Globe-like world map.

[Seeker]

What is the 'Epcot Center' in Disney World made of? Hexagons or triangles?

[Truman]

Uh, whoa.

I only meant that it would add a level of strategy to have the north and south map edges mimic the effects of crossing a geographic pole on a spherical (ellispoidal) surface. IMO, it's not necessary to redesign the structure of the map itself, or the shapes of the tiles (although hexagons are an intriguing idea -- though probably difficult to translate into keystroke commands, for those who use that method.)

All I want is to be able to cross the north and south poles, rather than march around them like in all previous Civ-type games.



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"Let me know the instant we have nukes!" ~Harry S. Truman

[Dauphin]

quote: What is the 'Epcot Center' in Disney World made of? Hexagons or triangles?

Both, it depends on how you look at it. Main units are triangles but they form "non-flat" hexagons that jut out.
[This message has been edited by Big Crunch (edited December 03, 2000).]

[RonHiler]

Errr, guys?

There is a civ-style game in the works right now, nearing completion, that uses an honest-to-god actual spherical map. It turns out I'm the lead programmer for that project (Manifest Destiny).

You could hit the homepage button above this post, and even go pick up a working demo there, but our webpage seems to be on the fritz right now. It should be functioning again by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest. In the meantime, if you look at the Alt-Civ section here at apolyton, you can get some screenshots (don't d/l the demo from here though, it is very out of date!).

Just thought I'd mention it, if you were interested in spherical world civ-games.

Ron

[Yeti]

Anyway you could use whatever drives "populous 2"?

In that, (albeit basic) civ game when you hit a key it zooms out to world view from space, and hitting cursor keys rotates the "world" with all your units showing up as dots. Then you can rotate as you please and zoom in again to normal view.


yeti

[airdrik]

I took a look at that manifest destiny demo and noted that all they did was used 'square' tiles, and just tapered them closer to the poles. Now one problem with this is that you end up with more tiles per geographical area at the poles as at the equater. I didn't play the demo far enough to see what would happen when you traveled closer to the poles, but I don't like the idea of having more tiles closer to the poles.

The way a spherical map should work is so that if you are traveling large distances, not on the equater, then it should take less tiles to move closer to the poles for a time, ie. when a boat leaves England and heads to New York, it doesn't head due west, it starts headed at a north west direction, and the curve of the earth leads them to the south to New York. It is a sorter trip this way, and you don't even have to alter your course.

Another thing is that the arrangement of the tiles at the poles should look similar to the arrangement of the tiles at the equater. As in if you took a picture of the wire frame of the tiles at the poles and at certain places at the equater, then all of these pictures would look identical. Another way to look at this would be that the pattern of the tiles, north to south, should look the same as the pattern of tiles from two points (but not all points) on the equater to the points opposite them. Plain and simply we have 6* points on the map that are considered 'poles' where all tiles converge.

*note this number may vary depending on the type of tile used, for 'square' tiles it is 6,for triangles it is 20, etc, depending on how many of that base shape tile unaltered into a polygon. In order to make a large, sherical map, in places, some tiles will have to be stretched.

[Ribannah]

We have had several threads about this very same issue, so I'll merely repeat the point I already made a couple of times.

There is no need to use tiles to build a spherical world. It is sufficient to attach co-ordinates to cities, troops, landmarks etc.

It is only when you zoom in (to an approximately flat surface) that tiles can be handy. Then you can simply have the program generate temporary tiles - in any shape, though personally I much prefer hexagons - for purposes of assigning workers and moving units.


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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[RonHiler]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 12-08-2000 12:06 AM I took a look at that manifest destiny demo and noted that all they did was used 'square' tiles, and just tapered them closer to the poles. Now one problem with this is that you end up with more tiles per geographical area at the poles as at the equater. I didn't play the demo far enough to see what would happen when you traveled closer to the poles, but I don't like the idea of having more tiles closer to the poles.

I don't know how old that demo you looked at was, but we don't use tiles at all in MD. Originally we tried that, but decided it just doesn't really work, for precisely the reasons you are talking about. If you are looking at tiles, you must have a really old version of a demo. We got away from tiles a good six months ago.

We are using a completely pixel based texture now, meaning there are no tiles to worry about squashing All we have to do is adjust the horizontal movement distance value based on distance from pole (a very simple equation), and you will never know the difference between movement at the equator and movement at the poles, except for all the snow lying around

Check our current screenshots if you want to get a better idea of what I am talking about.
http://www.rjcyberware.com/md/screens.html

I don't want to be obnoxious by promoting our game when you guys are interested in talking about CivIII, but I didn't want this left with misinformation about us either, heh. I'll bow out now.

Ron

[Grumbold]

While I can understand the desire to make use of sub-polar movement shortcut opportunities, even now the only units to really travel into the true polar regions are submarines. Unless Civ models exploration feats or the search for rare resources it shouldn't be necessary to do more than have a unit disappear off-map one turn and appear on any other connected edge-tile on the next turn or instantly with a fixed movement penalty cost. Optionally there could be a chance of sustaining weather damage.

[Ribannah]

It looks great, RonHiler!

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If you have no feet, don't walk on fire

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

This has been discussed several times over, I like the idea.

[Dauphin]

quote: I don't want to be obnoxious by promoting our game when you guys are interested in talking about CivIII, but I didn't want this left with misinformation about us either, heh. I'll bow out now.

There was me thinking you were a MDLead Programmer, when in fact you're a MDLead Advertiser.



[This message has been edited by Big Crunch (edited December 09, 2000).]