Triangle Grids (2022)
14 comments
·August 30, 2025null
tiffanyh
Original HN post (43 comments / 3-years ago)
o11c
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.
noduerme
I don't know if this is the real historical reason, but if you're doing something 2.5D, isometric, at with 2D graphics, at anything other than a 45 degree angle, then anything larger than one square creates clipping problems because part of it should either be behind another sprite on a square whose closest vertex is closer to the camera than the furthest vertex of the forward element. Z-ordering things on the ground between those elements gets even trickier. Making each building (or part of a building) stay within one square is by far the easiest way out of that predicament.
stevage
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.
pspeter3
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
vismit2000
Obligatory hex grids explanation by Amit Patel from reblobgames: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/
mcphage
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.
ortusdux
Has anyone made a game using an aperiodic grid (Penrose or the like)? Would make for a fun challenge.
dtgriscom
Check out Townscaper.
stevage
Wow, another great writeup. I did a sort of half-arsed version of that here: https://stevebennett.me/2020/01/03/alternative-earth-procedu...
I basically took a square grid and then just randomly displaced each of the vertices a bit to disguise the fact that there is a grid at all. I just wasn't really clever enough to come up with any other way to do deterministic procedural generation.
orthoxerox
It's not aperiodic, but I remember a roguelike game on a hyperbolic surface, resulting in more than six neighboring cells in some dungeons.
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.