Non flat maps (use pentagons and septagons on maps)

[Jakob Ilves <illvilja at yahoo dot com>]

Hello!

The orbiter is back, and in this email I'm considering to take a trip to the moon...  And you are
welcome to join me on the ride...

One thing I've been tinkering with on paper and in Java for approx 10-12 years is to let strategy
games take place not only on a flat hexagon playfield but upon a playfield where you have
occasional pentagons and septagons thrown in.

For instance, there were a few strategy games written in the 80s (Task force games' "Cerberus" and
Game Designers Workshop's "Traveller") which uses hexagonal maps of planets where a few hexes were
replaced with pentagons, resulting in a playfield which topologically was a icosokaeder (20 sided
die).  That would be cool to use in Xconq (or any other computer strategy game as well).

Imagine the 32 patches making up a leather football to be a playfield for Xconq.  Ok, it would be
a heck of a small map but still.

Actually, by using septagons (7-sided "hexes") in clever ways it's possible to create a playfield
with "tubes" protubing out of or into playfield surfaces.  One can have a few large ikosaeders
tied together with bridging tubes.

Imagine such a playfield where you have various terrains laid out... wow!  Imagine the nightmare
of displaying the thing in a GUI.... ouch!  It's the latter part which I've been scratching my
head with.

In the nordic mythology, the world consists of one huge tree, the ash named "Yggdrasil".  With
such a playfields with pentagons, hexagons and septagons, "yggdrasil" can be played upon in Xconq
:-).

As I said, this was a trip to the moon.  Stay tuned.  I'll create some docs and images for you to
view with this.

Best regards

/IlvJa, about to be lost in space


=====
(Jakob Ilves) <illvilja@yahoo.com>
{http://www.geocities.com/illvilja}

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