Drawing hexes on a sphere/planet

[DevilDan]

Thought a few people might find this entertaining:

"Hex Planet - Technical Demo," by Josh Davis
http://vickijoel.org/hexplanet/Hex%20Pl ... 0Paper.pdf

Sample, presumably copyright of the author:

[MarbitChow]

It.... it's beautiful.

[depricated]

brb changing drawers

[DevilDan]

Take five.

It is a bit like a beautiful dream, isn't it?

[MarchHatter]

I´m speachless in the beauty of a possible erf world in 3d version shape-ish

[turbler]

yep, definitely a wonderful thing. now we just need a couple empires, maybe a stack of dwagons or two, and...Erfworld!

[Ichthus]

Bah, what heresy! Everyone knows that the Erfworld is flat.

[DevilDan]

I'm thinking that it's shaped like a deep-fried, peanut butter, banana, and bacon sandwich.

[MarchHatter]

I think erfworld is flat but its more of a large map like draw place and when you reach to the end of the map you automatically start on the other side of the map. Its like 3d and like a sphere....BUT NOT

[DevilDan]

Erfworld is shaped like a Möbius strip, then?

[Justyn]

Erfworld is shaped like a Möbius strip, then?

Based on that description (when you reach the edge of the map, you go to the opposite end of the map), more like a doughnut. Think Final Fantasy.

[DevilDan]

Erfworld is shaped like a Möbius strip, then?

Based on that description (when you reach the edge of the map, you go to the opposite end of the map), more like a doughnut. Think Final Fantasy.

So the outside surface of a torus? Or the inside? Where does that put the "sun?"

[Justyn]

Erfworld is shaped like a Möbius strip, then?

Based on that description (when you reach the edge of the map, you go to the opposite end of the map), more like a doughnut. Think Final Fantasy.

So the outside surface of a torus? Or the inside? Where does that put the "sun?"

Hell if I know where the sun would go. But yeah, a toroidal shaped world, either the inside or the outside, would cause the "exit map on one side, enter on opposite map edge" thing.

[DevilDan]

Well, then we may as well just suppose that Erf is a Dyson sphere or any other "hollowed-out" structure.

[depricated]

I imagine Erfworld to be more like a Klein Bottle

[DevilDan]

I imagine Erfworld to be more like a Klein Bottle

Which is more or less like saying that it's a Möbius strip.

[KiltedNinja]

This is pretty cool. I researched something similar to this when I was developing a 3D Pointcloud made from coordinates derived from PI. I was toying with the idea "bounding areas" which would be spheres made up of triangles, hexagons, pentagons and so on, then the coordinate points which fell within these "bounding areas" could be compared with other points... Luckily, I had an attack of IRL and the madness of PI subsided.

This however, randomly mapping hexagons onto spheres, could very well be my next mission in visual basic - Just for fun, of coz

[AllPurposeNerd]

I thought maybe Erfworld was toroidal like Tetrisphere.

[davesnothere]

I think erfworld is flat but its more of a large map like draw place and when you reach to the end of the map you automatically start on the other side of the map. Its like 3d and like a sphere....BUT NOT

Nahh... when you reach the end of the hexes there is an unmarked plain space where movement is either impossible (no hexes) or unlimited, but the edge falls away and in the distance there loom other large unexplainable forms... that move unpredicably...

It's turtles all the way down.

[davesnothere]

Actually on the original topic, I looked that reference paper and immediately realized I'd seen this done in a board game before.

Closer to my home territory of train games: look at Mayfair's Lunar Rails and Martian Rails, which try to lay a hex grid on a spherical base.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/227753/lunar-rails
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/486742/martian-rails

Not as pretty, but a working example on a smaller scale.