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Author Topic:   Firaxis: Why squares and not Hexes?

Techie posted 03-03-99 08:27 PM ET
Something I've always wondered about Sid's
games is why they are still using the
archaic method of squares on thier maps
rather than hexes. Hexes solve the 'diagonal
move vs area travelled' problem, and
give more freedom of movement.
Hexes were made for boardgames/TBS games!
Why are'nt they used in Civ/SMAC ??

Techie
iratheous posted 03-03-99 08:41 PM ET
What other TBS game can I buy that offers hexes? I haven't played that many, But from ther games I've seen everything is squares. And besides, even with hexes wont you STILL only have 8 directions to move from one square??? woudln't a hex just be a different way of drawing the square??
JaimeWolf posted 03-03-99 10:32 PM ET
The quick answer is "why not?"
Longer answer: Hexes offer 6 axes of movement, squares offer 8 which easliy maps to the keyboard.
The squares are fairly abstract in size anyway, so why try for one move = set number of miles?
James
Brother Greg posted 03-03-99 10:49 PM ET
Also, it screws city sizes up. A size 2 radius city in squares makes for 21 squares. The same in hexes is, um, 19. Oh well, there goes that idea...
However, I think people find it easier to work with a square grid than a hex grid. Much less complex. So I think in the end it comes down to a gameplay issue. Easier to use squares than hexes, cos for the average Joe, it is easier to understand.
I would be interested to know (from Firaxis) what the actual reason is though (I'm always curious)...
iratheous posted 03-03-99 11:51 PM ET
I was thinking of octagons.. Well what are the bennifits ofhaving hexes? I see someone did the math and found that cities would get the use of less squares, I also see that if you had to retreat from an enemy unit you would only have 3 choices for the directions you wanted to move instead of 5. Wouldn't sensors lose to squares of cenverage? And what is wrong with squares? Is it just because the don't look as nice? (i play with all the grids off anyways) i don't really care either way as long as the game mechanics still work and I'm not losing out on something over the other.
Scrubby posted 03-04-99 12:05 AM ET
This is actually a very good question! I would venture though that Brother Greg is right. The average joe picking up SMAC won't be scared off. Hexes=Wargames=Complexity? True or not this might be the reason...
flurdy posted 03-04-99 05:39 AM ET
i think hexes/octagons is a good idea for a followup (beta centurie? Sirius? civ IV?).
people learn quickly and would adopt soon to a hex map, and probably would find squares arcaic afterwards.
this will also make it easier to make the planet a sphere and not a cylinder, to get traveling over the north/south poles more realistic.
Aceron posted 03-04-99 07:50 AM ET
The simple answer to why we're working in squares is this
"If it isn't broken, don't fix it"
Squares have worked fine in Civ, they've been more than adequate in Civ II, and not having hexagons instead has not detracted significantly from the gameplay experience, therefore there is no reason to completely reengineer the game, making it less recognizable and accessible to the fans of the series.
TheHelperMonkey posted 03-04-99 08:13 AM ET
If any of you have actually played a wargame, you people would know that it is imposible to move your tanks or whatever using keynoard. You always use mouse when playing with hexes (right?). I do, I don't use keyboard. On the other hand, if you wanna play a TBS, you use isometric view, with squares ti get the effect of 3-d (at least, that is what they did in SMAC).
sandworm posted 03-04-99 08:49 AM ET
I've never had any problem using the hex maps in some of the old SSI Panzer/Allied-General games.
I do wonder how well this would work on a 3D map. Sometimes I get confused with the squares.
In a way the squares that are used in smac ARE octagons, they're just not drawn that way (don't know how that could ever work, try drawing octagons that meet another octagon flush on every side). You can move out through the corner of the squares for the same movement cost as a side.
So maybe hexagons would work better than the squares with only six directions to move instead of eight, could be less confusing.
At least less confusing than my posts!
