interactive LOTR paths map

S

Shogoki

New Member
First of all: I just discovered Mythgard and SignumU in November last year.
Since then i binge-listened to all the SilmFilm episodes already and now going for Exploring The Lord of The Rings.
So therefore, Happy i found this and thank you for doing this great work! :)

Now to the actual topic:
In today´s (yesterday in the US, I guess) Episode Corey raised the question, why there´s no kind of interactive Map to see which Character was at which location at a specific point in time.
I thought this idea is quite cool, so i just took a bit of time to see if i may can build something like this.
So, after some initial time i came up with a prototype and thought it would be best to share this here, and collect some thoughts.

It can be found and accessed here.

Would be cool if you could take a look at it and give me some feedback if it makes sense to go into this direction :)
If it´s useful for some of you, I´d also be happy for suggestions on how to improve, or find a better base map?

In the prototype, there are only the Places/Dates from the "great years" of Appendix B for Frodo.

For the future i had already thought into this Direction:
- Possibility to select multiple characters (also at the same time, with different color-coding)
- add more data

That would give us a map, where we could select multiple characters and a date/(date-range?) and see there paths.

Looking forward to your Feedback.
 
Great idea Shogoki!

Well done!

Here is some feedback:

I think the map is good (where did you get it?). It looks like the map from the end fold-outs in the hard cover editions, which, I consider the definitive (or at least best) map. Also the scale of miles on the map you use (which is not on the original maps) looks pretty close to my own estimation of miles for the original maps.

I think some of your locations should be revised (for Frodo). Your start point seems to be some 50 miles south of Hobbiton (which is the square marked on your map). I also think your locations in the Old Forest, and the Barrowdowns, are likely too far south. All seems better once you get Frodo to Bree.

Hope that is helpful.

Good luck adding more to this!
 
Welcome to the forum, and congratulations.

I agree that this is a great start, and I hope that my criticism is taken in the spirit intended: to allow development of an improved tool.

As Flammifer has identified, some of the locations need tweaking, including the location of the Morannon.

Some of the line segments haven't drawn for me, (e.g. between Moria and Lothlorien) I don't know if others see that too.

Straight line segments between points are simple, but don't always represent the path taken. I don't know how easy it would be to include waypoints for line drawing that don't have a specific date associated (and so aren't stopping/selection points). Some of these additional waypoints will be subject to conjecture and controversy, but maybe different options could exist to allow comparison.

I found the arrow keys to be more reliable than dragging the slider when moving through time, so maybe a progress bar would be a better UI element to choose versus the slider.

I look forward to any development you make to this.
 
Many thanks for your feedback!

Flammifer said:
I think the map is good (where did you get it?). It looks like the map from the end fold-outs in the hard cover editions, which, I consider the definitive (or at least best) map. Also the scale of miles on the map you use (which is not on the original maps) looks pretty close to my own estimation of miles for the original maps.
Click to expand...

As the base map i used this one, which was not created by myself, mainly because it is a svg, and therefore can scale really nice.




Anthony Lawther said:
Welcome to the forum, and congratulations.

I agree that this is a great start, and I hope that my criticism is taken in the spirit intended: to allow development of an improved tool.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. Sure, i was surely hoping to get this kind of honest feedback.

Anthony Lawther said:
As Flammifer has identified, some of the locations need tweaking, including the location of the Morannon.
Click to expand...

Yep, I have to admit, that i was really sloppy assigning some of the locations.
As this is all manually mapping the place names to x/y coordiantes on the actual map, And i just wanted to get started quickly in the fist place here.

Also, If someone is interested in helping, especially in such things as, preparing the data of the timeline or mapping the Locations: you are very welcome :)

Anthony Lawther said:
Some of the line segments haven't drawn for me, (e.g. between Moria and Lothlorien) I don't know if others see that too.
Click to expand...

That´s true. Already identified this yesterday evening, and fixed it in my local version already.
This was an issue, when there were 2 locations assigned to one Date.

Anthony Lawther said:
Straight line segments between points are simple, but don't always represent the path taken. I don't know how easy it would be to include waypoints for line drawing that don't have a specific date associated (and so aren't stopping/selection points). Some of these additional waypoints will be subject to conjecture and controversy, but maybe different options could exist to allow comparison.
Click to expand...

Definitely. I was also kind of thinking that. Probably I can come up with a solution for this, like defining a set of Points for the route between 2 places. That would allow to draw a more realistic path, than only the straight line.

Anthony Lawther said:
I found the arrow keys to be more reliable than dragging the slider when moving through time, so maybe a progress bar would be a better UI element to choose versus the slider.
Click to expand...

Yeah, for this i want to "fresh up" the controls a bit anyhow.
I´ll try that out.
 
Wow! Quite excellent. There's a bug today (2/2) where Gandalf goes to 0,0 between Isengard and Edoras.
But he also goes to 0,0 between Moria and Lorien, and THAT IS EXACTLY RIGHT!
I love it.
 
Jim Deutch said:
Wow! Quite excellent. There's a bug today (2/2) where Gandalf goes to 0,0 between Isengard and Edoras.
But he also goes to 0,0 between Moria and Lorien, and THAT IS EXACTLY RIGHT!
I love it.
Click to expand...
Thanks.

Yep. We were still working on the coordinates for the places on the map. But I just published the latest version which has all the (so far) missing coordinates updated.
Many many thanks to Flammifer, for helping me a lot with labeling and sorting my mistakes out!

Therefore you should not see the jumping to 0,0 anymore now. Except for Gandalf, after his fight with Durins bane.
For this, I am still a bit unsure how to deal with Gandalf here. We might split it up to 2 characters (Gandalf the Grey & Gandalf the White), but then to track Gandalfs full path, one would have to select both. So I am not sure what is the best approach here.
 
Shogoki said:
Gandalf, after his fight with Durins bane.
For this, I am still a bit unsure how to deal with Gandalf here.
Click to expand...
As a computer geek, I love the round-trip to the origin 0,0. I think it's perfect and you should leave it exactly like it is. After all, returning to Illuvatar and being sent back is really what happened to him (well, maybe only as far as Mandos: we're not exactly told the details).
 
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