Okay, some of you may of heard of a little project I had in Help Wanted called Project Garas. It's a turn based game using a hexagonal grid like a board game. Actually nabbed a few people. Good news, the programming is going well although the game hasn't been touched yet (engine work). Bad news, the game has around 90 units and we only have one sprite artist at the moment. He told me that I need to find more people (which I do) since it's going to be tough work. Not because of drawing the sprites, but setting them up in different positions. I said "Yeah, diagonal, left, right, up, and down." "Wait ..I thought I was doing diagonal" So my question to you guys is this...in a turn-based game, are squares and hexagonal a huge difference in terms of game play and genre fitting? I mean, I like the idea of moving to different directions, but in a resource standpoint, having the sprite artist doing all those position and animatinog each one is a bit of a pain.

Yeah, having 6 connections rather than 4 or 9 does impact the game balance pretty significantly.

Finding good artists is often one of the hardest parts. If you havn't already, I'd suggest also trying advertising a few other places for additional help in the art department.

On your actual question, yes, there would probably be a significant difference in gameplay from having the different movement options available. Your players will never know though if they only experience it one way. I don't believe it'll really have any impact on your genre at all, but the gameplay would certainly be different depending on your choice.

Actualy, if you are doing it diagnoal, you need 5 sprites, not 8 - left is reversed right, up-left is reversed up-right, and guess what - down-left is reversed down-right(though not as declared LOL)

So, it's not 4 sprites vs. 8, it's 3 vs. 5. A difference of only two sprites.

Yep... and nobody ever notices.

Ultima did exactly that for years.

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Original post by SunTzu Yep... and nobody ever notices.

Actualy, I noticed that in the metroid games for the GBA.

Unless your units are simmetrical, you will need all points of view. Some units may have a weapon in one hand only. Inverting the sprite is not always the solution.

For now try this...
http://reinerstileset.4players.de/englisch.htm

This should work fine in your hex game if you are using an isometric projection. I wish this existed when I was doing isometric games.

Luck!
Guimo

You could make one 3d model and render it from as many angles as you need.

From a gameplay point of view the important advantage of hex is that every possible move from a tile is the same distance, but with squares up/down/left/right is shorter than the diagonals. This can be rather important if you're doing a strict turn based game (or not, depending on your gameplay).

Quote:

Original post by SunTzu Yep... and nobody ever notices. Ultima did exactly that for years.

when i was young, i actually tried walking around while always facing south, because of ultima. it didn't work so well, but the game still kicked ass.