Map projection for the next game?

[Technopiper]

Map projection is a big deal when it comes to games of these scale. Instead of map projection, I wish the next Pacific War game could use a 3D globe with a hex grid imposed upon it. Everything else on the map could remain 2D. It shouldn't be hardware intensive. Build-in or lower-end GPU could do.

Hearts of Iron I believe had a 3D globe but it's irrelevant since it uses area movement. Space distortion is most apparent with games that have well defined unit of distance. Next to rule management and an AI opponent, a 3D globe highlights what computer wargames are good at and I wonder why hadn't War in the East or War in the Pacific taken advantage of it, since they would benefit from it the most. Any thoughts?

[ncc1701e]

Perhaps it is because this is complicated to program. But yes, this would be ideal.

[AlvaroSousa]

I would love to do that but there are many factors involved here.

#1 I am alone. I would have to create an entirely new engine with 3d modeling. I don't have the manpower resources
#2 The Pacific on Europe scale is simply unplayable. It would be 4x the size of the map.
#3 Putting the rest of the world in the game makes it unplayable.
#4 The A.I. would be impossible to code for all the possible variations.

But.....

WP2 Engine will have a 2d flat options and a 3d like you are looking at a wargame on a real table option.

[Technopiper]

#1 I am alone. I would have to create an entirely new engine with 3d modeling. I don't have the manpower resources
#2 The Pacific on Europe scale is simply unplayable. It would be 4x the size of the map.
#3 Putting the rest of the world in the game makes it unplayable.
#4 The A.I. would be impossible to code for all the possible variations.

I guess as a gamer I took everything for granted in games. Appreciate what you did so far all by yourself! Thank you!

Not suggesting that the entire world be included in a Pacific War game. Just a curved 3D portion of the globe that covers the Pacific is needed. Of course it would still need a 3D engine. Does Unity come with prefabricated models that can be used? Maybe they are too generic to be practical?

[AlvaroSousa]

It can be done. It is beyond my skill to do it and incredibly time consuming to create a map system completely from scratch.

Designing indie wargames, or any games, isn't easy. Creating a new engine is incredibly time intensive.

Most games have the base engine and build on it.
HOI 1-4
CIV 1-6
CK engine was very likely used for Stellaris in some way.
SC1-3

WP2 I decided to completely redesign the engine because I didn't know how to code well the 1st time.
But it uses a lot of pieces from WP1 just better. I got the map, movement, combat, and UI done in a year about. It took me ~3x as long before from scratch. Now I gotta work on the A.I.

Of course this is the new fantasy game first to work out the kinks.

WP2 will be easier than the fantasy game as I will use the same game information as WP1... just add divisions.

WP2 will hopefully take all the special rules and smooth them out into a better easier rules set.

A couple thing I did for the map.
#1 increased pixel density by 30%
#2 Increase the # of tiles and terrain so there are more variations
#3 Used objects for information instead of graphic tiles for more flexibility
#4 Easier to mod counters as each country will have a flat base color block and then there will be a single unit type graphic.
#6 larger buttons in the UI.

But it will be the same method. LMB select, RMB action.

[Technopiper]

Looking further into it, I've found that you can't project a hex grid over the globe. What you need is a polyhedron, or triangles. This of course wouldn't work for wargames: we don't want connected corners. The triangles can be merged to form a mixture of hexagons and pentagons as in a soccer ball. Also not practical for wargames. I guess my idea wouldn't work in the first place. Let's just stick with map projections.

[ncc1701e]

What about this?

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sphere.JPG (50.25 KiB) Viewed 947 times

[ncc1701e]

A couple thing I did for the map.
#1 increased pixel density by 30%
#2 Increase the # of tiles and terrain so there are more variations
#3 Used objects for information instead of graphic tiles for more flexibility
#4 Easier to mod counters as each country will have a flat base color block and then there will be a single unit type graphic.
#6 larger buttons in the UI.

For the WP2 map, did you enhance the location of few cities? I have some doubts when I see Saratov, Gorki, Ivanova, Yaroslavl compared to the location of Kalinin, Moscow, Vladimir.

[Technopiper]

What about this?

Close enough since the pentagons are about the same size as the hexes. Perhaps someone would use it in large scale wargames in the future. Thanks for the picture!

[AlvaroSousa]

You will have 2 screen modes.

1 is a flat 2d like WP1
The other is 2.5d like Unity of Command 2.

Look up UoC2 under images in google. You will see what I mean. You will be able to zoom out pretty far and see the whole map.