Derek posted 03-04-99 08:54 AM ET
Hexes would make the game a little more difficult to program. For things like pathfinding, you have to be able to identify each map unit, whether it is a square or a hex. With squares, you know that a square 3 squares down is adjacent to the square 3 squares down to either side. With hexes, a hex 3 hexes down is adjacent to either hexes 2 and 3 or hexes 3 and 4, depending upon which column it is in.
Upon thinking about it, the games this I've played that use hexes tend to be strictly combat games, like Panzer General II, and they all have had non-morphable terrain. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes in SMAC then simple combat, so spending the extra effort on hexes probably wasn't worth it.
A better option for unit movement would be to not use a grid at all, like in Starcraft. That would make resource management and terraforming VERY difficult, though. How do you determine a city radius, or the effects of terraforming?
Note: Upon thinking about it, Operational Art of War is a very complex game, and it uses hexes, if I remember correctly. It tends to use fairly simple graphics, though, if I remember correctly, so that might compensate some.
henriks posted 03-04-99 09:03 AM ET
Someone correct me if I'm wrong...
I don't think it's geometrically possible to completely cover an area using other regular polygons than triangles, squares and hexagons. The triangle pattern is not fully symmetrical. Therefore, the only plausible patterns are squares and hexagons.
Lee Johnson posted 03-04-99 09:22 AM ET
The argument against squares is that movement through the corners is cheaper than movement through the sides, because a unit square is one unit across, but SQRT(2) ~= 1.4 across the diagonal. This distorts movement in those directions. If you disallow movement through the vertices, all moves cost the same regardless of direction--but then you can only move in four directions. It is possible to make the game keep track of fractional movement points, at the risk of confusing the player.
If you want to tesselate a plane with regular polygons, you're stuck with triangles, squares, or hexagons. Hexagons are 'best' because they have the largest number of facings.
I'm waiting for a turn based strategy game that does away with discrete grids on planar maps and uses movement radii on the surface of a real sphere. There are some interesting user interface challenges there, especially once terrain effects come into play. The reason this isn't being done is probably as much due to the "Is it fun?" rule of game design as it is to technical considerations.
MoSe posted 03-04-99 10:53 AM ET
Furthermore, how would you determine which resources a worker placed in an 'analogic' coordinate in the city radius will obtain from the land? How close can you put workers? If you don't introduce decimal resources, you'll have anyway to determine zones on the ground eve if you don't have a grid (here 2 minerals, there 1).
Hexes only allow for more realistic calculation of distance travelled (they always share a side, no need for corner-movement); throwing away the grid will force a change in the philosophy of land exploitment.
Triangles should then be the most flexible choice, after all you can see them as 6-cake-slices of an Hex, with a single triangle belonging simultaneously to 3 different hexes; you'd have again to penalize corner movement though.
zaz posted 03-04-99 12:55 PM ET
Play any game in the Battleground series, they all use hexagons. The game play is no more difficult for your average idiot. Plus there is no advantage to moving in certain directions as there is with squares.
As to the movement problem, I believe CTP will use the 1.412 factor in countering the move through the diagonals. (someone was thinking at Activision) Hope it works.
Lee Johnson posted 03-04-99 01:14 PM ET
"Furthermore, how would you determine which resources a worker placed in an 'analogic' coordinate in the city radius will obtain from the land?"
I said I was waiting for a turn-based strategy game; I didn't say it had to be Yet Another Civ. ;-)
Techie posted 03-04-99 06:44 PM ET
Thanks all for your replies...
My general response to the comments is that I believe that hexes more realistically portray terrain (more rounded coastlines and features) and more realistic movement (movement is not cheaper across the diagonal because all hexes share a side).
Some very popular and successful wargames (Panzer General comes to mind) were based on hexes and I did'nt find them more complex to operate. For a 3 dimensional map, I would think it would be easier to distinguish the boundaries between hexes than squares.
Someone pointed out that hexes don't map well to a keyboard. Actually they do map well if you use the character keys, clockwise starting with A and ending with Z. This is because of the way most keyboards 'stagger' thier keys.
