Yeah, I understand where you're coming from, Codehead. There's really no *need* to make a complete, ultra-flexible, plug-and-play, "ultimate" anything here. (I find I tend to try doing that a lot of times; it just tends to end up in an incomplete project and a load of frustration.)

I've left twobitcoder a message (since he's the one who sparked this whole idea), I'm hoping he or Codehead will be able to lay out a "plan of action" as far as the requirements for this project. Once we have those requirements sussed out, we should focus on implementing those requirements -- and nothing else.

A half-broken block of cinder doesn't polish much better than a turd, after all.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

Skeksis?








Glad I'm not the only one who does that. I wish I could get back all the time I've spent building open and expandable code that never gets looked at again after the job is done.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Close. The third staxis that rises up out of the hex plane is called Skek: Stak, Stag and Skek

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

That looks AWESOME! For FASA Star Trek, all we need is a flat hexmap, but for BTech the height would be really important, but not absolutely required. You could just use line-of-sight to show where the mech can see or not when aiming or moving?

I'd love to be able to use that hexmap renderer for the Trek game, because I have all the starship meshes, but one problem is OpenGL.... All my assets are in .X format i.e. Direct3D. It took weeks to convert them tall and fix textures, etc.

On the 2D vs 3D thing, man, if you have a simple way to get a hexmap to render it sure would look great, and you could simulate a 2D flat map but have the benefit of the Z axis as well. Or just use a, what is it called, orthographic? camera to render it as a 2D flat surface on the "screen" (view).

Personally I would like to just go all out 3D after seeing this mock-up, because doing the starship battles with the ability to move the camera around would just be so great, and make the game(s) taken more seriously among gamers.

I'm just stuck on the file format problem...

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That is a bit of a problem. Would it be possible to run the .X meshes through a batch-converter? Even if the textures and such don't come out, just having the meshes available in a more-standard format would be a good first step.

Alternatively, we could just use the .X file format spec to build our own .X file loader (which is assuming there aren't already some out there written by others -- I'd be shocked if there were none).


Yes, "orthographic" is the word you are looking for. I also agree that it could be a good "middle-ground" of sorts for the rendering engine.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

I have MilkShape which is quite good at converting stuff. I generally use .OBJ for non-animated objects. Let me have a couple of models to test and we'll see how they come out. However, as Clint says, there's probably some .X loading code around which would avoid the need for conversion completely.
I did look at .X a while back, IIRC the format supports animation and bone data. I assume there's none of that in these models though.

The renderer is orthographic just now. Going full 3D isn't that much of a stretch, but I'm trying to keep it simple at this stage.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

OK, stripped out some fluff and got back on track. Mouse selection is almost working. I just have to iron out some issues with Pushing/Popping the modelview matrix.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Fixed! An extra PushMatrix had snuck in to the Select() loop.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

sweet!

i love HEX based games. I'm planning on eventually remaking an old game of mine in HEX format.

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"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"Hope is the first step on the road to dissapointment." -Jonah Orion
http://tankzgame.blogspot.com

Hello. Not sure how far u have gotten into this. But I like community projects. And I think this could be great idea. But I also know with a community you get alot of idea's and wants. With that said. I think creating a hex based game engine would be perfect! It would helpful with any hex game

Like...
-option to add text to a hex
-option for 3d
-option to calculate distance between hexes
-option to color or texture

Ect...

Just a thought , instead of making just a specific game.
Cheers
Squills

Ugh.

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What most people don't understand is what I like to explain as a thing that I understand.

Ugh. What. It's been awhile for any update. Thought I would respark the love!

Contact Jasmine.

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What most people don't understand is what I like to explain as a thing that I understand.

she no answer ... only hear dial tone..

Are you kidding me? What?

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What most people don't understand is what I like to explain as a thing that I understand.

That's all I get, too. Silly phones.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

I like violet flower vases from outer space.

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What most people don't understand is what I like to explain as a thing that I understand.

This isn't even a project. It was a couple of hours of messing about, two years ago.

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I ain't pushing no moon buttons.

FOCUS... no no FOCUS!!!

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What most people don't understand is what I like to explain as a thing that I understand.