The Map.... Again

[Kumiorava]

As Firaxis has informed us, those unit pics supplied so far will NOT be seen on the map. The actual in-game units will look different, 'tho nobody knows how much. We'll have to wait for the first screenshots to find that out.

[Sir Shiva]

DOH!

[Darkknight]

Since it's 5:15am this is what i'm thinking half-way through the first page of this thread.:
If you had hang on there is no way to describe this.but

8 maps some with eastern hemisphere some with western
like so: e=eastern hemi. , w=west hemi. +linked -not linked

w+e+w

+ + +

e+w+e
n
w+w
s

a west can link to any other place another west links to ditto with east

if the link goes s from w then both south lines are touching and if it goes north from w then both north tips are touching(ignore directions from e)

eg central w is connected upwards to higher e therfore
north tip of w is linked with north tip of e where as in civ2 there was just
e+w+e i.e. a tube world.

e+w+e is the same as in civ2 when in globe formula.

uh woh talk about a brainwave.

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" mind over body "
[This message has been edited by Darkknight (edited January 02, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by Darkknight (edited January 02, 2001).]

[Sir Shiva]

OK, I see what you mean. But won't this not allow the whole map to be shown at once?

[Ferdi]

Do you know the difference between bmp and wmf image format. That can be applied to a map. Instead of having a big number of tiles/pixels to describe the map they should use a vectorized map. Each area is made up a number of coordinates which defines its border. A vectorized map can be as larger as we want according to the detail level.

[Darkknight]

When zooming out past a certain point for example just before two wests or two easts would be able to be seen the map would change to a set map of the world as in Civ1 when you pressed F10.

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" mind over body "

[Sir Shiva]

That would work!

And Ferdi, this vectorized map sounds interesting. Exactly what I had in mind...

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-Shiva
Email: shiva@shivamail.com
Web: http://www.shivamail.com
ICQ: 17719980

[Sir Shiva]

I was just wondering..

If the map is expanded as has been proposed in this thread, then it will be possible to disallow two units to occupy exactly the same spot on the map. This could simplify stacking, and could in some way involve an expansion of the battle map concept.

I haven't given it any thought yet... Maybe someone could develop on this?

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-Shiva
Email: shiva@shivamail.com
Web: http://www.shivamail.com
ICQ: 17719980

[Grumbold]

My favourite map style would be location based as per Civilisation the boardgame. Near the 'poles' the locations would just get larger to represent a sphere on a flat surface. I cannot envisage how Civ could create a map scale that was playable yet had no need for stacking rules. A system where infantry, cavalry and artillery troops stack, move and fight together is going to be more real than one where no stacking is allowed.

[- Groucho -]

My vote is for the map actually being a gridless sphere but the main window should display a mercator projection of the area of the sphere you're looking at. (Something like some of the previous suggestions by Shiva (I think it was Shiva)).

The main window would look much like it does now, the world window would show a globe with a rectangle outlining the view of the main window.

Units would have movement points. When you clicked on a unit, its possible move area would darken (imagine a blob around your unit - circular if you're on a plain, long fingers heading down roads, shortened when it gets up against mountains, stopping at impassable terrain.)

The POV or "camera" would be fixed in the main window at roughly the same height and angle it is for CivII. You could side scroll on the main window and it wouldn't act much different than it does now. Only watching the world window would demonstrate how the globe was actually rotating under your main window's rectangle. The main window of course would contain a slightly distorted view of the section of the world you were looking at (it would be stretched the further you got from the centre of the screen). But balancing terrain design and the actual size of the territory displayed should be able to keep us from getting too queasy - remember, with a dynamically generated mercator projection, the centre of the screen you're looking at is always on the "equator". Look at a classic mercator map of equatorial Africa, there is very little distortion needed.

Unrealistic movement (like the CivII pole problem) would be eliminated. The calculation of each units "movement blob" would be based upon a spherical world, and just displayed with the same distortion as is inherent in the main window. That way there is no unrealistic movement possible.

This method gets you the feel of the classic side scrolling map, without the unrealistic movement near the poles. Dispensing with a grid (be it hex or square) also helps, because vector movement gives more realistic movement and doesn't result in a picture with a bunch of weirdly distorted squares or hexes on it.

Whadda ya think?

(I've got to vote against the Shogun map though - not because it isn't utterly cool, but it is far more suited for a more tactical game. Civ, for me, is about long-term strategy - not unit based tactics)

[Adm.Naismith]

Echinda, your suggestion is good (still isn't new to the whole forum).

I'm not sure how can be implemented and I suppose map design it's already a taken decision (you don't draw final units, with animation and all, as showed ud on the Firaxis site, if you haven't already defined how the map appears and works, otherwise map and units will graphically "clash".

Some details will be tweakable, but I suppose the main design is done.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Grumbold]

I like the idea of a mercator map but don't understand how it works in practice without "weirdly distorted" hexes or squares. There has to be some sort of grid or positional system unless we want to encounter and resolve problems of units overlapping and interleaving rather than stacking on a tile.

Having the map highlight all locations within movement range of the selected unit is a good idea but could cause headaches later in the game with high movement values and extensive transport networks. The movement AI needs to be clever enough to actually know how to navigate around ZoC's to reach the tiles, too.

[- Groucho -]

Yeah, I realised it was probably far too late to actually influence game design, but I just had to get my two bits in.

As for how the mercator projection would work, think of it like this: the actual map is a sphere and the computer does all of its movement and range computations based upon units moving on the surface of a sphere. The main movement map however, contains a mercator projection of the portion of the sphere you're looking at. Essentially, you would spin the little globe in the corner of the screen (or hold your pointer near the edge of the screen) until the rectangle projected on the centre of the globe screen surrounded the area of the globe you wanted to look at. The computer would then "cut" that area out of the sphere and compute a mercator projection (one way to do it that is is easy to visualise is to cut the sphere section into a bunch of horizontal strips. The centre strip in the section would be longest and the strips above and below it would get progressively shorter. The computer would then stretch each strip so they were all the same length as the centre strip, and then stitch them all back together and display them as a map. Voila, a mercator projection).

As for vector movement, yeah it could lead to overlap problems, but one solution would be to just have a footprint around the base of a unit that constituted a "no stop" area for other units. In other words, units could pass through each other, but only if they had enough movement points to get all the way through.

or ...

You could allow overlap of friendly forces and then let the player drag a rectangle around units to select them. Once you dragged a rectangle, all the units in it would be displayed in a box you could select on (much like the stack selection boxes now).

[Darkknight]

I would love it if you had an almost RTS map screen as said before and that you could zoom in so far that you can see your individual soldiers racing around when you tell them to move and then setting up camp and going to sleep when their turn is finished the combat would just automatically zoom in on the area of combat and let you move your units around as in gettysberg or Antiedam.so the whole map would be a huge gettysberg also if they could package a Pentium 4 2Ghz processor computer with 1 gig RAM free of charge with the game so we could actually run it that would be great:P

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" mind over body "

[Sir Shiva]

Well, when Civ3 is finally released, P4's with 1 GB RAM may be obsolete

Echinda, great idea about the blob thing. And regarding stacking, you could group units which are close to each other and then move them preserving their grouping and relative positions... eg. Phalanx on the outside, catapults on the inside, knights on the flanks...

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-Shiva
Email: shiva@shivamail.com
Web: http://www.shivamail.com
ICQ: 17719980