You can get a lot of the benefits of hexagonal grids with triangular grids if you play your cards right. For example, you can allow units on a given triangle to move as if they were on the hexagonal grid that's formed by gluing triangles together at their corners.
I suggest using triangles in pairs, since diamonds form a grid nicely.
5 large strips (with 4 macro-triangles each) can form an icosahedron in a fairly sane way.
But IMO the biggest mistake people make is trying to make everything fit on a single square; multi-tile objects are very useful. And at that point, why not make everything take several tiles?
Abandoning tiles entirely in favor of node adjacency can cut memory a lot but requires more thought.
You can get a lot of the benefits of hexagonal grids with triangular grids if you play your cards right. For example, you can allow units on a given triangle to move as if they were on the hexagonal grid that's formed by gluing triangles together at their corners.
I suggest using triangles in pairs, since diamonds form a grid nicely.
5 large strips (with 4 macro-triangles each) can form an icosahedron in a fairly sane way.
But IMO the biggest mistake people make is trying to make everything fit on a single square; multi-tile objects are very useful. And at that point, why not make everything take several tiles?
Abandoning tiles entirely in favor of node adjacency can cut memory a lot but requires more thought.
Great write up on the pros of triangle grids. Did you consider using irregular triangles to help with the math? Eg a 2:1 triangle
Original HN post (43 comments / 3-years ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045779
Has anyone made a game using an aperiodic grid (Penrose or the like)? Would make for a fun challenge.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/loop...
Check out Townscaper.
https://andersource.dev/2020/11/06/organic-grid.html