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New wrap around world hex map design.

5 replies [Last post]
Sat, 01/08/2011 - 13:42
larienna
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I have been thinking on a new way to make a wrap around world, made of modular tiles. Here is what it looks like

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4201

That map is made of 8 separate tiles which are each printed on a 8-1/2x11 sheet of paper. On the top and bottom of the map, there is what i call the imaginary poles. Which means that the map is 11x24 hex. I would need 12x24 hex to have a completely round planet. Pretty close.

The way the poles works can be explained on this picture.

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4202

The half hex are simply ignored to bring the top hex closer to each other. It's a simple way to make the top and bottom closer. Players can also cross over the imaginary pole which connect to all the full hex on the same side of the board.

Originally, I wanted to use a rectangular map, But I got the problem that the tiles were not tillable anymore. The only way to tile them was with mirror tiling. But that would not have workd for me since the map would have been made of 3 tile large for a 11x21 map. Here is the original layout:

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4203

I designed a similar board in the past, but as you can see the maps where harder to cut. So I wanted to use a square design.

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4204

What Do you think?

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Sun, 01/09/2011 - 10:54
#1
dplepage
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Hex identification

The only downside I see to the new version is that, unlike the old version, you can't differentiate hexes by color-coding, unless you have the hexes along the edge of each tile have the same combination of colors (or have rules to deal with hexes with different colors in each quarter, or restrictions on which tiles can be lined up).

You could still differentiate terrain types with, say, a colored icon in the lower-right quarter of each hex, but then you can't rotate the tiles.

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Sun, 01/09/2011 - 22:24
#2
larienna
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There are multiple ways to

There are multiple ways to deal with that.

A- All half hex are all water.
B- Some half hex are all made of the same specific terrain type. And the half hex will always tile.

Personally I prefer method A because is also make sure there is no half hex that wraps around the map. But I am not sure if the possible continent layout would be interesting. I would be forced to have vertical continents a bit like north and south America.

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Tue, 01/11/2011 - 14:56
#3
larienna
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After browsing some games in

After browsing some games in some geek list, I stumbled on this picture:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/65618/mighty-empires

This is awesome, it removes the need to have full hex water. So now the continent could be closer to each other and the possible continent shape would be much more interesting. Which could be interesting to make smaller tiles and actually fit 2 tiles on a 8-1/2x11 sheet. I will also be able to use half hexes.

Why could not I come up with a design like that before.

In other words, all the hexes can be occupied and the ocean are in fact the sides of the hexes. So the sea only makes 2 adjacent hex not adjacent to each other. So there is no need to have a sea hex to separate 2 hexes.

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Tue, 01/11/2011 - 21:48
#4
larienna
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According to the picture

According to the picture above, I tried creating a new layout to old these new types of continents. I first designed this new hex map grid:

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4231

This map is designed for continent which does not occupy full hexes so that water hexes are not required anymore. It increase the amount of space the players can occupy on the board.

The poles are not tillable anymore. but you can still optionally cut the map in the middle on the dotted line to allow permutation of the maps.

There will not be any hex jumping since the half-hex are now on the sides, but there can still be an imaginary pole.

Then I decided to make some tests and fill it up with some contients

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4232

To make sure the top and bottom part are tillable with other parts, the continents can be designed to stay on their side of the line like shown in "A" or there could be a universal way to connect over the dotted line like shown in "B". This would allow continents to connect to the other side of the tile and allow various configurations.

Each tile will have a couple of water only hex like "C". This would require better ships to be able to cross it.

For the half hexes, one side of the map will use the half hex while the other side do not use it to make sure there is no conflict. That is the case with Hex "D". This way, these hexes are not lost.

As for hex "E", These hexes are currently water hex and I think it should be a good idea, it would add some spacing between continents

Finally, continent "F" has been drawn in a different way than other continents. Each side of the hex on that continent either has full land or full water. So an hex side never get cuts in half. There are various pro and cons to use this technique, I was just wondering if it was a good idea to use it.

BY thinking about it, the continents I have drawn above are pretty small. It might be a better idea to create much larger continents. I'll have to make layout test and determine some map creation rules.

So in conclusion, the continents can look better because it does not need to follow the edges and there are more hexes that can be occupied by players since there are very few full water hexes. So I need a much smaller map to play the game. I also think I keep some flexibility to create various map layout with a limited amount of maps.

What do you think?

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Wed, 01/12/2011 - 16:48
#5
larienna
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I made an error in the

I made an error in the previous landscape design. The continent edge jump from the middle of an hex side to another middle of hex side.

http://www.bgdf.com/node/4235

Another way to visualise or create the maps is to create nodes, represented by white dot in the picture above. A node makes the 3 adjacent hex solid and it connects to adjacent nodes. In the end, you just need to surround the nodes groups to create your landscape.

I will probably use the nodes for something in the game.

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