[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#6669) Poles on a N-S wrapping topology

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=6669 >

Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:

> I personally think that N-S wrapping without E-W wrapping should be
> ditched.  It's totally unphysical.  If a user wants something like this,
> he can put his monitor on it's side.

"Ditched"?  Excluding this topology would take a lot of work.  If people 
don't want it they don't have to use it.  It doesn't take any extra work 
to maintain.

> Somewhat surprisingly, the doughnut world is more physical.  However, it
> must have a pole (a single one), which corresponds to the "inside" of
> the torus.

Gameplay is more important than realism.  A torus may not be very 
realistic but (without poles) it leads to good gameplay.

> To summarize, I think the following is quite reasonable:
> 1. If haspoles = 0, there are no special arctic strip,
> otherwise there is 1 or 2 arctic strips depending on whether we have or
> have not the N-S wrap.
> 2. Separatepoles=1 is active only when we have poles and ensures that 
> each polar strip is a separate continent.

Yep.

My implementation gives a third value to haspoles.  Something like

   0 = has poles only if not north-south wrapping (default)
   1 = never has poles
   2 = always has poles

> Jason, does your patch handle single polar continent?

If you make poles on a torus, it will end up as just a single continent. 
  This is what causes the bug, since the continent numbering is done 
manually so continents 1 and 2 end up touching.

jason