Re: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps)

[Stan Shebs <shebs@apple.com>]

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