Recently, I've been working on some utilities to generate random star systems and worlds. To kick the process off, one of the first bits of functionality was to read in and parse the various Traveller star maps that are available on the net.

I have then written an export function to take the generated data, and output it in a format that

Celestia - can understand.

Currently, I only have basic star data (no binary star systems for instance, and no world data as yet) so far, but it's a start.

I'm currently working on randomly generating world texture maps. I had assumed that it would be relatively simple to get something simple working, but it's turning out to be harder than it looks.

Based loosely on the Traveller style of world generation, I'm working on putting together a Java based toolkit for creating, managing and displaying a universe in a way suitable for a pen-and-paper roleplaying game.

Though modern computers can process and display data far better than they could in the 70s (when Traveller was first created), it's nice to not need a computer when gaming. Because of this, the maps will still use the Traveller idea of 2D space based on a hex-grid, with sectors and sub-sectors and at most one system per hex. It's completely unrealistic, but it's easy to use and visualise.

However, systems will have multiple worlds, and the maps will contain more information than standard Traveller maps display.