Unofficial Lancer Universe Timeline

[harsh shell]

Overview

The Unofficial Lancer Universe Timeline (https://rishenko.github.io/react-lancer-timeline/) is a third-party design aid for players, GMs, lore lovers, content creators, and more. It attempts to provide an easy to use, interactive timeline containing events from both first and third party publications. Timeline events can be filtered by a variety of criteria, and each event has a link button for users to share with others or save for themselves.

What About Custom Timelines?

Players can also easily edit and save (by downloading) their own custom timelines by using the provided Timeline Data Entry tools on the site itself! These custom timelines can be downloaded, shared with friends and others, and reuploaded to the site at any time!

What About Third Party Creator Timelines?

I would love to add more events for third-party publications. If you, or someone you know, has either published or is about to publish content in the Lancer universe and would like to add timeline entries to the ULUT, please reach out. You can either:

• visit the github page (https://github.com/rishenko/react-lancer-timeline) and open a pull request
• post a message here with the ask
• hit me up directly via DM

Just make sure that if you ask for a third-party publication to be added but are not the author, that you get permission from the author or have the author give me a thumbs up.

Why bother? Well, not only does it help other players understand timing and context with the greater Lancer universe, but it help other players discover your work. Homepage links are provided for all sources, so this is yet another way to get your content out there for others to find.

What else is this post for?

• Site updates will be posted here, especially when adding new timeline events and content, or correcting preexisting ones.
• Bugs or issues people are having with the site
• Any and all feature recommendations

[sterile dagger]

First - very cool project! I'm sure this is going to come in very handy for all sorts of people, and you've done a great job making it look nice and usable.

I did notice a typo - in 3135, the description has "Ras Sharma" instead of "Ras Shamra"

I was also wondering if you're planning to include events from Battlegroup? It's first-party but not on itch, so understandable if you missed it.

[honest crypt]

I'm curious as to the place of battlegroup in a collated cannon timeline, as it moves the timeline out of lancer's starting position of 5016u

[quick sphinx]

same question WRT Wallflower and the other modules

[frank drift]

I will imagine that managing 3rd party modules will get dicey at best the more that come out, though it’s exciting to see another resource spreading awareness about some of them

[austere urchin]

Ras Shawarma 🌯

Rad project, and very relevant to my current interests

[harsh shell]

Re Missing Data (Battlegroup/Wallflower/Solstice/Dustgrave)
I just haven't sat down to add these. They definitely need to be added. I will likely get to them in the coming days unless somebody gets to it first.

Ras Shwarma
Nice catch! I'll correct that later today.

Different Starting Points
I have special "marker" and No Faction timeline events that can be used to specify things like "5014, Wallflower Starts Here"

3rd Party Modules
It will likely get to be dicey over time, especially if a module contradicts first party timeline events. Should this start happening, I'll likely adjust the site where third party modules default to be filtered out, and people can toggle those they want to see.

[harsh shell]

I might default to having first party modules (Solstice/Wallflower/Dustgrave) filtered out to prevent people from accidentally spoiling themselves.

[sterile dagger]

Yeah, that might be a good idea

You could do something simple like "5014u - the events of No Room for a Wallflower take place on Hercynia" as a spoiler-free version.

[harsh shell]

Good idea, I'll look into that.

So far, came up with 11 events from NRWF Act I, half of which are relative events, meaning they are x number of years before/after some specified time. Will definitely be adding a default filtered-out setting on these modules.

[tardy drift]

Fantastic project, filling in a niche we didn’t even know we needed. Is there an ability to whitelist categories instead of blacklisting them? If not, that would be my suggestion. Also, how hard would it be for people to fork this project to make timelines for home games?

[harsh shell]

Thanks for the kind words! What types of categories are you referring to re white/blacklisting?

As for forking and making your own timeline, all of the following are driven by a json file src/lancer-timeline-data.json:

• source table
• filter buttons for factions, sources, publishing attributes
• all timeline entries

Modify those to your heart's content, load the React app, and there you go!

6/22 EVENING CHANGES

• added No Room for Wallflower Act I data
• fixed Ras Shamra typos
• added flag to sources to filter out specified sources by default (starting with NRFW)
• fixed timeline entry links to open in a new tab
• removed empty faction circles from entries and button for no-faction

[tardy drift]

Re:white/blacklisting: if someone just wants to see information about the aunic empire, it seems like they have to click every other faction to disable those categories. Is there some sort of shortcut I missed that makes the process of focusing in on a faction/source that I missed? If not, I think it would be a good idea for a feature. Again, fantastic work, and thanks for getting back to me so swiftly about potentially firing timelines. I’ll have to give it a go!

