I say go for it. You never know if something will work unless you give it a shot. When I did a google search for maps of Gensokyo, I see that there are many people who have made maps of what Gensokyo might look like already. It might be worth taking a look at all of them before you start.
Thank you! I've been taking a look at some of them, and I might try and look at more pictures before deciding.
Honestly though, I don't really see how making an interactive map app for a fictional world is going to turn people who don't care about Touhou into loyal followers of the church of ZUN. Am I suppose to bring out my smartphone and say to my friends "hey guys, checkout this map for a fictional world that I really like". I don't think something like that really has something that will hook people into becoming interested in it.
I believe that the thing that really hooks people into liking Touhou is the games, the characters and the music. Using those 3 things I believe would be more effective to bring people into Touhou than just describing the world that it is all contained in.
The main reason for this is because of the main reason I like Touhou, and what I also think Touhou truly is. Sure, it starts with the games, but I honestly don't think that those truly embody what Touhou has become.
I think Touhou is a bit better described as an entire fictional WORLD. The characters, their quirks, and their connections with each other in an interesting setting is what truly sets Touhou apart. The music is pretty good too, and helps form that connection with said world.
Of course, many other games and books have successfully made their own worlds as well. It's just that those things usually focus on the world itself (such as in RPGs). The Touhou games... don't really introduce people to the depth of the world, since there isn't much dialogue or explanation within them (though print works can help expand on this). Most of this information has to be either obtained from the wiki (which can be a pain), or by gathering it from doujin works by various authors. As such, I want to introduce people more to the WORLD of Touhou, rather than the games, if that makes any sense?
The reason for a MAP is that each character has their own little "group" of characters that they interact with, usually originating at a specific location (the SDM characters interact with other SDM characters, the Underground characters interact with other Underground characters, etc). So this will be an easy way for people to get information on each group, one at a time.
The end goal of this is to just give people enough information so that they will be able to read doujins without getting confused as to "who's this? who's that? why are they saying that?"
Still, do you plan to release it onto an app store and charge money for it? I'm not sure how that should work but if it is considered a doujin work then I guess it's okay?
Um, no I won't be charging money for it (in fact I'll be making it open source as with all of my projects), and I think you're mistaking what I'm making. It'll be a WEB SITE app, where you just go to a link and you're there. Mobile support is something I'll keep in mind though, but it'll mainly be developed as a quick website you can easily pull up.
your forgot about all of the places in Perfect Memento in Strict Sense
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Most of the places I mentioned are already in there though, and the main concern here is that each character can have their own place on the map.