Privateer Logical Map

apocalyptech

Spaceman
It's entirely possible (probable?) that this has been done in the past but a tiny amount of Googling didn't bring anything up and I enjoy this sort of tinkering, so I just went ahead with it. I got curious during a recent replay of Privateer about the "logical" structure of the game map. As in: if you detangled the mess of jump points without regard to their actual "physical" location on the map, would it be possible to draw the map on a 2D Euclidean plane without having any of the jump lines intersect?

In the end, it looks like there's a single unavoidable crossed-jump-line in the map. This could be arranged in a number of different ways, of course. In the layout I went with, it's the jump between XXN-1957 and 119CE which conflicts with the jump between New Constantinople and Newcastle.

I've attached the map to the post; you can also find it (and its source file) at: https://apocalyptech.com/games/privmap/

It was done in the Linux editor Dia, though, so the source file probably won't help most folks.

Anyway, enjoy! (Or not! You do you.)
 

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Wow, fascinating! I've always wondered about this, great to see someone out there was smart enough to actually know how to do it!
 
So I'd expected to be done with this but couldn't escape the feeling that I maybe should've made an attempt to keep the systems closer to where they actually appear in-game. So, some more reworking today yields an alternate layout! Objectively speaking I think this is probably the better one by far: more compact, and the quadrant placements are kept much more intact. I still kind of prefer my original aesthetically (that golden-spirally thing from Rygannon to DN-N1912 is especially pleasing) but this one ain't bad either. Oxford / Shangri-La end up on the "wrong" side of Potter Quadrant, and I'm not fond of the way Varnus just sticks out at the bottom there, but what're ya gonna do?

Anyway, cheers!
 

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Hah, yeah, I figured that'd come up eventually. :D I'm a few missions away from finishing up this playthrough and was planning on starting up RF afterwards. I assume I'll end up doing a RF version as well, before too long. I'd sort of intentionally left off Delta/Beta/Gamma/Delta' since those aren't especially interesting, but I suppose it's probably worth a version that's thorough...
 
I'd say Delta Prime is the most "interesting" system in the game 😁 ... but I will not spoil you any further if you've not played through the game yet.
Righteous Fire has quite some systems with hidden jump points. I remember at least one additional jump point in the Eden system that was not listed on the nav computer. And then, however I thought I found at least two or three in total in my last playthrough. But that is now more than 10 years ago, because I played the game 2012/2013 last time.

Darn, I'm getting old.

Keep us updated ;)
 
I'd say Delta Prime is the most "interesting" system in the game
Oh, I only meant "interesting" in a mapping sense; I agree it's a rather interesting system from a plot/game perspective. :) Just that in terms of this sort of map, including those four to that "tail" doesn't really affect the logical map structure, is all. I have indeed played through the game a number of times!

Since I'm replying, I may as well mention a couple things I looked into last night, for a lark:
- Omitting the Exploratory Services systems, the two furthest-apart systems are CM-N1054 and Sumn-Kp'ta (regardless of whether you include Eden). Eleven jumps! And, interestingly, six different eleven-jump paths you could take between 'em.
- If you do include the Exploratory Services systems, the furthest systems become Delta Prime and either CM-N1054 or DN-N1912, either of which will take you thirteen jumps.

- Omitting the Exploratory Services systems, there are three systems from which you can get to the entire map on a single jump-fuel tank (ie: everything's within six jumps). Namely: New Constantinople, Nexus, and Tingerhoff. This, too, is the same whether or not you include Eden.
- Adding in the Exploratory Services systems to *that* metric, there's no longer any systems which can get anywhere on a single tank, but Palan and Tingerhoff become the best-connected ones, requiring at most seven jumps to get everywhere.
 
Provisional version which includes Eden (plus the requested Exploratory Services systems) -- I'm still replaying RF at the moment and don't remember if there's any other map changes. Had to flip Potter quadrant back to my original orientation to do this, and it seems that the only decent way to make it work for Humboldt/Fariss is to do a weird inversion where Junction and Nexus end up on the *outside* of the map. I'm not fond of yet-more-big-ol'-curved-jump-lines (or, really, the very-long jump lines to Nexus + Junction in general), but I'm not sure if there'd be a better way to get it to work without crossing lines.

Does Gemini actually show up in Privateer/RF? That addition was from a different game, wasn't it? I could add that in as well, though at least that one looks pretty "uninteresting" as well -- just an alternate route between Troy and Junction. Easy enough to add in, though if it doesn't actually show up in Privateer/RF I'll probably just leave it out...
 

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And, what the heck, here's my somewhat-lousy code that I'd used for investigating those stats, a couple of posts up: https://gist.github.com/7029b93c71ab5bd58744cac9f64bb934

It's a commandline Python script (https://python.org/) -- should work fine on practically any Python 3.x. Same disclaimer as my provisional map above: I've not yet finished my current RF playthough, and I don't remember if there are other map changes, so it's possible this isn't complete.

