I wrote the VB6 program, and haven’t messed with it in a long while, but here is the source code for getting the distance between two hexes. You’d pass the source and destination hexes, and it would return the distance between the two.
Function get_dist(ByVal iSource As Long, ByVal iDest As Long) As Long
Dim x1 As Long, x2 As Long, y1 As Long, y2 As Long, dx As Long, dy As Long
' 1st hex x and y axis
x1 = Int(iSource / HEXMOD) 'hex mod is a constant, 100 for 4-digit hexes, 1000 for 6-digit
y1 = iSource Mod HEXMOD
' second hex x and y axis
x2 = Int(iDest / HEXMOD)
y2 = iDest Mod HEXMOD
'distance between x's and y's
dx = Abs(x2 - x1)
dy = y2 - y1 + Int(dx / 2)
' adjust for even/odd hex locations
If (x1 Mod 2 = 1) And (x2 Mod 2 = 0) Then dy = dy + 1
' return the largest of these 3 items: dx, dy, or dx - dy
' VB6 uses the function name to return a value to the calling function
get_dist = dx - dy
If dy > get_dist Then get_dist = dy
If dx > get_dist Then get_dist = dx
End Function
Hope this helps.