* Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) @ 2003-11-20 17:40 Jakob Ilves 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch ` (3 more replies) 0 siblings, 4 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Jakob Ilves @ 2003-11-20 17:40 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq7 Hello! The orbiter is back, and in this email I'm considering to take a trip to the moon... And you are welcome to join me on the ride... One thing I've been tinkering with on paper and in Java for approx 10-12 years is to let strategy games take place not only on a flat hexagon playfield but upon a playfield where you have occasional pentagons and septagons thrown in. For instance, there were a few strategy games written in the 80s (Task force games' "Cerberus" and Game Designers Workshop's "Traveller") which uses hexagonal maps of planets where a few hexes were replaced with pentagons, resulting in a playfield which topologically was a icosokaeder (20 sided die). That would be cool to use in Xconq (or any other computer strategy game as well). Imagine the 32 patches making up a leather football to be a playfield for Xconq. Ok, it would be a heck of a small map but still. Actually, by using septagons (7-sided "hexes") in clever ways it's possible to create a playfield with "tubes" protubing out of or into playfield surfaces. One can have a few large ikosaeders tied together with bridging tubes. Imagine such a playfield where you have various terrains laid out... wow! Imagine the nightmare of displaying the thing in a GUI.... ouch! It's the latter part which I've been scratching my head with. In the nordic mythology, the world consists of one huge tree, the ash named "Yggdrasil". With such a playfields with pentagons, hexagons and septagons, "yggdrasil" can be played upon in Xconq :-). As I said, this was a trip to the moon. Stay tuned. I'll create some docs and images for you to view with this. Best regards /IlvJa, about to be lost in space ===== (Jakob Ilves) <illvilja@yahoo.com> {http://www.geocities.com/illvilja} Höstrusk och grå moln - köp en resa till solen på Yahoo! Resor på adressen http://se.docs.yahoo.com/travel/index.html ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-20 17:40 Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) Jakob Ilves @ 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch 2003-11-20 18:04 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 2:24 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 2:18 ` Brandon J. Van Every ` (2 subsequent siblings) 3 siblings, 2 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Emmanuel Fritsch @ 2003-11-20 17:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Jakob Ilves; +Cc: xconq7 Jakob Ilves a écrit : > > Hello! > > The orbiter is back, and in this email I'm considering to take a > trip to the moon... And you are welcome to join me on the ride... > [..] > Imagine the 32 patches making up a leather football to be a > playfield for Xconq. Ok, it would be a heck of a small map but still. You may enlarge it - each pentagone of your leather football is an inaceesible area. - each hexagone is divided into as many hexagone as you want. You may produce a simily spheric map. > Actually, by using septagons (7-sided "hexes") in clever > ways it's possible to create a playfield with "tubes" > protubing out of or into playfield surfaces. One can > have a few large ikosaeders tied together with bridging tubes. > > Imagine such a playfield where you have various terrains > laid out... wow! Imagine the nightmare More simple : juste plug the north of the map with the south, and you will have a cool toric univers. For multi player mode, it would warant more balnaced initial position, since with the present ice border, all position are not equivalent. a+ manu PS : septagons = heptagon ? ikosaeders = ikosaeder ? ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch @ 2003-11-20 18:04 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 2:24 ` Brandon J. Van Every 1 sibling, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-20 18:04 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Emmanuel Fritsch; +Cc: Jakob Ilves, xconq7 Hi Emmanuel, Jakob, On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Emmanuel Fritsch wrote: > and you will have a cool toric univers. For multi player mode, > PS : > septagons = heptagon ? > ikosaeders = ikosaeder ? American lexicon: football = soccer ball ikosaeder = icosahedron toric = toroidal Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch 2003-11-20 18:04 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 2:24 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 2:50 ` Eric McDonald 1 sibling, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread From: Brandon J. Van Every @ 2003-11-21 2:24 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq Emmanuel Fritsch > > More simple : juste plug the north of the map with the south, > and you will have a cool toric univers. For multi player mode, > it would warant more balnaced initial position, since with the > present ice border, all position are not equivalent. Yes, torus topologies aka "wraparound maps" are far easier, real world doable solutions. Forget true spheres. They're big trouble. Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA Taking risk where others will not. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-21 2:24 ` Brandon J. Van Every @ 2003-11-21 2:50 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 11:56 ` Brandon J. Van Every 0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 2:50 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq > Emmanuel Fritsch > > > > More simple : juste plug the north of the map with the south, > > and you will have a cool toric univers. For multi player mode, > > it would warant more balnaced initial position, since with the > > present ice border, all position are not equivalent. Xconq already supports east-west tori. If you join north and south as well, then you can get a sphere (depending on what type of folding you use). A sphere, while preventing someone from starting in a corner, can be a mess to deal with. Regards, Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-21 2:50 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 11:56 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 16:34 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread From: Brandon J. Van Every @ 2003-11-21 11:56 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq Eric McDonald wrote: > > Xconq already supports east-west tori. If you join north and south > as well, then you can get a sphere (depending on what type of > folding you use). A sphere, while preventing someone from > starting in a corner, can be a mess to deal with. Are you sure you don't mean that Xconq supports east-west cylinders, and north-south-east-west torii? A NSEW wraparound map is not a sphere, it is a torus. Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA 20% of the world is real. 80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-21 11:56 ` Brandon J. Van Every @ 2003-11-21 16:34 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 16:34 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq > > Xconq already supports east-west tori. If you join north and south > > Are you sure you don't mean that Xconq supports east-west cylinders, and Yes. I had the correct topological space in my head but wrote the wrong word. A torus requires an additional aligned folding to create. And a sphere takes two anti-aligned foldings to create. Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-20 17:40 Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) Jakob Ilves 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch @ 2003-11-21 2:18 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 2:32 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 6:58 ` Stan Shebs 3 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Brandon J. Van Every @ 2003-11-21 2:18 UTC (permalink / raw) To: xconq Jakob Ilves wrote: > > For instance, there were a few strategy games written in the > 80s (Task force games' "Cerberus" and > Game Designers Workshop's "Traveller") which uses hexagonal > maps of planets where a few hexes were > replaced with pentagons, resulting in a playfield which > topologically was a icosokaeder (20 sided > die). That would be cool to use in Xconq (or any other > computer strategy game as well). Oh fuck. Dude, don't take this personally, but I want to seriously save you from yourself now. The primary reason I'm all but bankrupt is because my 4X TBS game "Ocean Mars" is based on exactly such a hexified icosahedron. I thought with 11 years of 3D graphics experience it wouldn't be any big deal to build such a thing, and it was. YOU DO NOT KNOW OF WHAT YOU SPEAK. TURN BACK NOW. Seriously, you can lose the roof over your head going down this primrose path. I've got $60K+ worth of credit card debt to prove it. The whole reason I went looking for other people's projects was to find a more doable, interim prototyping effort to test some game design ideas, before getting back to Ocean Mars sometime next year. Now granted, it might have been more doable if I had adopted a very coarse hex scale, instead of trying to model Mars at 10 km/hex scale. I was shooting for a map of 1.6 million hexes. Much much smaller maps actually run ok with unoptimized code. But there are still decidedly nontrivial issues of geometry projection, terrain texture mapping, and stitching the mathematics together so that AIs can navigate the faces. Realize that when traversing the topology of a real sphere, it's easy to get lost! Many directions are indeterminate, no matter how you hexify / pentify them. > Actually, by using septagons (7-sided "hexes") in clever ways > it's possible to create a playfield > with "tubes" protubing out of or into playfield surfaces. > One can have a few large ikosaeders > tied together with bridging tubes. With such topologies, you're talking about a general nodal graph implementation. From an efficiency standpoint, you will need to restrict the size of your map because each arbitrarily flexible node is going to cost a lot more bytes than it would in an array. Also search algorithms have to be general purpose, they can't be optimized for the special cases of rectangular or hexagonal arrays. As long as you're willing to settle for modest topologies, it's viable. For instance, Europa Universalis uses a freeform territory approach, and even though it's fairly coarse the map of Earth feels huge. One spends a lot of time zooming in and out in that game, changing from the Eurpoean to the New World theaters. > Imagine such a playfield where you have various terrains laid > out... wow! Imagine the nightmare > of displaying the thing in a GUI.... ouch! It's the latter > part which I've been scratching my head with. Please... stop scratching your head. You are wasting your time. You could spend weeks just *designing* this thing, on paper. And you will never, ever finish what you started. You won't even make a dent in it. I have Been There, Done That, the entireity of the past year. And I mean full time, not as a hobby project. I know exactly how much labor it's going to cost you. Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA Taking risk where others will not. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-20 17:40 Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) Jakob Ilves 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch 2003-11-21 2:18 ` Brandon J. Van Every @ 2003-11-21 2:32 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 2:37 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 6:58 ` Stan Shebs 3 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 2:32 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Jakob Ilves; +Cc: xconq7 On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Jakob Ilves wrote: > In the nordic mythology, the world consists of one huge tree, the ash named "Yggdrasil". With > such a playfields with pentagons, hexagons and septagons, "yggdrasil" can be played upon in Xconq > :-). > > As I said, this was a trip to the moon. Stay tuned. I'll create some docs and images for you to > view with this. > > Best regards > > /IlvJa, about to be lost in space I think you should return to Midgard soon. :-) Xconq, in terms of direction finding and the way maps are laid out in memory, is rather tied to hexes. Interesting ideas though. Best regards, Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-21 2:32 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 2:37 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 2:37 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Jakob Ilves; +Cc: xconq7 On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Eric McDonald wrote: > Xconq, in terms of direction finding and the way maps are laid out > in memory, is rather tied to hexes. Actually, the memory layout is not a big issue. I was thinking of something else. Sorry. Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-20 17:40 Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) Jakob Ilves ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 2003-11-21 2:32 ` Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 6:58 ` Stan Shebs 2003-11-21 9:55 ` Jakob Ilves 3 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread From: Stan Shebs @ 2003-11-21 6:58 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Jakob Ilves; +Cc: xconq7 Jakob Ilves wrote: >Hello! > >The orbiter is back, and in this email I'm considering to take a trip to the moon... And you are >welcome to join me on the ride... > >One thing I've been tinkering with on paper and in Java for approx 10-12 years is to let strategy >games take place not only on a flat hexagon playfield but upon a playfield where you have >occasional pentagons and septagons thrown in. > Heh, not to be discouraging or anything, but I used up a bunch of dead trees sketching out hex sphere algorithms around 1995, finally gave up. Executive summary is that it's messy for geometry calculations (how units are nearby?), messy for graphics (although 3D hw changes the difficulty), and messy for AI. I then decided it was intrinsically out of scope for Xconq, and went on to the next knotty problem. :-) Ironically, the most plausible model was a pair of hemispheres; while things are weird all along the seam, at least they're consistently weird, and the player can plan for it. Stan ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-21 6:58 ` Stan Shebs @ 2003-11-21 9:55 ` Jakob Ilves 0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Jakob Ilves @ 2003-11-21 9:55 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Stan Shebs; +Cc: xconq7 Hello! (back in orbit! Back to the moon!) --- Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com> skrev: > Jakob Ilves wrote: > > >Hello! > > > >The orbiter is back, and in this email I'm considering to take a trip to the moon... And you > are > >welcome to join me on the ride... > > > >One thing I've been tinkering with on paper and in Java for approx 10-12 years is to let > strategy > >games take place not only on a flat hexagon playfield but upon a playfield where you have > >occasional pentagons and septagons thrown in. > > > Heh, not to be discouraging or anything, but I used up a bunch of dead > trees sketching out hex sphere algorithms around 1995, finally gave up. > Executive summary is that it's messy for geometry calculations (how > units are nearby?), messy for graphics (although 3D hw changes the > difficulty), and messy for AI. I then decided it was intrinsically > out of scope for Xconq, and went on to the next knotty problem. :-) Actually, I did not intend to use this pentahexahepta (PHH) world for Xconq, even if I think the icosaeder (I checked the spelling ;-) would make sense with it's tradition in strategy boardgames. I've a dream of an empire/xconq like play by mail game where I would like to have these PHH worlds in from the VERY start. Not at an extreme granularity considering hexes, but still. 