The Boreal Tundran Cartographic Association would like to welcome all interested parties to the Region of Canada Map Committee.

There, now that the formalities are complete, beer's in the fridge, glasses if you want are to the left of the sink.

Earlier there were discussions about doing a map of the region. Any ideas for how the map should be done?
What should be included on the map? Nation name (obviously), flags, prehaps date of establishment?
Do we want population proprtional areas? Roughly equal? Whatever area you want?
Simple graphic uploaded to web or forum?
If on website, do we want to try for any interactivity? (E.G. click on nation name and go to NS page for that nation.)

Any other ideas?

Mmmm. Beer.

The ideas sound good. I'd stay away from populations that are geographically proportionate to size. The reason for this is it won't take long for the map to be out of whack. (A nation that is at 6 million now, will be in the hundreds of millions next month, which could be a problem.).

Interactivity is cool, but sounds ambitious. You may want to take things in steps - first get the map in place, then try to make it interactive -that way we can see it, and perhaps new ideas will pop up at that time, and momentum for this project will build.

You may want to take requests from people as to where they want to be on the map, and what climate they want.

For instance, Bweezystan would want to be in a northerly climate in the middle part of the region, due to the fact that I live in the centre of canada in real life, and my nation's animal is the polar bear. Hence, a northerly middle location would fit the profile of my nation.

You might want to give the more active nations here the chance to request where to be placed on the map, and then build the rest of the nations around them. At least that would give you a starting point on the project...

Also, we need to think about updates to this map - nations come and go all the time - we may want to have a ten day residency period before anyone can be added - that way time isn't wasting constantly adding and subtracting nations from the map.

Those are my thoughts.

Anyone else?

maybe we could have people "apply" to be on the map, that way only nations that are really committed to staying in the region will bother asking to be on it. Additionally, they could request where they want to be on the map, through their application.

It could also be a way to stir up some more activity here, by forcing them to come to the off site forum to apply or something like that.

Not only is it a map, but its a marketing opportunity for these forums! ;)

exactly! I think that everything we do here should be used as a marketing oppurtunity

If it gets more people to call these forums home, I'm all for it :)

there is a way of doing this.

When Missinaba first put the idea forward I had word with a few friends who reckon than this would be easy enough to do through PHP and Dreamweaver, or ImageReady.

Problem is getting hold of the software. Once you have that my theory was overlay a map of canada with a blank hex map. The hexagons would be fairly small, but each one would link to a database with the properties of each hex.

The data would be arranged such that a group of hexes belonging to one nation would have a common colour and then a black border would go around the group.

After that, developing individual properties for each hex would be fairly simple.

Its an idea anyway, but it looks plausible.

Anyone know PHP?

Good idea, but how would you apply?

if that was meant in response to me....I would think you'd apply by PM, TG or a post on the forum, saying that you'd like to be added to the map

I have some basic knowledge of Dreamweaver but wouldn't know how to go about it. I do have access to DW.

I think it would be great to get many more involved. To be able to see a map of our nation would be cool.

I will assist anyway I can.

Micon

You could even have a form application on the web.

That could also be done with the back end database. An application could be submitted and then it would hold putting the country on the map until the application was approved by an admin.

That would automate it, but if it proves too complex then a simple TG or PM to the relevant party would suffice.

I can have a look and see if I could get my head around it?

Just so you all know what I am doing....

So far I am testing out working with database driven websites to see if we can do this. I have some webspace that I can devote to it.

I will update this thread when I have further inpho!!! B)

(W0A D00D - cH3cK out mY l33+ we8MonKEY $KiLL5 ) :lol:

Sounds good Boardz, hope you find something useful.

hmm - so far so good.

I have managed to get a PHP enabled site up. And the database works. Next step will be getting a simple map to work on the basis of what we have discussed here.

As soon as I have something worth showing I will post again with a URL for the site. At the moment its not much to look at, so its location on the internet shall remain secret :ph43r:

ooo mysterious! how exciting ^_^

Boardz - I find the fact that you are even close very impressive! You rock! (or at least the perception you've built in my mind's eye rocks :) )

Do you know anything about pulling xml feeds out of the NS data stream?

Sounds real good, I am sure we will all be impressed.

Boardz, you are the MAN. Thanks for your work on this... looking forward to whatever you come up with! :)

Sybillan Alpine Sports Federation director

If NS has XML Feeds then even better.... I will have a look at how to use them. That should be interesting :D

I can only devote a limited amount of time to this, but I am on the case B) This is an area of web development I have always wanted to get into, so its nice to have a project to work towards.

I tried doing a static website for my band, but I abandonned it cos it was too time consuming to update.

Hopefully I can use the experience towards sorting that out once and for all. Just aren't enough hours in the day..... :(

I commend your hard work Boardz.

I would like to apply for an area in the most northerly region of the map, if the senior members of Canada have no objection. I'd like to be so far north, our citizens would consider Churchill down south.

The region of Quebec currently has its own map in place:

http://membres.lycos.fr/darkpyro/cartenum.jpg

I don't know if this gives everyone some ideas or not. Kind of cool looking.

