Oolite Interactive Map v0.8.1
Oolite Interactive Map is a simple tool to allows you to examine details of each system in the game Oolite and to find routes and other information.
Use the buttons with arrows at the top of the page to pan left, right, up and down. (In 3D Mode you have 4 additional rotate buttons.) The buttons marked "(+)" and "(-)" allow you to zoom in and out. Reset View button re-centres the map and resets the zoom. The 8 radio buttons allow you to change which Galaxy Sector displayed.
Ctrl-click on any of the systems to auto zoom to that system to give a similar view to the F6 screen in Oolite. If you do not pan or zoom then ctrl-clicking again on that system will reset the view. If in 3D mode then any rotation previously made before zooming in will be maintained.
Move the mouse over any of the systems and a pop-up info-box will appear listing the details about that system.
To select the start point of the route click on the appropriate system. This will be highlighted with a green square-shaped selector icon.
Once you have selected the start point you can select the end point by clicking on the appropriate system whilst holding down the shift key. (For Webkit based browsers such as Chrome you may need to double click.) This will be highlighted with a red square-shaped selector icon.
When both the start and end points have been selected the shortest route will be calculated and the route will be highlighted using magenta link lines.
If you shift-click on another system you extend the route with a new leg. The previous end point becomes a waypoint which will be highlighted with a purple selector icon. You may extend the route as many times as you want.
If you click on any of the route lines the leg of the route you click on will change to the quickest route which is highlighted with cyan lines. Clicking on these will switch the route back to the shortest route. Each leg can be switched independently.
To reduce the route you can shift-ctrl-click on any waypoint or the start point and will delete legs of the route after that system. Clicking without modifiers on any system that isn't the current start point with delete the whole route and set that systems as the new start point
Extending the route will set the start search box with the system that is the start of that leg. (See Searching section for more details.)
There are two search text boxes at the top of the page labelled "Start" and "End" for the start and end points of the last leg of the route.
You may edit the start search box is when there is no route or when you only have a start point. As soon as has select an end point (first or extension) the start search box is set to the name of the start point of the last leg (last waypoint) and is then locked.
to use the search boxes enter either a full or partial system name into the search text boxes and all the systems starting with those characters will be highlighted with orange square-shaped selector icons. Underneath the map (temporarily replacing the route details if they were showing) the list of matching system names will be shown. If you enter a set of characters that do not match any system name then these character's colour will change to red to indicate this.
If you enter enough characters to filter the search list to one system then the appropriate start or end system will be automatically selected. You can only search for an end point if a start point has already been selected.
If you want to select a system who's name is the beginning of another system name then add a space to the end in the search text box. If there are two systems in the same galaxy sector with the same name (there is one occurrence of this) then you will need to select the one you want using your mouse.
If you tab out of the search text box and there is system selected then the full name will be put into that text box. If there is a route showing then the route details will reappear underneath the map.
By default all systems are showed as blue circles. There are two dropdowns to the right of the map (Fill and Border). You can select from the Fill dropdown one of 7 system properties and it will make the system symbol a slightly bigger circle and colours them according to the property value for each system. A legend for the property in shown beneath the dropdown. In the case of the Border dropdown this creates borders on the symbol and colours this border in the same colour scheme for the selected system property as the Fill dropdown. Again you get a legend under the dropdown. Tech Level property uses few colours with colours shared between three neighbouring levels. These are distinguished by having the shape of the system symbol change.
Why a 3D mode? Oolite does not currently support 3D galactic charts, so why bother to do this? The aim is purely to show what a 3D galactic chart could be like.
There is now a pair radio buttons (top right) that select between 2D and 3D mode. Changing mode will reset the galaxy.
When you are in 3D mode you get 4 rotate buttons. These rotate your point of view in 10° jumps. Rotate Up and Down buttons will change the "latitude" of your view. Rotate Left and Right buttons will change the "longitude" of your view. The initial view is from the top down (view points down at the "North pole") and is equivalent to the view you get in 2D mode.