3D rendering actually not necessarely solve rendering the entire world. It's easy to create PHH worlds were the sectors (let's just call all hexes, pentagons and heptagons for "sectors") are tied together in a topologically consistent way but still the entire world would be impossible to render in a 3D model. One could of course decide to only look at parts of the world and then let the player put together a mental map himself. Considering the 3d rendering of these things, if you attach a "tube" to a flat hex surface, is that tube then going inwards (a tunnel) or outwards (a pillar) from the surface? Topologically they are equivalent, from a 3d rendering perspective they are not. (and game mechanics as I see itright now ONLY considers the 2d topology of things...) But yes, as also Brandon pointed out there are tons of nasty obstacles (potential nightmares): * AI would be a challenge (that's why I aim at PBM, there all players are human, hence no AI needed. Easy cop out for me ;-). * How to render? My plan right now is to let the player focus on the current sectors and then the sectors within a certain radii is displayed as well, possibly distorted as needed. * How to render the whole world? Ouch! Do I have to do that :-). Seriously, I might "cut down" the topological info for the whole world display, limiting the visibility of individual sectors. Or, I can use a flattened out, cut up map of the world. * Economics of data storage. Yes, it's a pain and my current prototype uses one Java object per hex, per vertice and per edge, including links to all neighbor objects. Lots of bytes per sector. But computer performance is getting cheaper and cheaper and so is memory... Given my development pace and Moores law, this memory usegae is not an issue ;-). Why even do this? I don't do it because it's hard. I do it becaues it's darn impossible. (Ok, that's a travesty of a quote I found on the NASA web site, I admit). Mostly I want to create it because I want to play it and it's too hard of a problem to expect anyone else create it for me. (Brandon, I sincerely hope you get out of debt. I also hope you manage to get together Ocean Mars because it sounds like a very cool game! Good luck with both!) > Ironically, the most plausible model was a pair of hemispheres; while > things are weird all along the seam, at least they're consistently > weird, and the player can plan for it. > > Stan /IllvilJa, @ the moon ===== (Jakob Ilves) <illvilja@yahoo.com> {http://www.geocities.com/illvilja} Höstrusk och grå moln - köp en resa till solen på Yahoo! Resor på adressen http://se.docs.yahoo.com/travel/index.html ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) @ 2003-11-21 16:59 Elijah Meeks 2003-11-21 20:59 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 1 reply; 14+ messages in thread From: Elijah Meeks @ 2003-11-21 16:59 UTC (permalink / raw) To: mcdonald; +Cc: xconq7 "Xconq already supports east-west tori. If you join north and south as well, then you can get a sphere (depending on what type of folding you use). A sphere, while preventing someone from starting in a corner, can be a mess to deal with." I assumed there was same way to do this in Xconq, but I can't seem to find out how. What's the procedure for setting up a map up like this? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now http://companion.yahoo.com/ ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
* RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) 2003-11-21 16:59 Elijah Meeks @ 2003-11-21 20:59 ` Eric McDonald 0 siblings, 0 replies; 14+ messages in thread From: Eric McDonald @ 2003-11-21 20:59 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Elijah Meeks; +Cc: xconq7 On Fri, 21 Nov 2003, Elijah Meeks wrote: > I assumed there was same way to do this in Xconq, but > I can't seem to find out how. What's the procedure > for setting up a map up like this? Make the width of the world area greater than its circumference. Hope that helps, Eric ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 14+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2003-11-21 16:59 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 14+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2003-11-20 17:40 Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) Jakob Ilves 2003-11-20 17:50 ` Emmanuel Fritsch 2003-11-20 18:04 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 2:24 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 2:50 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 11:56 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 16:34 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 2:18 ` Brandon J. Van Every 2003-11-21 2:32 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 2:37 ` Eric McDonald 2003-11-21 6:58 ` Stan Shebs 2003-11-21 9:55 ` Jakob Ilves 2003-11-21 16:59 Elijah Meeks 2003-11-21 20:59 ` Eric McDonald
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