DOTLAN EveMaps

After doing some research about SVG in combination with the Internet Explorer I found out that Microsoft has their vector graphics format (VML) which got rejected by W3C 10 years ago. VML is supported from IE5.5+ and is likely the reason why Microsoft isn’t implementing SVG like all the other big browsers.

I did some tests and realized, that  it isn’t that much different compared with svg, at least for the features I need from a vector based graphics format. Because VML is based on a HTML/XML syntax it’s possible to modify it with Javascript (like I do with the infolayer switch on the maps to switch between: sovereignty, kills, jumps, etc.

After some hours of work, I finally replaced the Flash maps (which were only a workaround for IE users) with new maps based on VML (for IE Only).  I would be happy if the minority of IE Users can check if everything is working as intended. Firefox/Safari/Opera/Chrome user shouldn’t be affected.

Yesterday evening I updated the search function on DOTLAN EveMaps and just activated it for the live usage. You can now search in for agents, alliances, constellations, corporations, regions and stations in a single search window. I hope that helps you. I also updated the opensearch extensions.

Opensearch what’s that?

Browser which’re supporting opensearch (IE7+, Firefox, Safari, etc.) can use the search function of the DOTLAN EveMaps as quick search for your toolbar. If you’re browsing EveMaps just open the dropdown menu of your quick search and select DOTLAN EveMaps as search engine from the list of advertised search engines.

2 big updates for the navigation tools in 2 days? Really? Ups. It wasn’t intended 🙂 But the changes are so nice that I can’t hold them back.

Route planner with more options:

You can now select what kind of route you wanna show. Fastest, Prefer Highsec or Prefer Lowsec/0.0 It’s now your choice. In addition you can now select also regions and systems which you wanna avoid. The routing planer will guide you around those areas.

Save Jump/Route Settings:

I got asked if it is possible to save your personal ship and route settings (like carrier with skills 1, 2, 3) in your browser for further usage. Quickly added and approved.

Fly safe and have fun.

With the new update to the jump planner you’re now able to select regions and systems, which you wanna avoid in the jump path calculation.

Example:
You’re sitting in NPC Delve and wanna plan how to get out there back to your lowsec home in Derelik, but you don’t wanna go through Querious because it’s full of Goons which perhabs don’t like you or otherwise. With the updated jump planner you can now just add regions and systems which you wanna avoid (because you don’t like them or you know those systems are cyno jammed) and start the calculation.

Direct way:
https://evemaps.dotlan.net/jump/Thanatos,444/319-3D:Futzchag

Alternative way with 2 regions on the avoid list:
https://evemaps.dotlan.net/jump/Thanatos,444,-Querious,-Providence/319-3D:Futzchag

I also changed some elements in the universe map that’s being used by the route and jump planner tools. System with stations are now marked with a little rectangle, systems without stations still keep their circle.

An additional smaller change has been made to the route planner. The calculated route is now highlighted with a big yellow line in the background on the path, instead of the thick black line before.

Just a quick note: I doubled the number of colors which I use on the maps. I’ve now 36 colors (12 colors * dark/medium/light) and I hope that this will reduce the problems with alliances having the same color on the map.  I just can’t use every color because I’ve always to make sure the text inside the system boxes are still readable.

How are the colors assigned?

I load all alliances that had sovereignty on this map in my history database and assigned the colors in the chronical order. When all colors are assigned I start from beginning. This method allows me that on a single map the color per of each alliance will be the same the next day or when you scroll back in the history. On a different map your alliance still can have a different color.

With currently over 1700 alliances and over 320 alliances that were holding sovereignty in my history database, it would be a hard job to assign fixed colors to alliances. On the big influence map all alliances hava a color assigned but only a few alliances are shown due to their influence which limits the number of simultaneously displayed colors.

– Update –

I found a bug in the color assignment which resulted that some colors got more often assigned then others. I fixed it and it’s now working as intended. But it is still possible that alliance are getting the same color and/or just a brighter/darker one which is already used. Until I find a better solution with so many alliances it will stay this way.

With the public available, not official (sql) data about wormholes I updated my pages. The region listing and the system details will now list their anomalies and the corresponding effects (like bonus to remote repair, armor, damage, etc). I hope I interpreted the data correctly, otherwise let me know and I’ll fix it.

• Region Listing
• System Details with anomaly/effects

Additionally I added an overview for the wormhole classes including their time and mass restrictions.

• Wormhole Listing

Some weeks ago I already reported problems with sovereignty calculation. Yesterday during the deployment CCP did the same failure again. CCP calculated which system gained sov (0 -> 1) and which system lost sov (3 -> 0 or 3 -> 1) but they forgot to check which system should get a sovereignty upgrade (1 -> 2 or 2 -> 3).

In my database I counted 30 systems which had their sovereignty level (1 or 2) for 13 days and yesterday (day 14) they should get their upgrade which sadly didn’t happened. Which means all sovereignty upgrades in the next upcoming 14 days will get delayed for 1 day. (Example: if you expect sov 3 on Thursday, don’t wonder when you’ll get sov 3 one day later (Friday)).

In the Apocrypha 1.3 Issues Thread I (and in the bug reporting tool) I reported this Issue including the list of 30 systems which they forgot to upgrade. Let’s see if CCP is reading it. It really seems that they’ve some errors in their maintenance scripts for the extended downtime or failures in the procedures which needs to be done during it.

(more…)

Site Navigation Update

One week ago I did a few minor upgrades to the site navigation because the top navigation got overbloated with the new navigation feature. To make it short.

