SEV: Taking me to the edge of sanity

[Romulus68]

Try changing the ship movement speed in the options.

[Captain Kwok]

To clarify, it's not the movement itself but the pathfinding - so it is sensible really. This is due to the line of sight in the game, so it's calculating the path for the ship each hex that it moves. Although I don't think it calculates again in squares that have sensor coverage - but if it does that may be a point of optimization.

[Slick]

There have got to be other optimizations for pathfinding. Numerous other games use pathfinding, oftentimes with more complex pathing/obstacles without a noticable slowdown. SEV, in fact, really has a simple pathing, even with the rules of sight. I'm thinking this is a negative consequence of going from square grids to hex grids. Although I really like the hex grids over squares, somehow, when I first saw the demo, I had a bad feeling that this change would cause a slowdown.

[Fyron]

Slick said:
I'm thinking this is a negative consequence of going from square grids to hex grids.

Hexes have 6 adjacent locations to analyze, squares have 8. If anything, hexes should reduce the pathfinding calculations by virtue of 25% fewer adjacent locations to consider. Of course, if you optimize it to ignore squares/hexes that are in the opposite direction of the target, you pretty much have 3 versus 3 locations to consider. Sight and larger systems, plus double the movement, seem like they would have more of an effect than hex vs. square.

[Theonlystd]

the sim times are depressingly long


Grab a book,mow your lawn, do the dishes your turn might be done when you return.

[Fyron]

If you play in windowed mode, you can use your PC for other things during the turn processing. Browse the web, chat on IRC, play other games (even SE4 heheh), etc. Its only in fullscreen that the window being out of focus causes it to halt processing.

[Phoenix-D]

hah, that'd be a trick. Play SE4 and SE5 at the same time, see which game you finish first.

[Slick]

Imperator Fyron said:
Slick said:
I'm thinking this is a negative consequence of going from square grids to hex grids.

Hexes have 6 adjacent locations to analyze, squares have 8. If anything, hexes should reduce the pathfinding calculations by virtue of 25% fewer adjacent locations to consider. Of course, if you optimize it to ignore squares/hexes that are in the opposite direction of the target, you pretty much have 3 versus 3 locations to consider. Sight and larger systems, plus double the movement, seem like they would have more of an effect than hex vs. square.

Except that your incorrect opinion does not reflect reality. Hex grids do require more math overall when compared to square grids. If hex grids provided more efficient pathing, then why aren't all 2D computer games coded for a hex grid? This is illustrated more especially in the early days of computer gaming, when computing power and graphics forced optimization everywhere. Nowadays, optimization is not so important to programmers. They expect their customers to store their bloatware on ever increasing storage devices and play their games with ever more powerful CPU's and graphics cards.

[Phoenix-D]

Slick, that's just silly. Many of the early PC wargames were ports of board versions, and they had hex grids. And PC games have -always- been prone to bloat. Its gotten a little worse lately, but not much more so.

[Fyron]

Slick said:
Except that your incorrect opinion does not reflect reality. Hex grids do require more math overall when compared to square grids.

More math overall? How so? You can find adjacent hexes exactly equivalently to square grids; the constant offset x,y coordinate values are different, but it is the same amount of math (add an x value, add a y value). You can efficiently represent and parse both hexes and squares in 2d arrays, with not much difference in computational complexity. We discussed this on IRC yesterday; some important bits:

<Vornicus> a hex system is just a square system with two specific paths disabled
...
<Vornicus> If you're looking at the linked object model, a hex only has six links where a grid has eight (and an ortho grid has four); if you're looking at the array index object model, then grid rejects (0,0) as nonadjacent, hex rejects x == y as nonadjacent, and orthogrid rejects (x + y) & 1 == 0 as nonadjacent
<Vornicus> it was a bit technical
<Vornicus> But the point is that a 2-d array can describe a hex grid as well as it describes a square grid.
<Vornicus> Anyway, without obstructions, a path is found almost trivially

If hex grids provided more efficient pathing, then why aren't all 2D computer games coded for a hex grid?

Because they are weird-looking, and most games are designed for the masses?