Sectors Without Number: Hidden Entities, Notes, and More

Hidden entities and their children are marked with an icon in the sidebar.

Hello All,

This update is all about making the game master’s life easier. I’ll talk about two new print options, ability to keep entities hidden from your players, markdown based notes, and much more. All of this is live over on sectorswithoutnumber.com. Let’s dive into it.

Hidden Entities

In the sidebar edit you now have the option in the attributes section to set your entity as hidden. Not only that, but on the far right of the entity lists is a column that allows you to go through and set any children as hidden as well.

When an entity is hidden, it and all of it’s children will not show up for your players. Only you as a creator/game master can see them. If your checkboxes are disabled, that means a parent entity is already hidden.

As it currently stands, only entire entities can be hidden. The ability to hide specific attributes and world tags is already on the to-do list. That feature will go hand in hand with custom attributes and world tags.

(left) Sector map available in both print options, (middle) Expanded printable with one entity per page, (right) Condensed printable with one entity type per table

Print Options

You might have noticed that you weren’t able to print all of the fancy new additional points of interest when that was released not long ago. Well, you are now able to print them off and you get two print options!

The left image in the figure above shows the sector map that is rendered as the first page on both print options. The difference is that now you can easily tell which are systems and which are black holes.

The center image shows the expanded print option; a single entity per page. All of the entity’s attributes are displayed in a box to the right of the page while the rest is open. This is intended to make it easier for you to take notes when you are playing the game at a table with your friends.

The image on the right shows the condensed print option that allows you to see all of each type of entity in a nicely formatted table all at once. It’s great when you need to quickly lookup things up while in game.

To access these print options just select print in the sidebar navigation header, select which option you’d like to print, and click continue.

Notes

This has been the most requested feature since this website started by far. Notes can exist on any type of entity and can be hidden from your players if you so choose.

An example markdown based note.

WHAT!? Is that an image in the sidebar? You bet it is!

Markdown is extremely flexible. You can add ordered and unordered lists, images, links, headers, tables, quotes, and so much more. You can see a full syntax reference over on Daring Fireball. If you are going to add an image, you have to provide the URL link to it. Uploading an image to Sectors Without Number is not possible at this time.

You can start creating a note now on any entity by entering edit mode in the sidebar, and clicking the create button in the note header.

Entity Descriptions

A field in the sidebar for editing or adding descriptions to your planets, space stations, moons, and the rest of your entities is now available. You could easily make a description note on an entity, but I found it valuable to have a quick entity description right up at the top when you are looking in the sidebar.

New Sync Limitations

I spoke about this briefly at the end of the last update, but now local sectors saving has been completely removed. You must sign in to sync your sectors. If you have a sector saved locally, you can still view it but to make an update you must sign up so your local sector can be synced. Please note that the ability to view local sectors will be removed entirely in the coming months.

For those of you with an account, the total number of sectors you can have synced is now set at 5. If you were lucky enough to create more than that before the update went out, you can keep the ones you have but will not be able to create any more. To keep the servers running and the lights on I’m hoping to create a paid tier to extend the total number of sectors on your account. The paid tier will also include some more goodies down the road. Stay tuned for that.

Upcoming Projects

The roadmap is becoming clear and exciting, but all of this is subject to change as I’m sure you well know.

1. Improved Performance (June 2018): Over time I’ve been slowly lowering the maximum sector size because I don’t want sectors to take forever to load/save/render. It’s about time I fix that so you can render your 50x50 sectors.
2. Custom Attributes, Tags, and Entities (Late Summer/Fall 2018): Customize the generator to your exact preferences.
3. Paid Tier Goodies (End of year): I’m not ready to divulge my plans yet, but prepare yourselves!

These are other fun things that could sneak in at any time:

• Circular Sectors: Put a black hole in the center for added awesomeness.
• Sector Summary: You should be able to see all your planets together without having to open the printable.
• Adventure, Alien, and Faction Generation: These items could be assigned to multiple entities.
• Import / Export: If you aren’t the trusting type and really don’t want to sign up for the site, you could export your sector when you’re done editing it and upload it again when you need to.

As always, if you run into any problems or have any suggestions for new features, feel free to message me on reddit at /u/mpigsley or directly at mpigsley@gmail.com.