Spherical Map

[General Ludd]

A few years ago, I was opposed to both spherical maps and hexagons. Now that technology has improved, I think a spherical map could be pulled off excellently. And, now that I have played more strategy games, I would really prefer hexagons no matter what squares just do not lend themselves to strategy. A spherical map built of hexigons could make an excellent civ game, i think.


And keep your doughnut worlds away from me.

[geeslaka]

I shall guard my doughnut worlds well to protect them from your vicious attacks.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Smiley
Screw spheres, I want a 3-D map!

Could be done in a way. CtP has its land level and a space level (not to mention underseas). MoM had an air level, land/sea level, and an underworld level. I guess you could also have a multitude of underground levels too (like the Underdark in AD&D).

[Vince278]

Originally posted by geeslaka
I shall guard my doughnut worlds well to protect them from your vicious attacks.

You'll still have your hands full if I find out your doughnut worlds have a cream filling.

[geeslaka]

I'm sure someone will make a mod pack with that as one of the terrain types.

[Vince278]

With the cream filling?

[Inverse Icarus]

i'm thinking about what gees said, and adapted it to simple shpereical maps. i think it would be fairly easy to "fake" the sphere by creating "warps" that took you from the top of one area to the top of another, equidistant from the center of the map. to (ab)use his example:

 ________________________________
|         a               b      |
|                                |
|                                |
|                                |
|                                |
|                                |
|                                |
|           f               e    |
 ________________________________

a->b, f->e. it's simple. you'd essentially be splitting the globe in half, creating a central line.

say you have n tiles horizontally (width). the (n/2) tile would then "warp" to the nth tile. from there it's just a matter of indexing to find out exactly where each tile warps to, and an algorithm could be easily made to record it into a customized, easily made data structure (namely a matrix made of up, down, left, right pointers, and tile data). the up and down pointers of the top and bottom tiles would point to their "warp" mates, and after the game is loaded all movements would be instant, with miniscule cpu usage.

the only issue with this is, well, it's fake. it's simply not a spherical map, it's a flat map that teleports units. sure, you can send a ship north from canada and pop out above russia, but you can never center the map in such a way that you could see both.

also, this might have a major impact on how land masses at the poles look on the map. it probably isn't a major problem, but you would see civ2esque ice caps for antartica, a long stretch across most of the bottom, rather than a real-looking landmass. cities on the top and bottom would also have to load the info/images from the other side of the map, but thats gravy. it would look a little odd having a city at the tippy top of the map though, since you couldn't see the tiles directly north of it.

another thing: what should happen when you scroll up off the map? should it go to the bottom, maintaining your x position, or should it warp to where the center tile goes to?

[Inverse Icarus]

and for the record, i'm pondering many ways to create a real spherical map. gees just got me thinking otherwise for a second there.

[geeslaka]

It isn't necessary to store an edge tile's neighbor. The neighbor can be found by a simple formula: new_x = ( x + ( map_x_size / 2 ) ) % map_x_size
new_x is what x coordinate the unit moves to.
x is where it is moving from.
map_x_size is the horizontal size of the map.
This same formula can be used in the map drawing function to remove the seams. With that being done, the user could scroll as much as they pleased without hitting the edge. To do this, the game keeps track of the map center with a point that has a y_max double map_y_size. If map_center.y is greater than map_y_size, the map is drawn upside down.
Another way to look at it would be to say that map_center is a point on a rectangle that is moved around. Here is an example of that rectangle.

 ________________
|^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|
|^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|
|^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|
|^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|
|vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv|
|vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv|
|vvvvvvCvvvvvvvvv|
|vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv|
 ________________

^ indicates that the space is right side up.
v indicates that the space is upside down.
C is where the center of the map is.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Uber KruX
and for the record, i'm pondering many ways to create a real spherical map. gees just got me thinking otherwise for a second there.

Hexes would work (I think I mentioned this earlier...). The world would look like a (FIFA) football only with thousands of facets. Hex maps have been used in board wargames for ages, it should work for Civ as well. Like the football, you would have a world that is a true sphere, not simulated.

[Inverse Icarus]

but i thought there was only one amount of hexes that would work?

[Vince278]

The football has so few they had to add some pentagons to make it work. I'm not entirely sure on a huge scale.

[geeslaka]

Hexagons alone tile flat. And, yes, it has been mentioned before. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...45#post2062545

[Leland]

The keyword is "geodesic sphere", in case anyone wants to google it up.

[mrmielke]

please, if anyone is still interested in this, take a look here