Astra Historia

A complete visualization of the Warhammer 40,000 history across the galaxy.

Contribution

Want to get involved in the Astra Historia? Great! You don't need to be a programmer or psyker to help out - here are some ways you can get started:

Events

It's (hopefully) very easy to add new events - or edit events in the Astra Historia. If you're new to GitHub or source control in general - there's a great resource by GitHub on Contributing to Projects that you should check out first.

When you're done, you'll want to navigate towards the /static/data/events directory. The first child directory here is the millennium the event happened. For example, everything in the 41st millenium will be under /static/data/events/41/.

Inside of that directory, you have a bunch of directories for years within a millennium. These directories contain all the events we currently have recorded in the Astra Historia. For example, the Fall of Tanith (Gaunts Ghosts event) can be found at /static/data/events/41/765/fall-of-tanith.json.

A JSON file is a human-readable way to define things. You can read more about JSON files here. An event JSON file has a specific structure you must follow, it looks something like this:

{
  "name": "Fall of Tanith",
  "summary": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.",
  "library": [9780671784102,9780671784102],
  "locations": ["tanith"]
}

Most of these fields are self-explanatory - but there are 2 fields that are related to other types of data on the website - the library and location fields. Both of these reference the names of other JSON files on the website. For example, Ghostmaker referenced here can be found at /static/data/library/9780671784102.json, and the location referenced here can be found at /static/data/library/tanith.json. Both of these fields are optional, and not required for an event to be added.

To add a new event, simply make a new file in the correct millennium and year the event took place, follow the above structure - and give it an easy to remember name that's readable on the web (e.g. hyphens instead of spaces).

When you're done, create a PR with your work, and we'll get it merged in as soon as possible.

Library & Book References

It's possible to reference literature - usually by the Black Library - when creating events for Astra Historia. Doing so is pretty simple. Much like with Events, you'll need to create a new JSON file - this time under the /static/data/library directory. You'll want to name it the same as it's ISBN-13 number, which you can find by searching the book on OpenLibrary.org. A library entry looks something like this:

{
  "title": "Ghostmaker (Gaunt's Ghosts)",
  "author": "Dan Abnett",
  "synopsis": "On the jungle world of Monthax, Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt and his Tanith First-and-Only await the order to advance into the sweltering wilderness and drive the alien eldar from the Imperial planet.",
  "year": "2020",
  "openLibrary": "OL5843450W",
  "cover": true
}

There are a few non-obious call-outs here. Firstly, the openLibrary field here refers to the ID the book has been given on OpenLibrary.org. We use this to send users to in order to find more information about a book, the editions, and where to buy it.

Secondly, the cover field refers to whether or not you have provided a cover image for the entry. To do that, you'll need to also drop in a jpg image file alongside the JSON file - with the same ISBN-13 code as the filename. For example 9780671784102.jpg would be in the directory with 9780671784102.json. These files can only be jpg files, and should be as small as possible to preserve bandwidth. You can usually find a good cover image on OpenLibrary.org.

Locations

Example location:

{
  "name": "Tanith",
  "sector": "Sabbat Worlds",
  "location": [-12.8,-8.5]
}

Coders

Astra Historia was built pretty quickly as I wanted to learn Svelte and ThreeJS over a weekend. As a result - there's probably going to be a bunch of bugs, performance issues, and more. Please open PRs liberally, every little helps.

Outstanding issues

• Needs substantially more data, locations, and library references
• In general, though I think the galaxy looks pretty cool - I'd love to get it as close to Warhammer 40K accurate as possible. Any help in this direction would be greatly appreciated!
• There's a little too much transparency on the warp storms - and stars underneath show through. Unsure how to render this better right now.
• The warp in general could look - frankly - a lot cooler!
• Mobile support

Copyright

It's important to mention that Astra Historia is an unofficial fan-site for the Warhammer 40,000 universe - and all references, art, and literature related to Warhammer is © Games Workshop Limited.

GW, Games Workshop, Citadel, White Dwarf, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Battletome, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or ™, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.

License

Astra Historia is open-source under The MIT License (MIT).

The MIT license distributed with this repository only applies to the source code of Astra Historia itself, and not any copyrighted Games Workshop material.