Map Mode

[KrazyHorse]

What do you think guys? Civ I was horizontal&verical squares, Civ II was diagonal squares, many games use hexagonal tiles since this is the only isometric tiling of the plane.

[Ecthy]

Hexagonal is quite he way to go.. I've been convinced by that map mode since I've played Age of Wonders. of course, you can only walk "straight" into six directions:

up (north)
up-right (northeast)
down-righ (southeast)t
down (south)
down-left (southwest)
up-left (northwest)

that means there's no way to g ostraight into West or East, which demands some nice feature, like another movement points system... by that, you could "jump" over certain borders, using more movement points than by just going straight...

going northeast might cost 2 points, so does going southeast afterwards... 1 tile east - 4 points
if you go east straight, directly - 3 points

does this make sense?

[KrazyHorse]

well, it doesn't make much sense if you stick to thinking in the original 4-cardinal-points system, but it does mean that it costs the same amount of movement points to go between any 2 equally-spaced tiles on the map, no matter what their relative orientation

[SerapisIV]

What is the anaronym next to something else, JDGAD, mean?

[Ecthy]

yeah, what does that mean? now that I really care, I have chosen my pick, I'd like to know however

[KrazyHorse]

Just Don't Give A Damn

[007]

actually coming back to the map.
I think the map should not be flat. It must be a globe.
So instead of paning the map u'd rotate sphere. Somethin similar was done loooooong ago in X-force series.
So u'd see squears getting smaler close to horison and fool scale in the migle of the screen.

ALSO, I'd like to see smooth zoom in on a batalfield instead of just changing the screen. Besides I don't want to see citywals to be a beckground picture, i want them to be visualized as a real obstical.

[Inverse Icarus]

screen shottys show a isometric, civII view.

i like it better anyway.

[Captain]

Hmm, I like the concept of a globe, but I don't know how to deal with the poles. Ideally, there should be fewer tiles there, but that would result in an ugly and non-intuitive map.

Anyone have any ideas on how to deal with poles?

which of the square tiles, diagonal tiles, or hex tiles would be the best solution for this? or is a totally new/different type of map required?

(I think civ 3 is going with the diagonal tiles no matter what the poll results are, changing the basic tiling changes gameplay considerably and they'd have to rebalance everything)

[007]

if u think of a geosphere, it is made up out of equal triangular faces.
A triangulat tile is not that convenient, so (i guess) the next step is hexagon.

[Rollo_CH]

Would be nice to see hexagons, for instance the borders would be nicer...now they look like square boxes, like most of the United States, and some of the African countries, made from the Generals at the drawing tables.

[Geoff the Medio]

The "largest" possible platonic solid is the icosahedron. It has 20 sides, all of which are triangles. It is not physically possible to construct a "sphere-like polyhedron" with all equal sides, on which all the sides of the sides are equal in length any more complex than this.

Think of a soccerball (or non-american football ball if you prefer). It has both hexagons and pentagons on it... because it's not possible to construct a sphere-shape with all uniform "tiles" with that many "tiles"

This means that any attempt to implimenet a spherical globe in a civ-like game would have serious problems. It would only be possible to have a spherical model of the gameworld with all same-shaped tiles, of size greater than 20 tiles total, if the tiles are not all the same size. (again, this assume the tiles are simple shapes... eg. equilateral triangles, regular hexagons or squares)

[Provost Harrison]

Forget the idea of a globe, that would be complicated and confusing. Now civ games have always used quadrilateral tiles. I think the principle of the hexagonal square would be better, personally, as I have seen it used to good effect in other games (PG for example) and would even out movement between squares a bit. I personally think it would be a good move, at least to test...

[KrazyHorse]

Geoff makes a good point; he's obviously had as many math classes as I have. The problems with a globe really do come down to the fact that the only regular solids are tetrahedrons,octahedrons, cubes, dodecahedrons and icosahedrons. Of all these, icosahedrons have the most faces at 20, but these sides are triangles...not very convenient, and not isometric (even less so than the misnamed civII system). Dodecahedrons are smaller (12 faces) but are closer to isometric, with pentagons for sides. All of this goes to show that a civII size map in full 3-D is not possible.

