SEV: Taking me to the edge of sanity

[Possum]

Imperator Fyron said:
Kooky theory? Geeze, sorry for hazarding a guess... Can you point out any mass-market (PC) games that used hexes? All I can think of use floating point or squares.

Anyways, this is all tangential to the point that hex grids don't necessarily require any more computational power than square grids...

Panzer General used a hex grid

[Possum]

OMG, I think Fyron might be about to lose an argument!

Quick, call the Guiness book!

[Fyron]

Eh? I just said I couldn't think of any; I didn't say there weren't any. The argument was about computational efficiency anyways...

[Possum]

Just teasing you, bro

I personally don't have a clue which uses more resources for pathing calculations. But my personal prejudice is strong.

To me, hexgrids look "right" and "professional"

To me, square grids look "cheap", "cheesy", amateurish", and just plain "wrong".

Hey, I said it was prejudice, didn't I?

[Raapys]

I don't think it's necessarily the hexgrid that makes it slower. The problem seems to be that the game is recalculating the entire travel path each hex a ship move, instead of only doing it when encountering something that demands a path recalculation( i.e. an enemy ship blocking a warp point or occupying a hex in the middle of your travel route comes into sensor range, preventing your ship from moving further, therefor requiring recalculation of the path ).

[Captain Kwok]

Raapys is right - not to mention that fact it does it so much more as a ship can travel 10-15 hexes per turn.

[Baron Munchausen]

Imperator Fyron said:
Slick said:
Except that your incorrect opinion does not reflect reality. Hex grids do require more math overall when compared to square grids.

More math overall? How so? You can find adjacent hexes exactly equivalently to square grids; the constant offset x,y coordinate values are different, but it is the same amount of math (add an x value, add a y value). You can efficiently represent and parse both hexes and squares in 2d arrays, with not much difference in computational complexity. We discussed this on IRC yesterday; some important bits:

<Vornicus> a hex system is just a square system with two specific paths disabled
...
<Vornicus> If you're looking at the linked object model, a hex only has six links where a grid has eight (and an ortho grid has four); if you're looking at the array index object model, then grid rejects (0,0) as nonadjacent, hex rejects x == y as nonadjacent, and orthogrid rejects (x + y) & 1 == 0 as nonadjacent
<Vornicus> it was a bit technical
<Vornicus> But the point is that a 2-d array can describe a hex grid as well as it describes a square grid.
<Vornicus> Anyway, without obstructions, a path is found almost trivially

If hex grids provided more efficient pathing, then why aren't all 2D computer games coded for a hex grid?

Because they are weird-looking, and most games are designed for the masses?

I think that what MM is doing is a very fine-resolution absolute coordinate system (x,y) underneath the display, and then figuring out what hex the ship(s) fall into after doing the coordinate calculation. In the early betas there was a lot of 'stuttering' as ships tried to decide what hex they were gonna land in.