Presentation of System Details

[Garnfellow]

I'm looking for good examples of presenting complex star system details -- you know, Book 6 type of info.

It seems like there must be a nice way to detail all the stars, worlds, belts, satellites, and so on in a clear, readable, visually attractive format.

But what I'm finding is pretty ugly or hard to parse or both.

So where are the exemplars?

 

[ovka]

How about this:

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/ESEC_file_format

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[tjoneslo]

I'm looking for good examples of presenting complex star system details -- you know, Book 6 type of info.

It seems like there must be a nice way to detail all the stars, worlds, belts, satellites, and so on in a clear, readable, visually attractive format.

But what I'm finding is pretty ugly or hard to parse or both.

So where are the exemplars?

How are you trying to present the data: E.g. the UWPs, orbital location, etc as text? That is something mostly readable by people and machines.

Or are you looking for something more graphical. E.g. a picture of orbits around a star, with planets laid out with moons and the like, with a little space for the UWP and other interesting details?

 

[flykiller]

system generator to generate the text block below

 

[Garnfellow]

How about this:

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/ESEC_file_format

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

Regina is the perfect test case, well-developed and fairly complex. And while ESEC is fine for a machine readable format, I'm looking for something "meat readable."

 

[Garnfellow]

How are you trying to present the data: E.g. the UWPs, orbital location, etc as text? That is something mostly readable by people and machines.

Or are you looking for something more graphical. E.g. a picture of orbits around a star, with planets laid out with moons and the like, with a little space for the UWP and other interesting details?

I'm looking for a format that would would clearly and concisely orbital location, relationship of planetary bodies, and UWP, etc. for people.

I would prefer a text-only format but I suspect a visual presentation will better achieve what I'm after. The formats that are best for machines require a lot of redundancy and I find them hard to (quickly) parse. And I suspect the formats that will be best for people are not much good for machines.

 

[Redcap]

If it's for players, I suspect the H&E system map might be the best idea?

See http://www.downport.com/wbd/HEAVEN_&_EARTH.htm

 

[maggot-iiss]

Graphically ?

T5 style?

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/album.php?albumid=30&pictureid=376

 

[inexorabletash]

A while ago I was playing with something inspired by the system details in T4 "A Long Way Home" adventure (pages 52 and on), of all places.

https://travellermap.com/tmp/sys.html

Visually, the full page system maps in DGP's MT stuff are gorgeous, but they take up a lot of space. I was looking for something that could share space with a world writeup.

Note that I dispense with trying to make the orbits scaled in any way. The visual style is also extremely rough; I'm just using text characters for everything, since I hadn't made the leap to SVG yet.

 

[Garnfellow]

A while ago I was playing with something inspired by the system details in T4 "A Long Way Home" adventure (pages 52 and on), of all places.

https://travellermap.com/tmp/sys.html

Visually, the full page system maps in DGP's MT stuff are gorgeous, but they take up a lot of space. I was looking for something that could share space with a world writeup.

Note that I dispense with trying to make the orbits scaled in any way. The visual style is also extremely rough; I'm just using text characters for everything, since I hadn't made the leap to SVG yet.

This is a lot closer to what I had in mind -- concise but easily digestible. The big problem with a tabular presentation of this data is redundancies, but the big problem with a visual presentation is all the empty space.

 

[tvandeloo]

Star System Generator (Excel)

Inspired by this thread, I added a star system display tab to my Star System Generator spreadsheet (see the File Library).

 

[Garnfellow]

Inspired by this thread, I added a star system display tab to my Star System Generator spreadsheet (see the File Library).

That is really fricken sweet!

 

[tvandeloo]

Thanks!

Thanks Garnfellow, it was fun to make. I fixed the picture too so it shows the companion star (don't know why it didn't display the first time). Check out the star system generator spreadsheet (in the File Library) and let me know what you think.

 

[coliver988]

wow! that is really nice!

 

[Vargas]

Personally I don't care if orbits don't fall into nice neat slots because it makes visuals like this so much easier to use/understand.