RE: JConq

["A. Rick Anderson" <arick at pobox dot com>]

A major influence on my development has been the pattern 
movement/discipline.  The fundamental philosophy there is that we should 
focus reuse on proven, existing solutions, rather then debate and die on 
academically "purer" solutions.

Every major commercially successful computer-based strategy game that I am 
aware of in the last five uses a square-based grid.  Now I've already said 
that I am not a UI person, so I can only speculate about why this is 
true.  However, I am very reluctant to discard the example of these highly 
successful games.

By the same token, if this change impacts every aspect of XConq, then JConq 
wouldn't be a port or re-write, it would be a new program.

At 12:58 PM 2/7/2002 -0500, Burke, Martin wrote:

>I'm not sure 'best practice' is a correct term in this context.  Perhaps 'a
>common practice' instead.
>
>The reason I mention this is because countless successful board games use
>the hex model.  I'm not personally invested in the idea of hexes or squares,
>but I'm curious about the expected gains from switching over.
>
>Martin
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: A. Rick Anderson
>To: xconq7
>Sent: 2/7/02 12:08 PM
>Subject: JConq
>
>Let me restate this question.  Best practices by virtually every
>commercially successful strategy game has been to use squares, not
>hexagons
>as the basis of game design.
>
>If XConq was re-written in Java using a square-based grid system, how
>much
>of the existing algorithms and games designs would be rendered
>worthless.
>
>Stan threw down the gauntlet (not that I didn't deserve it :-), so I am
>looking more seriously at the possibilities of a JConq and seeing what
>it
>would take.
>
>At 09:11 AM 2/7/2002 -0500, A. Rick Anderson wrote:
> >What would be the impact of switching from a hexagon mapping system to
>a
> >rectangular one?
> >
> >-- A. Rick
> >