| hyperbolic space means that as you walk, there is much more space around you than you would have guessed from euclidian geometry; exponentially more space. so space is not a grid, but it is exponentially branching it's like.. suppose your space is discrete like in this game (if it's continuous it's the same argument basically), if you walk N steps in arbitrary directions in euclidian space, you can be sure you are confined in a N x N square so there are N^2 possible tiles you could be. in hyperbolic space your possibilities are much larger, space grows exponentially so you easily get lost anyway that's why parallel lines diverge in hyperbolic space: if you have two parallel trajectories that go in the same direction they get further and further apart because as you go, there is more space around each trajectory this means that unless you retrace your exact steps, it's very very hard to get back to your starting position after you wander for a while. navigation becomes almost impossible and it's not a matter of recognizing landmarks because you may never get to see the same landmarks again so in this game you are always walking towards new stuff; even if you go back, you won't find the placew you were before good thing it is procedurally generated then, and it basically doesn't matter much where you are because the game is pretty much the same everywhere (it has biomes but they just determine your enemies and stuff like that) a game like this but with a plot would be much harder and maybe require some sort of teleport or transport network |