RE: Mutilple maps?

[Hans Ronne <hronne at pp dot sbbs dot se>]

>You know, I had been thinking that in "Space Civilization", it would be
>nice if I could somehow set it up so that when any ground units land on
>a planet, they could be controlled on a planetary (tactical) scale,
>whereas the starships and everything else would be controlled on a
>galactic (strategic) scale.  The game "Colonizer" was an attempt to
>model what might happen when ground units land on a planet, and all the
>variants further allow it to model the vast possibilities of such a
>journey (e.g. "N-class world", "Already populated", etc.).  Of course,
>it can't (yet) model what it would be like to land on an inhospitable
>world such as Mars.

One way to implement several of these ideas is simply to allow multiple
worlds/areas in a game. In your specific case a starmap (galaxy) plus
various planetary maps. You would not necessarily need to mess with
coordinates or scales within each map. I believe this would be
comparatively easy to do since xconq already supports multiple map windows.
You would also need some rules for transition between the maps, as Stan
pointed out, but they could be very simple. Example: only a spaceship may
leave (disembark) a planetary map. It is then transported (with its cargo)
to the corresponding cell in the star map. Furthermore, only starships can
move at all on the star map.

The D&D type 3D maze that started this thread could even be implemented
without multiple maps. You would create a big map that contains a row of
"dungeon levels", 100 cells apart and physically separated. Each level
would contain a special cell (portal) that allows you teleport exactly 100
cells right or left, i.e. to the next level. Teleportation would probably
require some new kernel code, but it should be a relatively simple thing to
do.

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se