Shadowrun Digital Map, ArcGIS for fun. Options

[lokii]

I had a look at your North America 2075 map. I assume you'll still put the new northern coast of the Baja California ex-peninsula in. So the only other thing I noticed Newfoundland should be part of the UCAS (unless I missed this territorial change). It belongs to Maine to be specific (originally in NAGNA, recently confirmed in Dirty Tricks).

And one more from my resurfacing memories: A few roads I considered using as a border but never got around to try it out, are Trans-Canada highways for the AMC-UCAS border. I think that border was originally meant to follow certain Trans-Canada highways from the east up to the point were the border turns south to connect with the Sioux Nation border. In order from the east it should be described by:

Ontario Highway 11
Ontario Highway 17
Manitoba Highway 1
Saskatchewan Highway 1

I don't believe it works out over the whole border, but maybe some parts could be substituted with highway lines. So something to consider.

A few notes on outstanding issues.

South Florida: At least the map that accompanied the Second Edition shows that the border reaches up to West Palm Beach. It also hugs close to the coast. I think the solution of MJBurrage is better since it considers the description in Cyberpirates!

Aztlan/Amazonia: I would still be interested in the historic border (2050 to mid 2070s). Aztlan p. 106 has the description I based my correction sketch on, but it also has a map that shows the start of the border line from Lake Maracaibo, not the complete border though.

German coast: The Westphalia map looks as if it would fit better, if it is slightly rotated. I don't know if you tried that. Some of the Shadowrun maps appear to be rotated for optics or something.


Finally, if you are up for it, at the end of this process I would really love to have a list of changes in comparison to older maps (and descriptions of borders). Something that says these changes are retcons, but these changes are the result of events in the Sixth World, even if they have not yet been described.

[Tzeentch]

I had a look at your North America 2075 map. I assume you'll still put the new northern coast of the Baja California ex-peninsula in. So the only other thing I noticed Newfoundland should be part of the UCAS (unless I missed this territorial change). It belongs to Maine to be specific (originally in NAGNA, recently confirmed in Dirty Tricks).

Newfoundland should be in the UCAS.

One thing these maps show is how illogical the CAS complaint about "pliant Canadian politicians" was. Canada got reduced to a tiny little fraction of its former land.

And one more from my resurfacing memories: A few roads I considered using as a border but never got around to try it out, are Trans-Canada highways for the AMC-UCAS border. I think that border was originally meant to follow certain Trans-Canada highways from the east up to the point were the border turns south to connect with the Sioux Nation border. In order from the east it should be described by:

The AMC northern border follows the roads where possible. I made a similar change to the UCAS/CAS border.

The Sioux/UCAS border was similarly modified a bit to follow the natural features and roads that it was obviously attached to. (I suspect the first Shadowrun map was sketched on a road atlas.) I'll double-check what roads I used.

I made some small changes to the Denver western border to fix any egregious differences from the roads that it follows, but kept it a bit abstract as it just gets washed out at the lower resolutions.

South Florida: At least the map that accompanied the Second Edition shows that the border reaches up to West Palm Beach. It also hugs close to the coast. I think the solution of MJBurrage is better since it considers the description in Cyberpirates!

This is a question I have in queue with the line developer.

Aztlan/Amazonia: I would still be interested in the historic border (2050 to mid 2070s). Aztlan p. 106 has the description I based my correction sketch on, but it also has a map that shows the start of the border line from Lake Maracaibo, not the complete border though.

The SWA borders don't appear to even include Cali (and I used the SWA for these borders). Obviously this entire area gets a massive change in 2075. I'm not entirely sure where the 2050 border would be, I will have to look that up.

German coast: The Westphalia map looks as if it would fit better, if it is slightly rotated. I don't know if you tried that. Some of the Shadowrun maps appear to be rotated for optics or something.

I'm basically brute forcing some of these graphics as I don't know what projection they were created in (if any). If it was just scale/rotation then two tie points would fix it, but some of the smaller maps are in local coordinate systems of unknown type (probably based on atlas maps or road maps that were then redrawn in Illustrator). That's why you can see some of the georectified images get shifted into "trumpet shapes" and such - they're being shown in Web Mercator (which is my editing coordinate system).

