Toroidal maps

[Jaumito]

Is there any chance we'll see toroidal (wraparound) galaxy maps in the future?

[Ophiuchus]

You could of course explicitely connect fringe systems in universe generation with extremely long single-jumps. Would probably suck though.

Scripting something like stargates wont work probably as there is no mechanism for wiring it to a specific target system (maybe it could send you to the system which is the one farthest away).

Implementing this in a good way would additional mechanics - so i doubt this will happen.

The ring shape is the closest thing you can reasonably get with current mechanics.

But probably you could script other interesting topologies.

One could generate galaxies with rings of rings i suppose - but those probably get broken as soon as somebody gets starlane boring.

Or one could script multiple rings with inaccessible center systems (i.e. well guarded and/or disconnected). And connect the centers with each other with a single jump.

[Oberlus]

The visually nice implementation would require 3D graphics, I think. Something 2D without absurdly long starlanes would require an implementation diferent from current one, as if the map was plotted in a sphere and scrolling implies turning around that sphere.

I guess all that is several parsecs away from current development plans. But if someone would implement it...

[Jaumito]

You could of course explicitely connect fringe systems in universe generation with extremely long single-jumps. Would probably suck though.

Unless there's a way to set the distance for those starlanes, it wouldn't help much, except maybe for tiny galaxies. The goal is to generate a fair, even playing field for multiplayer and at the moment, we're stuck with ring maps but it gets tedious after a while (because they're topologically equivalent to wraparound 1D or 1.5D maps.) Wraparound cluster or irregular maps would be nice to have for the extra dimension.

The visually nice implementation would require 3D graphics, I think.

Nice, but not needed. There's a lot of games that let you generate maps that connect opposite edges (N-S and W-E) and that you can scroll infinitely. They're topologically equivalent to the surface of a torus, so you don't need a 3rd dimension to visualize them.

[em3]

Note, that merely connecting the systems would not be enough. There are some effects, that take into account euclidean distance (in uu), not topological distance (in jumps).

[Oberlus]

Another caveat: with a 2D implementation (of a toroid), you can't do a full zoom out, or it would be pretty messy.
In games like civ you always have a flat map than can be drawn in a simple rectangle, but they (AFAIK) don't use toroids.

This is making me hungry.

[o01eg]

In games like civ you always have a flat map than can be drawn in a simple rectangle, but they (AFAIK) don't use toroids.

Freeciv has toroids maps but don't support zooming.

[em3]

Civ IV had toroid and cylindrical, IIRC, but I'm not sure if it allowed zooming out... still, a rectangular minimap was always accessible. Cylindrical and toroidal maps generally look good in a rectangular section and can be scrolled if words at the wrapping border need to be seen.

[Oberlus]

Yes, yes, sorry, I don't know what I was thinking