StellarMaps

This past month, I continued working on converting features to the new Stellaris-independent data format. Wormholes, gateways, terra incognita, and relations mode are all working again. The largest remaining work there is solar system maps. Besides that, I need to convert a few more map modes, and implement some minor features like player names. All this data processing work is a bit boring to work on, but will be good in the long term. I also got fixes out for bugs that have been reported over the past few weeks.

To keep my interest, I decided to experiment with controls for creating a galaxy from scratch. This won't be in the next version, perhaps not even the version after that, but I wanted to work through some of the UX difficulties (and it sounded fun). Most simply, you could create a galaxy by hand placing each star and connection between stars. That would be quite tedious though for anything beyond a few stars, so some sort of random generation is needed. To strike a balance between automatic generation and user input, I experimented with "painting" the areas you want stars, then randomly placing stars based on how "bright" you painted each area. I also implemented an algorithm to place hyperlanes between the stars, with inputs for connectedness and maximum length, while guaranteeing that no hyperlanes cross and everything is connected.

Success! I had a lot of fun just drawing different shapes. It felt like a shame it would be so long before it was usable... but I wondered, how much work would it be to output a Stellaris static galaxy mod?

Paint a Galaxy

I spun "Paint a Galaxy" out into it's own project, as a combo of web app to create a custom galaxy and mod to play it in Stellaris! This was at first easier than expected, but then became quite a bit of work as I discovered the various ways static galaxy mods don't quite behave like you'd expect. I fixed the worst of the issues, then released to a better than expected reception -- for a bit, the project was the top trending post in r/stellaris and the Stellaris Steam Workshop!

I expect Paint a Galaxy to remain my focus the next month or so, but I'm intentionally keeping the focus pretty tight. There are many niche use-cases I could support, but I don't want to bloat the app, so I'll instead direct folks to manually mod their custom galaxies (and perhaps write some guides for some of the more common requests).

Other Stuff

Where else have I been up to?

• As always work and house work
• I'm continuing my studies of Japanese and Chinese
  • I'm looking for a Chinese language practice partner -- reach out if you're interested!
• I started working through Hands-On Rust to fill some knowledge gaps
• This month I've continued playing Morrowind and returned to Against the Stone -- both are amazing