To make the 3D view all the systems are given a z position. These like the x and y positions are initially obtained from the same random number seeds used by the system. But these are then adjusted to make sure that none the existing links to other systems are greater than 7 light years. This means none of the links will break but the average distance between systems now increases. The z positions are in the range of 0 to 31.5 and like the y positions are in steps of 0.5.
All the existing features work in 3D mode. The only difference is with the separate of overlapping systems. In 3D Mode there are no overlapping systems, as they now have different z positions, but even so some of these pairs of systems sharing the same x and y positions are very close together. Those closer together than 4 units (Oolite internal distance units not light years) still undergo separation when you bring your mouse close to them. This time the separation direction is up and down.
The Galaxy Seed button opens a dialog where you can change the Galaxy seed numbers to show other galaxies. Great for those that want to explore the "What if?".
The dialog has 6 numbers that make up the seed. Each number can be any whole number from 0 to 255. Change the numbers to what you want then click the "Apply" button to see the new galaxies. You may also click on the Galaxy Seed button to close the dialog without changing the seed.
If you wish to save the seed the drop-down Galaxy Seed dialog has a "Save Galaxy Seed" option that will open a Save Name dialog. Give the seed a previously unused name and click Save. Once saved you can then use the drop-down to select previously saved seeds which are listed at the bottom in alphabetical order.
From this drop-down you can also delete and rename selected seeds as well as select the Oolite Default seed used by the game.
The seeds are saved in your browser using HTML5's Local Storage system. Data stored this way is persistent between browser sessions but only as long as you do not delete cookies for the domain. When you delete cookies most browsers also delete the Local Storage data for the same domains too. If you do delete cookies automatically you should set up an exception for the map's domain. (Please note that this map does not actually use cookies for any of its processes.)
Obviously this storage mechanism only works if your browser supports this feature but given that browsers that do not support it are unlikely to support the map anyway this is unlikely to be an issue. But in case your browser does not support this storage mechanism the "Def." button (Default) will replace the drop-down and you can use this to return the seed numbers to the Oolite Default. This the same behaviour as the previous version of the map (v0.7.3).
When you first use this version of the Oolite Interactive Map a set of example named seeds get added to the drop-down. Please feel free to delete them if you wish. These seeds are those that have been mentioned in the Bulletin Board and the "Oolite Alternative" seed has a Galaxy 1 that is nearly identical to the Oolite Default's Galaxy 1. (The layout, names, etc. are the same but the species property and the descriptions are different.) The other 7 galaxies are totally different.
Features added in version 0.8.1
Features added in version 0.8.0
You can now create multi-leg routes. As before you just click on a system to start a route. (Which will be shown with a green surrounding icon.) To create a route you then extend it by shift-clicking on the end point system (destination). (Which will be shown with a red surrounding icon.) This is the same as before. Now you can shift-click on the next system and it will create a new extended route from the previous end point to the new selected system. (The previous end point now now becomes a waypoint and its surrounding icon is now purple and the new end point has a red surrounding icon.) This gives a route with two legs. Repeat to extend the route as many times as you want. You can click on lines for each leg separately to switch them from shortest to quickest route and back again.
The list of systems in the route is shown under the map as beborfe but now show all the legs and the start point, waypoints and end point systems are highlighted in the appropriate colours (green, purple and red respectively). The systems in between are coloured according to the route type (shortest magenta, or quickest cyan).
You can reduce the number of legs by using shift-ctrl-click on any of the waypoints or the start point to remove one or more legs.
The search feature has also altered becuase of the new routing feature. The first of two search boxes is only unlocked when you have no route points or just the start point. You can use the second search box to extend the route. Once a single system is selected the route will be extended and that systems name will be moved to the first box, locked and the second box will be cleared.
Features added in version 0.7.4
The Galaxy Seed dialog has been modified to allow you to save seeds with names:
Features added in version 0.7.3
Features added in version 0.7.2
Features added in version 0.7.1
Features added in version 0.7
Features added in version 0.6.1
Features added in version 0.6
Features added in version 0.5.1
Features in version 0.5