You can get a lot of the benefits of hexagonal grids with triangular grids if you play your cards right. For example, you can allow units on a given triangle to move as if they were on the hexagonal grid that's formed by gluing triangles together at their corners.

Original HN post (43 comments / 3-years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32045779

I suggest using triangles in pairs, since diamonds form a grid nicely.

5 large strips (with 4 macro-triangles each) can form an icosahedron in a fairly sane way.

But IMO the biggest mistake people make is trying to make everything fit on a single square; multi-tile objects are very useful. And at that point, why not make everything take several tiles?

Abandoning tiles entirely in favor of node adjacency can cut memory a lot but requires more thought.

What a great write-up.

I'd love to see board games use irregular grids, in the way they describe: different cell sizes/shapes suit different kinds of buildings/units.

Great write up on the pros of triangle grids. Did you consider using irregular triangles to help with the math? Eg a 2:1 triangle

Obligatory hex grids explanation by Amit Patel from reblobgames: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

I'd like to see games using half-square grids—a square grid where units default to 2x2. That gets you a lot of the benefits of both squares and hexes.

Has anyone made a game using an aperiodic grid (Penrose or the like)? Would make for a fun challenge.