Wrap-around maps suck
 

I have a hard time navigating around them. They are so inconvenient. I don't see why they exist.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

Because different people have different tastes? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

Perhaps also to simulate a non-flat world? Sort of like a globe?

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

I prefer non-wrapping maps also. You know you can turn that off. Its just one line that says #wraparound.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

It allows map to be designed "without edges" (which can facilitate game balance for multi-player games), and is an interesting feature which you can easily just not use if you don't want to. I tend to prefer maps with edges too, in general, but it's an interesting feature.

PvK

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

Oh, so all I need to do was just erase that line? LOL.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

not quite, you have to kill the links between the border provinces too.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

Ahhh yes. Sorry, my bad.
The #wraparound is what tells the game to allow scrolling view to wrap.

All movement is actually controlled by a line saying that province 1 is neighbor to province 2.
Such as #neighbor 1 2

It actually doesnt matter if they are next to each other or not. You can create "teleporters" across the map or connect maps that arent visually connected on the TGA image (an underground? or a shadow realm?) by adding neighbor commands.

You can also create a more strategic map requiring more planning and giving it alot of choke points by removing a bunch of neighbor commands. So that even if a province borders on 6 provinces you leave it only 3 neighbors etc etc.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The earth itself is a wrap-around with continents and oceans. Even in a fantasy world it's still good practice to apply some reality.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes but the maps that wraparound both north-south & east-west do NOT simulate a globe. It simulates some weird geometry that'd give you a headache if you physically saw it in all its dimensional glory.

On real globes if you go around the top, you'll end up halfway around on the other side, not at the bottom http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

on the other hand, the flat earth model has been abandonned some centuries ago by scientists (when they ceased being prosecuted for what they said)

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

There are scripts and things for GIMP which will globe a map and make it turn. Or chop one into that peeled orange looking thing which might be interesting to play on.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

How?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes but the maps that wraparound both north-south & east-west do NOT simulate a globe. It simulates some weird geometry that'd give you a headache if you physically saw it in all its dimensional glory.

On real globes if you go around the top, you'll end up halfway around on the other side, not at the bottom http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, it's not too painful - if I'm not totally wrong that is...

The shape is a doughnut. take a piece of paper, wrap it into a cylinder and then fold the top and bottom inwards til they touch - a doughnut.

mmmmm.. doughnuts...

Wouldn't want to live on one though..

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

Wait, I just realized something...

There's no map that just wraps east/west unless you make it using the neighbor commands?

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">... misconception I found especially widespread in the US ...

IIRC: 300 B.C., eastern mediterranean - they calculated the earth diameter .. from knowing the distance Alexandria - Luxor and the fact, that one day in the year sun was right vertical over Luxor and cast a short shadow in Alexandria.
And they got it mostly right (+- 15% or somewhat)!!

To calculate an earth diameter you must be shure the earth isn't flat at first, don't you?

A.

PS: And Galileo wasn't tortured, you know http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ December 24, 2003, 13:09: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

Very interesting!

Of course, that was with an assumption about what the shape was. I presume they were assuming it was spherical.

One could make Doms II maps with polar regions to try to simulate a sphere.

However, unless it were an enormous map, it'd be a pretty small sphere.

From an ancient/medieval Earth perspective though, a relatively small flat chunk is perhaps more appropriate and realistic than a sphere. If everyone in the world believes the world is a flat chunk, then for all effects and purposes, it is, until someone discovers otherwise.

PvK

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Especially if the seas around it are inhabited by things that will want to suck your brains for a lunch and can paralyze you before you can say
"Cthulhu fghtagn"... (thanks Slogan... My knowledge about Cthulhu ends in the local library where they have no books of Lovecraft)

[ December 24, 2003, 19:09: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

The Greeks knew the world was round, but that knowledge was lost to Europe during the “Dark Ages.” The Muslim civilization kept this knowledge, as well as a lot of other Greek advances, alive during this period, as well as making a lot of other neat advances like algebra. As Europe came out of the Dark Ages, it was not so much that they were discovering things, but that they were getting information from the Islamic world. The key difference, and why the world is as it is today, is what Europe did when they put the information together.

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes but the maps that wraparound both north-south & east-west do NOT simulate a globe. It simulates some weird geometry that'd give you a headache if you physically saw it in all its dimensional glory.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, the geometry isn't that hard to imagine: it's a torus - something like the surface of a rubber ring (with or without the duck head; it doesn't change the geometry much).

Still, I'd like to see a decent explanation for why the world is like this (it can be a "fantasy" one, but still...)

Re: Wrap-around maps suck
 

There are alot of wierd ways to show a globe as a flat map. http://www.progonos.com/furuti/MapPr...C/cartTOC.html

These can be used in this game if you are serious about it. Keep in mind that the image is the .tga file. This can look like anything, and has nothing to do with what provinces are actually "neighbors". The neighbors are defined by #neighor lines in the text .map file.

Things on the image file are often there as just visual aids to the players so they can understand what the .map file has already set. Such as what is water, land, mountains, extra thick borders for un-crossable. Nothing says the image has to have those at all. The .tga is an artistic view of the settings in the .map file.

So if you do your world as a sinusoidal or a homolosine map then make the #neighbor commands right you can create a realistic fantasy world. The neat thing about that, is you could have easily get a spinning globe of your map to display on a web page.

Personally Id recommend something like this till I see better. Realistic enough, but not too hard to make. http://www.odt.org/Pictures/vansant.jpg
http://www.cnr.colostate.edu/class_i.../robinson.html

But the simplest would be to create a big maps with a few polar areas across the top and bottom. The topmost would stretch all across the top and connect to 5 or 6 long provinces which connect down to 4 or 5 for each of them. Although they would appear extra long on the .tga the .map can still declare them to be small (no extra wealth for size), and it would properly reflect a world globe.

[ December 29, 2003, 17:23: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]