hexagon distance, map in post
JimP
🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
The Glorantha map book I bought, well it was free, says these vertical hexagons are 5 miles wide. I presume that is from middle point to middle point. The outer edge point, not the center.
Of course, that doesn't tell me how wide the narrow part is, the bottom of the adjacent hexagon.
Here is the map part I want to map in CC3+.
Is there an easy way, I did poorly in math at university, to calculate this ?
Thanks !
Comments
Does this page help, Jim?
https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/hexagon
I want to get side a, when I have length d.
Not sure how on that page, but I'm very tired. I'll check on Friday.
I'm not sure what problems you were having with that page, but if the longest side is 5 miles (d), then the short side (a) is 2.5 miles. That makes the perimeter 15 miles.
I'm tired... but anyway, visually the a part doesn't look half the width of d to me. Circumference doesn't matter.
Visually to me, a looks to be about .4 of d.
Calculator shows a as 2.5. I'll use it, but it doesn't look it. That it doesn't look it, could be an optical illusion.
The main map.the excerpt is from, 66 hexes wide. 33 at 5 miles and 33 at 2.5 miles.
Edit. I estimate earlier before I posted... 247.5 miles. Same as the calculation.
If youhave CC3+, this is almost easier to draw out than it is to calculate using geometry.
I started with a city map, which I left blank.
On this I had CC3+ draw a hex grid overlay, with a 5' hex (which is actually 5 feet from one side to the opposite side), with "user grid, hex grid, snaps" on.
From there once the grid is drawn, you can verify that each hex is 5 feet across, and then it is a simple matter of measuring any desired side.
Hope this helps 🙂
I
Actually, precisely 2 ft, 10 and 5/8ths inches. 😝
A 30,60,90 triangle has sides length 1, sqrt(3), 2, if I recollect correctly. I'll let y'all figure out how to put the 12 triangles together to get a hexagon.
Well, 5 miles, or 8 kilometers.
The map I'm working on, the original has light text, not much change between the elevations. I choose 2 of the bitmap fills to be different.
the original.
my map, so far.
Lower left corner is where my eyes are trying to focus, and aren't. Definately tired. I'll work on it in a day or so.
Jim, I think your original maps are from the Argan Argar Atlas, which states only that the hex scale is 8 km or 5 miles. All that means is each hex is classed as five miles in size, but that's NOT in any specific direction. This was a very common assumption at one time, when hexes were really just used for approximate distance estimating in games overall (RPGs and boardgames), so it's not a true scale from any one part of the hex to another.
It doesn't help that even some of the original hand-drawn maps of Glorantha by Greg Stafford don't have a proper scale on them, so realistically, you can set whatever scale distance best suits your purposes, and not get bogged down in the minutiae of mathematical precision for something that never had it in the first place!
If you want to investigate further, this topic on the Basic Role Playing Forum (for those unfamiliar, BRP is the base RPG system engine all the Chaosium RPGs use) pretty much covers all the essential details and issues. Even the official published RQ books and maps aren't consistent in their scaling of the same places - which to an extent is fair enough, as this is a game world set in what for Earth would be the Bronze Age!
I forget where I read it, I think in the atlas, they say most of the maps are extrapolated from Greg Stafford's notes and sketches.
I decided 5 miles per hexagon.
My biggest problem is seeing the map clearly. If it continues to give me problems, I'll just guess at the terrain on those areas.
And Chaosium released that atlas you mentioned for free.
Edit. That link you posted is one I think I encountered a day or so ago when I did a search for Glorantha map scale.
I decided to try a smaller area on another map.
original.
mine so far. A mixture of symbols from different Annuals. Text and outer glow needs to be adjusted.
Are you trying to produce maps similar to the original map?
Vaguely like them.
Going to import more bitmap fills, not enough contrast on my map. It has less contrast than the original.
Here we go. I had zoom in on the pdf, and found some names were wrong. And off to the left wasn't a forest, but a desert. Ah well.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to this, especially as it doesn't really follow-on from Jim's more recent mapping progress posts. It may be useful for anyone hunting for similar information in future, however.
I did a bit more digging through some of my old RPGs and board-wargames that used hex maps, going back to the early 1970s. Unfortunately, I can't find anything more definitive on the matter from the Glorantha setting than what was covered by the Basic Role Playing Forum topic I linked to previously. Elsewhere though, there does seem to have been a general, if frequently vague and rarely-stated, concept that the scale size of individual hexes wasn't that important, but that the separation between the CENTRES of adjacent hexes WAS key, as being equal to the stated scale hex-size (if obviously rather confusingly so). That could suggest the Glorantha maps discussed here were intended as being similarly scaled.
This seems to have come about from when hexes started to be preferred for indicating the positioning and movement options for units on maps for gaming purposes (which units might be individuals up to army-sized groups, dependent on the intended map use), and is a somewhat idealised improvement on the use of flowchart-like diagrams, which connected points with lines alone to indicate routes, distances and locations. The hex sides indicate only the possible movement routes between adjacent hexes (because of their all-round unambiguous connectivity), with the hex-centre to hex-centre distance being the actual scale distance for the map, while the hex itself indicated where the unit could be considered as being at any given moment (effectively replacing the idea of connected points).
It's possible this was only true for board-wargames, where the maps involved were sometimes noted as having had a hex-grid superimposed on the map to regulate movement (albeit river lines, roads and terrain features had been shifted on some of those to fit the hex-grid too - something that later become the typical standard pattern). This though was the basis from which the RPGs drew subsequently, thus the concept was likely adopted across the whole range of such game-types, if not necessarily consistently!
I'll go away now 😁!
I played some of the hexagon war games. One was just a vague map of nowhere in particular. A few roads and rivers didn't go along the hex edges, other maps did. I think I lost the counters and instructions, but might still have the maps.
Facing and area of control was important. Area of control was typically one hexagon out from the unit.
I always assume that when a map says each Hex is 5 units, that it's the distance between opposite sides...
I was worried about how to count the shorter distances.
@JimP It’s a fantasy magical hex. No matter how you measure it the distance is always 5 miles from point A to point B. Always never changes even across the center. That’s why it’s magic!!
Well, me magic wand to measure a magic hex is in the shop, in another dimension, and I've lost the claim ticket.
So its 5 miles, 2.5 miles, 5 miles, etcetera.
@JimP Better get that wand fixed soon. You have too many unfinished maps to ponder non-magical hex distances.
I put the Tunneled Hills map up on my Runequest website. If anyone is interested, here is the link. No navigation menus yet.
I'm not just working on this. I'm, a few maps a week, updating my Crestar site to have CC3+ maps on it.