Morbus Iff's page

G'day! I sent in an email on Friday, and have yet to receive any response.
Comparatively, I've seen responses in this forum happen within a day.
How much longer should I wait before I send a polite reminder?
(Or, coyly: this is said polite reminder.)

It's been a LoOong time since I've GMd, but I kickstarted the new virtual tabletop Roll20, so I've gotten early GM beta access. I've got three players committed to a Thursday night, 8 to 10PM EST Carrion Crown adventure path, and I'm looking for one more. We'd be looking to start in two weeks (May 24th). Random bullet list summary:

A week ago I showed off a proof of concept of a Google Map of the Inner Sea.
I've since "started over and done it right", and it is now available for public perusal.

http://www.mapsofgolarion.com/

Maps of Golarion offers an unofficial interactive Google Map of the Inner Sea, with clickable markers, info windows with a blurb about the location, and additional links to the Pathfinder Wiki or matching products on paizo.com. It currently has about 60 locations defined based on the hardcoded values in the Community Use Inner Sea map. The first data milestone will be to fully mark out all those hardcoded values. After that, I'll be adding any and all other locations that have been mentioned (which will take a loOoOong time), as well as Adventure Path and Module "journeys". There are pie-in-the-sky plans for future functionality like on/off filters and custom user-uploaded locations for your own campaign setting.

It also works and was tested on an iPad, for game table use.

The following entries in the Community Use Registry no longer exist or are otherwise broken. NONE of the entries are in the list simply because they’re “old”. The ones listed are inaccessible or non-existent resources crowding up the index:

• “Rise of the Runelords” Play by Post
  
• “Paper Lanterns on the Ebon Tide” Campaign
  
• AGoP: Pathfinder Society Legends
  
• Beyond Golarion
  
• Bonus Magic Item Handouts for Carrion Crown
  
• Caerux Khaiognos :: Pathfinder Online Community :: Wiki
  
• CAYDEN’S HALL NEW MAP
  
• character tent
  
• Classless Pathfinder
  
• Cobb County RPG Society
  
• Council of Thieves - A Recurring Villain: The Hound
  
• Creative Writing project for College
  
• Dithering Fool’s Campaigns
  
• Entertain My Kids
  
• Eridar Campaign Wiki
  
• Golarion World Wiki
  
• Golarion Latitude Maps
  
• Golarion’s Largest Dungeon
  
• GolarionOnline
  
• JScotGaming
  
• Jtools
  
• KayYoss.com
  
• Kaytastrophe Carrion Crown Wiki
  
• KromeDragon
  
• Nevynxxx’s Blog
  
• Pathfinder Android Spelldirectory
  
• pathfinder chronicles
  
• Pathfinder Fan Art Site
  
• Pathfinder Google Wave
  
• Pathfinder Icons
  
• Pathfinder Manager
  
• Pathfinder One-Shot Sign Up Sheet
  
• Pathfinder Portal
  
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Character Sheets
  
• Pathfinder RPG: Kuwait
  
• Pathfinder: Salones del Norte
  
• Pathfinders of Tulsa
  
• Paths in the Sand
  
• PbP Roleplaying Games
  
• PFOGC.com
  
• PhD Thesis: “Building Fantasy and Reality …”
  
• Project Circle (NOTE: This is just pointing to a product review, which itself does not use any material from the CU packages.)
  
• Rubens Costa
  
• Sczarni Caravan
  
• Shadowmains
  
• Sorceror Aid Project: Sigils & Talents
  
• Sorceress Adventures
  
• Summon Monsters/Allies
  
• The Complete List of Pathfinder Modules
  
• The Great Railroad in the Sky
  
• The Path
  
• Turien World Project
  
• We Be More Goblins!
  
• World of Thundain Campaign Site
  
• wxRCG
  

The following entries EXIST and SHOULD REMAIN in the index, but are likely using title tweaks to allow them to be sent to the top of the list:

• Pathfinder Society Organized Play - France
  
• Pathfinder-fr.org
  
• Venture Captain
  
• Remove quotes from the other top-sorted entries.
  

The following entries have incorrect URLs. Where possible, I’ve included the right URL.

• “Alkenstar Community Development” http://z3.invisionfree.com/PFRPG_Alkenstar/index.php
  
• Heroes’ Guide of Maryland http://heroesguildonline.forumotion.com/
  
• Mercenaires de Varaisie http://mercenairesdevarisie.pro-forum.fr/
  
• Rise of the Runelords http://mekanismi.sange.fi/pmwiki/pmwiki.php
  
• Rise of the Runelords Adventure Journal http://samhaine.wordpress.com/rise-of-the-runelords/
  
• The Fool’s Court http://thefoolscourt.zxq.net/
  
• The Young Kingdom’s Wiki http://youngkingdoms.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
  

Good morning. It's been requested a few times over the years (usually with summaries of "this site was taken down because of unauthorized use" or "well, Paizo might be working on it." or "let's wait until the community use map is updated" or "yeah, great idea, but no clue how to do it!" or even "check MapLib.net! It's slow as hell, but there are some unflagged versions over there!") but let's reopen the can of worms:

I want an interactive Google map of the Inner Sea.

Now, I know nothing about the Google Maps API, but I *am* a programmer- and writer-by-trade, so it couldn't be that incredibly hard, yeah? So, I spent a few hours this morning learning how to make this proof of concept: http://www.disobey.com/detergent/2012/golarion-google-map/ Now, there's a metric omgload of things "wrong" with this proof of concept but, generally, POCs are meant to be demonstrated, then thrown away and rewritten "right". And that's about where I am at this point: "huh, yeah, I think I can get this to work!"

To step back a bit, when I envision an Inner Sea Google Map, I see:

• Baselining on the locations in the Inner Sea Map Folio.
  
• All locations pinned, with an info window that shows source material.
  
• Adding "unofficial placements" of official locations based on new monthly materials.
  
• A region overlay that can be flagged on and off.
  
• A dropdown list of all markers so you can search by name, not location.
  
• A pie riding a pony.
  

And I think most of that's possible (take a look at mapwow.com for one such example - there are many more).

But, and this is probably where previous map efforts have stagnated: the community use map is simply too small. AnnNNd, I/we don't have any rights to use the latest version from the Inner Sea Map Folio PDF (which is giiigannNtic and would work just fine for Google Maps). It's also generally non-portable: if I sit down and pin out every location in the Inner Sea, that data is unlikely to port over to a "better" or higher-res version of the map - meaning a lot lotta rework.

I think our options are thusly:

• "Settle" for this low-res version, knowing it's the best we can get Right Now, but that any amount of work we spend on it will be "wasted" if anything better comes along. This also means that the burned labels on there will have to stay - I have no capability to remove them (unlike the version in the Inner Sea Map Folio). Incidentally, does anyone know what font that is?

• Use the official Inner Sea Map Folio high-res version and make it Google Maps capable, and distribute everything *but* the imagery. You'd get all the markers, data, and code, but it'd be up to you to figure out how to get it running locally from your own purchased PDF (this would mean exporting the unlabeled image, running a script to slice it into tiles, etc.). I'd give instructions as best I could, but it is not going to be ideal.

• Plea with Paizo. Give me permission to use the unlabeled high-res version from the Inner Sea Map Folio PDF. I'll open source the underlying code and markers (or not; tell me!). I'll pay for a domain and server for it. I'll walk you through what I did so if I get run over by a bus, you can use it yourself. Or, make it a work-for-hire for pennies a day (give or take) and make it all official.

I'm interested in doing this, but I'd rather do it "right" and with the best materials onhand.