1. Hexmap Worlds: Come Look at This Map

Post 1 in the Hexmap Worlds series — a feature tour of the overland hexmap, not a tutorial.

I've spent an embarrassing amount of 2026 staring at hexes.

Not in a sad way. In a "wait, if I tweak sea level one more notch, does that mountain pass actually make sense?" way. The project grew out of wanting a proper overland map for Godot — the kind of thing you wander with a party, not a battleboard you clear in twelve turns. Continents. Biomes. Fog. A path that costs real travel hours. Little barriers that make you dig for a key like some outdoor Metroidvania.

That stack lives in a demo I keep calling SimpleHexMap, with the reusable bits packed into our hexmap_overland addon. This post is the tour: what you can see and play with today. I'm naming the plugins and people who made it possible. I'm deliberately not walking you through every shader uniform. That's a different post (or twelve).

If you just want the series home: Hexmap Worlds.

Standing on other people's shoulders (happily)

Before the feature list, the thank-yous — because this thing is a kitbash in the best sense.

• Hexagon TileMapLayer by Zehir — flat-top hex grid, cube coordinates, A* pathfinding. The bones.
• Phantom Camera by ramokz / Marcus Skov — that lazy, cinematic follow while the party marches, plus free-pan when you're just rubbernecking the terrain.
• hexmap_overland (ours) — terrain generation tabs, fog of war, barriers, travel hours, the Zeshio_2 art bridge, minimap, the whole overland personality layer.
• Console and Textchat — the action feed so the map can talk back when something happens.
• TexturePacker importer (CodeAndWeb) — the sprite-sheet on-ramp for art packs.

Inspiration-wise I owe a permanent tab to Red Blob Games — especially the elevation / continent thinking that feeds our mapgen4-style generator. Godot's Asset Library carried the two big plugins above. Art-side, Zeshio / Pixel Hex packs (we're deep into Zeshio_2 transition tiles right now) are what make the biomes feel like a place instead of a noise texture with commitment issues.

Parked for later shout-outs: Gaea, the AWS Terrarium DEM tab, Mountains of Madness techniques. They're in the lab; they're not the headline today.

What you can actually do in SimpleHexMap

A buffet of terrain generators

One map, several brains.

You can spin up continents with the Original generator, swap to RRF, lean into mapgen4-style elevation thinking, poke the Madness techniques tab, or pull real-ish height vibes from the AWS DEM path. Same overland shell — different geology. Presets save and load so you're not re-twiddling sea level from memory every morning like some kind of cursed barista.

Zeshio_2 biomes and those sweet edge transitions

Fills for the biomes, then edge transition overlays so coast / forest / whatever doesn't look like someone dropped PNG cookies on a blank grid. This is the "does it feel like a world?" pass. Still iterating (more underlay pairs, coast spike polish), but the bridge is real and it's in the demo.

Pathfinding with a travel-hour budget (and secrets)

Click a destination, get a path — classic. Then make it matter: travel costs hours, barriers block the obvious route, and keys / unlocks turn the map into a little adventure graph instead of a taxi simulator. You're not just pathing; you're planning a day on the road.

Fog of war with actual states

Three vibes, not one muddy overlay:

• Unseen — blank. You haven't been there. Deal with it.
• Explored — gray memory. You know the shape; you don't get live intel.
• Live vision — what's in sight right now, with line-of-sight in the mix.

It turns wandering into discovery again. Chefs kiss. (Don't @ me about the emoji budget.)

Camera that behaves like a camera

Phantom Camera handles the lazy follow while the party moves. Idle? Free-pan and drink in the ridgelines. It's a small thing until you've lived with a camera that fights you — then it's the whole mood.

Minimap, time-of-day, knobs for the terrain itself

Minimap for the "where am I on this continent" question. Time-of-day feeding vision so dusk isn't just a color grade. Terrain band and sea-level controls when you want the shoreline to negotiate. Generator presets so your favorite stew of settings survives a restart.

What this post is not

It's not "install these fifteen addons and paste this GDScript."
It's not a postmortem of every wrong turn (there were many; some were educational; some were just me arguing with fog).
It's not the final art pass — Zeshio work is still cooking.

It is an open door on the Hexmap Worlds series: here's the overland fantasy we're chasing, here's who we built on, here's what already works in the demo if you squint at a Godot window with me.

What's next on the map

More transition pairs. Coast spike love. FOW polish. Phase 2 terrain dreams (rivers, forests, stamps) are still on the board under HexMapModule — they'll get their own daylight when they're ready to show off.

If you're into hex overlands, Red Blob-style elevation toys, or just want to watch someone take Asset Library plugins way too seriously — stick around. Series page again: Hexmap Worlds.

And yeah — I've still got hexes behind my eyes when I try to sleep. Worth it.

— Mario