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Re: Hexes vs squares (was Re: JConq)
- From: Simon Juncal <sjuncal at erols dot com>
- To: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>
- Cc: "A. Rick Anderson" <arick at pobox dot com>,"Burke, Martin" <mburke at arbros dot com>,'xconq7 ' <xconq7 at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 14:42:02 -0700
- Subject: Re: Hexes vs squares (was Re: JConq)
- References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020207131249.00b2e698@pop.starpower.net> <3C66F8B6.B969273E@apple.com>
sorry to send this out using a reply all, but i can't get unsubed from
the xconq list, which is pretty embarrassing considering i used to run
an email list mysef... if someone could please clue me into how to unsub
i'd be very grateful
Stan Shebs wrote:
>"A. Rick Anderson" wrote:
>
>>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.
>>
>
>This is a very interesting game design point. I think the choice
>has more to do with genre and audience than anything else.
>
>For instance, wargames nearly always use hexes, with some grand
>strategy games using regions (like Risk), and some tactical games
>using continuous terrain (like TacOps). Hexes are especially good
>when distances matter, because between any two points the distance
>is the same irrespective of direction. When your game needs trucks
>to be x% faster than tanks on roads but y% slower cross-country,
>hexes will give you the most accurate model of any tesselation.
>
>Squares have the advantage of being more familiar to the person
>who's spent more time driving around city streets than reading
>military history, and they work just fine when time and space
>don't really matter that much. For instance,it doesn't really
>take warriors 50 years to walk 100 miles, or 1 year for a bomber
>to fly 500 miles, as happens in Civ; the abstraction of movement
>for the sake of playability is so extreme that the distinction
>between moving horizontally/vertically vs diagonally is trivial.
>Hexes would add nothing to Civ gameplay.
>
>One compromise I've seen in RTS games is to use a grid for
>representing terrain, but work with unit position and motion as
>continuous values. That way you get artwork simplification
>while retaining realism and flow of the action.
>
>Xconq partially abstracts geometry, with the long-term expectation
>of enabling a game module to specify which way to go, but I now
>think that's too ambitious for a development team any smaller than
>10 FTE (full-time-equivalent) developers. (To put it in perspective,
>Xconq has only occasionally gotten to 1 FTE...) For any new game
>effort, it would be better to pick one geometry and stick with it.
>
>Stan
>