I'm working on the design of a turn-based wargame similar to the old Empire, or Civilization (but with all aspects except combat removed). Both those games use square tiles, and I'm starting to think maybe I should too, although I had originally planned using hexagonal. AFAIK, the main (only?) advantage of using the latter is that units travel equal distance in all directions, while with square tiles they would move faster diagonally. I guess this doesn't matter when unit and terrain tile sizes are abstract. Are there other advantages to hexagonal tiles for this type of game? And what do you prefer?

Hexagonal can be trickier to program, and to draw, but if done well it will look nicer than squares.

If I were to do a game like that, I'd use squares because I'm lazy. My favorite sim game is Colonization 1, which was squared. (I haven't played most of the newer ones though.)

I've figured out the coding part, but drawing the tiles will be painful (6-sided seamless textures - aargh! ). I was more thinking of gameplay though. I haven't played many recent strategy games either. The old ones that used hexagonal tiles always had defined unit and tile sizes, eg. all units are regiment sized and a tile represents 2 km of terrain. My game won't have this, so I thought that might make hexagonal tiles useless (can't matter much if a unit can move a bit faster diagonally when tile size is undefined, right?). After writing the post I thought of another good reason to have them though: the ability for players to reliably measure distances visually.

Diagonal movement in squares is not necessarily wrong if it's faster. I don't think it really effects game play all that much.

People will rather sit down and see a visually nice display - if drawing hexagonal means you have to sacrifice the quality of the graphics, then it's probably not worth it. (Unless, you can make up for it in gameplay.)

Yeah, maybe it doesn't matter all that much. I'll try drawing some hex tiles, and go with square ones if I fail. In either case I'll need great gameplay cause my drawing skill is pathetic.

Mr. Schlyder,

Check out this thread on GDNet for a discussion on a better approach at tile transitions.

Hoopla!

The basic point of using hexagonal tiles rather than square is if you are locking a unit's position in a tile. If a unit must be in a particular tile, perhaps with a particular facing in that tile, then it is best to use 6-sided tiles. This allows for 6 directions, rather than the 4 that squares do.

If, however, units can be at any arbiturary position on the map (irrespective of the shape of tiles), then the only reason to have hex-tiles is for placing obstacles. However, that reason is rendered moot by using some form of pixel-perfect collision system. Since units can be at any tile, you're not relying on tiles to determine their facing, position, or movement, so using hexes is just an impediment to getting work done.

Very interesting points Korval! I see I haven't thought about this thoroughly enough. Looks like I'm definitely gone use square tiles now.

Oh, and Mr. Rosen,

Thanks for the link! Very interesting too!

Why use tiles at all? Why cant you use a value that says how many pixels they can cross per turn. Use a little right triangle trig to figure out how far one point is from another, and BANG: You have a game that isent limited in anyway, shape, or form to just tiles.

A good idea for a RTS game (that has continuous movement), but not a turn-based one, IMO. I don't see any benefits for the latter. It would only complicate the code. It's laughably easy to do collision detection, apply terrain effects, etc. when using a tile system, and I think it's nicer to know that a unit can move 2 tiles than let's say 60 pixels when planning an attack.