Kerbal Maps is back! (sort of)

[CraigCottingham]

Update 2022-11-22: kerbal-maps.finitemonkeys.org will be going offline for a short while.

I've been running Kerbal Maps on a free dyno on Heroku, and they've decided to do away with those.

Since the database features have never been fully implemented, what's currently available can be served from a static web server.

I'll just need a few days to move it over. I'll update here once it has been moved.

Update 2019-08-18: Version 0.4.3 is deployed. See below for changelog.

I am absolutely delighted to announce that Kerbal Maps is available once again, at https://kerbal-maps.finitemonkeys.org.

It's still very early days -- there are still a lot of features I'm planning to add, but I wanted to get this out in front of the KSP community as soon as I could. All the basic features you'd expect from a map web app are there (panning and zooming). Something which I think is new is overlays, sets of predefined markers that can be displayed or hidden with a single click. For instance, as of today there's an overlay for all of the anomalies found on each celestial body.

Other features I plan to add soon:

• user accounts, so you can add your own markers and overlays
• upload of Waypoint Manager config files, making it easier to add markers
• more overlayable objects besides markers, such as lines, paths, and regions

Bug reports, questions, and suggestions are welcome. If you have access to Github, you can open an issue https://github.com/FiniteMonkeys/kerbal-maps/issues; if you don't, please add to this thread and I'll do my best to move it over.

A quick follow-up: If anyone knows who currently owns the kerbalmaps.com domain name, please let me know or have them contact me at craig AT cottingham DOT net.

Changelog:

• 0.4.3 (2019-08-18)
  • Overlays weren't wrapping like map tiles. Now they wrap like map tiles, in that neither one of them wraps.
  • There's a legend now for the biome maps. It will be shown when the map style changes to "biome", and hidden when it changes to something else.
  • The default cursor is a more helpful crosshair.
• 0.3.3 (2019-01-31)
  • Add support for "zoom" query param in URLs.
• 0.3.2 (2019-01-30)
  • Better support for KSP wiki-style URLs.
• 0.3.1 (2019-01-30)
  • You can now "search" for a coordinate pair. Look for the sidebar icon that looks like a magnifying glass. Several different formats for entering coordinates are supported: `-0.1027, -74.5754`, `S 0.1027, W 74.5754`, or `0.1027 S, 74.5754 W`. I'm trying to be liberal in what the app accepts, so if you have some other format you'd like to be able to use, let me know and if it's reasonable, I'll try to add it.
  • Query parameters in the URL are now supported. I added this mainly so the links in the KSP wiki will work again.
• 0.2.0 (2019-01-25)
  • You can now change the celestial body and map style. Look for the sidebar icon that looks like a globe. Note that tile images for the highest zoom level is only available for a few bodies at the moment -- since they're so high resolution, they take a long time to generate (8 hours or so per body), but I'm working on it.

Edited November 22, 2022 by CraigCottingham
version 0.4.3

[Beetlecat]

I know you haven't gotten much by way of feedback on this, but it's pretty great to see it alive and kicking.

[Stone Blue]

:O noice...
*...runs to notify the Telemachus dev aboot this...*

[CraigCottingham]

1 hour ago, Stone Blue said:

:O noice...
*...runs to notify the Telemachus dev aboot this...*

Oh, hey, I didn't realize Telemachus has Kerbal Maps integration. By all means, I'd be happy to help make my instance of Kerbal Maps work with Telemachus.

[Stone Blue]

@CraigCottingham how difficult/involved would it be to add maps for different planet packs?

[CraigCottingham]

3 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

@CraigCottingham how difficult/involved would it be to add maps for different planet packs?

If you mean other planets in the Kerbol system, they're already in there. If you mean something like RSS, I'd have to install it and see, but I don't think it would be terribly difficult.

[Stone Blue]

I'm thinking JNSQ right off the bat... Mainly since that will be my next playthrough, and I *really* like using Telemachus in my playthroughs  
just wondering if its really involved, mostly on making/modifying the maps to get them ready for inclusion... or if its not too difficult, and mebbe someone could do at least *that* grunt work... vOv

Edited July 23, 2019 by Stone Blue

[CraigCottingham]

34 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

I'm thinking JNSQ right off the bat... Mainly since that will be my next playthrough, and I *really* like using Telemachus in my playthroughs  
just wondering if its really involved, mostly on making/modifying the maps to get them ready for inclusion... or if its not too difficult, and mebbe someone could do at least *that* grunt work... vOv

I'll create an issue on https://github.com/FiniteMonkeys/kerbal-maps and look at installing JNSQ to see what it's going to involve.

[CraigCottingham]

@Stone Blue Okay, I just installed JNSQ and Sigma-Cartographer in KSP 1.7.3, and generated level 0 maps for Prax. (I assume it did so correctly, but I can't really tell, because I've never been to Prax. )

I'll start generating all of the maps for all of the celestial bodies in JNSQ and look at how to make the planet pack selectable in Kerbal Maps.

For the bodies which are shared between stock KSP and JNSQ, are the maps identical or should I regenerate the stock ones as well?

[JadeOfMaar]

9 hours ago, CraigCottingham said:

@Stone Blue Okay, I just installed JNSQ and Sigma-Cartographer in KSP 1.7.3, and generated level 0 maps for Prax. (I assume it did so correctly, but I can't really tell, because I've never been to Prax. )

I'll start generating all of the maps for all of the celestial bodies in JNSQ and look at how to make the planet pack selectable in Kerbal Maps.

For the bodies which are shared between stock KSP and JNSQ, are the maps identical or should I regenerate the stock ones as well?

Regenerate them. JNSQ changes them by a huge degree.