Regardless, here's the syntax (the actual --help output includes the valid names for specifying systems, instead of just systemname. They're all just lowercased, convert spaces/dashes to underscores, and omit apostrophes entirely):
Code:
$ ./gemini.py -h
usage: gemini.py [-h] [-d] [-e] [-r] [-a]
                 [-f {systemname}]
                 [-t {systemname}]
                 [-m]

Compute optimal routes in Wing Commander: Privateer / Righteous Fire

options:
  -h, --help              show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug             Show extra debugging output
  -e, --exploratory       Include Exploratory Services systems
  -r, --rf                Include Righteous Fire system (Eden)
  -a, --all               Include all "extra" systems
  -f, --from {systemname} System to travel from
  -t, --to {systemname}   System to travel to
  -m, --max               Instead of finding a path, find the most distant systems

Requires setting either --from *and* --to, or just --max. (If --from or --to are specified at the same
time as --max, they will be ignored.) By default this excludes the Exploratory Services systems (Delta,
Beta, Gamma, and Delta Prime), and Righteous Fire systems (just Eden), but those can be included with
the --exploratory, --rf, or --all options.

Some examples:

Code:
$ ./gemini.py -m
Furthest-apart systems are at distance: 11

Instances:
  * CM-N1054 <-> Sumn-Kp'ta

$ ./gemini.py -m -a
Furthest-apart systems are at distance: 13

Instances:
  * CM-N1054 <-> Delta Prime
  * Delta Prime <-> DN-N1912

$ ./gemini.py -f perry -t sherwood
Got 1 path with 4 jumps:

Perry
-> Tingerhoff
-> Nexus
-> Capella
-> Sherwood

$ ./gemini.py -f new_constantinople -t 119ce
Got 2 paths with 2 jumps:

New Constantinople
-> Junction
-> 119CE

New Constantinople
-> XXN-1957
-> 119CE
 
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Wow, you've spent a lot of time on this! I've taken a look at the CIC pages here:

It says that Eden is connected via hidden Jump Point to Raxis. Although I think it's also connected to Rikel as the system map shows:

I thought the jump point was in the lower right corner of the Eden system, but I may be wrong as it's more than 10 years ago I've played it the last time. Here is the Raxis system:

However, a direct link between Raxis and Eden means another crossing line in your logicial map.

As far as I remember, I've never seen a Gemini system in the game. It also doesn't appear on Wedge's base list... if there's a system like that, Wedge would have found it 😁
 
It says that Eden is connected via hidden Jump Point to Raxis. Although I think it's also connected to Rikel as the system map shows:
https://www.wcnews.com/maps/sectors/gemini.png
Huh, yeah -- I see that there does seem to be some conflict between Raxis vs. Rikel online. There wouldn't be hidden jump gates to *both*, eh? On my provisional map up there I'd connected it to Rikel, which is the easier of the two (as you say, connecting to Raxis would lead to another unavoidable overlap). Well, I'll be at that point in RF before too long, so I guess I'll find out in a bit! :)
 
Aha, very nice! Good ol' Graphviz. :D That's what I'd tried at first, too, though was trying to use neato/fdp instead of dot... Graphviz is theoretically good at doing undirected graphs, but I can never seem to get decent results with 'em. My Graphviz source is at: https://apocalyptech.com/games/privmap/privmap.gv -- I'll attach about the best I was able to get, for an undirected graph. Not awful as a starting point but clearly leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of overlaps!
Rikel is correct and Raxis is wrong. (I took apart the Righteous FIre system data recently!)
Aha, groovy, thx for the info!
 

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Rikel is correct and Raxis is wrong. (I took apart the Righteous FIre system data recently!)
Thank's for pointing that out LOAF! ;)

However I'm still not sure, because I really remember at least 2 hidden jump points in the game (or even three). I'm really absolutely 100 percent sure, that there are at least two hidden points although I don't remember if both of them are in the Eden system. It could be another system, but as I said... I would need to replay the game again. And with two hidden jump points I don't mean the one in Eden and the correlating one in Rikel.

Oh, and one more thing:
Happy new year to all of you! 😁
 
I decided to check the game's files and you are 100% right: in both Privateer and Righteous Fire there's one more secret jump point which is RIKEL TO PERRY. It's present in both Privateer and Rigtheous FIre but I'm not 100% sure how to locate it in-system... better start exploring!

There's also one additional system in the game called Test Bed, obviously something left over from design/testing. It doesn't have any jump points, so it's impossible to access in the finished build.
 
I decided to check the game's files and you are 100% right: in both Privateer and Righteous Fire there's one more secret jump point which is RIKEL TO PERRY. It's present in both Privateer and Rigtheous FIre but I'm not 100% sure how to locate it in-system... better start exploring!

That's indeed great news... so my brain is still functional! ;)
I've turned 40 this year and I feel real damn old. Reactions are also getting slower... but hey, even though I like all Wing Commander games, I love Privateer the most! It is my favorite game of all times... so to say. But my favorite ship remains the Armada Arrow ... *speeeeeeed* 😁
 
Okay, so yeah -- finished up Righteous Fire tonight and I think I'm happy enough with that last version that I posted. I did tweak it slightly so the Eden->Rikel jump is labelled "unmarked" (and uses a dotted line) but this is otherwise identical to the previous version. I didn't think it made sense to add in that mystery Rikel->Perry jump, given that nobody even knows where it is.

Anyway, with that I expect I'm probably about through fiddling around with this stuff for the time being. Thanks for indulging me, and cheers!
 

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very nice! I will definitely use this for the gemini sector RPG to make things easier on the players. ;)
 
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