Non OTU: LBB S3 Spinward Marches (re)mapping in 1105

[Spinward Flow]

Great stuff! Love this.

I have my moments ...

Do you have plans to do other sectors, or are you going to stop this magnificent correction crusade in the SM?

I was not intending to continue my own personal efforts beyond the Spinward Marches. I wanted the results of this project to "exist" so I wouldn't be stuck using the rather obviously mismatched to LBB S3 map currently found on Travellermap (one of those "if you want something done, you've gotta do it yourself" kinds of deals) labeled M1105.

When I started, I thought there might be only a few things to correct here and there, like the occasional typo in a forum post. Imagine my surprise when I kept finding DOZENS (plural) of corrections that needed to be made on a subsector by subsector basis in order to bring things back into compliance with LBB S3, LBB2.77 and LBB2.81. The scale of the updates and edits I needed to make was just ... daunting.

And I'm not even done yet!
I'm taking a pause to pontificate on and puddle around with a new World Colors scheme that is more readily shows combinations of Trade Codes relevant to speculative goods trading and merchant traffic as a further demonstration of what I would personally like to see in a sector map. One of those "never mind the fancy chat ... SHOW ME!" kinds of deals. Needless to say, there are some challenges involved with the visual design language to use with such endeavors, since I'm going back to the drawing board (with somewhat "primitive tools" for the task). Incorporating additional details such as Vacuum World, Desert, Atmosphere: A-C, Ice Capped/Water Ocean/Fluid Ocean, etc. visual indicators for ease of use relevant to wilderness refueling and so on starts making things rather complex, so I need to sort out something logical/repeatable/programmable before rolling out the next round of image editing.

So in terms of planning ... I had (and still have) no for reaching beyond the Spinward Marches sector.
In the Traveller sense, I still consider the Spinward Marches as "home" even all these decades later.

However, what I'm doing has enough "logical consistency" to it that it is theoretically possible to incorporate the "structure" of what I've done into Travellermap (via some reprogramming of the image blocks generation) to yield the same results that I'm getting here (after text editing of the Sector and Metadata XML data files). I wanted to undertake this project "out in the open" here on CotI to demonstrate and show the methodology and thinking behind all of the decision I was making, along with showing the results of those decisions when implemented into the now familiar sector map to highlight the differences in approach and yield. That way, if anyone else would like to replicate my efforts elsewhere in a different sector, I'll have provided enough demonstration "road map" example to follow that it will be a lot easier for other parties to do something similar with their preferred sector maps.

Ideally speaking, I'd love to see the italics for Population: 5-6 world names plus underlined italics for Population: 4- world names programming update rolled out across Travellermap for ALL sectors, not just the Spinward Marches (and keeping all the text fonts in Arial, unlike what I've accidentally done with my image edits before I realized my first draft mistake). I'd like to think that such a programming edit for Travellermap would be almost trivial to implement into the programming of the APIs. That way, everyone benefits (in perpetuity) in all sectors rendered by Travellermap, not just "my" LBB S3-esque version of the Spinward Marches done up in a poster format.



I was only planning on doing an edited version of the Spinward Marches, but what I've learned and done to "my" map can be something rolled out to Travellermap more broadly, if there's sufficient demand for it, by updating the programming that drives the image block generation of the Travellermap APIs. I don't like keeping advances and discoveries all to myself ... I prefer to share.

Knowledge Shared Is Knowledge Multiplied.

Hope that answers your question.

 

[Spinward Flow]

So in terms of reassigning colors in a new scheme for More Colors using the Preview app for image editing, the default colors I have available to me are:

If I rotate that set of default colors by 90º and put labels on those colors for how I'd want to use them (broadly speaking), so as to organize my thoughts on color assignments, I wind up with this:

Use of italics as well as underlined italics for mainworld names as markers for Population: 5-6 as well as Population: 4- UWPs, respectively. So the typeface font modifier is used to indicate the Non-industrialized trade code.

This then becomes the "pre-visualization" step before proceeding to mock up world icons that "neopolitan stripe" trade code/remarks combinations into the world icon circle. So if anyone has an objection about the color assignment choices I'm pondering here, this would be the time for feedback.

