Arulco Tactical World Map (JA2 1.13)

An interactive web map that stitches all of Jagged Alliance 2 1.13's Arulco tactical maps into one zoomable strategic world map, rendered from the game's real isometric tile graphics (not the low-res radar minimaps). These are the standard 160×160 maps — 202 surface + 38 underground sectors — laid out on the familiar 16×16 sector grid (A–P × 1–16).

Using the map

Open index.html in a browser, or serve the folder (python3 -m http.server) and open it.

• Drag to pan, scroll to zoom, click a sector for its info. High-detail tiles stream in as you zoom.
• Level switcher — Surface / Basement 1–3.
• Roofs toggle — off reveals building interiors (surface).
• Layers panel — towns, mines, SAM sites, enemy garrisons, patrol routes, quests & POIs, NPCs & dealers, loot, creature zones, roads & rivers, terrain, and a difficulty heatmap.
• Touch: one-finger pan, pinch zoom, tap select. Keys: WASD/arrows pan, +/− zoom, F fit, Esc deselect.
• The URL captures the view — #@<col>,<row>,<zoom> and #<SECTOR> are shareable links; ?level=b1, ?roofs=0, and per-layer ?mine=0 work too.

Building it yourself

The game data is not included — point the build at a JA2 1.13 install (paths in build/config.js), then:

node build/build.js --webp --detail 1.0 --webp-quality 70

Requirements: Node.js (zero npm dependencies) and, for WebP output, the cwebp tool (brew install webp). The build decodes the game data and writes dist/ — the per-sector tiles, level overviews, and manifest.json / data.js. Then open index.html or serve the folder.

Handy flags: --one <SECTOR> renders a single sector for debugging, --webp-quality <n> trades size for quality, --detail <0..1> scales tile resolution. Drop --webp for an indexed-PNG fallback (no cwebp needed).

What it reads

Everything is decoded from the game's own files, from scratch:

• SLF archives (maps and tilesets)
• STI / ETRLE images (tile graphics)
• .dat tactical maps (160×160)
• JA2SET tileset tables (XML) — the tile → graphic mapping
• TableData / scripts — sector names, towns, mines, garrisons, loot, etc. (the overlays)

Tiles are sliced into a small multi-resolution pyramid (6400×3200 down to 1600×800), so the viewer only ever loads the on-screen tiles — smooth panning even at native resolution.