Turn Based: Square Grid vs. Hexagonal Grid

denizsi said:

I don't understand the underlined. What does real or any fantasy world has to do with anything? There are plenty of examples of either genre using either grids that simply work. Please explain.

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Squares: in all 8 directions, one movement of the unit/character/whatever, will be visually close enough to the starting square to look "realistic" as a single movement, even with 4 of the directions being diagonals (it's only ~1.4).

Hexes: this is only possible in 6 directions. If you want hex grids to offer all 12 directions, 6 of those directions will be visually very far away from the original hex on the map, like in the image from my previous post. And of course not adjacent to the original hex either. So it's impossible to get "realistic" north/south/east/west movement, in one of those directions you'd always get either a very long movement, or zigzagging.

So in practice, with hexes you not only have two directions less than with squares, but you literally lose one cardinal axis of movement, if it's possible to move in a straight line from north to south, it's impossible to move in a straight line from east to west, and vice versa.

deniszi said:

Why is horizontal-vertical alignment a preference, anyway? That's very unnecessarily rigid thinking.

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Draq said:

Since tiles in general have little point other than simplifying portrayal and calculation of spatial relations, especially distances, hexes have significant advantage in terms of less fucked up distance metric.

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Not sure I got this correctly, do you mean because it's possible to just quickly count hexes in 6 directions to determine the distance? For that simplification, you'd have to sacrifice two directions, and one cardinal axis. It just doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me. With squares, all you have to do is solve the diagonal issue in one of the ways already outlined in the thread, and that's that.

DraQ said:

How so?

If you said "overhead" then you would have something with faint semblance of a point, although a hex can be neatly folded to fit into rectangular array or even faked with slightly shifted rectangle in terms of tiling, so no, not really.

But you said "iso", and both grids run into exact same set of problems in isometric projection, so, again, no, not really.

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It's much easier to build maps (this of course also applies to 2D overhead), plan obstacles etc. if your tile grid is the same as your movement grid. And it's more intuitive for the player too - without the disconnect that comes from seeing one kind of tiles when they look at game objects, the floor, etc, and another kind of tiles when they look at their movement grid (this was the case in Fallouts). And it's pretty much a given that your iso tiles will have a rectangular base. So why not use the same base for the movement grid too?

deniszi said:

They also seem to be less affected by rigid game world design where everything most of the world has rectangular bases.

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If this is a problem that needs to be solved, then wouldn't free movement be a superior solution?

Squares: in all 8 directions, one movement of the unit/character/whatever, will be visually close enough to the starting square to look "realistic" as a single movement, even with 4 of the directions being diagonals (it's only ~1.4).Hexes: this is only possible in 6 directions. If you want hex grids to offer all 12 directions, 6 of those directions will be visually very far away from the original hex on the map, like in the image from my previous post. And of course not adjacent to the original hex either. So it's impossible to get "realistic" north/south/east/west movement, in one of those directions you'd always get either a very long movement, or zigzagging.So in practice, with hexes you not only have two directions less than with squares, but you literally lose one cardinal axis of movement, if it's possible to move in a straight line from north to south, it's impossible to move in a straight line from east to west, and vice versa. Cardinal directions? It's a staple of pretty much all world cultures. Human beings think, spatially, in terms of forward, backward, left and right, not forward, backward, left and a bit backward, left and a bit forward, and so on. Why should one move away from this without a very good reason?Not sure I got this correctly, do you mean because it's possible to just quickly count hexes in 6 directions to determine the distance? For that simplification, you'd have to sacrifice two directions, and one cardinal axis. It just doesn't seem like a good tradeoff to me. With squares, all you have to do is solve the diagonal issue in one of the ways already outlined in the thread, and that's that.It's much easier to build maps (this of course also applies to 2D overhead), plan obstacles etc. if your tile grid is the same as your movement grid. And it's more intuitive for the player too - without the disconnect that comes from seeing one kind of tiles when they look at game objects, the floor, etc, and another kind of tiles when they look at their movement grid (this was the case in Fallouts). And it's pretty much a given that your iso tiles will have a rectangular base. So why not use the same base for the movement grid too?If this is a problem that needs to be solved, then wouldn't free movement be a superior solution?