Note that this "refactoring of the colors" means that a mainworld which is:

• Agricultural, Rich and has a Water Ocean would have three vertical color stripes in the world circle icon ... green, purple, blue.
• Desert and Rich would have two vertical color stripes of yellow, purple.
• Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor and has a Water Ocean would have four vertical color stripes ... grey, brown, cyan, blue.
• Desert, Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor would have four vertical color stripes ... yellow, grey, brown, cyan.

Basic idea is to organize the Remarks in the Sector data to be alphabetical in sequence (so Poor before Vacuum, for example) and then use that arrangement to determine the left to right ordering of the More Colors applied to world icons in each hex.

I don't think I'm going to have time to do anything with this over the weekend before monday, so if people have ideas or strong opinions about this notion before I proceed into the next step phase ... now is your chance to provide input.

 

[coliver988]

So in terms of reassigning colors in a new scheme for More Colors using the Preview app for image editing, the default colors I have available to me are:

If I rotate that set of default colors by 90º and put labels on those colors for how I'd want to use them (broadly speaking), so as to organize my thoughts on color assignments, I wind up with this:

Use of italics as well as underlined italics for mainworld names as markers for Population: 5-6 as well as Population: 4- UWPs, respectively. So the typeface font modifier is used to indicate the Non-industrialized trade code.

This then becomes the "pre-visualization" step before proceeding to mock up world icons that "neopolitan stripe" trade code/remarks combinations into the world icon circle. So if anyone has an objection about the color assignment choices I'm pondering here, this would be the time for feedback.

Note that this "refactoring of the colors" means that a mainworld which is:

• Agricultural, Rich and has a Water Ocean would have three vertical color stripes in the world circle icon ... green, purple, blue.
• Desert and Rich would have two vertical color stripes of yellow, purple.
• Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor and has a Water Ocean would have four vertical color stripes ... grey, brown, cyan, blue.
• Desert, Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor would have four vertical color stripes ... yellow, grey, brown, cyan.

Basic idea is to organize the Remarks in the Sector data to be alphabetical in sequence (so Poor before Vacuum, for example) and then use that arrangement to determine the left to right ordering of the More Colors applied to world icons in each hex.

I don't think I'm going to have time to do anything with this over the weekend before monday, so if people have ideas or strong opinions about this notion before I proceed into the next step phase ... now is your chance to provide input.

I do like where you are going, but from a background that sometimes dabbles in UI, often the more options you add, the less useful things actually are. It requires a great deal of cognitive effort to start translating a dozen different things to get a view of what it is you are looking for. Of course, the people who make the UI understand it, but someone else will see something more akin to a Vargr's taste in clothing: there are a LOT of colors in there!

Years ago, and it may have been the GURPS Far Trader supplement (which is really good but is a big-ship and busy Traveller Universe, so not exactly to my taste but I again digress), some Traveller system had trade maps. The lines between the systems indicated the best trade routes based on the DMs and things. So a trade map does not necessarily need all that detail, but rather the overall trends for what is best to trade where.

Anyway, I do applaud your efforts here. As I do a lot of personal world-building that rarely gets seen simply because it is something I enjoy doing. And you do seem to be really enjoying this process!

 

[Spinward Flow]

I do like where you are going, but from a background that sometimes dabbles in UI, often the more options you add, the less useful things actually are.

As advertised, this is the pre-visualization step before moving into production of the actual standardized icons to be placed onto the map.

The way I see it, there are 4 basic visual cues that can be used for world icons, in terms of design fundamentals.

1. The center (filled) circle
2. The outer ring around the centered (filled) circle
3. Vertical stripes of color
4. Horizontal stripes of color

Some of these elements will not necessarily "play nice" with each other when smushed together, and some may not be legible when arranged in different locations. This is why I'm starting with the Color Swatches and trying to make sure that the palette to pull everything from isn't too convoluted or requires too much fine tuning to be able to see the differences in color contrasts at a glance.

