Re: GALAXY Development Question

From: Gumpu Redkar <gumpu@gumpu.student.utwente.nl>

Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Michael Hodgson wrote:

> Hi to all the galaxy developers out there...

>         I am interested in how galaxy, specifically the more recent
> flavours, like explorer and NG distribute homeworlds around the
> galaxy?  I can easily see how it is possible to create a 'fair'
> situation when there are a square number of players (4,9,16,25...),
> or nice numbers of rows close to this, by sectoring the galaxy, and
> placing a homeworld close to the center of each sector...

>         But what do you do when you have say 19 players?  Do you
> just use a bigger grid (say 5x4) and have a blank location,
> accepting that all positions are not equally spaced, or have the
> same number of equidistant neighbours.  Or is it more cunning than
> that?

I can answer it for GalaxyNG.

The home worlds are placed completely randomly.  The code does ensure
that no two pairs of homeworlds are closer than some distance 'd'.

Usually this number is 20 or so.  So no two homeworlds are closer than
20 ly together...  however some for some homeworlds the minimum
distance to the nearest home world might be more than 20.

As to fairness, one of the main problem is not so much with the
distance between home worlds but with the number of neighbours of each
home world.  Especially with home worlds that are at the edge of the
galaxy as they have fever neighours than homeworlds located in the
middle of the galaxy.

Blind galaxy and G+ solve this by having a wrap around galaxy.

A solution for GalaxyNG was recently made by Tommy Lindquist,
here all home worlds are located on a ring.  Where each two
neighbours are the same distance appart.

An exampe is on:
http://gumpu.student.utwente.nl/~galaxyng/Testzone/map.gif

Another issue is the number of good planets that surround a homeworld.
In the old version of galaxy these good planets were scattered randomly
around the galaxy...

In GalaxyNG the code ensured that around each home world (within some
radius) there is an equal number of good planets.

Would be interesting to hear what the mechanisms in explorer are...

Have fun,
Frans.

References

GALAXY Development Question
Michael Hodgson <mkh100@york.ac.uk>
Thu, 08 Oct 1998 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

GALAXY Development Question
Michael Hodgson <mkh100@york.ac.uk>
Thu, 08 Oct 1998 00:00:00 +0000