Pardus Auto-mapper

News

This is the home page of the Pardus auto-mapper.

The automapper is a map tool for the Pardus game. It is a Firefox extension that you run while navigating around the game. It automatically picks up a snapshot of the nav screen (and nothing else, honest, look at the code) and sends it to this server, where we generate nice maps and lists:

Orion: Sector list Universe map SBs and planets
Artemis: Sector list Universe map SBs and planets
Pegasus: Sector list Universe map SBs and planets

Planet stats

You have to turn it on, and you can turn it off -- so no one else can see what's in your faction's secret nook, for example. Be aware, once a screen is in here it stays here.

It only runs on a fairly new version of Firefox at this time.

The extension: Pardus Ajax Automapper
The Chrome version . Note that someone else has built the Chrome extension, which feeds data to this site. Any issues with the Chrome mapper, take it up with that author. We endorse it only insofar as it sends data to this site, we think.

Instructions

To install, activate the link (above) in Firefox. Firefox should do the rest.

Sorry, the extension does NOT work with Internet Explorer or any other browser, as far as we know. Nor do we care. If you get it to work, great! If you send us instructions on how to get it to work, great, we'll post them!

You should have a new option in the Tools menu.

When you click it to start, it pops up a message: Starting Pardus Automapper. When you stop it, it pops up a message: Stopping Pardus Automapper, and a number. Don't worry about the number, it's just the number of nav screen snapshots that were left to send.

The maps on this site are automatically updated every 15 minutes based on data received from players using the extension.

The maps have a route calculator feature. Select the type of engine, and then click your starting point, and then click your ending point. It will attempt to calculate the least-cost route. It ignores the presence of monsters.

Props

Props to "Pants Commander" (don't ask me) whose work Darmani extended, whose work we extended. They did the automapper, we optimised it and made it report to a server instead of a file. Much work on the server side to produce the maps and images. Many man-hours of programming in Perl. And Javascript. Props to Larry Wall too.

Props also to Blue Sun Corporation, who helped and inspired all map-makers and whose universe coordinates we have borrowed. Their Pardus map helped us a lot in our exploration of Pardus.

Props to members of T.I.R.O. who patiently listened to our ranting and raving as we programmed the back-end scripts and the route-finder function. T.I.R.O. also helped with valuable testing and contributed much of the initial maps here.

Props to Edsger Dijkstra for the least-cost-routing algorithm. Also to NASA Explores, for the PDF which told us how to calculate a path from known distances. Also to some tutorial at some Canadian university for furthering our understanding of Dijkstra's algorithm.

Props to Piotr Rorot for the idea of, and showing me example code for, the funky sector selection list on the universe map pages.

And of course, to the Pardus programmers!

With the new Aperture, thanks to Takius Stargazer, Lancel, Nebulosa, Stewb, Bishop, Lysin, Tovarisch Kapitan, and others unnamed, for sector locations.

No thanks whatsoever to the griefers.

PS: We are pardus@butterfat.net