It requires a great deal of cognitive effort to start translating a dozen different things to get a view of what it is you are looking for. Of course, the people who make the UI understand it, but someone else will see something more akin to a Vargr's taste in clothing: there are a LOT of colors in there!

There are a lot of colors, and I'm already trying to figure out ways to discard the need for various colors, if possible, so as to shrink the variety of permutations. I may also need to revise my mix of color choices depending on "what needs to go where" in order to be able to easily read the resulting visual language.

I can pontificate more on this point if anyone is interested in watching the sausage get made (more than I've already been doing up to this point) so as to have access to the notions behind the decisions for better peer review of both the process and the results.

For example:
I may need to shift Water Ocean from being blue back to cyan ... which would then displace the color used for Poor. I could swap in magenta instead for Poor, which presumably will be clearly different enough from purple for Rich to be readily accessible. The reason why I might want to make this color shift is if I start using a "ring around the circle" (ala white ring around black historically used for vacuum worlds) as the indicator of a Water Ocean. The poor contrast of a "blue on black" ring around the colors marking a Water Ocean when used with a black space sector map background color then necessarily prompts the need to shift to a lighter and higher contrast color against black, hence cyan for a water ocean.

Additionally the same thinking can be used to make the outer ring circle either white (vacuum or trace atmosphere), yellow (desert) or cyan (water ocean) ... leaving the center inside the outer ring available for stripes of color used for Trade Codes. Ice-capped would add horizontal white stripe (upper/lower) bands to indicate that the world has Atmosphere: 1 and Hydrographics: 1+, which would overlay the vertical trade code stripes in the center.

That way, the outer ring is more about providing wilderness environment conditions, while the inner portion of the center (filled) circle is used for Trade Code colors in vertical stripes.

Worlds with Atmosphere: A-C would have an orange center filling (probably no stripes for other trade codes) and an orange outer ring if Hydrographics: 1+ ... but if Hydrographics: 0 then there would be a yellow outer ring as the indicator for a Desert world, even though the Atmosphere: A-C is present.

Subtle little cues like that start becoming possible when working on the basis of an "assembled overlay" system like I've got in mind. It'll start making a lot more sense once I stop typing about it and start showing some concepts that convey the visual language I think I'll need to be using once everything starts settling into place and I can work out any kinks and conflicts that will need to be dealt with.

 

[bookwyrm]

So in terms of reassigning colors in a new scheme for More Colors using the Preview app for image editing, the default colors I have available to me are:

If I rotate that set of default colors by 90º and put labels on those colors for how I'd want to use them (broadly speaking), so as to organize my thoughts on color assignments, I wind up with this:

Use of italics as well as underlined italics for mainworld names as markers for Population: 5-6 as well as Population: 4- UWPs, respectively. So the typeface font modifier is used to indicate the Non-industrialized trade code.

This then becomes the "pre-visualization" step before proceeding to mock up world icons that "neopolitan stripe" trade code/remarks combinations into the world icon circle. So if anyone has an objection about the color assignment choices I'm pondering here, this would be the time for feedback.

Note that this "refactoring of the colors" means that a mainworld which is:

• Agricultural, Rich and has a Water Ocean would have three vertical color stripes in the world circle icon ... green, purple, blue.
• Desert and Rich would have two vertical color stripes of yellow, purple.
• Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor and has a Water Ocean would have four vertical color stripes ... grey, brown, cyan, blue.
• Desert, Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor would have four vertical color stripes ... yellow, grey, brown, cyan.

Basic idea is to organize the Remarks in the Sector data to be alphabetical in sequence (so Poor before Vacuum, for example) and then use that arrangement to determine the left to right ordering of the More Colors applied to world icons in each hex.

I don't think I'm going to have time to do anything with this over the weekend before monday, so if people have ideas or strong opinions about this notion before I proceed into the next step phase ... now is your chance to provide input.

I would change Water Ocean to Hydrographics: A. This way, only Desert & Water Worlds need a Hydro coloring. Any other planet would be considered to have a Hydro 1-9.

