Actually, he's not the only one. I got my "real" start with VB6 (technically I started with BASIC on the C64 ), and Machaira also has done a good bit with it.


Oh... that. Well, if that's an important criteria, then yeah... stick with IGTHORN.

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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."

Oh, man. Funny stuff


That sounds enticing, indeed! I'm having my last real nice long holiday in December of this year. Going to start work in February, and then I'll only have 20 days leave per year (and 12 public holidays, hooray for my country!)

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Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve

Yes, I've been thinking on it, and combining edging and shading would be perfect if we made it so that the contour lines are one-way gradients. The hard edge of the line is the high edge, the faded edge of the line bleeds into the lower tile, and the higher the tile is in relation to another, the farther the gradient stretches.

Thoughts? (I will try to come up with a mockup to demonstrate what I'm getting at and post it sometime soon.)

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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."

Like this?



I had a similar thought today, spooky! I think it's obvious from that which is up and which is down. (Or is it?)

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

I can't see your image, Karl (something weird is up... can't see the GPWiki forum logo at the moment either... but I can see all other images. )... but here's my little mockup:

http://imm.io/9I2y

The effect is exaggerated here, as it's mainly to convey my point. (Lighter tiles = higher, darker = lower)

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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."

Hmm, I added the images folder earlier. I've chown'd it now. Can you see the images now?

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

No dice, at least on my end...

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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."

The left side is down, the right is up. It's not immediately obvious though.

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

All images are working my end.

The shading idea is cool. If you make the higher altitude tiles lighter as well, like in Clint's image, then it's much more obvious that it's elevated (compared to the flat colour in Codehead's image).

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Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve

I get a 404 when I try to directly view either the GPWiki forum logo, or the image in Codehead's post.

Bizarre...

*tries disabling ABP*
*tries allowing GPWiki.org in NoScript*
*tries a hard refresh*
*tries a different browser profile*

OK, I'm out of ideas, and those two images are the only ones I can't see (as far as I know)...

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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."

Hmm, not sure what's causing the image faff. I've hit them from different machines, even a mobile browser and they work OK.

Anyway, we get the idea. It does seem to work, although I think it may start to fall down a bit when there is a large step up between hexes. I.e 3 or more levels difference.

I don't know if the StarTrek game needs 'levels' I imagine that the map is flat, possibly with the odd planet or large space rock to spice things up a bit?

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

There are a couple ways we could handle this. One might be to not have contour lines (or at least very minimal lines) between height differences of less than n levels... that way, instead of making each level of difference have a slightly more gradiated contour, we could make the line-shading more granular, and only have it adjust every n levels of height difference.

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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."

Ah, I can see the image now; and yeah, that's mostly what I had in mind. The tile-shading in addition to the contour-shading work well compared to either-or in my opinion.

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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."

Started throwing some code together for map rendering tonight. It sucks to be starting again when I had so of this much done before.
However, a fresh start gets rid of all the accumulated junk of the last ten years.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

What language/libraries are you using?

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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."

C++/OpenGL. I should look at C#/XNA, but I can prototype faster with a familiar language and API.

The only C# stuff I do is business apps.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

If you use C# already you'd probably be able to get up and running in no time. All the plumbing is done for you, you just have to add gameplay code, especially if you use something like the Gamestate Management sample.

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

I have to agree with Machaira -- unless you already have a lot of your code base in C++, making a transition to C#/XNA is a piece of cake. Prototyping is much more rapid with C#/XNA, even if you aren't yet an XNA initiate.

Besides; there's no real rush to get anything done that will have to be overhauled (or even replaced entirely) early on in the game.

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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'm thinking about various platforms if 2D map works out. It might even be simple enough for my asthmatic old smartphone.

Anyway, forging ahead with C++/OpenGL just now.

Looky!



I need to get mouse selection working, setting hex colors by hand sucks!

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Not complaining, but I notice the tiles in your image are "pointing" horizontally -- wouldn't it be a good idea to nail down which should be used? I generally prefer them pointing vertically, as it is more akin to isometric rendering (so it's easier to use the same code for both methods), but either method would work as long as we can all agree on the orientation.

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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."