Finally, if you are up for it, at the end of this process I would really love to have a list of changes in comparison to older maps (and descriptions of borders). Something that says these changes are retcons, but these changes are the result of events in the Sixth World, even if they have not yet been described.

Aye, I can do that.

[lokii]

One thing these maps show is how illogical the CAS complaint about "pliant Canadian politicians" was. Canada got reduced to a tiny little fraction of its former land.

Yep, this has come up before. Some people (Ontarians presumedly) countered it with the argument, that Ontario is really all you need. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) To their credit they back the claim up. This post and the ones following it:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=993713

The Sioux/UCAS border was similarly modified a bit to follow the natural features and roads that it was obviously attached to. (I suspect the first Shadowrun map was sketched on a road atlas.)

Well, as I said before the Sioux/UCAS border is based on the border between two timezones, I guess therefore it is also aligned with roads and as shown in my construction map I described it in part with county borders. If you want to compare with the time zones, here is a shape file: http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/

The SWA borders don't appear to even include Cali (and I used the SWA for these borders).

That was actually why I noticed the discrepancies with the border. According to War! Cali was in Aztlan, but the map in the 20th Anniversary Edition where I took the border line from (probably the Almanac too) implied that it was in Amazonia. The description in the Aztlan sourcebook is clear though, the border runs 50 kilometers south of Cali and the city is mentioned for its military base I believe. I'm interested in the correction mainly to update the animated maps. And while I can come up with something myself of course, I would rather use the official/semiofficial corrected version, if you are interested in also tackling that problem.

By the way, do you still plan to have the Sixth World geographic reference publicly available as a shape file or in a similar format, once everything is done? I realize the data file can become pretty big. Personally, I don't need the normal islands or coasts, but the new structures and the adjusted border lines would be nice to have as data.

Aye, I can do that.

Should have said that earlier. Thank you for your effort. I have bemoaned the map situation for so long. Maybe I can find something new to complain about now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Tzeentch]

Well, as I said before the Sioux/UCAS border is based on the border between two timezones, I guess therefore it is also aligned with roads and as shown in my construction map I described it in part with county borders. If you want to compare with the time zones, here is a shape file: http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/

-- I'm not sure it actually ever matched the timezones. I'm overlaying the Natural Earth timezone layer and it sorta matches in some areas but not in others.

By the way, do you still plan to have the Sixth World geographic reference publicly available as a shape file or in a similar format, once everything is done? I realize the data file can become pretty big. Personally, I don't need the normal islands or coasts, but the new structures and the adjusted border lines would be nice to have as data.

-- I took it offline because I was/am doing some heavy edits in some areas (I just changed a big chunk of western the Denver zone based on a really close look at the Denver box set maps, for example)

-- I'm getting pretty happy with the borders so will be exporting the polygons to a line file and then removing the coastline elements so it's just borders (which will be more convenient for overlaying on Google I think).

-- I can upload another dump of the current geodatabase after I do another round of topology checks (I despise overlapping borders!). I'll upload it as a shapefile and KML. If you want another format let me know. The polygon layer should be online at the dropbox within the hour.

Should have said that earlier. Thank you for your effort. I have bemoaned the map situation for so long. Maybe I can find something new to complain about now. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

-- It won't ever make total sense. The Shadowrun borders will follow natural breaks and roads (which is itself sort of problematic when you think about it, since usually that means the road centerline is a border) and then suddenly veers off in a straight line ignoring everything for hundreds of kilometers, then joins back up with a road and traces that again. It's actually a bit maddening (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tzeentch]

Oops you were right I had Newfoundland as part of Quebec! Fixed that.

[lokii]

-- I'm not sure it actually ever matched the timezones. I'm overlaying the Natural Earth timezone layer and it sorta matches in some areas but not in others.

I think it is an exaggerated form of the timezone border, used as a orientation but maybe not correctly positioned. So it's probably irrelevant for our purposes. I'll try it out myself, once I have found my way around Quantum GIS for extracting single coordinate sets from shape files. Then I can also have a look at your shape file.

-- I'm getting pretty happy with the borders so will be exporting the polygons to a line file and then removing the coastline elements so it's just borders (which will be more convenient for overlaying on Google I think).

Though your SR_Nations.shp isn't as big as I would have thought, considering all the structures in there.