Switch the colors for Hydrographics: 0 and Non-Agricultural. Or De to Brown, Na to Orange, and Atmosphere A-C to Red. You could probably then switch Po to Yellow so it is less confused as a Water type of world, which could open up a lighter/brighter Blue for Hydrographic A for better visibility. if you don't want to use Red for Atmo A-C you could use that color between dark blue and violet/purple (that's used for Rich) or just use dark blue... or use dark blue for Atmo A-C with Hydro 1+ and the other for Atmo A-C with Hydro 0.

Change Atmosphere: 0-1 to Vacuum. This way you know if an Ice-capped world is Vacuum or Trace Atmosphere just by looking without having to check the UWP.

 

[Kakistocrat]

So in terms of reassigning colors in a new scheme for More Colors using the Preview app for image editing, the default colors I have available to me are:

Would it be more functional to use a dedicated “paint” program so that you’d have a wider variety of colors from which to choose? On Macs, I haven’t used Preview for image editing, but I have used Seashore, and it has worked well enough for my modest image editing requirements.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I would change Water Ocean to Hydrographics: A. This way, only Desert & Water Worlds need a Hydro coloring. Any other planet would be considered to have a Hydro 1-9.

Change Atmosphere: 0-1 to Vacuum. This way you know if an Ice-capped world is Vacuum or Trace Atmosphere just by looking without having to check the UWP.

In as much as I can, I would prefer to carry forward the legacy coloring where practical/reasonable, rather than just swapping everything around for (my own personal) convenience. Granted, I'm already dropping yellow as the Agricultural+Rich combination, opting instead for stripes of color (green+purple) on a single circle so I don't have to deal with a plethora of color blending (green+purple=yellow) options that would just get way too confusing too quickly.

The real use for the Water Ocean (Atmosphere: 2-9, Hydrographics: 1-A) is to provide an indicator for which worlds have opportunities for wilderness refueling from terrestrial open water sources. Contrast this with Desert (Hydrographics: 0) and with Fluid Oceans (Atmosphere: A-C, Hydrographics: 1-A) where the liquid on the surface is not water due to atmospheric composition. Could be hydrocarbon seas, could be chlorine seas, could be all kinds of liquid cycle stuff going on, but it won't be a water cycle.

Switch the colors for Hydrographics: 0 and Non-Agricultural. Or De to Brown, Na to Orange, and Atmosphere A-C to Red. You could probably then switch Po to Yellow so it is less confused as a Water type of world, which could open up a lighter/brighter Blue for Hydrographic A for better visibility. if you don't want to use Red for Atmo A-C you could use that color between dark blue and violet/purple (that's used for Rich) or just use dark blue... or use dark blue for Atmo A-C with Hydro 1+ and the other for Atmo A-C with Hydro 0.

I'm already thinking about organizing things into a kind of "double layer" organization process that works more like a stripes inside outer circular ring formulation. Makes things easier on the assembly of combinations. Bare minimum is that I'll need to revise my swatch colors assignment that I briefly outlined above to accommodate such a change in layout. In such a circumstance, I'm thinking that I'd use a red ring to indicate Fluid Oceans and a white ring to indicate Atmosphere: 0-1. That then permits use of yellow (Desert) and cyan (Atmosphere: 2-9, Hydrographics: 1-A) when neither the Fluid Oceans nor Vacuum conditions are present.

Would it be more functional to use a dedicated “paint” program so that you’d have a wider variety of colors from which to choose? On Macs, I haven’t used Preview for image editing, but I have used Seashore, and it has worked well enough for my modest image editing requirements.

I'm not really looking for "lots of shades and hues of the same color" here. Instead, I want to use high contrast colors that are easily readable when smashed together in limited areas. I don't need the full run of hex codes to achieve what I'm looking for, since a ROYGBIV plus a few extra colors ought to be sufficient to my needs and purposes here ... and I can get that out of Preview (which I'm not mildly proficient in, after making all those deck plans for my starship designs).

In this case, 12 colors ought to be plenty ... and as you probably noticed in the post starting this "pre-visualization" sorting, I was only really using 10 of the 12 colors available to me.

It'll make more sense once I start making samples ... which will probably have to wait until I've got time to spend on the problem on monday (or later this coming week).

