The Mapping Lab

One map in, hundreds of route-choice challenges out.

The Mapping Lab turns an orienteering map into playable challenges. You supply the map; the pipeline finds pairs of points that make an interesting leg, computes route alternatives between them over the map's passable ground, measures each one, and renders the images the game shows you.

Two things every map needs

Layer	What it is	What it decides
The colour map	The map a runner sees	What the challenge looks like on screen
The impassability layer	A black-and-white mask: black is impassable, white is passable	Where routes may go, and therefore what the correct answer is

The mask is what keeps a generated route out of a building or a lake.

Four ways in

Source	What happens	Best for
A pair of TIFs from OCAD	You export the colour map and the impassable-objects map yourself at 508 DPI. No generation step, no editing step.	Anyone with the OCAD file (fastest and most accurate)
A PDF, PNG or JPG	The impassability layer is generated from the image, usually in one to three minutes, and you refine it by hand.	Maps you only have as an image
An OCAD file (.ocd)	You upload the OCAD file itself and Routster renders the map and the impassability layer straight from its symbols. Sprint maps only.	Sprint maps, when you have the .ocd
A local run upload	A folder produced by a local run of the pipeline. It skips processing.	People who run the pipeline themselves

Upload Your Map: the map name and the four ways to provide a map — Step one of the wizard: the four ways in.

Use the OCAD route where possible

The impassability layer comes from the map's own objects rather than from a colour analysis of an image, and it skips the editing step.

Three kinds of challenge from one map

The same source map can feed route choice, Route Finder and Route Navigator. They are separate generation jobs with separate parameters: route choice needs legs with competitive alternatives, Route Finder legs where the shortest path is non-obvious, and Route Navigator a network of junctions.

Sharing

Visibility	Who can play it
Private	Only you. This is where every upload starts.
Club	Members of your club. The setting for preparing a squad for a specific terrain.
Community	Everyone. Needs a location so people can find it.

None of these are the official pool, so attempts on them do not feed the global leaderboard. They do count on the map's own leaderboard. See Leaderboards.

Where to go next

Finding source maps

Where good source files come from, and the permission question.

OCAD workflow

Two exports at 508 DPI, the fastest and most accurate route in.

Standard uploads

PDF, PNG or JPG, with the impassability layer generated for you.

Parameter guide

Every knob on the generation job, with defaults.

Common pitfalls

The handful of mistakes that ruin most first uploads.