Dear all,
I'm trying to implement a small-scale strategy, taking turns game implemented in Java, GUI is made with JFace and SWT.
My challenge is to write a GUI implementation of the world map, where countries will act as clickable buttons. However, countries have no fixed boundaries, no rectangular shape, and simply no way I can think of to be described in a grid layout.
This is my first time trying to implement a project of this type, please advise
Best regards, Paul
If it's a tile based map (like at Civilization) or it's displayed as pixmap, you could save the ownership of each tile/pixel in a two-dimensional array. Just display the map a a simple, clickable pixmap in a canvas an add a MouseListener. If you get a click event at the coordinates (X,Y), you can just get your country like:
Country clickedCountry = myCountriesOnMap[X][Y];
... in your Listener implementing the MouseListener interface. myCountriesOnMap would be of type Country[][].
Of course, you will need an algorithm that will resolve the ownership for each tile/pixel at startup or if a territory gets conquered (I don't know, if this may happen). May be you will have to define your countries as polygons (like you would do it for a HTML map). I cannot help you on this, as I haven't done anything similar jet, but I'm sure you will find something on Google.
Greetings
Sacher
Try to use the OpenStreetMap data. It contains exact country borders and good image export possibilities.
The Key:border tag will show you all borders. You could extract it and calculate your clickable areas.