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Author Topic: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.  (Read 13769 times)
Megagun
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StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« on: April 07, 2012, 07:53:21 pm »

Here's something I've been working on for a while: a Star Control 2 starmap, rendered and searchable in the browser!
You can try it out here. The project is also on GitHub here.

Everything should be pretty self-explanatory. Use the search box to search for alien homeworlds, stars, or the location of devices. Click on a star to display some additional data about the planets orbiting that star (courtesy of Elestan's planetary database). Several star highlighters are available that highlight stars with a neat pulsating animation.

Enjoy!
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meep-eep
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2012, 08:23:56 pm »

Nice. Also the message for IE users. Tongue
(It works fine on Opera, btw.)
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #2 on: April 08, 2012, 01:33:31 pm »

You should bring Vela in front of Zeeman.
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Megagun
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2012, 11:01:24 pm »

You should bring Vela in front of Zeeman.
Fixed.

I've just made some updates that allow users to pan and zoom the starmap, like on Google Maps. Also added some performance improvements so that stuff doesn't have to be recomputed when recoloring the stars or showing/hiding sets of Spheres of Influence. Unfortunately, the panning doesn't appear to work on Firefox and Safari. Probably has to do with the way I load SVGPan.

This change however means that IE8 and below are completely unsupported now. I recommend Chrome over FF as it seems to be quite a lot faster. Haven't tried Opera yet.
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2012, 03:23:45 am »

I recommend Chrome

Eww, Chrome. Chromium with bonus Google spyware, in other words. Nah, I think I'd rather use plain old Chromium. Tongue
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2012, 04:08:51 pm »

I've just made some updates that allow users to pan and zoom the starmap, like on Google Maps.

I would suggest that when zooming, the size of the stars should remain constant, and just the distance between them should change.  That way, you can zoom into tightly packed star clusters like Vulpeculae to see the individual stars more easily.
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #6 on: April 10, 2012, 05:53:48 am »

I recommend Chrome

Eww, Chrome. Chromium with bonus Google spyware, in other words. Nah, I think I'd rather use plain old Chromium. Tongue
I first downloaded Chrome when it was released.  It has absolutely nothing except the browser and favorites (that's what it seemed like).  Chrome was completely boring.  Is it still like that?

Megagun, you are awesome!  The highlight feature is very useful.  Coloring the stars by the amount of mineral or biodata?  Very neat, thank you!
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2012, 05:09:06 pm »

I first downloaded Chrome when it was released.  It has absolutely nothing except the browser and favorites (that's what it seemed like).  Chrome was completely boring.  Is it still like that?

Chrome is really just Chromium repackaged with some tracking and built-in Flash.

I'm not sure what you mean by "boring", though. Compared to Firefox, the only thing Chromium lacks (that I can think of) is the metric ton of add-ons Firefox has.
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Lukipela
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2012, 07:28:17 pm »

As a firefox user I can't pan or zoom or anything, but I do think it is a very pretty map and nice work.
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2012, 08:23:38 pm »

Just found a mistake on the map. It lists Beta Vulpeculae II as the Androsynth homeworld. The actual Androsynth homeworld is Eta Vulpeculae I.
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #10 on: April 10, 2012, 10:02:55 pm »

I'm not sure what you mean by "boring", though. Compared to Firefox, the only thing Chromium lacks (that I can think of) is the metric ton of add-ons Firefox has.

This makes it boring. Tongue
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2012, 05:28:22 pm »

How do I download this for offline use without a browser?
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #12 on: April 11, 2012, 07:25:23 pm »

How do I download this for offline use without a browser?

I don't know about "without a browser", but you ought to be able to use it offline with a browser by just downloading the web page.
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Megagun
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #13 on: April 11, 2012, 10:26:15 pm »

I would suggest that when zooming, the size of the stars should remain constant, and just the distance between them should change.  That way, you can zoom into tightly packed star clusters like Vulpeculae to see the individual stars more easily.
Good idea. I'll keep that in mind, but I'll probably do it in such a way that stars will still get bigger as you zoom in, only the rate at which they get bigger when you zoom in gets lower the more zoomed-in you are.

As a firefox user I can't pan or zoom or anything, but I do think it is a very pretty map and nice work.
Yep, that was a known issue. It has also been fixed.

Just found a mistake on the map. It lists Beta Vulpeculae II as the Androsynth homeworld. The actual Androsynth homeworld is Eta Vulpeculae I.
Whoops. Fixed.

How do I download this for offline use without a browser?
Grab a .zip off of the GitHub page or clone my repo, then open index.html in your favorite browser. This currently works just fine, because I don't make any XHR calls and all starmap data is static. I can't however guarantee that this method will continue to work in the future.
EDIT: if you actually meant "without a browser": you can't.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2012, 10:30:05 pm by Megagun » Logged
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Re: StarmapJS: an interactive Star Control 2 starmap.
« Reply #14 on: April 12, 2012, 12:26:06 am »

I'm no that familiar with java, but I have a couple programs written in it that do not require a "browser" to work. They can be executed offline. Can this be adapted to this map so that it could be ran offline? A executable .jar file is what they are.
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