Mice and Maps

Presented by Rhiana Heath
Monday 1:50 p.m.–2:15 p.m.
Target audience: Developer

Abstract

A few years ago my brother gave me a copy of a role playing game called Mouse Guard. The premise being you were little mice in the forest going around fighting the evil weasels and trying not to get trampled by a moose, caught up in a snow storm or eaten by snakes in the mean time. It came with a map with a rich story about each of the locations you could visit and characters you could meet along the way.

Now I wasn't familiar with the setting and wanted to have the information close at hand while we played without having to pause and look up information every few minutes so I decided to turn it into an app.

I had just started learning Ruby on Rails so naturally it is a Rails App. I then decided on using leaflet, an open source javascript library for maps, to program the bulk of the functionality.

The app let's you create markers on the MouseGuard map with leaflet, link them to the Ruby Database and update any information about the location including pictures and what the players got up to whilst there.

Today we'll have a look at the app, how it was built, what challenges came up, how I then added in custom leaflet features and eventually got the behaviours I was aiming for.

Presented by

Rhiana Heath

Rhiana is a front end developer with a focus on accessible UX and design based in Melbourne. With a background in educational psychology Rhiana made the move to programming 3 years ago after attending a Rails Installfest run by reinteractive. Combining her skill sets, Rhiana has a passion for making software the is easy for everyone to use and understand. She has spoken at a number of meet ups and conferences with the aim of educating people in the community.

©2016 Linux Australia and linux.conf.au 2017. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Site design by Takeflight. Image credits can be found on our Colophon.