Games, I like playing games. The thing is most games are only for Windows. Everyone knows Microsoft created a unfair advantage over other computer operating system providers in the 90′s. They are a trailed and accused monopolist, but time is changing and other platforms are gaining momentum. So, why aren’t most games being developed cross-platform? Does the gaming industry really think there isn’t any money in the other 6-7% computer platforms? Maybe they are right, but this really going to stay a chicken or the egg problem. If nobody develops the games for the other platforms then they wont grow as a gaming platform at all. Keeping me stuck on Windows.

This got me thinking, how are the game console developers handling this? They have to program games for at least three different consoles. Wii, PS3 and Xbox. Those don’t share a lot in the architecture department, meaning they need to be programmed differently. You’d figure company’s like Electronic Arts have to know how to create cross platform games. Take a look at their Need for Speed product page and see which platforms its supports: iPhone, Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo DS, PSP. Why is Mac OS X and Linux missing? How hard can it be to support another two major platforms? Makes me think, is Microsoft telling them not too? Lets not get too paranoid…

Come on gaming industry lets get Mac OS X and Linux into the mix! If a Indy gaming house like Guild Software can develop a game (Vendetta Online) for three platforms, why aren’t the big boys doing this then?

But there is also some good news. Valve recently announced Steam is also going to support the Mac platform. Also Blizzard has a good reputation of supporting the Mac OS X platform. So some are heading into the right direction although Linux could use some more love.

A lot of people are daily using Macs and Linux for both work and entertainment, but for gaming most of the time they need to switch to Windows. Windows is still the biggest gaming platform. I don’t understand why the gaming industry keeps betting on one player. They are helping Microsoft to stay the biggest player in the market. Don’t they know Microsoft is a competitor of them in the gaming field? Fools i tell you, just plain fools…

After my rant about the game of Travian last week i decided its time to do some game development of my own. The combination of Travian and Civilization sounds like a interesting concept. My goal for this week was to create a Hexagon map and be able to find a path from one place to the other on the map.

Hexagon map

The first step was to create a map. I choose for hexagons as tiles for my map. This is because on square maps diagonal movement is faster then in straight lines, which is awkward and can be unfair in some situations.

I created some hexagons in Inkscape and gave them some color with the GIMP. Created some trees as unwalkable tiles to test my path-finding routines against.

Some HTML and Javascript to draw the map in a browser.

A* Pathfinding

You want to be able to move units over the map, but as a player you don’t want to click each tile manual to create a path. Path-finding solves this by searching for the best path from point A to B. Later we can use this for computer controlled units, traders for example that go from village to village.

Since i knew nothing about path-finding i did some basics research about it on the web. It seemed it was A-star Pathfinding i needed. So i followed the “A* Pathfinding for beginners” guide. Really well written and understandable. Although i made a lot of mistakes at first. This was partly because i created it in Javascript, which was a bit of pain due to the fact that i had little Javascript knowledge. In about two evenings i had squashed most of the bugs and it worked under Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

The result

I’d guess i like to share my result with the world. So i cleaned up the interface and made it possible to test different paths easy. Maybe some else will find my Javascript implementation of A* Pathfinding on isometric Hexagons interesting or useful.

You can find my Hexagon Pathfinding in javascript example here. You can click on the map tiles to create or remove trees. Then with the “Draw Path” button you can generate the path. It should walk around all of the trees you planted.

Next week i will try do something with fighting between units.