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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 15, 2022 06:20 PM |
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Game Map shapes
Seems like hexes are the settled-on two-dimensional representation of space. They are the simplest equal-distant and allow all-directional movement - squares are simpler but not equa-distant.
Staying in 2D for the moment.. is there no other choice, whether for a tactical map or the larger area map?
Older games like Civ and Homm1-3 used squares in the area map, but Homm altered the distance traveled to account for it.
What are the benefits and drawbacks of various shapes?
add/edit: hexes seem more complicated than I thought, they are actually simpler than 'squares' which allow diagonal movement, which are in effect octagonals, but that shape cannot be drawn in 2d. Is this more complicated than it needs to be?
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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 15, 2022 06:47 PM |
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Koei games like Bandit Kings of Ancient China and Uncharted Waters used the hex in the tactical (combat) map, in fact the number of 'nodes' varies for the different territories in the are map, as territories of the static (ie. not 'open') nature have always been.
The choice of unitary, whether something is one 'territory' or an infinite series of points, like Darklands, is also a choice.
So, basically, what level of granularity do you want.. in Darklands even the tactical map was non-unitary (ie. 'infinite' granualarity).
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted May 15, 2022 10:23 PM |
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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 15, 2022 11:11 PM |
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Actually relevant, I'm watching the video seriously.
..
There, you have answered the question.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted May 16, 2022 02:04 AM |
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No problem. Any time is good to spread the hexagon gospel, my brother 
____________
Never changing = never improving
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LouWeed
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 16, 2022 11:37 PM |
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There's actually three regular tilings - squares, hexagons, and triangles. Anything other than a tiling of squares is harder to implement from a programming point of view
A square tiling that allows diagonal movement can be represented as a semi-regular tiling of squares and octagons, but the octagons are like three times the size of the squares
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_tilings_by_convex_regular_polygons#Regular_tilings
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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 16, 2022 11:49 PM |
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There is a name for this - "tilings" haha I did not know!
 
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted May 17, 2022 01:47 AM |
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i woudn't say that "everything which is not a queare" is harder to program. That is quite arbitrary. perhaps there are more ready-made tools using aquares but that is bias and not just being "easier"
Actually, that is only true for a fla euclidean surface
A sphere cannot be perfectly covered by squares or even hexagons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_uniform_tilings_on_the_sphere,_plane,_and_hyperbolic_plane#Summary_spherical,_Euclidean_and_hyperbolic_tilings
____________
Never changing = never improving
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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 17, 2022 02:33 AM |
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What do you guys think about a 'flat'/2d map with a 'terrain' character vs. adding an "altitude" dimension, albeit just covering one characteristic of what consists terrain.?
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LouWeed
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 17, 2022 02:41 AM |
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NimoStar said:
i woudn't say that "everything which is not a queare" is harder to program. That is quite arbitrary. perhaps there are more ready-made tools using aquares but that is bias and not just being "easier"
The screen you're looking at to read this uses a cartesian coordinate system to uniquely identify each pixel as being at a particular x & y - i.e the pixels are already arranged in a grid which is essentially a square tiling. So calculating sizes and locations for your own square tiling doesn't require anything more complicated than multiplication & division. Anything that's not just right angles, you have to do actual maths to translate everything to cartesian coordinates
Just the way it is. For the record, I prefer hexagons.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted May 17, 2022 04:51 AM |
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The screen has zero importance in designing the game tho. The pixels and the rest of the stuff is handled by the renderers and other pieces of fundamental hardware and software, not by the game's movement grid.
And there were actually other pixel geometries made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_geometry
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Never changing = never improving
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LouWeed
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 17, 2022 06:23 AM |
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Yup you're right - nothing directly to do with the hardware, it all depends on the low-level pieces of software that do the actual interfacing to the hardware for you - and I don't know of a single one that uses anything other than cartesian coordinates. And any programming language that has built-in support for drawing stuff on the screen does the same.
The whole up/north, down/south, left/west, right/east thing is pretty inbuilt, not just computers, but us too. Just look at the language.
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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 17, 2022 06:37 PM |
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new city builders
add: Why are there literally an endless supply of these indentical games? Are they all 'made' using the same program? Can any of these get more than 100 players? What is the point of everyone making the same thing with different skins? This is madness.
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LouWeed
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 17, 2022 11:45 PM |
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Just play sim city 2000 - surely that's the Vice City of city building games
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purerogue
Known Hero
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posted May 17, 2022 11:50 PM |
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Not looking for something to play, trying to understand the industry.
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