Re: Planet UPP's and software

John Kim states he's been reading about programs being undertaken to
generate worlds and systems, and wants to know what became of the
efforts.

There are several commercial programs available containing generation
programs and official sector data from GDW's Imperium Campaign: GDW
produced some for Apple ][ some time back, and Digest Group Publications
produced IBM, Mac, Apple ][, and Commodore (Amiga, I presume) versions
of a World Builder program (detailed system/world generation) and the
IISS Second Survey Sector Data (37 Imperium and nearby sectors).

There are some small offerings on the Traveller Mailing List written by
listees.  I wrote gensec, a sector/subsector world UWP generator, and
mapsub, which turns gensec output into hex grid maps, either in ascii
(line printer) format or postscript (laserprinter) format.  Phill
Everson and Gareth Waddell wrote a program that generated systems in
accordance with Scouts (Book 6) Expanded System Generation.  Paul
Netherwood wrote a program to expand UWP's into a more human-readable
format.  Bill Morrison wrote a program to generate REAL star systems,
not specifically for Traveller, but in accordance with modern
astrophysical simulation.  Jo Jaquinta wrote a "1,000,000 stars" program
as an example of keeping a database of 1,000,000 stars for a PBM via
generating them as needed via a small algorithm.  All these are
available from the TML Archvies, maintained by yours truly, as TML
Packages SW1 through SW8.

Most importantly, there is a discussion list for this very topic, which
has been chartered to act as a mailing list peripheral to the TML.  It
is maintained by Bill Morrison, and you should contact him to join.
Here's the blurb from the TML Orientation message:

Star System Digest: [email removed] (Bill Morrison)
	This person collects messages relating to computer methods of
	the generation, representation, and display of star system data,
	digests it, and resends it weekly to the Traveller Mailing List.

Actually, "weekly" is a misnomer, "periodically" would be a much more
apt description.  I strongly urge anyone planning to spend time
developing a system to join this discussion and get everyone fired up
about developing a program; progress is slow and comes in spurts -- I
think we're all pretty busy at our jobs most of the time.

As for legality of posting, it is legal to post your own programs to the
list, or adjustments to previously-posted programs.  It is legal to post
small snippets of data from existing copyrighted sources, in accordance
with law permitting "fair use" of copyrighted material.  As far as I am
concerned, any information posted by GDW or DGP, or members of those
organizations, to other public bulletin boards, are fair to post on the
Traveller Mailing List.  Specifically, anything submitted for public
dissemination by Joe Fugate or Gary Thomas is okay.

> Has anyone thought of saving those isocahedral planetary maps
> as graphics files on computer?  I think it'd be awfully neat
> to flip through them as if you were really flipping through
> Imperial survey data on your ship's computer :-)  Or how about
> a program that takes a planet's UPP, orbit, star type, albedo,
> axis tilt and generates a map, weather patterns, ocean currents...

Yes, I have, and I'd love to come up with a program to generate, store,
and display these on my Sun workstation or dumb ascii terminal at home,
and be able to browse through world maps, UWPs, subsectors, sectors, and
quadrants.

> Come to think of it, has GDW ever published planetary maps of
> some major worlds (like Regina) for general use, not as part
> of an adventure?

I don't believe so.

James
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Traveller Mailing List Administrator	  James T. Perkins @ Tektronix, Inc
[email removed]                   	  Beaverton, Oregon, USA
[email removed]                           "Load Auto/Evade, Beowulf!"