The following menu entries has been merged:

• Maps + Regions => Universe
• Corporation (Changes) + NPC Corporations => Corporations

You’ll find them now in the sub navigation once you entered this part. Additionally I changed the navigation point. You’ll directly start with the Jump Planner (which is more used) instead of the Route Planner.

New Combined Map

Due to a request and a donation (thanks :-)) from Tomcat (W.I.) I created a new combined map for the 2 regions: Vale of the Silent and Geminate. Have fun using it. I also added a combined region map for Etherium Reach and Insmother I created some weeks ago.

Etherium Reach, Insmother
Geminate, Vale of the Silent

Jump Bridge Maps

What about Jump Bridge Routes on those combined and the common region maps. Sure you can add them with a custom made URL. The syntax would be:

https://evemaps.dotlan.net/special/Vale-Geminate.pdf?path=<jumppath>
https://evemaps.dotlan.net/pdf/Catch.pdf?path=<jumppath>

The path variable is using the same syntax of the route planer sys1:sys2::sys3::sys4 (: = Gate2Gate, :: = Jump To). Multiple jump bridge chains  can be separated by , (Comma)

A full jump bridge map link would look like this:

https://evemaps.dotlan.net/special/Vale-Geminate.pdf?path=P3EN-E::0MV-4W::TVN-FM::T-ZWA1,Q-L07F::Y0-BVN::ZLZ-1Z::JZV-F4,EOA-ZC::39-DGG::K25-XD::P-E9GN
(That’s just an example and doesn’t reflect the current situation)

Fly safe

Some of you might already have seen the new menu point in the top navigation panel. If not – now is the best time to check out the new features. After about 2 weeks of many headaches about routing and path finding algorithms (A*) and browser issues (f**k IE),  I’m happy to be able to announce the new section on my evemaps page: Navigation.

This includes a jump planner for capital ships journeys including fuel consumption, a jump range tool to see what systems are in range (incl jump bridges) and last but not least a routing planner for gate to gate navigation. The routing planner has the ability to including possible jump bridg jumps and a calculation for the liquid ozone consumption. To able to visualize the jump and gate routes I also included a new map that will reflect the real New Eden layout additionally the routes are integrated into the already known maps.

Feel free to test it, break it and please give me feedback if everything is working as intended or if something is broken. Many thanks to all who I talked to while getting headaches and those who already tested it.

Here are some screenshots. Enjoy

Quote from the Eve-Online Evelopedia

Sovereignty 2: Requirement : Territory level (1) Sovereignty undisrupted for fourteen days.
Sovereignty 3: Requirement : Protectorate level (2) Sovereignty undisrupted for fourteen days.

As we usually know and expect, it always takes 14 days to upgrade the system from sovereignty level 1 to 2 and 14 days as well to finally reach level 3. But under unknown circumstances it seems CCP may has problems doing their calculation right. It looks like 14 days in real life aren’t always 14 days in New Eden. Even if we nearly using the same calendar.

I’m storing the sovereignty history of each system in my database. When I started to do some sovereignty calculations, I found some  irregularities which were really strange. It looked like that sometimes a systems holds sov 1 for 13 days and ticks over to sov 2  in the next downtime (which is the normal case) and sometimes after 14 days  (plus the next downtime).

After some short queries 🙂 I found those funny sovereignty entries in my history table.

+--------+---------------------+---+------------+------------+----+----+------------+
| System | Alliance            |Sov| Start      | End        |Days|Next| Next Start |
+--------+---------------------+---+------------+------------+----+----+------------+
| L-M6JK | C0VEN               | 2 | 2009-05-12 | 2009-05-26 | 14 |  3 | 2009-05-27 |
| 2-WNTD | Legion of xXDEATHXx | 1 | 2009-05-12 | 2009-05-26 | 14 |  2 | 2009-05-27 |
| C5-SUU | Sc0rched Earth      | 1 | 2009-05-12 | 2009-05-26 | 14 |  2 | 2009-05-27 |
| 3-3EZB | Red Alliance        | 2 | 2009-05-12 | 2009-05-26 | 14 |  3 | 2009-05-27 |
| M-XUZZ | Red Alliance        | 2 | 2009-05-12 | 2009-05-26 | 14 |  3 | 2009-05-27 |
| I0N-BM | Shadow of xXDEATHXx | 2 | 2009-05-13 | 2009-05-26 | 13 |  3 | 2009-05-27 |
| 9D6O-M | Sons of Tangra      | 2 | 2009-05-13 | 2009-05-26 | 13 |  3 | 2009-05-27 |
| ZA9-PY | T o r m e n t u m   | 1 | 2009-05-13 | 2009-05-26 | 13 |  2 | 2009-05-27 |
| BB-EKF | Atlas Alliance      | 1 | 2009-05-13 | 2009-05-26 | 13 |  2 | 2009-05-27 |
| DZ6-I5 | AAA Citizens        | 1 | 2009-05-13 | 2009-05-26 | 13 |  2 | 2009-05-27 |
+--------+---------------------+---+------------+------------+----+----+------------+

As you can see, we’ve systems that got their sovereignty upgrade both on the 26 May 2009 but got the previous sov level on the 12th and 13th. Didn’t we had a patch day somewhere in that area. It really looks like that CCP has some problems calculating their sovereignty during extended downtimes, but that’s only an expectation.

This might not be a problem for people who’re upgrading from sov 1 to sov 2, but alliances who’re doing their calculation right and waiting to login after downtime for onlineing in their cyno generators might have problems with this.

Additionally: on the 26th May 2009 CCP didn’t had a single sovereignty upgrade (expect one sov 4 upgrade) as well as yesterday, the 1st June 2009.