A question on hexes

[Simon Edmonds]

I have noticed that the hexagons used in TOAW are not geometric. Is this an intentional thing. I have been trying to create a 10km europe map and I have found that the difference using hex based mapping programs at that scale is around the kilometer mark going east to west. North to south is fine. How do you work around this?

[Lobster]

Not sure what you are getting at since in a regular hexagon d will always be longer than d2.

[Simon Edmonds]

G'day Lobster. What I mean is that in a geometric hexagon the length of all sides will be the same. If you enlarge the TOAW hex to its largest and measure the line from any corner through the center to another corner you will find it is about 48mm. This means that any one of the sides should be about 24mm long. (each side being part of 6 equalatral triangles making up the hexagon. If you measure the sides on TOAW you will find that the flat top and bottom sides are about 28mm each, and the diagonal sides are about 22mm. This results in an east west distortion and brings Moscow at least 20 hexes closer to Berlin.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Simon Edmonds

G'day Lobster. What I mean is that in a geometric hexagon the length of all sides will be the same. If you enlarge the TOAW hex to its largest and measure the line from any corner through the center to another corner you will find it is about 48mm. This means that any one of the sides should be about 24mm long. (each side being part of 6 equalatral triangles making up the hexagon. If you measure the sides on TOAW you will find that the flat top and bottom sides are about 28mm each, and the diagonal sides are about 22mm. This results in an east west distortion and brings Moscow at least 20 hexes closer to Berlin.

How are you generating your map?

[Lobster]

Right, the hex sides should be equal but are not. If you are going to overlay the map with a hex grid you could adjust the map by expanding it on the proper axis to compensate for the difference I believe. Most people don't bother to.

On the other hand you could you Curt Chamber's Opart Design and Debug (ODD). The map tool has the means to stretch or compress hexes. Maybe that would fix the problem. http://yves.lr.pagesperso-orange.fr/ODD/ODD.htm

[Simon Edmonds]

Thanks for that. My computer wont connect to that link but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I'm sure it's part female. I will connect on a different computer tomorrow. Will Opart overlay Google Earth like Hex Thingy does? Doing vegetation is really easy when the grid is sitting over a satellite image.

[Lobster]

It requires a .bmp image. I used it to make a 2.5km map of the Soviet Union from Warsaw to just east of Gorki (Nizhny Novgorod). It's been awhile since I used it but if I recall there's an upper limit to the size of the .bmp image it will accept.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Simon Edmonds

G'day Lobster. What I mean is that in a geometric hexagon the length of all sides will be the same. If you enlarge the TOAW hex to its largest and measure the line from any corner through the center to another corner you will find it is about 48mm. This means that any one of the sides should be about 24mm long. (each side being part of 6 equalatral triangles making up the hexagon. If you measure the sides on TOAW you will find that the flat top and bottom sides are about 28mm each, and the diagonal sides are about 22mm. This results in an east west distortion and brings Moscow at least 20 hexes closer to Berlin.

I wouldn't worry about the size of the hex on the screen.

[Simon Edmonds]

Did some follow-up research. Yeah you are right. The hexes in ODD can be adjusted. Jack Bechtold used it to make the monumental Barbarossa 2.5km map.
I found that WitE 1 has the same problem with non-geometric hexes as well. Jack Billings, the forum moderator commented that they are doing a full map rebuild to fix it in WitE 2. (Nice to have resources)
Massive amount of work to use ODD on a large scenario though. Lot of skill too. Pity it couldn't be modernised to work in conjunction with Google Earth or Open Topo.
I wonder if the Hex shape in Hexthingy could be modified without effecting the dilational transformation.
Is there a modern version of the Lat/Long program anywhere. My computer refuses to run the old one.
Does anyone else out there have any ideas short of gluing or photo-shopping maps together.

[Zovs]

Where is hex thingy located?

I did a search but just nordic things game up...

[Simon Edmonds]

Hey Zovs. I have been using it for a number of years now. I think it has been migrated to Github. I have the original download and can email it to you if necessary.

[Simon Edmonds]

Ok. I've got it worked out. You start with a Hexthingy grid of the area of your game. Then you do up a simple C# program that you can use to place all of the key cities towns and heights on a geometric hex grid. The more complex you make it the more you can add. Transport lines, Coasts, etc. Once that is done update the program to overwrite the old grid with a new grid using TOAW hex measurements. You can make both grids come with coordinates and disable the one you don't need at the time. Finally you use the new coordinates to transfer the cities, towns and heights onto the TOAW scenario map. That will give you a framework to draw in the vegetation from the satellite picture.

[Lobster]

Hexthingy is hosted on an ASL site down towards the bottom of the linked page, fifth up from the bottom at this point in time: http://www.desperationmorale.com/play-aids/

This is v1.2 which is, as I understand it, the most recent version.

[Zovs]

Thanks Jack!

[golden delicious]

From memory ODD has a modest "drift" which leads it to deviate slightly from what you actually ask for. Then, too, you're at the mercy of whatever projection your source map uses.

If you're really serious (and starting from scratch!) then use Bob's Latlong program. Should also be more useful if you're doing something funky to automatically plot points on the map once you've defined it. You'll just need DOSBox to actually get it to run in the first place.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

If you're really serious (and starting from scratch!) then use Bob's Latlong program. You'll just need DOSBox to actually get it to run in the first place.

There's something I hadn't thought of! I assumed you had to have an XP computer to still get it to run.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay


There's something I hadn't thought of! I assumed you had to have an XP computer to still get it to run.

Oh boy would that be a pain in the arse...

No I was a bit nonplussed when the error came up but I have DOSBox installed already so I tried that and- presto! It works.

Then I realised I didn't actually want to map 90,000 hexes and quit after fifteen minutes. Maybe another time.

[Simon Edmonds]

Hey Zovs. If you have downloaded Hexthingy you will notice that it doesn't come with coordinates. I got around that by using placemarks to write the coordinates in 10 hex squares. Google earth doesn't seem to have a limit on placemarks. I am over 20,000 on a scenario map I am working on and haven't run into problems yet.

[Simon Edmonds]

Just an update on the 10km Europe thing. The placemarks are finished. All 25,000 or so of them. Worked out at about 182Mb which is pretty good. I will now have a go at doing the coast, rivers, borders and towns of Germany which is the second biggest country of the map. If anyone wants a copy of the 10km Hexthingy map let me know.
I would really like to do a 5km one. Hence my question on a previous thread on map size, names and a terrain problem I have.
By the way does anyone know where I should post my tech questions to actually get an answer from the makers?

[Simon Edmonds]

Well I did the code for Hexthing Germany and overwrote it using the TOAW hexgrid. The resulting conversion was exponentially harder than I thought it would be. Way to hard.
I am now leaning towards Golden Delicious's idea of simply not worrying about the difference in hexes and transcribing it straight from the Hexthingy grid onto the TOAW scenario map. The difference between the two after 700 hexes (east west) will be about 81 hexes. Is this too big of a discrepancy?
Followed up on ODD but it wont run on my 64bit computer. Is there a 64 bit version anywhere.