 

[Spinward Flow]

So after a little more thinking about the Preview default color bar:

Rotate the color bar vertical and (this time) differentiate the colors into the outer ring color and the solid circle center.

Outer ring

Solid circle

This formulation actually uses all 12 color swatches with no duplication. It also segregates the color information into environmental (outer ring) and commercial (solid circle).

---

The next challenge is to work out a template that I can use to create an array of world icon overlays that I can then just copy/paste into place for all the worlds on my version of the Spinward Marches sector map.

Still trying to figure out how I'm going to be able to implement this scheme into Asteroid Belts (because their trade codes can vary and those trade codes are merchant traffic relevant!), so the Asteroid Belts are going to be a touch "non-standard" in that regard, but I want to retain the scheme (if not the exact world icon shape) that we're all familiar with. I'll probably go with a 3/4/3 elongated hexagonal arrangement (best seen in the Bowman/District 268 world icon) and work my way onwards from there.

---

Structurally speaking, the idea to have a standard sized black background, put a solid circle color on top of that background and then overlay the outer ring color (with transparent center) on top of that to create the base matrix of world icons. That way, I can copy/paste assemble combinations from that base matrix for worlds that have multiple trade codes.

The next challenge is to find a repeatable quality workflow process that will enable such an outcome.

At this point I've determined that the scaling for the Travellermap More Colors icons is actually 27x27 pixels for the Vacuum Worlds and 25x25 pixels for the non-vacuum worlds (which basically get a black outer ring which can't be seen on a black background). Therefore, in order to give myself sufficient margin for quality control overlay purposes, I need to be using a workflow that yields a 31x31 pixel world icon image for consistent overlay with margin clearance (with Asteroid Belts being an exception). I may wind up needing to create world icons from scratch at a larger scale (such as 62x62, for example) and then resizing to scale down to a 31x31 pixel final yield to copy/paste into the sector map image for each world icon in order to achieve consistent quality control results. This will no doubt require some experimentation to find the right balance of creative elements before moving to implement into the sector map.

 

[Kakistocrat]

This formulation actually uses all 12 color swatches with no duplication. It also segregates the color information into environmental (outer ring) and commercial (solid circle).

That’s an elegant solution. Are you wedded to a set of 12 color swatches? There are a few more trade classifications that are in the Market Price Table of Merchant Prince, so expanding the set to 16 or so ought to cover the missing trade classifications from that table, e.g. using a lighter shade of grey for Non-industrial to complement the grey that you’re using for Industrial.

The next challenge is to find a repeatable quality workflow process that will enable such an outcome.

That’s why I use SVG format as my “development” workflow, and convert the .svg files to .png files for “publication” — i.e. the images that I’ve posted on CotI are .png versions of .svg originals.

I may wind up needing to create world icons from scratch at a larger scale (such as 62×62, for example) and then resizing to scale down to a 31×31 pixel final yield to copy/paste into the sector map image for each world icon in order to achieve consistent quality control results.

Presuming that your Mac has a “retina” display, a doubled scale at 62×62 could be necessary to display on your Mac at a reasonable size, but might need to be reduced to 31×31 for display on other platforms (including non-retina Macs). The Traveller Map API has a “device pixel ratio” option for this reason; the dpr=2 option can be used to double the pixel ratio for high resolution displays (such as retina Macs), so that an X×Y image is returned as a 2⁢X×2⁢Y image when the dpr=2 option is specified.

 

[Spinward Flow]

That’s an elegant solution.

We make every pretense of competency around here.

Are you wedded to a set of 12 color swatches?

Not particularly, more like it's a matter of convenience. The Preview app provides those 12 color swatches as default, so might as well use them for internal consistency and quality control. Also, I'm disinclined to add more colors just for the sake of adding more colors.

There are a few more trade classifications that are in the Market Price Table of Merchant Prince, so expanding the set to 16 or so ought to cover the missing trade classifications from that table, e.g. using a lighter shade of grey for Non-industrial to complement the grey that you’re using for Industrial.

Are you referring to this (LBB7, p36)?

