[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Suggestion: Growning cities

[Erik Sigra <freeciv@xxxxxxx>]

Steve Hodge wrote:
> 
> Jules Bean wrote:
> >  Not that long ago, someone pointed out that doing away
> > with tiles completely was the only totally elegant solution to the
> > 'map freeciv onto a sphere' problem.  I think a tileless freeciv would
> > be a nice thing to have.
> 
> Well you can do pretty well mapping hexagons to a sphere. It's something
> I'm toying with at the moment. Basically, the way I'm doing it,
> regardless of the number of hexagons you want (valid numbers are
> 30*n^2-10) you have to have 12 pentagons. The two obviouos options for
> dealing with those is to either make them holes in the map, or handle
> them normally. Being able to handle an arbitrarily connected network of
> cells wouldn't be a bad thing for FreeCiv.


This was one of the first things I suggested after discovering Freeciv:

  <http://arch.freeciv.org/freeciv-dev-200003/msg00611.html>

I'm pleased to hear that someone has actually started to code it :-)

How would the coordinates be arranged?

Maybe freeciv.org could sell a gold distribution of Freeciv on CD,
incluing printed manual and a little special purpouse keyboard with two
groups of keys:
* One ring of 5 symmetrically placed keys for moving from pentagons.
* One ring of 6 symmetrically placed keys for moving from hexagons.
If the pentagons are so rare (12 on the whole map), the 5-ring could
just be placed outside the 6-ring.
It could of course be used in any other game where it would be usefull.

> Regards,
> Steve Hodge

Erik