Spherical world

[smallstepforman]

I've been following the History of the World developer blog (a project to create a Civilization type game, but in true 3D - link http://members.optushome.com.au/hotw/), and the developer has taken only 2 weeks to go from a square based world to a spherical based world, with hexagon tiles at that. So if one guy can do it in 2 weeks, why cant Firaxis with an army of developers do the same. It would be a shame if Civ 4 came out using u flat world.

Check out the screenshots of the spherical hex based world - looks pretty good for such an early stage of the project.

 

[Mordack]

Call to Power had this - one of the few good things about that series

 

[rhialto]

Nope, CTP didn't have spherical worlds. It used square tiles, and had options to wrap horizontally or vertically.

If you take a large square area (as in civ and ctp) and wrap it horizontally, you get a cylinder. Wrap it horizontally and vertically, you get a torus, or doughnut, shape. Not a sphere.

 

[Craterus22]

Good find...

I would be for the switch to hexagons even if they decided not to make a spherical world.


Though I wish they would...


ps - civ3/conquests also can wrap maps vertically and horizontally

 

[acd]

I wouldn't want to play on map like that. It plays with my eyes to much.

 

[Hakim]

Great link!

I've wanted this for so long, but it seems Civ IV wont have it .

 

[Loppan Torkel]

It's not a high priority for me, it's better if they improve other things before this.

 

[MattII]

I'd like a hexagon base world as well, with the hexagons aligned to the even numbers of a clockface, to give straighter top and bottom edges, and it wouldn't make the left and right edges any more corrugated than they already are.

 

[rhialto]

The important point for me is that, if they map a spherical map, it should be orientation-independant. That is, it should like the same no matter where you view the map from. Otherwise, it still doesn't remove the main problem inherent to flat maps.

The impassable poles issue isn't as a serious problem as most people make out, as in reality the only uits that travel there are some of the more modern aircraft, and there are plenty of other ways to give them that pole-crossing ability.

 

[happy_Alex]

Before I read this thread, I put down a spherical world as one of the things that could be modded to civ2 if the code was released. Sounds kinda difficult though. One thing about the hexagonal world, how are units supposed to move, in 6 directions as opposed to 8?

 

[Hyronymus]

I've been following the History of the World developer blog (a project to create a Civilization type game, but in true 3D - link http://members.optushome.com.au/hotw/), and the developer has taken only 2 weeks to go from a square based world to a spherical based world, with hexagon tiles at that. So if one guy can do it in 2 weeks, why cant Firaxis with an army of developers do the same. It would be a shame if Civ 4 came out using u flat world.

Check out the screenshots of the spherical hex based world - looks pretty good for such an early stage of the project.

All I see is a screenshot of a spherical world - no units moving on it, no cities found, no cvi-like thing whatsoever. And you really wonder why Firaxis can't do it for Civ? If it was merely drawing a spherical world they would've done it with Civ1 right away.

 

[happy_Alex]

not really. Such a thing would have beeen beyond peoples computers at the time. And civ I set the pattern for the series, so they're not likely to change it. As I said It would look pretty wicked and we should try and do it if we get the Civ II source code.

 

[Hyronymus]

I obviously had to include 'if PC's were capable back then' when I wrote my reply but I honestly hoped that the average gamer would automaticly realize that DOS didn't allow 3D graphics, rendering my statement a highly over-exaggerated one but it seems I was wrong and some people really believe I meant what I said.

 

[rhialto]

I expect that if were did have the civ2 source code, we'd find so many algorithms rely on the assuption of a square grid that the whole thing would effectively be written from scratch anyway. This is an extremely low level design feature after all.

 

[Hyronymus]

I hope people don't confuse low-level design with low-level difficulty.

 

[happy_Alex]

I expect that if were did have the civ2 source code, we'd find so many algorithms rely on the assuption of a square grid that the whole thing would effectively be written from scratch anyway. This is an extremely low level design feature after all.

oh yeh with a hexagonal grid and all. But some things would work like diplomacy cities and the like? Isn't the code for the game broken down into chunks?

 

[OwieB2003]

Personally, I'm not too sure if spherical, complete worlds are a good idea. They'd be cool, and they'd be real, but navigating polar regions (pushing your units through them)'d need to be a REAL pain just through the sheer logistics of it. Storms for naval and air units, the cold and keeping your units from freezing up/freezing to death for ground units. Course, it'd also be cool if overall city health and volcanoes could affect the entire map, the way real cities and volcanoes do over the spherical map we live in, but that idea prolly belongs in another thread.

 

[MattII]

I like the Idea of a globe, but it should be the basis for another game line (Sid Meier's Global Conquest maybe). @Hyronymus post #11, he is a single guy attempting a task which has probably not been attempted before, you can't expect instant results. @Happy Alex post #10, 1,3,7,9 to move diagonally, 4,6 to move side to side and 2,8 to cycle through units (assuming vertical point). If horizontal point simply swap 4,6 and 2,8.
ie vertical point
/\
| |
\/
horizontal point
__
/ \
\__/

 

[warpstorm]

It's not that a spherical world can't be done; there are many, many games that have done it in the past. It's, why should it be done? Because it's realistic or because it's cool, are usually the wrong reason.

 

[lcorinth]

It's not that a spherical world can't be done; there are many, many games that have done it in the past. It's, why should it be done? Because it's realistic or because it's cool, are usually the wrong reason.

I agree. It might be cool, but it should be considered carefully. In Risk II you can toggle a spherical world on, but I find it harder to play that way. Flat maps, even of the real world, are sometimes more practical, because they're easier to read, even if they lack some accuracy toward the poles.

Perhaps you could have the option of clicking on a global view? It could get tricky, though, since in the flat view the poles are just as far from east to west as the middle "equatorial" region is... I like the idea of seeing what the globe would look like, but I'm generally happy with the way a flat map plays.