MapSquare Class OO discussion

[Richard Bruns]

I'd love the hex maps or the province maps. It would be great if we had that option. Even if you run rivers through the tile, it looks much better in hex maps.

My proposed fixed provinces are basically huge squares. So if we have the ability to make "squares" have irregular shapes, I'd automatically have what I wanted in terms of military movements. I'd just make the squares bigger and give them new shapes.

[F_Smith]

Richard:

That's the goal. You will have that choice.

Mark:

Just saw your comment about SMAC's AI. I've never been able to win on the harder settings. The AI is excellent . . .

The top 3 difficulty settings ("Librarian" and above) are *very* good.

My problem is I much prefer ancient and middle-ages warfare to the 'futuristic' stuff. When planes enter the picture, I start to lose interest . . .

[puree]

apologies for misspellings and a missing for loop on last post.

f-smith

if you can create a seperate controller package then excellent, as i said earlier its very hard to seperate controller from view ( or maybe even model to an extent) and is rare to find mvc in its form. i seem to remember microsoft ditched it in favour of 'document'-view , ie a 2 component model ( its a long time since i looked at their architecture though, and i didt get that involved then - i just pulled out me visual c++ stuff, yep document-view)
Therefore i would say dont get overly worried about that level seperation.

the renderers are really the biggest part of the view, so strictly speaking they dont belong in controller, but as said above its likely theyll end merging to an extent anyway.

if you want each square to be represented by a canvas of its own, then yes the renderer will return a canvas every time it is asked to render a square.

TerrainRenderer mmmmm .. what do you mean by that, one renderer would be used to paint a square - terrain, armies the lot ( or whatever is to be seen anyway ), there probably shouldnt be a renderer painting the terrain , another the armies etc.

if i get time this weekend ill knock up a simple demo version of a mapview/mapmodel/mapsquare/renderers to provide a better idea of how i think they hang together, if you want any help coding , or whatever drop us a mail.

beor

changing to hexes would i assume mean some minor changes to the model, something has to deal with adjacent squares/hexes which are now 6 instead of 4.
I say minor as i assume anything relying on looking at neighbours is using arrays or collections in a loop, and not hard coded to expect 4 neighbours, so none of that would need changing - but other stuff to do with AI might.

in theory the graphic seperation means the model of each square could be used in a 3D view, zoom out for the standard civ view , zoom right in for a soldiers eye view of the land in 3D !!!! well ok bit ambitious, but it is possible without the slightest change to the model.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I haveto disagree with using hexes, for now atleast, mainly because what Mark says. With the way the computer can handle the diagonale movement of squares accuratly, hexes lose the advantages they had and in fact are more restictive. I know, i've play hex war games a while ago also...currently Betrayal at Antara and its much more difficult than the non-hex predessor, Betrayal at Krondor.

1. Hex allows 6 way movement and attack. While better than 4 ways of squares normally allowed, the diagonale cost equation now allows for accurate attack and movements in 8 directions which then is more accurate.

2. With the 6 possible directions, Hexes don't allow for direct east/west movement, but do allow it for north/south movement. Thus it favors one type of movement (up/down) as apposed to the other because you cannot move straight left or right, but much choose to move diagonally up/down one way then back and this can have important consiquences if you want to move and get stuck inbetween. (Also it'd be impossible to move exactly along the equator as you keep going above and/or below it and then back on the center of it).

3. It doesn't allow for ness anything to go straight, espically left-to-right. Esp. if you want rivers along the boarders which it wouldn't look to good in a square map. Not major, but still....

4. It puts off a lot of non-wargamers also who don't like hexes because they aren't wargamers. On the other hand, wargamers will play (most will anyway) ones basef on square tiles if done descently. Final Fantasy Tactics is a good example. It is a square based tactical game and is one of the hottest strategy/wargames of all time (and among the hardest to come by as the price for used copies is $50 and up in places).

Anyway if i can get a descent program I am willing to work on the map graphics for the square based tile system (not units...unless you want anime units), but not hexes. That's alot more work.

One thing on irregular tiles, that's okay maybe so long as it isn't a jigsaw puzzle like say africa. Otherwise a few 'provinces' could take up tons more space...also the player would haveto draw all the pics for these provinces as irregular means by implied definiation, non-standard.

[F_Smith]

puree:

Yes, yes, yes -- please. Any help you can offer would be appreciated. I'd love to see anything you code up. It would help move the game along tremendously.

I can also guarantee you will get full credit for your contributions, which so far have been weighty enough to deserve that and more.

Let me ask you something -- one thing I would love to do is draw the map in a 3d 'wireframe' approach. Have you seen the maps in 'Railroad Tycoon 2' or 'Alpha Centauri'? RR2 is the most outstanding map I think I've ever seen.