[Sigma88]

I love kerbal-maps so I hope this is successful

if you need any help with cartographer or anything else feel free to ping me

[CraigCottingham]

On 7/24/2019 at 9:09 AM, JadeOfMaar said:

Regenerate them. JNSQ changes them by a huge degree.

Wow -- "huge degree" is almost an understatement. I generated all of the tiles for zoom level 0 (all the way out) and Kerbin looked nothing like what I was expecting.

I have some work to do on kerbal-maps to make it deployable again (apparently I forgot to write down some steps last time I did it ), then I'll add UI to allow switching to the JNSQ pack. Generating all of the tiles may take a little while, but thankfully a weekend is coming up so I can leave my computer churning.

On 7/24/2019 at 2:48 PM, Sigma88 said:

if you need any help with cartographer or anything else feel free to ping me

I've only generated the zoom level 0 tiles, but (cartographical changes aside) I think there may be a problem with the way they're being rendered. The ocean on Kerbin may not be rendering correctly. I'll have a better idea what I'm talking about soon and if I still think it's a problem, I'll open an issue on Github.

[drtedastro]

Thanks for bringing this back / fixing and making it available.

Would it be possible to pick / use a different icon for the pointer on the map(s)?

something that had an actual 'point' or easier way to point more precisely ??

again, many thanks.

cheers.

[CraigCottingham]

1 hour ago, drtedastro said:

Would it be possible to pick / use a different icon for the pointer on the map(s)?

something that had an actual 'point' or easier way to point more precisely ??

By "pointer", do you mean:

• the cursor displayed at the current mouse position;
• the icon displayed for points of interest (like anomalies); or
• something else?

Or maybe I'm not quite understanding what you're asking for. What problem are you having, that you're hoping will be solved?

[drtedastro]

Sorry i was not more specific...

the cursor that shows the mouse position on the maps...

Thanks and again, sorry for confusion..

Cheers.

[CraigCottingham]

On 7/27/2019 at 11:40 AM, drtedastro said:

Sorry i was not more specific...

the cursor that shows the mouse position on the maps...

No worries. The default cursor depends on your operating system and browser, but in general it's intended for pointing, so it should already be doing a good job of what it's supposed to be doing. That being said, I do have control over what it looks like. What kind of change would you consider to be an improvement? Something like crosshairs?

Also note that, if you're visiting kerbal-maps on a mobile device like a smartphone, the browser doesn't display a cursor at all, and there's nothing I can change about that.

 

[drtedastro]

cross hair would be great.....

yup, great.

thanks.

[Kerbart]

How does one toggle the legend for the Biome map?

[CraigCottingham]

3 hours ago, Kerbart said:

How does one toggle the legend for the Biome map?

You can't currently; there isn't a legend yet. I've added an issue for it (https://github.com/FiniteMonkeys/kerbal-maps/issues/69) and assigned it to the next feature release. I don't know when that will be yet, but it should be soon (depending on how much life intervenes).

[CraigCottingham]

4 hours ago, drtedastro said:

cross hair would be great.....

I've added an issue for it (https://github.com/FiniteMonkeys/kerbal-maps/issues/70). I had a whole response written up about how the default cursor in your browser should be good enough, then I realized that the default cursor in Kerbal Maps is not your browser's default. I may switch to the browser default first to see how it looks.

[Kerbart]

6 hours ago, CraigCottingham said:

You can't currently; there isn't a legend yet. I've added an issue for it (https://github.com/FiniteMonkeys/kerbal-maps/issues/69) and assigned it to the next feature release. I don't know when that will be yet, but it should be soon (depending on how much life intervenes).

Greatly appreciated! And no rush... life does intervene, after all.

[CraigCottingham]

On 7/24/2019 at 2:48 PM, Sigma88 said:

if you need any help with cartographer or anything else feel free to ping me

The colors in the biome maps for some of the bodies (well, most if not all of the bodies besides Kerbin) are difficult to tell apart, being largely similar shades and hues. Is there a way to configure them when they're being generated to use colors that are more dissimilar, or does KSP provide those colors?

[CraigCottingham]

Version 0.4.3 is out. See the post at the top of the topic for details.

[Sigma88]

On 8/18/2019 at 7:28 AM, CraigCottingham said:

The colors in the biome maps for some of the bodies (well, most if not all of the bodies besides Kerbin) are difficult to tell apart, being largely similar shades and hues. Is there a way to configure them when they're being generated to use colors that are more dissimilar, or does KSP provide those colors?

the colors exported by cartographer are those used by ksp, if you enable the cheat "biomes visible on map" they show up in map view.

however the colors are always the same, so it should be easy enough to replace them with an image processor in case you want different colors

[Stone Blue]

@CraigCottingham HI... I'm poking around a little, and attempting to extract JNSQ maps...
I was just wondering which, if any, JNSQ bodies you had already extracted... ??  vOv

Also, I'm new to using Cartographer, and was wondering if you had one, could you share the exact content of a .cfg used to extract specifically a JNSQ body?

Also, which maps does KerbalMaps support?
I guess Cartogropher can export moar types than what KM uses? vOv

are these it?

 

1- satelliteColor

2- heightMap

3- slopeMap

4- biomeMap

Also wondering what the texture sies are for each zoom level? vOv

Thanx

EDIT: So I'm hoping to end up fostering Telemachus/KerbalMaps support for JNSQ... If you Discord at all, and want to live chat aboot this at all, I suppose we could take it to Sigma's Mod channel on the Kopernicus server (I go by KineticSloth8StoneBlue on Discord, and am on just aboot everyday)? vOv
https://bit.ly/kopernicus-discord

Edited October 13, 2019 by Stone Blue