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**The Joker** · August 6, 2001, 17:31

These seem like some great links.

Could you take a look at these, programmers?

**amjayee** · August 7, 2001, 08:34

I will look at these later, today I can't and about tomorrow I'm not sure, but I will. The 3D map would be nice, I personally would like it, and I know I could also do it, though it might take a lot of time. Anyway, the tiles as we know them would have to be dumped, but perhaps we could find something similar to replace them. I will think about this, now I haven't enough time to post more or check out the links.

**amjayee** · August 17, 2001, 15:22

I was going to post these ideas some days ago, but that night the apolyton site was down and I couldn't post. I didn't have time to post until now. But here are some ideas about the new map system for consideration. I think we could be a little more innovative without losing very much more time.

I think we can design the map so, that it is possible to change the 2d map to 3d later. The trick is, that we forget tiles. So, map is an area where vertain distance in pixels represents certain distance in reality. The map would be navigated with coordinater just like in our world. So, armies would exist in certain coordinates. To attack another unit, you would not move the unit to the same tile. Rather, you would need to get to close contact with the army, and that would be done by ordering the army to attack; they would try to engage in battle, while the other army could try to escape. Production could be handled by dividing the map into areas of arbitrary shape and size. In a simple map, they could be squares for example.

Cities, terrain improvements etc. would be placed in coordinates rather than areas, like units. Cities could have any radius and shape, freeing us from the unrealistic restrictions with the tile system. Population and production would be handled by the areas on the map. There could be many areas in a region, and the areas should perhaps be created according to climate, vegetation and other natural discriminating factors.

The unit movement is already not very much dependent on tiles, so we can as well make units move freely, not restricted by tiles. The same goes with cities and tile improvements. For production and population, we need to have areas of land, but it's not necessary for them to be of any particular shape, or of the same size. The only thing that matters is the amount of people and the amount of natural resources and production facilities. So this would be sufficient. To start simply, we can have square, hex or diamond-shaped areas all of the same size. Later in the 3d map, we could have areas of any shape or size.

With this system, it would be quite easy to store the elevation, climate information and population density as vector graphics. Also coastlines and rivers would be vectors. This system would offer great amounts of flexibility and realism, and endless possibilities for enhancing and adding new features, if it's designed generic enough. Also this system would take time, but not much more than ordinary tile system. And it would be quite easily applied to 3d system, with a planet of any shape. We could as well make cube or donut-shaped worlds.

I think this new system would be worth the effort, and we could get some results quite soon, if I have time to make it. What would you think of it?

**Mark_Lipovrovskiy** · August 17, 2001, 19:27

Great!!

**ElmoTheElk** · August 18, 2001, 06:57

Can't add more to that. Just great! It's sounds really appropriate for ggs, not to hard to make and it's highly flexible. Plus more... I can't wait to see a model and a real map!

Elmo

**The Joker** · August 18, 2001, 12:52

WOW!

You have great ideas, Amjayee. You really, really do.

This system is so simple and straightforward, and yet I hadn't even thought about doing it that way. To me a tileless map would mean endless work just do design it, and yet this is indeed possible to make.

I am in a hurry now, but I will tune in tomorrow with more comments.

**The Joker** · August 19, 2001, 15:39

Ok. First I have to state that I think Amjayee's proposition is fantastic. And it is just what we should have.

Some comments:

I think you are right that starting out by just making all these areas (let's call them that!) square would be pretty good. Then the map could be made, and a more advanced one with elevation can be made. Then we can have maps just as we want them, AND we can turn the map into a sphere later on.

The areas are also great since each area is propably gonna be a lot larger than the 50 km hexes we thought about using. So storing the terrain info is gonna be much easier. I am not yet sure whether regions should be bound to these areas (so that an area can not be split between two regions, although I don't really like that concept), but I do think that some of the more fundamental population things (nationalism, some economics etc) can be bound to the areas in stead of to the regions. This will make sure that players does not cheat by just changing region borders when they have some problems.

I am not yet sure how many areas we should have in the game. But we thought about having upwards of 1 million hexes. And I think we can easily cut that down to 100,000 or even fewer areas. And that suddenly leaves some space to put some more aspects of the game into areas, which, I think, is more realistic than binding them to regions.

**amjayee** · August 20, 2001, 10:02

Wow, thanks for the positive feedback guys. I feel baffled.

Anyway, it's good that we share the same vision of the map. I think that I will concentrate my time on the map now, and try to get something done. I will need to do some design, to ensure that the thing will be generic enough. I hope I could have something to show soon, but I can't say when.

I will use DirectX 8 for the map, because I'm personally very fond of it, and consider it a huge advancement from DX7. So, eventually I will need to make a new wrapper for it, but that causes no problems - Chris was far-sighted enough not to make our UI dependent of our current wrapper. That's good.

I will keep you updated of the progress with the map.

**Mark_Lipovrovskiy** · August 20, 2001, 17:15

Amjayee: Just a question:
Are you working on the map itself or on the visual representation thereof?
Accord. to the docs, it seems that you wanted the two to be seperate.

Also, why use directX when you can use more portable technologies such as openGL (I'm the portability d00d here, I guess)?

I myself use Linux a lot, and it would be a shame to make the game hard to port by using proptietary technologies...

Just a question

**amjayee** · August 22, 2001, 07:42

I'm working on the visuals currently, not the map... and yes, hopefully the data and its representation will be separated. It would increase portability too.

We are using DirectX for the UI, in windows environment it is the Thing to use for multimedia things, it's just like that. And since we already use DirectX for other things in the UI, it's just logical to use Direct3D for the map. But we are separating all platform-independent stuff, so porting to some other system and possibly to some other graphical environment is "just" a matter of replacing some classes with new ones. We are doing all we can to make porting as easy as possible.

And besides, I like DirectX. It's one of the most sensible things from Microsoft, which is not much said, of course - but it is quite good and easy to use, and we can do everything with it, without too much hassle. That saves time, which is good, since we are already short on that.

**Mark_Lipovrovskiy** · August 22, 2001, 10:01

Cool.

Amjayee, is there any chance of us ever meeting on ICQ?

**amjayee** · August 23, 2001, 11:37

I don't use ICQ, at least not currently, though I have the number. Also, I'm not online very much. Perhaps we'll meet on IRC some time. Also, the possibilities to meet depend on you geographic location, more specifically the time zone. Where do you live? "Ambassador to Israel" does not give very specific information.

It could mean that you live in Israel, or are an Israeli person living some place else.

**Mark_Lipovrovskiy** · August 23, 2001, 13:56

Israel is where I live. But I'm generally flexible with timezones.

**Nath** · August 23, 2001, 14:48

I'm commenting on this topic a bit late because I've been on holiday, but here are my suggestions:

Production could be handled by dividing the map into areas of arbitrary shape and size. In a simple map, they could be squares for example.

These 'areas' are basically tiles

.
I like the idea of combining tile-based gameplay with point-based, as you've suggested. It'll take a LOT more work, though.

Cities, terrain improvements etc. would be placed in coordinates rather than areas, like units. Cities could have any radius and shape, freeing us from the unrealistic restrictions with the tile system.

Sounds good, but what'll effect the shape of the cities? Also, at the scales being discussed, changes in the city radius onscreen will cause unrealistically large changes in the actual area. Little cities and settlements will be invisible if the point-based system is followed too rigidly.

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