TAS Form 6 - Subsector Map Grid

[mearrin69]

I had a hard time finding a blank form for this on the Internet so I made one. Here's a blank JPG of the form. Feel free to use it as desired...no credit required, since I didn't exactly design the thing.

I'm working on the PSD file with placeholder text, symbols, placement guide, etc. - all in layers so colors, fonts, etc. can be changed. One thing that'll enable is, for instance, making the background black and using colors on the symbols. If anybody's interested in the PSD I can try to post it...though it'll probably be too big for the forum so I'll have to host it elsewhere.
M

[mearrin69]

Still working on symbols but here a black version and one with a starry background.

[atpollard]

Beautiful work!

... but my printer and wallet shudder at the thought of printing out a sector's worth of mostly black "color" images.

[mearrin69]

Thanks. Yeah. I intended the white blank one for printing. The other two will probably only end up on my iPad during games!
M

[atpollard]

I understand that you are just reproducing the 'official' forms, but I always thought that a sub-sector should be Hexagonal, composed of a smaller hex grid, and fitting together with other hexagonal sub-sectors ... more of a 'sphere' of influence than a Section-Township-Range in space.

... but that's what I like best about Traveller - the player's unalienable right to tinker.

[mearrin69]

Heh. I always thought that space should be, well, space-like...instead of page-like! I first saw and perused the Traveller LBBs (I was babysitting for my parent's geek friend who had Traveller and an amazing collection of WWII vehicle models) when I was in about 6th grade (around 1980, but that's telling) and I was amazed. The Spinward Marches book and the maps in there were so cool but, even then, I wondered how you could map space as flat. Even so, I still can't look at a subsector map without going, "Oh!" and starting to come up with stories about the worlds there...
M

[mearrin69]

Here's a test map (on white) of the Jewell subsector in the Spinward Marches. This is based on the data shown on the Traveller Map site. It doesn't *quite* match the data in my old Spinward Marches supplement but I'll take it they've done their research.

I kinda want to put the UPP in there, which is why the world names are so small. Still figuring out what I want to show...hard to balance providing a lot of info with keeping it simple. The early maps put very little on there but seem to grow more complex as the years went on. Still, I don't want to load it up too much.
M

Edit: And one on black for good measure. This one needs some tweaking.

[altasilvapuer]

I don't know about anyone else, but I for one would LOVE a psd of this. I've done some little tinkering with the set-up of the maps, but for now I've been working with hand-drawn hexes on 1cm graph paper. It's a little...time consuming, to say the least. And I've yet to come up with a good way to draw in the various connecting routes without making the map completely illegible.

I'm also still tinkering with what I can/want to show on the subsector maps, but I can show some of what I've got, if people are interested.

-asp

[Jaxilon]

Do you mean the .jpg at the start won't work?

[mearrin69]

I'll try to post up a link to the PSD, but might not get to it until Saturday or so. Right now, I've got the base white, black, and starry sheets in a bottom layer and then layers with mapping symbols and text so you can just get them and copy-move them to where you want for your own custom maps. The jump-routes are just a long piece of graphic that you can copy, move, and rotate into place and then trim to fit. In the PSD, I'll leave a sample map in there so you can see how it's all used...at least in my formulation, though you can do what you like with the pieces. I've done passable symbols for the white and black maps but was hoping to add some detail to the color map (maybe world type by color or something) so there's some more information.
M