My guess is that SM and BR were most familiar to constructing thier formulas based around a square grid, and thought it too much work to rethink thier code with hexes. In response to Derek's point about hexes being more difficult to index, it actually is'nt that big a deal if you index the hexes diagonally along a line parrallel to one of thier sides. Any oldtimer wargamer like me would know that Undoubtedly though, calculating the number of hexes between two points would require some new math.
My vote is still for hexes in SMAC2, if only for the aesthetic reasons.

Techie
TheHelperMonkey posted 03-04-99 09:38 PM ET
We need a reality check. SMAC IS NOT a wargame, IT IS a TBS. I have played wargames and i can tell you that the game play and movement of units there is mcuh different than in a TBS. For example, in People's General, a scout car could move up to around 13 hexes (I think), but insted of moving your scout car with the numpad, you used a mouse. That is the way hex games work. YOu have to use a mouse. That is very cumbersone, becuase the focus of SMAC is not wargaming, but empire build using the key AND the mouse.
Xentropy posted 03-04-99 10:37 PM ET
Lee Johnson: If you haven't already played it, find Conquest of the New World Deluxe Edition someplace on a discount rack... old game, but pretty good, and it used an open coordinate type system combined with resource gathering... it was really rather unique and interesting, and yes, I think that'd be the ideal setup for a game, though sometimes you have to give up the ideal for game balance, ease of design, and ease of play... Conquest did it very well, but even it had some interface qualities I'd change a bit...
Chris Pine FIRAXIS posted 03-05-99 09:09 AM ET
1.414 movement factor sounds totally frustrating. It sounds like moving diagonally is like moving through fungus.
Octagons?
Hexes, while more realistic (I guess...), allow fewer movement possibilities for a unit: 6 instead of 8. Plus, it's nice to use the numeric keypad. It already has arrows on it. It's intuitive.
Octagons?? ... Octagons?? Unless you mean the Ammon Tiling (aperiodic tiling of the plane with two types of tiles and points of local 8-fold rotational symmetry), which I doubt, how would one use octagons to tile a plane?
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Author	Topic: Firaxis: Why squares and not Hexes?
Techie	posted 03-03-99 08:27 PM ET Something I've always wondered about Sid's games is why they are still using the archaic method of squares on thier maps rather than hexes. Hexes solve the 'diagonal move vs area travelled' problem, and give more freedom of movement. Hexes were made for boardgames/TBS games! Why are'nt they used in Civ/SMAC ?? Techie
iratheous	posted 03-03-99 08:41 PM ET What other TBS game can I buy that offers hexes? I haven't played that many, But from ther games I've seen everything is squares. And besides, even with hexes wont you STILL only have 8 directions to move from one square??? woudln't a hex just be a different way of drawing the square??
JaimeWolf	posted 03-03-99 10:32 PM ET The quick answer is "why not?" Longer answer: Hexes offer 6 axes of movement, squares offer 8 which easliy maps to the keyboard. The squares are fairly abstract in size anyway, so why try for one move = set number of miles? James
Brother Greg	posted 03-03-99 10:49 PM ET Also, it screws city sizes up. A size 2 radius city in squares makes for 21 squares. The same in hexes is, um, 19. Oh well, there goes that idea... However, I think people find it easier to work with a square grid than a hex grid. Much less complex. So I think in the end it comes down to a gameplay issue. Easier to use squares than hexes, cos for the average Joe, it is easier to understand. I would be interested to know (from Firaxis) what the actual reason is though (I'm always curious)...
iratheous	posted 03-03-99 11:51 PM ET I was thinking of octagons.. Well what are the bennifits ofhaving hexes? I see someone did the math and found that cities would get the use of less squares, I also see that if you had to retreat from an enemy unit you would only have 3 choices for the directions you wanted to move instead of 5. Wouldn't sensors lose to squares of cenverage? And what is wrong with squares? Is it just because the don't look as nice? (i play with all the grids off anyways) i don't really care either way as long as the game mechanics still work and I'm not losing out on something over the other.
