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Why Elemental doesn't have a hex grid, and why it should.

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Why Elemental doesn't have a hex grid, and why it should.

from Elemental Forums

Brad Wardell on why we have squares instead of hexes.

 

"I hate hexes," says Wardell when asked what he thinks of Civ 5's big new feature. "One, I like being able to move in eight directions. I don't like only being able to move in six. Two, it makes the game feel like playing on a hardcore board tile game. I just don't like that look."

 

The "i like being able to move in eight, instead of six" is completely arbitrary;  obviously it cannot be supported by any solid argument, but it CAN be attacked with the argument that FOUR of those directions basically break the system.  It's always better to move diagonally in a "square grid" system, because you are covering MORE GROUND.  This is stupid.

From Wiki's article on Hex Grids:

The primary advantage of a hex map over a traditional square grid map is that the distance between the center of each hex cell (or hex) and the center of all six adjacent hexes is constant. By comparison, in a square grid map, the distance from the center of each square cell to the center of the four diagonal adjacent cells it shares a corner with is greater than the distance to the center of the four adjacent cells it shares an edge with. This is desirable for games in which the measurement of movement is a factor. The other advantage is the fact that neighbouring cells always share edges; there are no two cells with contact at only one point.

It's a bit ironic that Brad doesn't want the game to "feel like playing on a hardcore board tile game", given that it's definitely the most hardcore big game to get sold in probably 10 years, and given that it has the cloth map mode which feels a little boardgamey anyway.  Also, nobody knows strategy and tactics like the guys who made those hardcore board tile games he's talking about.  He should look to learn from them rather than reject them because he "doesnt like" the look.

 

In short, I'm a bit sad that Brad isn't the kind of designer who can look past his own personal preferences and figure out what is actually best for the game.

elemental
40,083 views 59 replies
Reply #51 from Elemental Forums Top

I prefer hex maps, and I greatly anticipate playing Civ 5 as a result.  However, hex maps vs. square maps is a design-time decision.  There is really just no feasible way to incorporate it at this time without rewriting the engine from the ground up.  And I mean this quite literally. would have to be done anew, from ground zero.

Reply #52 from Elemental Forums Top

It's sad that so many of you mistook what I said for "I LIKE HEXES BETTER!!!" somehow.  And I'm also sad that some of you seem to think that there is nothing more to game design than preference.

 

The truth is, there's often a "best tool for the job" situation with various design challenges.  With regards to moving armies around a map, hexes are better.  Even if I "like" squares more, it doesn't matter, because hexes simply make more sense.

 

I understand that it's extremely unlikely that hexes will be put into the game, but the point of the thread was to bring up the point that Wardell is being quite "un-designerly" when it comes to this topic.  It is not good enough to just say "I like that" or "I don't like that" and base your design decisions off it.

 

What if there was a game designer who was making an FPS, and it was an otherwise great game, except that the designer "didn't like the mouse", and so the game only supported keyboard or gamepad play.  This would suck.  Obviously, the Squares/Hexes issue isn't *that* fundamental, but it illustrates my point about a man's personal preference getting in the way of making the best possible choice.

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Reply #53 from Elemental Forums Top

One major gripe with squares is that you can move/shoot farther in some directions.  There is a pretty simple fix for this.  Every other diagonal costs two movement points instead of 1.  

Once you start doing that, all your range calculations start to resemble a circular perimeter. 

Wouldn't that make everyone happy?

 

Also, since this game uses action points, they could just have diagonal movement have a 1.44 cost multiplier.

 

 

Reply #54 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rwemack, reply 54
One major gripe with squares is that you can move/shoot farther in some directions.  There is a pretty simple fix for this.  Every other diagonal costs two movement points instead of 1.  

Once you start doing that, all your range calculations start to resemble a circular perimeter. 

Wouldn't that make everyone happy?

 

Also, since this game uses action points, they could just have diagonal movement have a 1.44 cost multiplier.
End of rwemack's quote

Why not?

Or just remove the ability to move diagonally at all

Reply #55 from Elemental Forums Top

The truth is, there's often a "best tool for the job" situation with various design challenges.  With regards to moving armies around a map, hexes are better.  Even if I "like" squares more, it doesn't matter, because hexes simply make more sense.

End of quote

As have been pointed out, with an action point system you can get all the advantages of Hex if you want, what I'm not sure if you understand is that when you design a game you're not really after what's the most optimal or accurate, you're after what you think the players will find the most fun and as this thread has shown many people just plain don't like Hexes which makes Hexes bad from a design standpoint.

Reply #56 from Elemental Forums Top

I wonder if in the CivV forums there is the 'parallel universe' discussion going on about the same subject. ;)

Reply #57 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Das123, reply 57
I wonder if in the CivV forums there is the 'parallel universe' discussion going on about the same subject.
End of Das123's quote

 

Yes they were. I personally do not like hexes in Civ V, the way they make map look like, with all those zigzags... However, for tactical battles I think hexes are better.

Reply #58 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rwemack, reply 54
One major gripe with squares is that you can move/shoot farther in some directions.  There is a pretty simple fix for this.  Every other diagonal costs two movement points instead of 1.  
End of rwemack's quote

No.

As someone involved in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup development I can tell you this stuff is hotly debated on our dev wiki and there is no simple fix. There are still differences from reality. Imagine orthogonal move costs 5 points, while diagonal costs 7. 7/5 is 1.4, which is pretty damn close to 1.414213..., the sqrt(2). And these are still small integers which makes it easier for humans to calculate. Now a character/missile has a range of 35 (7 * 5 = 35). It will look like this:

Code: css
  3. .......7.......
  4. .......6.......
  5. ..5....5....5..
  6. ...4...4...4...
  7. ....3..3..3....
  8. .....2.2.2.....
  9. ......111......
  10. 7654321@1234567
  11. ......111......
  12. .....2.2.2.....
  13. ....3..3..3....
  14. ...4...4...4...
  15. ..5....5....5..
  16. .......6.......
  17. .......7.......

I hope this renders correctly. This forum's text processor is awful. Anyway, even if you adjust costs so they are more less right, there's different number of squares in your range depending on how you aim. To use an example from Crawl: if Bolt of Fire hits everything in a line, you can make it hit 7 creatures by casting it orthogonally, and 5 by aiming it diagonally. Every other direction will be something inbetween.

As for hexes, the only real drawback is they are poor for representing artificial features. Humans often build with a lot of right angles (90 degrees), because it's very easy to calculate rectangles. As far as I can tell Elemental uses very little artificial geometry - cities are composes of few big "districts", so that's no reason to abandon hexes.

One solution could be to use hexes for outdoors and squares indoors.