that's two v's) to see warnings like missing fonts, etc.

  • Arial Narrow is not in Microsoft's free fonts, so I use Arial instead. Also, it helps a lot on Linux if the filenames are in lower case for the fonts.
I actually had font filenames lowercased originally, but later on some Linux installation we found these fonts with first letter uppercased in filenames. Pretty typical of Microsoft products -- no care for letter case since it does not matter on Win. I am thinking we should add some logic to try various letter case combinations for the font filenames (i.e. arialbd, Arialbd, ARIALBD).

  • free called from SDL_FreeSurface crashes when trying to free outimg in drv_end; looks like you've already freed that image at the end of drv_write.
Will have a look.

Here's a patch (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/mapdiffs.patch). I'd put this in Bugzilla, but I don't think cluttering it with lots of tiny niggles that aren't really part of UQM is a good idea.
I will review the patch in detail a bit later. Thanks!


There's an error in the constellation lines for Crateris.
Thanks! I see it. I thought we had all those ironed out already -- guess not!  ;)


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Novus on March 22, 2006, 04:43:45 pm
Right. Take a look at port.h in the project. It defines stricmp to strcasecmp or the other way around depending on your config. Is it not working for you?
OK, I missed that one. The problem is that scriptlib.c doesn't include port.h.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: fossil on March 23, 2006, 01:39:25 am
Most of the problems reported previously have been fixed in CVS. The one remaining is the case sensitivity in font filenames.
Please keep reporting any other problems you find.

As for non-availability of Arial Narrow, can you suggest a common font as a replacement for this? We would like to keep the cluster names as narrow as reasonable.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Novus on March 23, 2006, 11:32:30 am
As for non-availability of Arial Narrow, can you suggest a common font as a replacement for this? We would like to keep the cluster names as narrow as reasonable.
Sticking to Microsoft web fonts, you could use Impact. This test page (http://volker.dnsalias.net/linux/mstt_test.html) might help. Alternatively, you could try to find some suitable free fonts and include them with the map generator.


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: Vee-R on March 25, 2006, 12:05:48 am
Please, no Impact.  Ugly fonts make me homicidal. :(

I've found some suitable (narrow, sans-serif), readable, freeware fonts which could be used:

Kaffeesatz (http://www.dafont.com/yanone-kaffeesatz.font)
Epitough (http://www.dafont.com/epitough.font)
Bluehighway (http://www.dafont.com/blue-highway.font)
Babel Sans (http://www.dafont.com/babel-sans.font) (Does a very good Helvetica Condensed impersonation... which is what I used in my own map.)


Title: Re: Remaking the original paper starmap
Post by: youBastrd on June 06, 2006, 05:21:06 am
The map generator is filed under map
Neat, at the risk of punning, I'll check out this tool.  The google maps thing could definitely use this generated content.

I think I've used one of the output files already without asking, please complain if that's an issue. :/