>From: Timothy Little [email removed]
Subject: 3D mapping
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 93 14:09:33 EST
>You can (if you like) retain the hex-grid. However, just as a hex grid
>gives better adjacency than a square grid (6 neighbors to each grid point
>as opposed to only 4), you can get better adjacency by shifting adjacent
>planes of a stack of hex grids in 3D. It looks really clumsy in text, so
>I'll try to draw some pictures.
>Instead of using layers of hex paper like:
[very good ASCII graphic deleted]
>Where each hex has 8 neighbors; 6 around it, 1 up, and 1 down:
>Use a simple shifted pattern like:
>So that each hex now has 12 neighbors:
>It looks much clearer if your hex maps are done on transparencies,
>which you can get by photocopying a normal hex grid onto plastic sheets.
>(If you only have access to white-lines-on-black, some photocopiers can
>do inverse print - otherwise, you can buy hex paper or draw your own)
There is much to be said for the offset-stacking method. There are also
good reasons not to use it. Primarily, it makes mapping with anything
BUT maps-on-transparencies much harder to "see" what's going on.
I chose to have a straight-stacked map for my 3D subsector map,
with 8 neighbors (6 on same level and one above and one below),
and am cheating a bit and also giving a better distance function
if you want to shave a couple of parsecs off that jump (which makes
the systems at up/down one and over one 1 parsec away for jump
purposes, though they're really 1.414 (sqrt(2)) away...).
It's not as realistic, but it's much easier to visualize.
The whole point of using very large-grain hexes is to simplify;
Traveller 2D could have mapped using cartesian coordinates in
much finer detail, but they simplified to keep it straightforwards.
I think that applying that methodology to 3D developments is
a good idea.
- -george william herbert