drawing borders

I would go for option 1. Then a border tile is any tile that isn''t completely surrounded by a similar type of tile.

Walter O. Krawec Games
www.waltsgames.com

The only thing I''m worried about with this option is slowing things down too much. A normal map will be about 6000 tiles. Using this option would force me to check every tile, plus check each tile''s neighbors. I imagine that this would take a great deal of time.
Does this seem like a valid concern?

Another option then is to perhaps have a Tilemap (option 1) where a value of 1 is player1''s territory and 2 is a border of player1s. Than 3 is player2''s and 4 is player2''s border and so on. I used something similar in Hands to Quarters which has up to 19000 tiles and it works great.

Anyway, sorry for the short reply, but I''m in a hurry.

Walter O. Krawec Games
www.waltsgames.com

store within the tile the id of the player who "owns" the tile, which i presume will determine what color the border shall be drawn in.

also store within the tile a number where one bit represents a side of the tile. in a square, this would be one bit for north, one for east, one for south, and one for west. since this is only four bits, you may want to also put the playerid value with it together into a single byte (if you know that you''ll have less than 16 players, because 0 will be reserved for "not claimed")

when evaluating a square for which borders to show, simply check the playerid values in each of the squares it shares a border with, and store this information in the border variable. when creating a new map, you will only have to do this one time.

when the ownership of an area changes, then you need to reevaluate that area, and each area that it shares a border with. if using squares, that means only 5 evaluations, rather than having to do the entire map each time.

Thanks both of you. I''m goign to try what TANSTAAFL suggested, sounds like a pretty good approach. Trust me when I say that I will be back with any question.