[harsh shell]

Let me give it some thought. I have concerns around complicating the interface by having too many potential avenues to turn a bunch of things on and off, but again, let me see what I can do. If you or others have ideas for a simplified user experience and flow to accommodate this, I'm all ears.

[harsh shell]

I will likely take the route shown and tested in the images below. I've added All Factions and All Sources buttons to the top of their respective sections. Clicking on them will toggle the entire list together. This way you can switch from the default blacklist approach to a whitelist.

[harsh shell]

I see why folks are asking for Battlegroup. There's a lot there. This'll take a little bit.

[harsh shell]

6/24 MORNING CHANGES

• added All Factions and All Sources filter buttons and faction/source data

Regarding Battlegroup, I now realize that most of the timeline events are the same events but told from different perspectives (Union, HA, KTB). So I'm going to consolidate the Battlegroup entries that are taking place at the same locations/timeframe.

[harsh shell]

6/24 EVENING CHANGES

• added Lancer: Battlegroup timeline entries
• links in the Sources table now open in a new tab

[harsh shell]

Have started work on the following features, which will take some time:

• give people the ability to modify the timeline within the browser
• allow people to download the timeline data (json file) after they are happy with it
• allow people to upload the timeline data and overwrite the timeline they alone see in their browser

My goal is to help people do the following:

• create timelines for their own campaigns or third party content since they can share the file with others and have them upload and view it themselves
• allow people an easier way to add/update timeline events that they can send in to me without having to learn about JSON, github, and the like

[frank drift]

oh hell yeah, that sounds super useful for home games and living worlds

[harsh shell]

The following is a dev update:

• can create new timeline entries
• can modify existing timeline entries
• allows for multiple factions and multiple sources
• timeline entries have an edit button next to their link button
• can download the json timeline data

Todo:

• add functionality to remove timeline entries
• add functionality to upload timeline data
• add functionality to download data with and without edit markers (like how MODIFIED now appears) so people can work on a timeline while still being aware of changes made

None of this is deployed. Likely a few more days of coding/cleanup/styling fixes.

[harsh shell]

Have it all working. There are still some UX issues, such as handling going back and forth between the edit area and later sections of the timeline. I made it such that if you are in edit mode and click on the edit icon, it'll take you directly to the edit section. The two pics show the edit mode being on versus off and some of the differences.

[harsh shell]

Aaaaand timeline editing is now live! Please play with it and provide feedback on any bugs, UX issues, or what have you. I expect there will be a few!

[harsh shell]

At some point I'll add faction editing capabilities so people can create custom factions for their campaigns and associate timeline entries with them. But that will be in a bit because I'm going to pause new development to take a break and focus on fixing any timeline editing bugs or needs that arise.

[tardy drift]

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but as a test I wipped up some timeline entries corresponding to the lore that comes with my custom "C'mon gang, we need to save Passacagmas" Sitrep.

A couple things I noted:
1.a) I didn't realize I needed to reset the entry form everytime to make a new uuid so the first time I was writing entries I was just replacing one entry mulitple times. I ended up having to rewrite a bunch of entries. Probably just an example of me being dumb but maybe there could be a dialogue box that pops up when you're about to replace/update an entry?
1.b) or maybe reformat the uuid box so that it's green if it would create a new entry and make it red if it's about to update/replace an entry? That would definitely be useful because there were many times I got paranoid that I was about to rewrite something so I reset the entry form multiple times for some entries. Being able to see at a glance would also be very helpful.

Either way, it was still a lot of fun to put together! Excited to see the new faction editing capabilities when they arise!

[harsh shell]

Hahah, holy shit this is awesome! Thank you so much for using it and putting all this effort in. Sparri Claus - I love it!

This is the perfect place to post and one of the reasons I made this post: Not everybody wants to open github issues but do want to report an issue or ask for a feature. I'm here for feedback and to make things better and easier for everybody.

You raise a fine point, and I like the suggestions. I'm also considering adding a modal - a popup choice after saving - asking whether the user wants to Keep Editing or Start New. Let me do some thinking and tinkering and report back.

[sleek goblet]

i absolutely love this. been compiling a comprehensive timeline of player backstory events and setting events in here and its been smooth sailing and bug-free so far, past a momentary confusion at the start about the need to reset the entry form.

thanks for this!! i love having timelines to look at and to use to sort everything out in my head, so this helps a lot

[harsh shell]

Probably going with what you see in the pic: you click Create/Update Entry button and a modal pops up asking if you want to Keep Editing or Start New.

Have friends coming over for grilling, so not likely to get this out until this evening or tomorrow morning.

[harsh shell]

7/1 AFTERNOON CHANGES

• adds a modal that appears after saving an entry, giving the choice between Start New or Keep Editing
• modifies edit entry link to take user to the year field instead of the top of the Timeline Data Entry section