Civ IV will have a 3D map! A discussion of possibilities

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Sn00py
So why a spherical map anyway? Do you want to zoom out to space and see the earth from afar? Is that how you want to move around the world?

The latter. It's about movement more than anything else.

Originally posted by Sn00py
If that's what you want, then the release date can be 2006 December.

Why? It's not that tough to add.

[General Ludd]

Actually, a 2006 release date would be pretty good... unless you want another rushed hack job that requires two expansion packs just to get to a level of mediocracy.


The game's only been recently announced, and a year and a half to two year production time is not unreasonable at all.

[Max Sinister]

@vulture: OK, it's not a sphere, but it doesn't look too bad... would be very hard to program, of course.

@Nuclear Master: CTP had the option to play on a donut-shaped world. Never tried it.

[Fosse]

A spherical map is just the way to go. Continuous zoom is nice, but doesn't justify 3D all by itself. They could just add more zoom levels if that's all the more that they wanted to add.

A 3D map that is a perfect sphere is now out of the question since they have unfortunatly (in my point of view) decided to go with tiles, but that doesn't mean that a distorted sphere is ruled out. I don't care if my globe bulges at the equator anyway (as someone said it would by 3 degrees with an all Hex globe)... Earth does, so why not?

Being able to sail or fly over the poles, and having distances be realistic at different lattitudes would be a huge improvement.

The days of the tiny cylindrical map should be over with. The cylinder is a hanger-on from low power PC days... please Firaxis, let it die.

[sabrewolf]

flat maps DO often make sence, but mainly when playing scenarios and local maps (like map of 1 continent and smaller). so don't let it die completely

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Fosse
A spherical map is just the way to go. Continuous zoom is nice, but doesn't justify 3D all by itself. They could just add more zoom levels if that's all the more that they wanted to add.

3D allows the zooming to be much more clear and concise. If you look at Civ 3's zoom then you'll see the problem - the map scrolls slowly there's only a couple levels and it doesn't look at that nice. Doing the map in 3D allows many more zoom levels to be implimented rather easily, and they'll all look just as good as any other, just bigger or smaller.

And that's not all 3D does - it makes it easier on the developers, because instead of creating objects in 3D and rendering them back to 2D (like they did for Civ 3), they can keep them in their native format, which look better and are also more flexible to use in game (rotating, zooming again, etc.).

[Jon Shafer]

I think everyone should be considering how a map of diamonds could be implimented into a spherical map (if at all), because I really see there being no way that Civ 4 will change from diamonds to hexes or anything else.

That being said, the only way to have such a design would be to have distorted diamonds that aren't the same shape (some of them very highly distorted near the poles). Because of that, I don't see spherical maps being very likely.

[Drachasor]

Well, one way to deal with distortion is to hide it. You keepthe distortion at the edges or opposite side of the sphere as much as possible, and whenever you move your perspective, it doesn't rotate the sphere as much as it overlays the area you move to on the good part.

-Drachasor

[PresidentMarcos]

Hmm. How about a map view looking down on the North Pole from above, with both X and Y wrapping? Pretty effective simulation of a spherical world.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by PresidentMarcos
Hmm. How about a map view looking down on the North Pole from above, with both X and Y wrapping? Pretty effective simulation of a spherical world.

Kind of hard to have a north pole when there isn't a south pole.


With both X and Y wrapping, it would represent a doughnut shaped world.

[PresidentMarcos]

No, no. Have you ever seen those maps of the Earth looking down at the North Pole? The idea is to use the same view. X and Y wrapping would represent the fact that if you went down south far enough, you would go around the south pole and come out on the other side. Just as soon as I figure out how to post pics...

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by PresidentMarcos
No, no. Have you ever seen those maps of the Earth looking down at the North Pole? The idea is to use the same view. X and Y wrapping would represent the fact that if you went down south far enough, you would go around the south pole and come out on the other side. Just as soon as I figure out how to post pics...

It doesn't matter where you focus the map, if you take a flat map and wrap both sides together you get a doughnut, no matter what.



If you focus it on the north pole, the "north pole" simply becomes a patch of ice in the doughtnut some where.

To represent travel across the poles you have to connect the sides of the cylinder together rather then the ends, which can only be done by capping off the cylinder with a dome, basically resulting in a sphere.




This can be represented on a 2D plane, but not in such a way that it would be practical as a game board.

[VetLegion]

Good job with the pics General Ludd

[sabrewolf]

general ludd: nice pics ... matlab?

X and Y world wrapping would be torus (or doughnut) shaped, but here it's again a gameplay issue. being stuck on the north/south tip of a continent sucks because you've got worse corruption centering and further scouting. i'm ignoring the tundra-lands which usually comes with it. with Y wrapping, everyone has the same maximal distance to the furthest point: half the map.

but of course, logic wouldn't allow Y axis wrapping (except if you exit the top square on the left side of the map and reappear from the top again, just on the opposite side )

[FrostyBoy]

So my questions are..

1. Do you want to rotate around like you can in Black and White?

2. Do you want to zoom out so that you can see the entire sphere?