Today we deployed a website update that achieved something we’ve wanted for a long time: no zoom limits! For so long, we had it so you could only zoom the map out so far - this was due to performance issues related to loading thousands of locations on the map (and in the results section). We spent the last month tackling this issue. It might not necessarily be done, and it’s certainly not perfect, but we think it’s cool! Check it out.

What is happening.

This is another in a series of articles about map tile hosting. Pinball Map has now been around for like 16 years, and so has tried a few things. I think the overall rundown is: Google Maps, Mapbox, Maplibre using self-hosted mbtiles from OpenMapTiles, then back to Mapbox, and now self-hosted pmtiles from Protomaps. This post is about our experience switching from Mapbox to Protomaps. It covers the overall steps for self-hosting on Cloudflare, and our first month’s bill (it was very small).

Live to blog, blog to live. That’s what we sometimes say, especially when we remember to blog a blog.

It’s always risky to publish a blog post on April 1. Especially a serious one. And I can assure you, with the utmost sincerity, that this is a serious post. You can’t joke about RSS.