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The problem is that every tile must be identical for terrain and unit gif mapping to work.
Geodetic domes are made of subtly varied triangles and cannot do this.
OK, here's how it could work.
You start with an icocehedron. No, its not what happens to your head after drinking too much. Its a 21 sided prismatic solid in the general shape of a sphere, formed entirely of equilateral triangles. (This is the shape of those big funny dice in D&D)
You map onto each triangle as many hex-tiles as you want. Because hex tiles form a perfect equilateral triangle, excepting that the three "lines" aren't perfectly straight.
These triangles would be mini-maps in themselves. To get a good size globe you would have about 240 hexes along one side of the triangle. This would give you about 10000 tiles, like a 80 x125 grid.
You would have 21 selectable views, which you could scroll between. Each would be straight "down" onto one "triangle, with a slightly oblique but very legible view of the six adjacent triangles. You could easily rotate your view in any of 3 directions, and quickly scroll around to the opposite side or the globe.
At the interface between two triangles, you would have only prependicular movement from your "own" triangle across the interface to the corresponding hex on the other triangle. Some graphical work here, but the geometry works.
Not as spherical as anyone would like, but lets you have correct movement, and send an ICBM over the ice cap if you want.
BTW, I don't believe there is such thing as a computer map without "tiles." Call them points or co-ordinates, they act as tiles. They are all mathematically defined relational space. Some programs just conceal them better than others. To try to emulate a gridless world at all you would need a ten by ten sub-coordinate system for each current civ "tile" - 1,000,000 points for your computer to track. For what?
Is what I'm trying to say at all understandable?
[This message has been edited by The Mad Viking (edited March 23, 2000).]
Geodetic domes are made of subtly varied triangles and cannot do this.
OK, here's how it could work.
You start with an icocehedron. No, its not what happens to your head after drinking too much. Its a 21 sided prismatic solid in the general shape of a sphere, formed entirely of equilateral triangles. (This is the shape of those big funny dice in D&D)
You map onto each triangle as many hex-tiles as you want. Because hex tiles form a perfect equilateral triangle, excepting that the three "lines" aren't perfectly straight.
These triangles would be mini-maps in themselves. To get a good size globe you would have about 240 hexes along one side of the triangle. This would give you about 10000 tiles, like a 80 x125 grid.
You would have 21 selectable views, which you could scroll between. Each would be straight "down" onto one "triangle, with a slightly oblique but very legible view of the six adjacent triangles. You could easily rotate your view in any of 3 directions, and quickly scroll around to the opposite side or the globe.
At the interface between two triangles, you would have only prependicular movement from your "own" triangle across the interface to the corresponding hex on the other triangle. Some graphical work here, but the geometry works.
Not as spherical as anyone would like, but lets you have correct movement, and send an ICBM over the ice cap if you want.
BTW, I don't believe there is such thing as a computer map without "tiles." Call them points or co-ordinates, they act as tiles. They are all mathematically defined relational space. Some programs just conceal them better than others. To try to emulate a gridless world at all you would need a ten by ten sub-coordinate system for each current civ "tile" - 1,000,000 points for your computer to track. For what?
Is what I'm trying to say at all understandable?
[This message has been edited by The Mad Viking (edited March 23, 2000).]
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