Oops you were right I had Newfoundland as part of Quebec! Fixed that.

But I didn't see that you already had the new Baja California lines in the map. The passage is so narrow, that I couldn't distinguish it from the background because of the grey borders. I think the gap does look a bit wider on the Shadowrun Anniversary North America map but of course Corporate Enclaves' is much more detailed. Though I have to say the borders seem overly zigzaggy, almost like splintered glass.

[Tzeentch]

But I didn't see that you already had the new Baja California lines in the map. The passage is so narrow, that I couldn't distinguish it from the background because of the grey borders. I think the gap does look a bit wider on the Shadowrun Anniversary North America map but of course Corporate Enclaves' is much more detailed. Though I have to say the borders seem overly zigzaggy, almost like splintered glass.

-- I think that was intentional. The shape and extent of the sundering is something I have in the hopper for the line developer to give a Word of God on. It may just be effectively retconned as bad cartography and temporary flooding.

[lokii]

For completeness sake the border of Trans-Polar Aleut Nation has two main problems in the Sixth World Almanac: North America (goes back to the Shadows of North America map) and Asia where it does not quite follow older maps. In general the T-PA border keeps within the polar circle or about 66° latitude North. This can be seen in Target:Wastelands p. 55 or on this map. The map in Shadows of North America p. 33 shows that the border between Athabaska and T-PA is labeled with "Polar circle" unfortunately the actual border doesn't follow the circle. It should be a straight line for this projection. Since then this wrong line has been copied to new maps. A comparison between Shadows of Asia maps and the one from Target: Wastelands reveals some inconsistencies between both sources (border and controlled islands). I resolved this favoring SoA, but I think mainly because its maps were easier to work with at that point.

[Tzeentch]

Aye, it should probably follow the Arctic Circle.

The Yakut/TPA inconsistencies I think I'll explain as everyone just guessing where the border really is as neither side runs land surveyors out there or has an official treaty. I updated a Google KML of the latest border linework file (North America is covered) and the nations shapes yesterday. I also uploaded the latest export of the nations shapefile. I've been busy with editing my annotations to create something that looks like the "SWA style." For example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd4m9v6budfjq0o/test_NW.pdf

[lokii]

The Yakut/TPA inconsistencies I think I'll explain as everyone just guessing where the border really is as neither side runs land surveyors out there or has an official treaty.

But the border was created in 2018 with Russia on the other side. I suspect that they cared about it.

I think I solved one inconsistency between T:WL and SoA with the map on Target: Smuggler Havens p. 32. Both actually use that map as a base, but in T:WL for the western border of the Asian portion of T-PA the border line between Yakut and Russia was used instead of that between Yakut and T-PA (I assume by mistake).

Also, I noticed for that border I mislabeled the file with longitude/latitude coordinates I gave you. It is called "adm0_na_Yakut--Trans-Polar_Aleut.csv" but should be "as" instead. The border not only (roughly) follows the polar circle also the "indent" in the border is based on real world geography, the shape is created by two rivers Omolon and Kolyma.


By the way, I added a few more instances of your "Alter Ego" Kzeentch weighing in. One of them right next to the T-PA map in Target: Wastelands. That should make you something of an expert. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[lokii]

I put this here as a footnote, why the Almanac's simplifications shouldn't be the last word on Asian geography. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) If there ever is another word...

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...t&p=1308811

[BaronJ]

Just following up on this ancient thread; I'm amazed and awed by the amount of work you all plied into this! I miss Dumpshock now!

However, it looks like a lot of Tzeentch's dropbox files aren't responding. Are the results of all of this work living over on the Shadowhelix these days?

[lokii]

However, it looks like a lot of Tzeentch's dropbox files aren't responding. Are the results of all of this work living over on the Shadowhelix these days?

Well, not the things Tzeentch produced. You have to contact him about those. But all the different maps and other information I linked to in this thread should still be in the Shadowhelix. In general either the following category:

http://shadowhelix.pegasus.de/Kategorie:!Bilder/Karten

or this portal page:

http://shadowhelix.pegasus.de/Shadowhelix:Karten

are good entry points for all the map stuff in the wiki ('Karte' is the German word for map).

[hermit]

Whatever happened to the new North America map?