But anyway, do you have any ideas or suggestions on rendering such a map?

* * *

Lordy:

don't worry, hexes is a distant thought right now. We're just talking scalability.

[F_Smith]

puree:

P.S. -- Microsoft about 2 years ago switched to the m-v-c approach. Only, in typical MS fashion, they renamed it and claimed it as their own.

Have you heard the term 'Windows DNA Architecture?

MS says the perfect architecture *they've* developed has 3 tiers --

quote: Windows DNA is Microsoft's platform for building and deploying Web-based applications . . .

It's short for Windows Distributed interNet Applications Architecture.

Surprisingly enough, they only believe in using Windows-specific technology for each of the tiers -- Active X, Com, and DHTML.

Isn't that a shock?

The MS people were kind enough to give a 'free' seminar on how to leave behind that 'Sun Owned Franchise' of Java and program the "modern" way.

Ugh.

[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited October 06, 2000).]

[puree]

sorry f-smith,im hopeless at graphics themselves. i tend to design and code up things under the presentation layer, then stick some simple and functional graphics in place

(16 color bmp's converted to gif would not be to much of an exageration !!!! - using that cool professional package,,,, 'paint' it can be found under programs/accessories from the start menu - just in case you have never seen it followed by photo editor that comes with office,, so as you see im way ahead of you all in that area )

[F_Smith]

Puree:

I'm there, too. I'm hopeless at doing the actual grafix. I do use Paint Shop Pro, tho, but only for converting grafix for one format to another!!! But it makes me feel like a 'pro' . . .

I'm mostly talking about drawing a wireframe of the landscape's changing altitudes, then painting the 'terrain' .gifs.

I've actually made some significant progress in that direction. I've also been doing some more reading and learning about 'view' code. I may finally understand it. Tonight after the kids go down, I'll post what I've got to the web for your thoughts.

[Mark_Everson]

puree:

Yes, please contribute in any way you can!

F_Smith:

Wireframe??? Um, uh, don't take this the wrong way, but can't you just shoot to implement the existing graphics first? The nature of the graphics is something for the whole team to discuss. And not in an OO thread. The choice of graphics implemetations has far-reaching implications. Since we don't even have artists currently working on the project, this seems an extremely premature time to investigate this...

So although your 'contract' says you can try whatever options you want to, I really thing it would be best to at least do the simple iso graphics that are already available first. YMMV, but this approach makes a lot more sense to me. The good OO nature of the code should allow retrofits fairly easy later to wireframe stuff if we decide that's the way we want to go (but We needs to include artists first...)

Sound reasonable?

[puree]

no artists, wow thats useful

so the simple circles and solid color fills in the quick knock-up i sent f-smith are about top of the line

[Mark_Everson]

puree:

Well, we still have the art from the last bunch that is in demo 4. I think we can go a Looong way with that if necessary. And I'm sure we can interest more artists in the project once we're showing clear progress again. But my point was that taking radical turns in the art area when we don't have someone (or several someones ) that's committed to implement it is IMO not a good idea at this point.

[F_Smith]

Mark:

I am talking about using the existing grafix. I'm only talking about drawing them in the 'SMAC'-style, on a 'wireframe' 3d grid instead of on a flat plain.

Just using transforms on them, to show altitude.

It is only a programming issue.

It's something I want to learn how to do anyway. The 'flat plain' version is quite simple and already coded. I'm also about done with one kind of a 'perspective'-type map. And I'll include the option for simple squares.

[alms66]

First off, I like the idea of the wireframe map ...I think we should go for it. Have you ever played Ceasar 2, or 3? They have a button to go from city to province view, could we use something like this in the interface to go from "normal" to "world" view? So instead of having 2 map windows (one "normal" and one the zoomed out map), we have one map window and clicking the button shows the "zoomed" view in the same window.

Mark,
what happened to Magnus (sorry if I got the name wrong), the new guy with the art? IMO, his work was truly excellent, and I'd really like to see more from him. Please don't say he's quit already

[Mark_Everson]

F_Smith:

Wireframe: Oh, didn't realize it was just as simple as a transform. If it doesn't require add'l artwork then I have no problem with it.

TK:

Magnus hasn't taken off, but he hasn't even had enough interest to post on the forum. So it is just my guess that we shouldn't count him as really committed.

Could you put any map graphics appearance comments in the map gfx thread? That's a design issue and that discussion don't belong here .

[roquijad]

I haven't participated in this thread because of my very poor OO-coding knowledge, but I realize this thread is something like THE thread that should be moving on.... So I wonder... Why it has been left aside for so many days? Is everything solved here already? Did I miss something?