Border Timelapse

Status: abandoned. This repository is archived and unmaintained. It is published here for reference only.

A Node.js CLI for converting historical geographic data (GeoJSON, Shapefile, TopoJSON, CShapes) into a normalised keyframe JSON format, intended to drive an animated 9:16 border-map video generator for short-form video platforms.

Only the ingestion stage was built. The renderer, video export, and frontend were never started.

What works

• CLI ingestion script (scripts/convert.js) that reads scenario configs and emits normalised keyframe JSON.
• Adapters for GeoJSON snapshots and CShapes-style temporal datasets.
• Three processed scenarios in data/output/:
  • Mongol Empire (1206–1368)
  • British Empire (1815–1960)
  • USSR collapse (1989–1991)
• A single-page HTML viewer (viewer.html) that renders the output JSON with vanilla SVG for sanity-checking.

What was planned but not built

• Five remaining launch scenarios (Roman Empire, Alexander, Napoleon, WW2, USA expansion).
• Shapefile and TopoJSON adapter implementations (stubbed but unfinished).
• React frontend with D3 rendering and a timeline scrubber.
• Canvas-based frame capture and ffmpeg.wasm export.
• Validation script (validate.js).
• Server-side rendering pipeline.

Usage

npm install
node scripts/convert.js --scenario mongol_empire

Output is written to data/output/{scenario}.json. To preview, open viewer.html in a browser and load one of the output files.

Source data files belong in data/raw/ (gitignored). Source URLs per scenario are listed in claude.md.

Output schema

{
  "scenario": "mongol_empire",
  "label": "Mongol Empire",
  "startYear": 1206,
  "endYear": 1368,
  "keyframes": [
    {
      "year": 1206,
      "label": "1206",
      "territories": [
        { "name": "Mongol Empire", "color": "#c0392b", "geometry": { "type": "MultiPolygon", "coordinates": [] } }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

All geometry is GeoJSON in WGS84 (EPSG:4326), simplified with @turf/simplify.

Project context

The original design notes, scenario list, and data sources are preserved in claude.md for anyone who wants to fork and continue.

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.