From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 32645 invoked by alias); 21 Nov 2003 02:16:30 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 32621 invoked from network); 21 Nov 2003 02:16:29 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO outbound28-2.lax.untd.com) (64.136.28.160) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 21 Nov 2003 02:16:29 -0000 Received: (qmail 9509 invoked from network); 21 Nov 2003 02:16:26 -0000 Received: from 66-52-246-40.sttl.dial.netzero.com (HELO vangogh) (66.52.246.40) by smtpout03.lax.untd.com with SMTP; 21 Nov 2003 02:16:26 -0000 From: "Brandon J. Van Every" To: "xconq" Subject: RE: Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps) Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 02:18:00 -0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal In-Reply-To: <20031120173747.55020.qmail@web40903.mail.yahoo.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165 Importance: Normal X-SW-Source: 2003/txt/msg00881.txt.bz2 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.