ticket-by-ticket

Tools to easily create maps and play a popular game

The purpose is to make custom map generation based on real world geography easy and fun! The MVP is to be able to generate a board and optionally destination tickets. From there we want to either design a RESTful API based game engine or find a way to import our custom maps to another game.

The name is a play on words of direct translations of the original. Fahrkarte fuer Fahrkarte was a close second.

Design

TBT will consist of the following components/flows:

1. We rely on outside data sources
   • Existing / legacy / planned railroads
   • Actual city and station info
   • Raster graphics of geography, regions, etc
   • Note in future could be a nonexistant/fantasy/elaborated place
   • These outputs go to 2, 4, and 6
2. Map designer
   • Has 1 available
   • Decides where to put actual points/routes data (could be traced over raster or pulled from points) - this becomes 3
   • optionally manipulates map output from 4 to improve
3. points/routes data
   • in JSON
   • from a person 2
   • converts to a map 4
   • also loads to DB 5
4. map generator
   • reads 1 raster and 3 data
   • outputs a single file
   • may also be used by PC game 6
   • may be edited by person 2
   • optionally, prints destination tickets also
5. database / API
   • inputs map data 3
   • interacts with client 6 and robot 7
   • stores game state
6. client
   • uses map data 3
   • interacts with db 5
   • may use 4 map or 1 map
7. robot
   • interacts with db 5
   • may get map data 3

Get started

1. Draw a map in Google maps
   • Just put points with simple names for cities/stations
   • example https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1hx0aYHMCiwSoYo_vl30oC0rnj-tKL-K5&usp=sharing
2. Export the layer as CSV
   • Example output sample.csv
   • Needs to have columns WKT, name
   • WKT is format POINT (lat lng)
   • name is simply the name of the city
3. Convert CSV to JSON
   • tbd-edit import
   • It figures out geometry automatically
4. Design routes/tracks
   • tbt-edit con
   • one can continually run 6 to check work visually
5. Design destination tickets
6. Generate map
   • tbt-edit export -i map.svg
   • Input JSON file generated in 3 and modified in 4
   • select a map source if desired (example http://maps.stamen.com/ )
   • It will auto download background raster
   • It will generate SVG from JSON, which references the raster as a layer
   • Output will be an SVG and a png

JSON spec

Map:

• geometry
  • real: lat1 (NW), long1 (NW), lat3 (SE) lat4 (SE)
  • resolution: x, y
  • image: relative filename
• cities
  • name: x, y
• route: (list)
  • cities: 1, 2
  • len: int
  • tracks:
    • color
    • color
    • auto
• tickets (list)
  • cities: 1, 2
  • points: int

(see map.schema.json)

Rules

Acknowlegements

• Map tiles by Stamen Design, CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under CC BY SA.