Embryonic online galaxy viewer

[relmz32]

Galaxy's back, and better than ever (2 galaxies attached with before and after for proof that no galaxies were permanently harmed in the implementation of this feature... well, those 2 galaxies weren't).

So that's what a Vines map looks like.  I never knew...

So, will you be releasing this today?  Or later today?

First of all, Keith, you are a monster. In a good way.
Second of all, what Toranth said.

[keith.lamothe]

@ProfessorPaul: the distance between stars did matter during AIW's alpha, from what Chris told me.  You'd select a command ship and give it an order to warp to another star and the time it would be "off the board" depended on that distance.

While there's no mechanical reason we can't do that (wouldn't even prevent the during-the-game manual or automated untangling, as those use the "unofficial" alternate layouts without touching the official), it would simply be a really different game.  But perhaps someday

So, will you be releasing this today?  Or later today?

Monday morning or noonish, probably.

[LaughingThesaurus]

It could be a cool disadvantage to some ships, where they don't make it through warp space instantaneously. Instead, they do actually have travel time between wormholes.

[keith.lamothe]

Just put this in the release notes for 6.044:

=== Map Untangling! ===

* Thanks to Dr. Zoidzerg for putting us on the trail of the force-directed-graph method, and special thanks to [http://www.brad-smith.info/blog/archives/129 Brad Smith] for previously publishing a C# implementation (and permissive license thereof) that we were able to adapt and extend for AI War.

* Added an "Untangle Map" button to the lobby (just under the big New Map Seed button), here's the in-game tooltip for description:
** Some map types (notably Vines, Spokes, and Tree) produce maps that are difficult to read due to the links between planets being very long and crossing over each other a lot.  You can use this button to run a "Force-Directed Graph" physics simulation that will generally result in a more readable map in those cases.  This is certainly not guarunteed to fully untangle a map, in any event.
** Untangling is not really recommended for map types that already don't have much link-overlap, but you're welcome to give it a try.  The results are generally interesting, if nothing else.  Maze maps usually remain readable but look more organic after this process.

* Also added two new related chat-line commands:
** cmd:untangle map
*** This is basically the same as clicking the "Untangle Map" button in the lobby, but can be used in-game (and thus on old saves).
**** PLEASE NOTE! This only applies to your alternate layout (accessed via the alt+right-click context menu on the galaxy map), not the official layout, as we very much want to avoid modifying that after game-start.  So if you're looking at the official layout (or someone else's alternate) when you trigger this command, you won't see the results until you switch to your alternate layout.
**** Also, this change to your alternate layout is not sync'd to other machines in multiplayer; we may add that later but it's a little tricky because the untangling is happening on a separate thread, etc.
** cmd:stop untangling
*** This simply stops the process started by the other command.

So it will be more prominent than just the chat command (though I'm keeping that in for mid-game use).  Not automatically applying it to Vines/Spokes/Tree yet as I want you folks to test it some first.  But it does definitely help those map types.  I rather like it on the maze variants too; not to untangle but to "organicize" them.  I don't recommend it for concentric or crosshatch or whatever

[doctorfrog]

spelling error on that tooltip: guarunteed -> guaranteed

[keith.lamothe]

spelling error on that tooltip: guarunteed -> guaranteed

I. Can. Never. Win.

Thanks, though, fixed

[Eternaly_Lost]

So, does this untangle snake maps as well? Those are one of the things that are trivially to untangle and the one thing I always wished was that they would make some sort of design without crossing over on each other.

But I happy settle for a simple grid layout or a large spiral when untangled.

[keith.lamothe]

So, does this untangle snake maps as well? Those are one of the things that are trivially to untangle and the one thing I always wished was that they would make some sort of design without crossing over on each other.

But I happy settle for a simple grid layout or a large spiral when untangled.

The force-directed method is actually not good at getting the snake to overlap, though it does do a good job at shortening the map-crossing links.

I added an additional rule that increases the repulsive force between two planets based on the number of hops between those two planets, and that caused the snakes to no longer overlap but also caused it to compress large chunks of planets very close together because it really makes no effort to use all available space, etc.  So I only left a very mild version of that rule in because overlapping snakes are better than snakes where 30 planets all occupy a contiguous bright ball

But I'm testing a small alteration to the routine that, just for snake maps, lays all the planets out in a sort of spiral before actually doing the untangling, so that the untangling can then just make it look more natural.