Anyway, what I wanted to mention was the fact that a city surrounded by 2 rows of hexagons would have a total of 19 resource tiles, not too far off from the current (and misshapen) 21-square city radius.

[007]

I got it figured out

You all are right, that straight with plaotonic solids we can't solve the problem.

However, take Octahedron for example:
Break each triangolar face into triangular mach that follows contur of sphere.
(I'm a grahpic designer - work a litle with 3d-VIZ)
So, "3D viz" can do a sphere composed of triangular faces, based on tetrahidron, octahidron and icosahidron.

The next step is to combine 6 triangular faces into 1 tile, Wich creates hexogonal map with 6 rectangular poles (norrth, south and 4 poles on equator).

Actualy drawing out all possible solutions brought me an indea:

Fuge the tiles at ALL. Measure city growth in acres and speed of units in miles per turn.
for example 1 worker can work 10 000 acers around city. A warrior can move 100 miles per turn .
It can't get more real than that!


But, Unfortunately Firaxis already has it's graphic engine runing and they won't change it to hexogonal model.
So the thing i'd like to see is atleast spherical distortion of the screen just to feel the glob.

[KrazyHorse]

Wow 007...didn't expect anyone to go into so much detail. I agree with your comments on squashing the poles; it's already done on some maps to avoid the ridiculous situation in which the Mercator projection makes Alaska look as big as the rest of the US. I just did a search; the area-accurate map is called the Peters projection. This is about the geekiest discussion I've had in a while . Map projections, solid geometry and graphics design as they relate to video games. Oh lord.

[007]

the Peterson's map is indeed politicaly correct, but it still does not provide a geometrical model for a random planet.
The longer i think about the map the stronger i'm getting convinced that the game doesn't need tiles at ALL.
I consided tiles a rudiment from paper based game that by a miracle got carried on.

[Geoff the Medio]

he's obviously had as many math classes as I have.

nope. Previous discussion on the subject a few years ago. No math class ever talked about icosahedrons. (hedra?)

As for the modelling the sphere by breaking the faces up into smaller triangles, this doesn't work because it requires that the triangles be non-equilateral and not all the same size. If you take an original triangular face, then put 3 new vertices along the edges of the triangle, then push those new vertices out from the centre of the whole sphere (to better model the surface), the new triangle located directly in the middle of the old triangle is bigger than the other triangles around the outside, as well, the 3 corner triangles are no longer equilateral. (hard to explain w/o a diagram... someone with web space, feel free).

Another point of interest: If you ignore the differences in sizes of the triangles, it's possible to construct a grid of tilted quadrilaterals from a sphere modelled out of triangles. There might be some minor problems getting the grid to line up depending on the numbers involved, but basically, if you have a row of triangles, the row above and below is "flipped" upside down compared to it... (this mirroring works in 3 directions). if you take the top corner of the upper row, and connect it, across 2 triangles, to the rightmost corner of the 2nd triangle over in the row, then down to the bottom corner of the triangle below the original, then up and left to the left corner of the triangle 2 to the left from the original, then back up to the top corner of the origianl, you get a quadrilateral that looks pretty much like a tilted civ-style tile... except that it has 4 vertices at its corner, and 2 internal ones (useful for mounthains or trenches or whatever).

I realize that's hard to understand w/o a diagram... but again, no webspace. I made a nice diagram though...

[dainbramaged13]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Forget the idea of a globe, that would be complicated and confusing.

RIght on!

Now civ games have always used quadrilateral tiles. I think the principle of the hexagonal square would be better, personally, as I have seen it used to good effect in other games (PG for example) and would even out movement between squares a bit. I personally think it would be a good move, at least to test...

