This week’s big issue revolved around zone pathways. Last week I showed off this theoretical image of how to place zones in a grid, but offset the position of the node to create an illusion of breaking up the grid:

 

 

 

(it’s worth noting that the top middle witch hut isn’t actually a valid position in this image)

 

As it turns out, actually competently generating this is something of a chore.

 

 

 

 

 

Red lines represent the different points that roads can come from.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this system locations are composed of 3×3 tile squares, with a single tile buffer between them  (4×4 and up aren’t really viable due to tile size relative to screen size). Being a grid, there can be one roadway coming in on each side. Our road system isn’t sophisticated: the presence of a two road tiles next to each automatically connects them- no independent roads that are adjacent but going in different directions. The ultimate goal is to place the node (a town, a dungeon, etc) in a location such that every roadway uses it as the crossroads so that the pathways between zones are visually clear to the player: therefore each roadway must not touch another or it will create a second crossroads. With only one or two roadways, the position of the node can be anywhere within the grid. Once you hit 3 roadways, certain node positions are impossible relative to the roadway positions. At 4, every roadway needs to directly intersect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem this creates is interdependence between every zone. A zone with only 2 connections, one of which has 4 connections, must place one of its roadways based on what the 4 connection wants. With enough 3/4 connection zones present, it ends up with a fairly uniform placement despite the effort to do otherwise. It’s also a pain to process when altering one zone can have ramifications on all of the others.

So I dropped it. Because it’s not that important relative to the amount of work it was going to take. And went for total uniformity:

 

 

 

 

 

It looks alright. It’s also slightly more readable than the version with offsets. There may come a time to improve the look of it. That time isn’t now.