Trade Classifications List
The following trade classifications are used in this trade and commerce system.
Agricultural: Producer of foodstuffs.
Asteroid Belt: Many small worldlets.
Barren World: No population, government, or law level.
Desert World: No water.
Fluid Oceans: Oceans composed of fluids other than water.
High Population: Population of one billion or more.
Ice-Capped: Hydrographics contained in polar ice-caps.
Industrial: Heavy industry forms a major part of local production.
Low Population: Population less than 10,000.
Non-Agricultural: Dependent on synthetic food production.
Non-Industrial: Population less than 10,000,000.
Poor: Low grade living conditions.
Rich: High grade living conditions.
Vacuum World: No atmosphere.
Water World: Entire world surface covered by water.

If you are, then the combination of color scheme and naming scheme that I've outlined above actually accomplishes this.
Observe.

1. Agricultural: green center of world icon
2. Asteroid Belt: non-circular world icon (exception)
3. Barren World: included in Sector remarks and seen in UWP
4. Desert World: yellow outer ring of world icon
5. Fluid Oceans: red outer ring of world icon
6. High Population: world name in ALL CAPS
7. Ice-Capped: horizontal white stripe banding (top/bottom) overlaid onto world icon
8. Industrial: grey center of world icon
9. Low Population: world name in underlined italics
10. Non-Agricultural: brown center of world icon
11. Non-Industrial: world name in italics
12. Poor: magenta center of world icon
13. Rich: purple center of world icon
14. Vacuum World: white outer ring of world icon
15. Water Oceans: cyan outer ring of world icon
16. Water World: blue outer ring of world icon

So there are basically 16 variables to encode visually, some of which are NOT mutually exclusive (so combination multiples are perfectly possible).

4 of those designations do not use colors.

• Barren World: subset of Low Population world name in underlined italics
• Low Population: world name in underlined italics
• Non-Industrial: world name in italics
• High Population: world name in ALL CAPS

That leaves me with a requirement for 12 colors ... and as it so happens, I'm using a default selection of ... 12 colors.



Isn't it nice when things just ... work?

Presuming that your Mac has a “retina” display

When I had to replace my almost 12 year old (but top of the line when I bought it) late-2011 27inch intel chipped iMac in the early summer this year (the power supply was finally dying), I replaced it with an M2 mac mini (bottom of the line) and a 5k 27inch Apple Studio Display (5120x2880) as "future proofing" against needing to buy new monitors for the next decade due to fantastic visual and sound performance. And yes, it is a "retina" display!

The Traveller Map API has a “device pixel ratio” option for this reason; the dpr=2 option can be used to double the pixel ratio for high resolution displays (such as retina Macs), so that an X×Y image is returned as a 2⁢X×2⁢Y image when the dpr=2 option is specified.

Well, I wasn't using that option to generate my sector map image before I started editing it. Since the 3602 × 5209 png images the Poster Maker was producing seemed ... adequate ... for my purposes, I wasn't about to complain. Besides, I'm a bit far along in the process of making changes and updates to want to backtrack to that step at this point.

In the Preview app I just simply zoom to Actual Size first, scroll horizontal/vertical to where I need to be working and then just zoom in further (usually +3 zoom factors) to do any detail work on the saved image. The Preview app will allow quite a lot of zoom factor before hitting its max zoom, so it's not like I need to use tweezers to move my mouse cursor around the screen (so to speak).

 

[Kakistocrat]

Are you referring to [the Trade Classifications List] (LBB7, p36)?

Indirectly; I was referring to the table at the top of page 37, which is based on that list.

If you are, then the combination of color scheme and naming scheme that I’ve outlined above actually accomplishes this.
Observe. […]

I didn’t know about your white banding for Ice-Capped, and I’d forgotten about your use of italics for Non-industrial and Low Population — mea culpa. It seems as though only Barren World is a “second class citizen”, without a uniquely identifying use of icon center, icon ring, or text style. Perhaps also putting an underlined italicized Barren World’s world name in parentheses would allow distinguishing a Barren World from other Low Population worlds, without having to refer to its UWP or to the sector remarks? (The trade effects in the table on page 37 are cumulative for goods sourced from Barren Worlds and Low Population worlds when sold on an Industrial world.)

