I'm kind'a bummed Elemental looks as if it will be using Squares other than Hexes. I know its following after Civ and MOM. Cid finaly got it right:
As you can see Hexes rounds everything out and create a smother and less block like world. Of corse this is a IMO thing.
Yea ... in the end it sure is nice to be able to actually move in a straight line ... of course, with squares there are MANY MANY different ways to reach point X in the same amount of turns as going straight.
Of course, the nice thing about squares is that you can actually GO straight, instead of have to constantly zig-zag.
You can go straight with hexes too. Just not north or south. East, west, and diagnols are all straight. But for squares, anything not along a north-south or east-west axis requires a non-straight line.
Debating about straight lines in a tile-based game is completely counter-productive. They are not designed to be, nor could they ever be, truly linear. It's the nature of the beast. To use this as a foundation of a debate between hex and square is completely pointless.
In that case, it is the CEO's preference. Although, Hex tiles would be nice to play with. I seem to have forgotten that East-West is straight in a Hex map as well. having only North-South axis as non-straight seems to lean me slightly in favor of Hex maps.
However, to state non-straight lines as "The nature of the Beast" is amatuer and rudimentary at best. I understand your point, but still ...
In any case, I used to play BattleCry with Hex maps, and that worked wonderfully (as a tactical Wargame)
Frogboy, I hope you include both as options. Seems like an excellent tool for rpg'ers to use for custom map making. Remember those old Avalon Hill war games like Squad Leader, Kingmaker, etc. Fondness for hexes there. Also, old wargaming where your using a ruler to move little groups of miniatures where 1" equals some distance. Games like Ancients, etc. So there are many other gamer types out there that you could potentially help with a real dynamic map editor.
The squares are nice for those DnD types who used the squares for dungeon maps.
I would also like the option for no overlay. Legend creation tools(the legend is the information at bottom of most maps) Some important things in a legend are scale, declination angle, name of region or area, etc.
Matter of fact, you can go hog wild if you want on the Cartograph Creation tool. Hope you do anyways.
I'm guessing that would require a massive amount of work.
Eh, just allow the map to be divided by hexes, so that people can mod in a whole new set of rules centered around Hex-maps.
If people can mod in hex maps, they can attempt to balance them too. Not sure how much work it would take to allow Mods to use hex-maps.
Could be alot, could be a little, but it would certainly be ALOT of work to make two versions of the game (one on hex and one on squares) ... so I would prefer the actual game to only use Squares.
I would prefer they pick one and make it perfect. Having hexes or traingles or randomly shaped tiles with curves and lines that look like they are from an Escher painting can wait for mods/expansions.
I wonder if octagons would be better??? are Octo-maps possible?
Try to draw one and see what happens.
The only simple polygons capable of tessellating (filling a 2D plane with no overlaps and no gaps) are triangles, squares and hexagons.
I thought this was a 2010 TBS game that was going to push conventional thinking. Why are we using squares or hexes when we could use distance and vectors?
I want to chime in and just say that I do prefer squares and I am sad to see Civ5 moving in this direction.
We've never used triangles.. right?
No, triangles make for horrible grids. Just think about the diagonals on them. They might be amusing as a novelty, but as a serious grid? no thanks.
The Doritos mod will prove you wrong! Now, someone make that mod!
Wow, NGE doritos. Makes me wish i lived in japan. For those, having a triangle grid would be totally worth it.
The problem that it's usually better to move diagonally on a square grid can be remedied by multiplying the movement cost by sqrt(2) (this value can be rounded to 1.4 or 1.5) when moving on diagonals. But I still prefer hexes.
Couldn't we just toggle in-between overlays? Doesn't seem complicated to me but then again, I'm not always the brightest light. Sometimes just a dim bulb. The hexes were used extensively for miniature war gaming. People enjoyed having flanking options which hexes provided. Squares are limited in direction you face, but were used so heavily(cause it was easy) in underground/dungeon settings for people to make maps with.
Everyone who wargamed or rpg'd at one point has used a 1 square = 10'. The advancements in pc gaming(which many wargamers/strategy enthusiasts migrated to) allowed for a complete circle or to face any direction you wanted without overlays. Not sure if the flanking/rear attack bonuses have carried over through the years like they should have. The gist of it all is I would like to see squares, hexes and no grids as options for the users in Elemental.
The attack/defense modifiers should be the same regardless of overlays. Meaning, if you get attacked from rear whether your in hex/sq/cirlce/triangle/ or no overlay the modifiers should remain the same and not be based on the overlay just the relationship between the units and how they face each other.
It would require a major overhaul of the engine. Going from squares to hexes is not that simple. Just look at the Civ5 screens and how the terrain is molded to fix hexes. They would have to change all the map drawing graphics, city borders, and so on to handle hexes. Not to mention city building is design to fit neatly into a square tile which would be thrown off by hexes. There are lots of other things as well that could arise from such a drastic change.
Ok, didn't know tiles were tied to terrain or anything else. I thought it was just a graphic for visuals.
Every game you think of as not being tiled uses triangles. Triangles are not nice for human tile-counting though, so they are only used when faking a non-tiled environment.
Well considering that I remember a post about making the square's inside each square 3 by 3 for city building purposes (Which sounded and still sounds like a great idea worth the trouble and effort). Boogie came on and explained how much effort went into getting the 2 by 2 overlay done and after a bit of spiteful glaring at the code said 3 by 3 (Which still sounds like a great idea that should be considered for the neatness and reduced sprawl factor of cities regardless of how much work it will be and how much boogie must be consigning my soul to the farthest reaches of hell atm. ) wasn't in the cards.
I am thinking Hexes at this point is kind of a moot point.
Good god! Why do the Japanese have doritos so much more awesome than our own?!?
I will post more later, but there are only THREE possible regular, simple polygon patterns that repeat evenly.
Triangles, squares, and hexes.
Triangles aren't intuitive so we use squares or hexes. We could do something wierd like sqaures + octogons, but that's not a simple one-shape repeating pattern.
I'll post more wierd stuff in a different thread just for fun. : )
Double post...
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