Squares, Hexes, Octagons...

[geeslaka]

It isn't just a 45° turn, the parallelograms are also flattened a bit.

[Trifna]

I prefer by far circles.

Otherwise, ANY of them that can form a spherical map.

[Vince278]

I must admit it took me awhile to get used to the isometric POV when I went from Civ1 to Civ2. I'd still like to see a hex-based Civ.

[LDiCesare]

It isn't just a 45° turn, the parallelograms are also flattened a bit.

Yes, but the problem to me is that the most intuitive directions (up, down, left, right) are tied to a single pixel (the top, left etc. border of the diamond). This makes it very very hard to find out directions when you start with the games. Hexes or horizontal/vertical squares are much easier to see the directions.

[Leland]

Originally posted by Trifna
I prefer by far circles.

Care to explain what you mean by that?



If a triangle has three neighbours, a rectangle has four neighbours, a pentagon has five neighbours, a hexagon has six neighbours, etc. ... how many neighbours does a circular tile have? An infinite number? Or, taking into account the limits of computing power, "only" whatever number of tiles the map happens to have?

[Trifna]

No

Well it's... circles. With any other geometric figure, you can pass from a one of the side to the side of the next geometric figure. Same with a circle: circle have an infinite number of side, thus it is vectorial movements. [I'm not even sure it would work, and perhaps it would just be more complicated for the player...].


Seriously, having six sides is enough for me. The only think I'd like would be to see a SPHERIC map. This would truly bring something (strategy, fun, geopolitic by north-south contacts...). I know a game called Populous that I heard was a spheric RTS.

[LDiCesare]

Populous wasn't really spherical. As for it being, RTS, yes, but it really didn't look like current-day RTS. It was strategy, and yes it was real time, but it was no click fest (you didn't move your citizens one by one). Great game.
Note a spherical map causes problems with the paving. You can pave a sphere with triangles (icosaedron) or hexagons with a few pentagons put in here and there, but it's not really straightforward.

[Dale]

It all depends what sort of game you want. If you want free-movement, like RTS games, then I would just go for the simplicity of squares. Also it's easier to keep track of where in a square a unit is (a simple x, y). I believe a hexagon map works well with war games, when you need different facings, the distances from centre of one tile to the next is always the same (for munition distances), etc etc.

After I finish my current project, I'm going to work on an idea for a map engine (tile-based) where it's squares in squares. So for each map tile, you might have 9 squares inside it. This would mean 9 different locations for your unit/building in each map square. Now that's versatile.

[Inverse Icarus]

it's not so much versatile, it's simply making any given map 9 times as big.

unless, of course, only 1 unit could occupy a "major tile" at a time.

[LDiCesare]

In Clash, a task force that is moving through a square keeps a counter of where in the square it is, without needing an inner layer.
I miss the point of the inner grid. You can provide facing, inner position for very cheap (2 floats for position, 1 for facing), yielding to an infinity of positions inside the square. That's even more versatile, and not more expensive.

[VetLegion]

Squares with a top down view for me, isometric view does not bring that much into the game. And for when I am not that conservative, tileless world.

[Spiffor]

My first reaction would be to answer "square" because I love the simplicity it implies. However, after having played Fallout and its hex-based system, hexagons aren't any more difficult to manage. Besides, they solve the diagonal problem squares have, and they allow for a better connectivity in a spherical map.

[Vince278]

My previous points exactly.

[Urban Ranger]

If you look at a football (not a handmelon ), you will notice that you need some pentagons also to cover there surface of a sphere with hexagons.

Ultimately, you can't go with a tile/grid-less system, because that would require infinite resources and resolution, which you don't have.

[Skanky Burns]

From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, I like hexagons better. Up to six road-lines per tile rather than 8 make the map much simpler and prettier after I have roaded the entire land area.

I also found it ironic that Hexagonian preferred squares.