Legacy Astrographic Data
The Legacy Astrographic Data is the chaotic set of sector and subsector data sets that arose during the period of 1977 to 2008. Classic Traveller didn't arise as a planned science fiction setting. It developed into one.
History of the Astographic data
The legacy data is the interaction of the official publications, the work of the various Traveller licensees, and the fan works. Because these works fed into each other in various random ways, tracking the exact history of some of the data can be a difficult task.
Initial sectors
The generation of astrographic data was included in Book 3 (1977), and the ability to map the data (See TAS form 6, in the same book). The generation rules were expanded with the publication of Book 6 (1983). There are several variations of system generation through each version of Traveller.
The first full sector of data, including full maps, was published in The Spinward Marches (Supplement 3) (1979). And followed by The Solomani Rim(1981)
Library Data (A-M) (1980) has the first full map of charted space (p23-24), but with no world locations.
Judges Guild published (1981) four sectors: Ley Sector, Crucis Margin, Maranantha-Alkahest Sector, and Glimmerdrift Reaches which included 22"x34" maps and full data.
Vargr (Alien Module) (1984) published map and full data for the Gvurrdon sector. Each of the Alien modules (Zhodani, K'kree, Vargr, Aslan, Solomani, Hiver) contained a more detailed map including sector names, but still without data.
Atlas of the Imperium (1984) published maps for 35 sectors of the Imperium. These contains system locations, and a few system details. The data behind the AotI has never been published and presumed lost.
The only source of data was physically published works. In addition to the many works of Game Designers' Workshop, and the several licenees, there were several fanzines also publishing astrographic data. Access to data required knowledge of the publishers and access to the physical media.
Generated Data
Digest Group Publications, a Traveller Licensee, with the publication of The Travellers' Digest (1985) magazine generated several sectors of data, reverse engineering the AotI maps to some success. Their generated data for the 35 sectors of the Imperium was uploaded to the GENII online service in 1989. This data is also know as Sunbane data. The data is also published in The Travellers' Digest, MegaTraveller Journal, and the other DGP works. The data also serves as the basis for many of the later fan based works and some canon publications.
Vilani & Vargr (1990) and Solomani & Aslan (1991) include detailed dot maps, showing the location of star systems across most of the charted space map. Other than the Sunbane data, this data is never released. Fans reverse engineered this data.
A major source of astrographic data is the HIWG project. HIWG divided charted space into four quadrants, and several smaller sections. In addition to expanding the original Sunbane data, the members also reverse engineered and generated data for most of the sectors published in V&V and S&A.
There are several additional projects like, Clifford Linehan's Core Route project, generating data and publish it online.
There are two main software programs used for viewing and manipulation the astrographic data: Galactic (1996) and Heaven & Earth (1999). These programs are distributed with the Sunbane data, as updated by the HIWG teams. Different releases of the programs have different releases of data depending upon what was available to the developers at the time.
Access to data during this era required knowledge of the pre-web internet, including subscribing to the TML or other mailing lists, knowledge of various FTP sites, and being a member of online services like AOL or GENII.
As the various Traveller publishers during this era would publish books, the data would be transcribed into various online forms and re-distributed. Most people still had access to data only via the published works.
Internet Era
The internet era begins in the late 1990s. Traveller Publishers during this era are largely on their own in terms of astrographic data. Some publishers (Imperium Games, QuikLink Interactive) generate their own data from scratch, others (Steve Jackson Games) use the existing published data with minor updates.
Freelance Traveller (1998), Downport (1999), and The Zhodani Base (1999) are all early sites which contained copies of the previous generated data and make attempts to collect and update the published data.
The Traveller Wiki (2006) begins to collect the data from the various sites and starts (2008) to publish the data in a more consistent fashion.
With the publication of the playtest version of the Traveller 5th edition core rule book (2008), Don McKinney, Robert Eaglestone, along with Marc Miller engaged in the T5 Second Survey a project to collect and update known astrographic data.
References and contributors
- Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
- Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science