Re: StarForce and other SPI stuff

Atcliffe, Phillip wrote:
> The "radius" of the "sphere" was 20 ly, and Redmond
> Simonsen (the designer, and SPI's Art Director) said that
> they made every effort to get it accurate, with only a
> couple of stars having to be shifted slightly to get them
> into a hex or level (what the game called a LiteZulu, a
> volume one hex across by one level vertically, both
> dimensions being one light-year). I don't know which stars
> got moved -- anyone who does?

	I've got real 3-d starmaps that I could compare
	it too, but I'm a little busy now...

> The plane of the map (level 0) was the ecliptic, which may
> or may nor have been an odd choice.

	Every single 3-D starmap I've encountered has
	been that way, with the sole exception of the
	maps in PROXIMITY ZERO.

	It is that way because it is relatively
	straightforward to do the calculations for
	that sort of map.
	Translating the co-ordinates to a more
	logical system (for instance, with
	the map plane being the plane of the
	galaxy) is really difficult.  That is,
	unless somebody has done the work for you.

	( Plug for my 3-D starmapping web site:
	it has all the equations, including the
	one for translating to galactic centered
	co-ords. It can be found at
	http://www.clark.net/pub/nyrath/starmap.html )