When I had to replace my almost 12 year old (but top of the line when I bought it) late-2011 27 inch Intel chipped iMac in the early summer this year (the power supply was finally dying), I replaced it with an M2 Mac Mini (bottom of the line) and a 5k 27 inch Apple Studio Display (5120 × 2880) as “future proofing” against needing to buy new monitors for the next decade due to fantastic visual and sound performance. And yes, it is a “retina” display!

Most Macs now probably use high-resolution “retina” displays, but I still use my non-retina 2010 13 inch MacBook Pro without an external monitor. It was bottom of the line when I’d bought it (second-hand), but I’ve upgraded its RAM and replaced its hard disk with a SSD.

Since the 3602 × 5209 png images the Poster Maker was producing seemed … adequate … for my purposes, I wasn’t about to complain.

If the default pixel ratio works well for you, then there’s no need to double it!

 

[Spinward Flow]

Indirectly; I was referring to the table at the top of page 37, which is based on that list.

Either way, I've got a color+world name scheme that will cover ALL of those.
The Remarks for each world entry in the Sector data would also include that information and would be accessible when loaded through Travellermap if stored at an actual (on map) location.

It seems as though only Barren World is a “second class citizen”, without a uniquely identifying use of icon center, icon ring, or text style. Perhaps also putting an underlined italicized Barren World’s world name in parentheses would allow distinguishing a Barren World from other Low Population worlds, without having to refer to its UWP or to the sector remarks? (The trade effects in the table on page 37 are cumulative for goods sourced from Barren Worlds and Low Population worlds when sold on an Industrial world.)

It's a thought.
I would prefer not to clutter up the sector map styling with potentially ambiguous notations. At the scale I'm using for my sector map images the UWP is visible (and legible when zoomed to Actual Size), so recognizing that Population: 0 is happening in some places isn't that difficult. It's also rare enough (only a handful of worlds are unpopulated/Barren) that I do not feel a compulsion to further differentiate them. Basically, anyone astrogating in that region "should know" which worlds are uninhabited.

If the default pixel ratio works well for you, then there’s no need to double it!

Well, only if I want to make impossibly beautiful wall poster sized images that are too cumbersome to save and use ...

 

[Spinward Flow]

Outer ring

Solid circle

---

When I build this up into the appropriate (single) combinations, I get these results:

Desert, Atmosphere: A-C

Desert, Industrial

Desert, Non-agricultural

Desert, No Trade Codes

Desert, Poor

Desert, Rich

Fluid Ocean, Atmosphere: A-C

Ice Capped, Industrial

Ice Capped, No Trade Codes

Ice Capped, Poor

Vacuum, Industrial

Vacuum, Non-agricultural

Vacuum, No Trade Codes

 

[Spinward Flow]

Water Ocean, Agricultural

Water Ocean, Industrial

Water Ocean, Non-agricultural

Water Ocean, No Trade Codes

Water Ocean, Poor

Water Ocean, Rich

Water World, Industrial

Water World, No Trade Codes

Water World, Rich

The nice thing about this arrangement is that with these world icon templates (constructed in the Preview app) is that when a world has multiple Trade Codes, I can just copy/paste rectangular vertical stripe sections together to create the combo. And that would look like this:

Water Ocean, Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor

---

All of these world icons are 31x31 pixels in size (including the outer black background to match the black of the sector map poster I'm using). The outer rings are functionally 27x27 pixels and the solid center is 25x25 pixels. At a 1:1 pixel ratio here on the forums, that impacts the legibility of the world icons, but that functionality/feature changes when you can zoom in however you'd like on the Travellermap site or when looking at the Poster image as much as you want.

The

Water World, No Trade Codes image is extremely hard to see the blue colored outer ring in the black when viewed on a white background here in the forums (assuming you have the bright style here) due to the brightness drowning out the contrast between a circle of blue and black.

