Mutilple maps?

[Stanley Sutton]

I need to become a bit more familiar with the internals of the code
before I can really answer a lot of those questions.  Some will be game
dependent, although extending things may be similar.  For example, there
was a text based rogue-like game whose name I can't remember, that has a
surface map, and city and dungeon maps.  Normally you typed a command to
"enter" a city, dungeon, or terrain tactical map, which was the only
level you could engage in combat.  If you made it to the edge of the
wilderness hex, or a city gate, or the up staircase for the dungeon, you
went back to the  countryside level.  If you were attacked by wandering
monsters in the countryside, you were yanked down to the tactical level.

The same sort of convention could be used for a space based game, but I
don't see how you could get around having table for each unit, based on
the scale level, for movenment, allowable commands, etc.  You might need
a command to switch levels, but only allowed for certain units.  A ship
with interstellar drive might be the only type that could switch to the
intersellar level, and might not be able to switch to a planetary
surface level.  A planetary warship or transport might be able to move
at planetary,  and solar sytem levels, and land/take off from a plaetary
surface, but not move around on the surface.  

There would also be the problem that you might not be able to initialize
a game completly in memory with the current map structures.  After all,
if you have a few hundred planetary systems, with an average of 1 planet
per system that'd you'd need a map for, that would be a lot of maps if
they were pre-initialized and memory resident.

So there are a few problems to look at.



-----Original Message-----

From:	Stan Shebs [mailto:shebs@apple.com]

Sent:	Tue 18-Jun-02 11:24

To:	Stanley Sutton

Cc:	Hans Ronne; xconq7@sources.redhat.com

Subject:	Re: Mutilple maps?


Stanley Sutton wrote:

> 

> Actually I was thinking of multiple scale maps, such as strategic and

> tactical levels, but supporting 3D would be nice, also.  I suspect
that

> doing both won't be much more work than doing either serpeatly. :-)

> 

> Just glancing at the code, a good first step might be to replace all
the

> explict x and y dependancies with a co-ordinate struct, which would

> support both multiple co-ordinates and scales.



>From hard experience, I should say that this approach, while

having the appeal of greater abstraction in the code, doesn't

work very well in practice.  What typically happens that the

abstraction is easy to understand and implement, you do it, but

then the real purpose of the abstraction is hard to implement and

never gets done.  Xconq is littered with hundreds of these - clouds

for instance, which have map layers, GDL, etc, but there isn't any

way for a game to use them (I originally had the idea of using them

to protect parts of a battlefield from air attack and maybe ranged

fire, but that part was never done).



In the case of multiple maps, you should decide what they're for,

how the player will play them (multiple displays? split-screen?),

how units transition between (intra-cell stack? exit portals?),

how GDL applies (speed can be adjusted for scale, but what about

adjacency tests?), and how algorithms such as path finding should

work.  It's not a good idea to start tinkering with the code unless

you have a moderately detailed answer to all these sorts of questions.



Personally, I think the multiple interlinked map idea could be made

to work, but the multiple-scale idea is too hard and would stress

the already-overgeneralized game framework too much.



Stan



> -----Original Message-----

> 

> From:   Hans Ronne [mailto:hronne@pp.sbbs.se]

> 

> Sent:   Mon 17-Jun-02 15:35

> 

> To:     Stanley Sutton

> 

> Cc:     xconq7@sources.redhat.com

> 

> Subject:        Re: Mutilple maps?

> 

> >Is anyone doing any work on multiple level maps currently?  Is so, do

> 

> >you need help?  If not, do you need someone to start working on it?

> 

> You mean a 3D map like in D&D? I guess it could be implemented as

> multiple

> 

> areas on top of each other that are connected at certain points. Would

> take

> 

> a lot of coding, though. Certainly not something I'm working on.

> 

> This would also raise some interesting AI problems. Should the game
only

> 

> load and play one area (where you are) at a time? This would be like
in

> D2

> 

> where nothing really happens when you are not around. Or should the
game

> 

> try to play all levels at the same time? I guess the latter is more or

> less

> 

> unavoidable in a multiplayer game.

> 

> All in all, this is a huge task. But if you want to give it a try,

> please

> 

> go ahead :-).

> 

> Hans

> 

> Hans Ronne

> 

> hronne@pp.sbbs.se