Scrubby	posted 03-04-99 12:05 AM ET This is actually a very good question! I would venture though that Brother Greg is right. The average joe picking up SMAC won't be scared off. Hexes=Wargames=Complexity? True or not this might be the reason...
flurdy	posted 03-04-99 05:39 AM ET i think hexes/octagons is a good idea for a followup (beta centurie? Sirius? civ IV?). people learn quickly and would adopt soon to a hex map, and probably would find squares arcaic afterwards. this will also make it easier to make the planet a sphere and not a cylinder, to get traveling over the north/south poles more realistic.
Aceron	posted 03-04-99 07:50 AM ET The simple answer to why we're working in squares is this "If it isn't broken, don't fix it" Squares have worked fine in Civ, they've been more than adequate in Civ II, and not having hexagons instead has not detracted significantly from the gameplay experience, therefore there is no reason to completely reengineer the game, making it less recognizable and accessible to the fans of the series.
TheHelperMonkey	posted 03-04-99 08:13 AM ET If any of you have actually played a wargame, you people would know that it is imposible to move your tanks or whatever using keynoard. You always use mouse when playing with hexes (right?). I do, I don't use keyboard. On the other hand, if you wanna play a TBS, you use isometric view, with squares ti get the effect of 3-d (at least, that is what they did in SMAC).
sandworm	posted 03-04-99 08:49 AM ET I've never had any problem using the hex maps in some of the old SSI Panzer/Allied-General games. I do wonder how well this would work on a 3D map. Sometimes I get confused with the squares. In a way the squares that are used in smac ARE octagons, they're just not drawn that way (don't know how that could ever work, try drawing octagons that meet another octagon flush on every side). You can move out through the corner of the squares for the same movement cost as a side. So maybe hexagons would work better than the squares with only six directions to move instead of eight, could be less confusing. At least less confusing than my posts!
Derek	posted 03-04-99 08:54 AM ET Hexes would make the game a little more difficult to program. For things like pathfinding, you have to be able to identify each map unit, whether it is a square or a hex. With squares, you know that a square 3 squares down is adjacent to the square 3 squares down to either side. With hexes, a hex 3 hexes down is adjacent to either hexes 2 and 3 or hexes 3 and 4, depending upon which column it is in. Upon thinking about it, the games this I've played that use hexes tend to be strictly combat games, like Panzer General II, and they all have had non-morphable terrain. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes in SMAC then simple combat, so spending the extra effort on hexes probably wasn't worth it. A better option for unit movement would be to not use a grid at all, like in Starcraft. That would make resource management and terraforming VERY difficult, though. How do you determine a city radius, or the effects of terraforming? Note: Upon thinking about it, Operational Art of War is a very complex game, and it uses hexes, if I remember correctly. It tends to use fairly simple graphics, though, if I remember correctly, so that might compensate some.
henriks	posted 03-04-99 09:03 AM ET Someone correct me if I'm wrong... I don't think it's geometrically possible to completely cover an area using other regular polygons than triangles, squares and hexagons. The triangle pattern is not fully symmetrical. Therefore, the only plausible patterns are squares and hexagons.
Lee Johnson	posted 03-04-99 09:22 AM ET The argument against squares is that movement through the corners is cheaper than movement through the sides, because a unit square is one unit across, but SQRT(2) ~= 1.4 across the diagonal. This distorts movement in those directions. If you disallow movement through the vertices, all moves cost the same regardless of direction--but then you can only move in four directions. It is possible to make the game keep track of fractional movement points, at the risk of confusing the player. If you want to tesselate a plane with regular polygons, you're stuck with triangles, squares, or hexagons. Hexagons are 'best' because they have the largest number of facings. I'm waiting for a turn based strategy game that does away with discrete grids on planar maps and uses movement radii on the surface of a real sphere. There are some interesting user interface challenges there, especially once terrain effects come into play. The reason this isn't being done is probably as much due to the "Is it fun?" rule of game design as it is to technical considerations.