Anyway, I wanted to provide this Proof Of Concept matrix to demonstrate how the visual language refactoring I've been thinking about looks like when tested before putting it into practice on my revised sector map. "Seeing Is Believing" and all that jazz.

If Travellermap were to adopt this refactoring of presentation on maps ... I would recommend that rather than replacing the already existing More Colors scheme that the Travellermap APIs use, instead just create another checkbox option. Call it New Colors to differentiate it from the legacy system used with More Colors. That way you expand the number of available options, rather than overwriting previously available options.

Had to use 2 posts for this due to the sheer quantity of images.

 

[TamsinP]

Isn't that missing Non-Industrial?

 

[Spinward Flow]

Isn't that missing Non-Industrial?

I thought we'd been over this.

include use of italics as well as underlined italics for mainworld names as markers for Population: 5-6 as well as Population: 4- UWPs, respectively.

Non-industrial is indicated by font, not by colors.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Worked out a slightly improved scheme (after my first draft attempt seen above in #134) for the "vertical neopolitan stripes" to use with multi-code icons that I hope improves legibility.

Desert, Industrial, Non-agricultural

Desert, Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor

Desert, Non-agricultural, Poor

Ice Capped, Industrial, Non-agricultural

Vacuum, Industrial, Non-agricultural

Water Ocean, Agricultural, Rich

Water Ocean, Industrial, Non-agricultural

Water Ocean, Industrial, Non-agricultural, Poor

Water Ocean, Non-agricultural, Poor

To balance out the odd number of pixels in the center (a 25x25 area) I use a single vertical stripe 1 pixel wide in the colors of yellow (Desert), white (Ice Capped, Vacuum) or cyan (Water Ocean) between the different color stripes. The ordering of the arrangement for the colors is just a simple alphabetical of the trade codes from left to right.

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Now that I've got my New Colors icon set built and ready for copy/paste overlay purposes completed comes the next (set of) step(s) ... replacing ALL of the legacy world icons on the sector map generated by the Poster Maker with my New and Improved world icons using my new color scheme ... all 439 of them. This will be a "return to form" of posting iterative steps, subsector by subsector, until the finalized sector (re)mapping is completed.

This may take another couple of weeks to finish up.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Thirty-fourth step revision: Imgur Link (3602 × 5209 png image) (recommend opening in new tab)

This step updates the world icons for the Qronor subsector using my New Colors icon set that I am proposing be rolled out more broadly on Travellermap as an alternative option feature.

See posts #133, #134 and #137 to review world icon color scheme guide.
Italics as well as Underlined Italics for are used for mainworld names as markers for Population: 5-6 (Non-industrialized) as well as Population: 4- (Low Population, Non-Industrialized) UWPs, respectively.

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Wow.
What a difference being able to see these New Colors world icons (in their proper context) is having when being able to visualize the trading opportunities (and thus trade routes and flows of commerce and travelers) on a (sub)sector scale.

When I know what the colors mean and what the font scheme for world names means ... this presentation method makes a lot of things SO MUCH CLEARER when looking at the map.

For one thing, I can SEE the Ice Capped worlds!
I can SEE the trade code combination worlds!
I can SEE the Non-agricultural and Poor trade coded worlds!
And best of all, I can start to SEE where there are world clusters involving "Have to Want and Back Again" where commercial opportunities ought to flourish.

This really is a case of "seeing is believing" for being able to determine the difference that the paradigm shift I'm working with here can produce!

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One other point of business is that I'm going to have to work out something for Asteroid Belts before I get to the Regina subsector, so I'm probably going to need to hit the PAUSE button for a bit after image editing the Jewell subsector ... but once I've got a scheme in place for showing Asteroid Belt world icons that also include trade code colors in them just like the "circular" world icons (albeit with a slightly different arrangement) then I'll have all the parts and pieces I need to finish building out the edits of the entire sector (re)map.

 

[TamsinP]

I thought we'd been over this.

Non-industrial is indicated by font, not by colors.

You're absolutely right - you had and I forgot.

 

[bookwyrm]

Is Poor Stats Atmosphere 2-5 Hydrographics 3-? If so , you won't have any Poor Water Worlds.