WTF are hexagonal squares?


What do you mean by isometric, and why do you care so much that it would be so?
I dont understand why you think hexagons would be so much better? It creates too many movement problems to be worth it. AOE can use hexagons because they dont define movement, only building placement and such. I played a turn-based war game (some really old ww2 game) with hexagonal squares at my uncles house once, the movement system was incredibly confusing...

To the math geeks on the forums looking for incredibly complex and drastic solutions to the globe problem - FORGET IT!
It's not realistic, and not even WORTH it!

[Darkknight]

Hexagonal that's what we're doing in Humankind. It's a lot more realistic . The distance you move when you move up/down/sideways on the isometric map is something like 1.44 times that when you move diagonal when its a hexagon they're all equal.

[Darkknight]

Yeah! I just read everyone for a 3D globe.
That's easier said then done though. Spent months on it.

[007]

but, but,

if there is no tiels the Globe is easy.



well geoff we were claimed as math freaks so I'll carry on
filling in the face of octahidron with raws of stacked triangulars (like in pool(billiard)) will allow for all the same equalateral triangles.
Want another math problem?
Devide a square into 3 equal parts with straight edge and pensil only (no measurments).

[Geoff the Medio]

To the math geeks on the forums looking for incredibly complex and drastic solutions to the globe problem - FORGET IT!
It's not realistic, and not even WORTH it!

My suggestion was complicated in terms of how to set it up geometrically, but in terms of gameplay, it would be just like current CivII/III, but wrapped nicely around a globe.... which is what really matters, right?

filling in the face of octahidron with raws of stacked triangulars (like in pool(billiard)) will allow for all the same equalateral triangles.

True, but that's not a globe. That's an octahedron with lots of triangles on it. To make a globe, you'd have to push out the triangles on the inside of the face of the octahedron so it would more closely approximate a sphere, which would also distort the triangles as I described.

That's also basically what I suggested before, except I chopped up the rows of triangles to make standard CivII style tilted tiles. (commonly called isometric, I think)

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by 007
the Peterson's map is indeed politicaly correct, but it still does not provide a geometrical model for a random planet.

Well, what I meant was that I wish the designers would take into acount the smallness of the area actually in the polar regions, which is what the Peters map does. In the CivII world map, Siberia, Northern Canada and Greenland together took up half the available land area. While these regions are large, their size was exaggerated by the Mercator projection. The bias grows so that it is impossible to even represent the actual North or South poles on such a map, leading to the problem of excess temperate zones.

[To_Serve_Man]

Ick, Hexagons? come on, arent we a little to old to be playing with Hexagons? To move East or West takes twice as long cause i cant travel a striaght line (diagonal up, diagonal down, etc etc). An Octagon (maybe Actagon?) would be better. With 8 sides I could go all directions in a striaght line....

It was mentioned before to make the map a Point system instead of a box system. I support that idea. The point system is kinda like.... Lords of Magic.

[007]

I want to see u draw octagonal map, ok, just 10 tiles.

[marcuspeddle]

I voted for hexagonal because I used to use that kind of graph paper for making maps when I played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. It was great for paper maps but I can see how it might cause some problems for moving in a computer game. Not only that, what keys would you use for moving on a hexagon map? Well, 7,8,9 for the upper half of the hex and 1,2,3 for the lower half of the hex might work, I suppose.

[Darkknight]

DOH!
You cant draw a octagonal map. Hexagonal is the best you can get I'm afraid, if you want it to be realsitic. Co-ordinate system still uses squares. The best way is to use a globe made of triangles. Each triangle is excactly the same.

[To_Serve_Man]

Hey your right!!! You cant make an octagons hook together! hehe, silly me I didnt even think of that.. I guess we really aren't to old for hexagons... hehe oh well... i still think that a point system would be better... or Civ2 style

[KrazyHorse]

Okay. If you don't mind, check this out. It took forever to draw in Paintbrush. F***.