[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Project

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 25 Jan 2000, Tony Stuckey wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 06:25:06PM +0100, Thue Janus Kristensen wrote:
> > I don't think you cant make a spherical world with square tiles in any 
> > reasoable
> > manner, not without rewriting freeciv completely.
> 
>       This has been discussed extensively in the game design groups on
> usenet.  Toroidal worlds are the "easiest", Civ historically uses a
> cylinder.

<off-topic> Hmm.  They sound like interesting groups.  Which, if any,
would you recommend <off-topic>

>       Truly spherical worlds are best simulated by turning the map 45
> degrees, defining poles to be 0,0 and N/2, N/2, and allowing all
> directional map edge crossings.

Woah. That's fiendishly clever.  I like it a lot. This is a beautiful
illustration of how 'squares' on spheres needn't have 90 degree angles.


>       Hex or Triangle maps better approximate spheres, too.

Yeah. These are the more obvious approach.  N hexagons plus 6 pentagons
are an almost perfect approximation (in the sense that for large enough N,
the approximation can be arbitrarily good).

Jules
 
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