[TML] A basic quadrant for review

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 8/30/08 4:14 PM, "Knapp" <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 9:59 PM, Infojunky <Infojunky at ceecom.net> wrote:
>> Knapp wrote:
>>> Just playing with ideas, what do you think?
>> 
>> Good start.
> 
> Thanks! I don't think layout is my best skill.
> 
>>> The stars are the right sizes relative to each other and the colors
>>> are correct according to that color map I posted. The star values are
>>> from my system generator that I wrote.
>> 
>> Speaking as a trained cartographer have you considered sizing on a
>> logarithmic scale? It would serve to make your smaller star symbols a
>> little larger and larger ones more manageable.
> 
> I thought about that sort of idea (I was just thinking of clipping the
> top and bottoms sizes to a max and min) but log is great. The problem
> is that the stars almost not showing up is really what it is like for
> them. Also the HUGE blue ones are in stark contrast to the small dots
> and give a feel that I might loose with the log idea.

Well, most main sequence stars are going to be between .1 and 2 times Sol's
radius.  At the very extreme, you're looking at about .05 to 3500 (the
biggest are actually red supergiants, not blue).  A log10 scale makes that
-1.3 to +3.5.  You could shift that up to 1.1 thru 5.9 (Sol ~2.4), which
still gives a pretty good difference between big and small.

Or maybe take the square root, so the *area* of the star symbol represents
the radius, but that's still an very big scale for the extreme range (.2
thru 59).  Any attempt to keep the big scale in any sense is going to suffer
this problem.

OTOH, you *could* use a piecemeal function.  If the radius is less than, say
2, use it directly.  If larger, use a function like log or whatever,
adjusted so that 2=2 and larger sizes are compressed.  Maybe log4(R)+1.5.

> Did you see that I changed the color of the hex numbers to yellow from
> white, if there was a star there? Is that to obscure?

Not obscure at all.  I just wonder if it's needed, since you already have
stuff *in* the hex anyway, at least a star symbol.  I think I've seen a map
where they left out the number altogether in unoccupied hexes.  (Well, if I
didn't see it, it's my idea, but you're welcome to it anyway. :) )

>>> My subsectors are 10 by 10 with 4 quadrants in each.
>>> Sectors are 40x40 hexes.
>>> 
>>> It is for printing on two A4 pages.
>> 
>> I was gonna ask about the reasoning behind the number but I see you have
>> given one, and it's a valid choice, lots of people for get to consider
>> how something is gonna be displayed when they come up with maps.
> 
> I have a few reasons. 5x5 fits nicely on a page with lots of detail
> that the 8x10 maps did not have with the simple generators. We now
> make maps with computers and have far more data!! It will take a few
> pages just for these 13 stars to list all the stars, planets, moons,
> and other details. As it is I dropped all the planet and moon info
> that I have for this quad.

I notice you also cut the stars down to 1 listed per hex.  Or did you not
worry about binaries and larger yet?  That could easily double the listing
size.  :)

> I think I could fill a little black book
> with just one quadrant (or maybe 49 stars of the subsector)of 13
> stars, If I include all the details of weather, life forms, orbits etc
> and that is without human info like governments or adventures. With
> this large size I can but a lot of icons in one hex.

I like the idea of more detail for a smaller area.  Of course, I also like
the idea of a smaller "Imperium"...

Also, if you make some stars fill their hex, you'll have trouble putting
other symbols in there too.