MoSe	posted 03-04-99 10:53 AM ET Furthermore, how would you determine which resources a worker placed in an 'analogic' coordinate in the city radius will obtain from the land? How close can you put workers? If you don't introduce decimal resources, you'll have anyway to determine zones on the ground eve if you don't have a grid (here 2 minerals, there 1). Hexes only allow for more realistic calculation of distance travelled (they always share a side, no need for corner-movement); throwing away the grid will force a change in the philosophy of land exploitment. Triangles should then be the most flexible choice, after all you can see them as 6-cake-slices of an Hex, with a single triangle belonging simultaneously to 3 different hexes; you'd have again to penalize corner movement though.
zaz	posted 03-04-99 12:55 PM ET Play any game in the Battleground series, they all use hexagons. The game play is no more difficult for your average idiot. Plus there is no advantage to moving in certain directions as there is with squares. As to the movement problem, I believe CTP will use the 1.412 factor in countering the move through the diagonals. (someone was thinking at Activision) Hope it works.
Lee Johnson	posted 03-04-99 01:14 PM ET "Furthermore, how would you determine which resources a worker placed in an 'analogic' coordinate in the city radius will obtain from the land?" I said I was waiting for a turn-based strategy game; I didn't say it had to be Yet Another Civ. ;-)
Techie	posted 03-04-99 06:44 PM ET Thanks all for your replies... My general response to the comments is that I believe that hexes more realistically portray terrain (more rounded coastlines and features) and more realistic movement (movement is not cheaper across the diagonal because all hexes share a side). Some very popular and successful wargames (Panzer General comes to mind) were based on hexes and I did'nt find them more complex to operate. For a 3 dimensional map, I would think it would be easier to distinguish the boundaries between hexes than squares. Someone pointed out that hexes don't map well to a keyboard. Actually they do map well if you use the character keys, clockwise starting with A and ending with Z. This is because of the way most keyboards 'stagger' thier keys. My guess is that SM and BR were most familiar to constructing thier formulas based around a square grid, and thought it too much work to rethink thier code with hexes. In response to Derek's point about hexes being more difficult to index, it actually is'nt that big a deal if you index the hexes diagonally along a line parrallel to one of thier sides. Any oldtimer wargamer like me would know that Undoubtedly though, calculating the number of hexes between two points would require some new math. My vote is still for hexes in SMAC2, if only for the aesthetic reasons. Techie
TheHelperMonkey	posted 03-04-99 09:38 PM ET We need a reality check. SMAC IS NOT a wargame, IT IS a TBS. I have played wargames and i can tell you that the game play and movement of units there is mcuh different than in a TBS. For example, in People's General, a scout car could move up to around 13 hexes (I think), but insted of moving your scout car with the numpad, you used a mouse. That is the way hex games work. YOu have to use a mouse. That is very cumbersone, becuase the focus of SMAC is not wargaming, but empire build using the key AND the mouse.
Xentropy	posted 03-04-99 10:37 PM ET Lee Johnson: If you haven't already played it, find Conquest of the New World Deluxe Edition someplace on a discount rack... old game, but pretty good, and it used an open coordinate type system combined with resource gathering... it was really rather unique and interesting, and yes, I think that'd be the ideal setup for a game, though sometimes you have to give up the ideal for game balance, ease of design, and ease of play... Conquest did it very well, but even it had some interface qualities I'd change a bit...
Chris Pine FIRAXIS	posted 03-05-99 09:09 AM ET 1.414 movement factor sounds totally frustrating. It sounds like moving diagonally is like moving through fungus. Octagons? Hexes, while more realistic (I guess...), allow fewer movement possibilities for a unit: 6 instead of 8. Plus, it's nice to use the numeric keypad. It already has arrows on it. It's intuitive. Octagons?? ... Octagons?? Unless you mean the Ammon Tiling (aperiodic tiling of the plane with two types of tiles and points of local 8-fold rotational symmetry), which I doubt, how would one use octagons to tile a plane?