Comment by jvanderbot

Comment by jvanderbot 9 days ago

This is amazing.

I did a similar thing for the game Highfleet, until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team.

My ultimate goal was to have a "print poster" button that would generate the image and ship it off to one of those poster drop-shippers for a small fee. In that game, you can annotate the maps, and the world map with battle annotations is really special with lots of memories of victories and defeats. Alas, no dice.

I suggest you do this for blueprints! The first thing I'm going to do is take my favorite space platforms and outposts and make posters - the colored block imagery is really artful.

And, if you want a real challenge, you could parse the end-game uploads (galaxy) if available, or save files themselves.

Or, slightly less ambitious - a game mod that generates links to this site directly.

Very nicely done!

alexpotato 9 days ago

Had never heard of Highfleet but it looks pretty awesome!

Plus, I grew up playing MicroProse games in the early to mid 1990s so wild to see that they are still around and making great content.

I also loved this quote from the reviews:

"A typical Microprose game in that you need to a) immerse yourself in it and b) READ THE GOSH DANG MANUAL in order to have any hope of enjoying it." [0]

0 - https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989787811/recomm...

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jvanderbot 9 days ago

Oh it's alarmingly fun.
1. radio decryption and cyphers
2. Complete flying fortress customization
3. ancient tech-obsessed desert culture kinda like homeworld
4. merchant raiding and resource constrained survival
If you get deep into building customized ships, I have an automated optimizer for you to check your stats against :)

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Pannoniae 9 days ago

"until I ran into roadblocks with the dev team." What kind of roadblocks?

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jvanderbot 9 days ago

There were a few things that were difficult to render properly that made the maps incorrect in ways that would really look bad to a veteran player. Like certain cities not having the right links via trade routes (which is a huge part of the game).
I got radio silence from everyone when I tried to confirm the way to correctly determine links. So I moved on to an easier problem.

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piebro 9 days ago

I actually printed a few designs and hung them up in frames in my home. Maybe I'll add the idea and some links to the readme. Can you recommend a printing service?

I think it's not possible to access the actual file upload using the galaxy hall of fame (https://www.factorio.com/galaxy) or I just can't find them. Otherwise it would be pretty cool.

Oh yeah, I like the mod idea. That should also be quite doable, thanks.

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pbronez 9 days ago

It's cool that you support plotters. I don't have a plotter, but I DO have a 3D printer, and those can also do some pretty cool 2D visualizations.
There's a good ecosystem for Lithophanes [0][1] and maps [2][3]. This would be a cool addition to that.
[0] https://all3dp.com/2/how-to-3d-print-your-own-lithophane/
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU13fzqAu4BTAhOSHJgHRqg
[2] https://blog.prusa3d.com/how-to-print-maps-terrains-and-land...
[3] https://map2stl.com/

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- piebro 9 days ago
  
  Oh nice, I didn't know one could print Lithophanes. If you mount a pen in your 3D Printer and the right settings it should also work as a pen plotter. But I don't know how practical that is.
  The map2stl tool is also cool. I created a similar tool [0] for pen plotters using OpenStreetMap Data a while ago, which is fun to play around with.
  [0] https://piebro.github.io/plotting-maps
  
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  mystified5016 9 days ago
  
  Plenty of people have taped a pen to their 3D printer. The main problem is the same issue for all plotters: they just aren't actually that useful. They're neat as hell for sure, they just don't solve a problem that most people have.
  
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