Yep - I like the stylised look. B)

what I am going for at the moment will be something that will be easy to update. The problem with a JPEG format picture is that to update the nations borders and links would require some effort and time with a graphics package, that is designed to make images ready for the web. I think when we first discussed this we mentioned Illustrator and ImageReady and Dreamweaver, all of which are brilliant applications, but have one fundemental flaw. Cost. That and the fact that using any one of them requires some sort of degree qualification in art and design :lol:

Hopefully I can get it to look as good, and still have the dynamic content, and an easy to use mechanism for updating. Like HB suggested, if we can have content that auto updates from the NS that would be great. Some features, like nations that cease to exist could be written to happen automatically from NS. Other features, like membership and placement of territory will have to be manual, but will be made as easy as possible to do with an admin page of some sort.

I will know more when I start writing the modules and getting the tables together. I warn you now though , this could take a while.

As for "look and feel", it may be possible to customise it, just like you can customise the look and feel of the message forums. They are written in the same way that I am planning on doing this project.

We could hash out a map in the interim. I may be some time doing this :blink:

The other benefit of doing it this way will be the experience that I will get using the XML feeds from NS. As a result I should be able to put together some scripts to facilitate region management for the cabinet. With any luck i can even build them into the site.

I realise it sounds like I am promising quite a bit here, which is why the time scale is extended. However, a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.

Bweezy - that example is very helpful. If anyone else can find any others post the links here. Also if anyone has any suggestions as to how the pages should look, I am more than willing to hear them.

On the same note, if anyone has graphic content that they want included, submit it here too. The more the better.

Erm.. I think I have gone on for quite long enough...

maybe not.... :unsure:

no... you're right, i am done :D

I think this is an awesome idea and would love to help out anyway I can. Thanks for all the hard work.

I just noticed this comment now...so here are some maps that I've stumbled upon over time:

Map of The Heartland
Map of Wysteria
Map of Meritocratic Isles
Map of PEEL

And no offence to who ever made it, but I hope ours could be a bit better than this:
Map of Africa

I know I've seen more than that...I'll post them if I find them

http://invisionfree.com/forums/CACE/index.php?showtopic=323

Map of Aperin -- the most elaborate i've seen.

Hi everyone, I'm new and would just like to add thanks for inviting me.

This map idea sounds pretty cool. If I had to choose my own area, somewhere like southern China because my animal is the Panda.

The map project seems to have fallen apart. Perhaps I'll have to look into resurrecting it at some point (though my artist skills suck).

What about getting an actual map of Canada and porting it across into a Web-friendly format such as PHP or similar?

You had me until you uttered the terms "PHP"...

I got lost at porting..... :huh:

Sorry Checkers. What I mean is find an actual map of Canada and convert it into a web based publishing format. FP may be able to do it but I'm not 100% sure how to. Boardz is the man, as he's recently been experimenting with PHP for his bands web-site:

http://www.one-zero-one.net

I'm not sure if he'd want to committ to such a large task though as it would require constant updating based on Nations' movements and size etc.
I'm sure that there are a couple of people who could manage it on this site - it's just finding them and asking them nicely to spare some time.

thanks for the explanation (still have pretty much no clue what you're talking about though...don't worry about it :D )

As for managing it, I could spare the time, but I would probably have no idea of how to do it.

If implemented correctly, it could probably do it itself with little or no Administrator input. I have no idea how that would be done, but I'm sure someone would. It would just be a case of ammending the Nation profile and thier location I guess.

Okay, here's a decent map - I think. Anybody know how to do the rest?

Hey, where are the Turks and Caicos on that map? ;)

Sybillan Tourism Director

Sorry Sybilla. It's just a plain old map. It now needs work to make it 1) an achievable and realistic project and 2) people to add additional suggestions as to how to make it so.

Sounds like maybe one of the easiest ways to do it is to make it the index page of a series of map webpages. Fill in some info on the map, scroll over that portion of the info with your mouse and it tells you what you'll find if you click. A click takes you to a more in depth page. I dunno what kind of web wizards are among you, but I'm sure Boardz could handle that, and it may be the easiest start? Yes? No?

As for content, I'm sure no one person has the time to keep it constantly updated. But isn't there a way for each nation to input info in themeselves? Like this message board? I must profess I know very little about web development...

That would be the beauty of a PHP based site. As I understand it, PHP is a cascading data-base style formula that could keep itself updated. You would somehow need to tie it it with the Regional happenings.
That is almost as much as I know. I may decide to investigate this further.

FYI Boardz had been working on it, however he has gone AWOL since the beginning of Feb.

As for my abilities I would have no idea how to go about it.

The last region (besides saskatchewan) I was part of ran a map-based rp format. It was a message board, such as this one, set up in the very same way this one was. The map was off-site, like on geocities or angelfire (depending on cartographers preference). It was a basic map drawn on MS Paint I believe (we could one-up it if someone has a better simple art program) and uploaded to the webpage. It was managed by a single minister voted in by election (like the rest of your government in this region). It really wasn't all that much work, needed to be updated once every 2 or 3 weeks depending on how much activity the forum recieved. Its really not all that complicated. Im not sure why it all fell apart. Eastern Europe region has an entire rp system set up for news, conflict, maps, and even economy (ie exchange rates, trade, etc). This region could learn a lot from Eastern Europe's forum/off site webpage.

Anyways check it out (through NS), and I suggest opening a post for voting in a minister of geography or something if you ever want to get this map idea off the ground. Cause from what I see its never gotten past the idea page, mostly because no single person has taken on the task yet. Put it up as a government position, and I guarantee someone will run for the position.