Aperiodic Tile-based Platform Game

Has it ever been written, a platform game that uses an aperiodic tileset?

Yes; see the works of Mat Dickie

I believe I would be able to be of more help if you explained what you meant by "aperiodic tile-based".

>>3
It's a set of tiles that fit together in a non-periodic way.

>>1-4
Oh! I knew what aperiodic tileset meant, but since you were talking in the context of a game, I didn't even think of that.

No, I don't think so, as rectangular tiles (or tiles that tile in a similar way) are the most convenient to use, because they can be easily represented in memory.

I mean that by tileset I thought of a "tileset" as in a set of graphics that can be assigned to rectangular tiles on a map.

I used to play one in an aperiodic era.

>>1
I'm sure there has been. I don't know if Duke Nukem Manhattan Project counts, since it uses 3d graphics instead of 2d (although it features 2d gameplay), but the idea seems fairly obvious. I've often thought it would be a good idea to construct a platform engine with levels consisting of arbitrarily shaped and positioned graphics and arbitrary collision geometry, not bound together.

>>8
arbitrary shapes ≠ aperiodic tiles

>>3
I meant something like a penrose tiling pattern for the background.

>>9
Well that's just retarded.

>>7
*upvotes*

>>5
There are aperiodic square tiles, i.e. Wang tiles. The Wikipedia article on them has references on their use in texture generation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_tile

The reason they aren't useful is because it takes a lot of processing power to compute the tiling. If I tell you, get me the tile at (25,35). What is it? You've either got to do a whole lot of work to calculate it, or you have to store the whole grid on disk and load it into memory. If your grid is small of course the overhead is negligible, but then what was the point of using aperiodic tiles?

>>13
Huh huh.
You said ‘Wang’.

>>13
I thought >>1-chan meant more like Penrose tiles.

>>13
There are better aperiodic square tiles, for instance ballsac tiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballsac_tile

>>15
I didn't get that impression at all. He just said aperiodic (twice). It seems much more logical to use square tiles for a video game, hence Wang tiles.

>>17
THAT'S THE PARADOX!!

>>13
If I tell you, get me the tile at (25,35). What is it? You've either got to do a whole lot of work to calculate it, or you have to store the whole grid on disk and load it into memory.

I believe many tilemaps are stored on the disk, and I have seen a few platformers in my day, believe me!

>>19
This is exactly the kind of lazy and indulgent attitude that causes the excessive and unacceptable bloat we see in today's software systems.

Is started programming it.
I have a 2d array that resembles the plane,
The tiles will be arranged there.
I am using the robinson tileset.

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/symmetry/aperiod.htm

After 10 hours I have made this much progress:
http://pastebin.org/83294

So the skeleton is complete, and I am currently tracking down bugs.

What do you guys think of it?

I'll continue someday later.. Maybe weekend or so..

>>21
goto statements
（　´_ゝ`）

>>22
Hello E.W.Dickstrap

>>23
oh, hello >>3-san

（　´`_ゝ´`）

>>24
Oh no! I meant >>23-san! How do I delete that?

（　˚_ゝ˚）

>>22
Yeah I need them to break out of nested for statements

>>21
That's pretty cool. It seems a fairly efficient tiling to calculate, but very low quality. There is a lot of high-level repetition in it even if the tiling itself is aperiodic. For example every other tile in every other row is blue. Every fourth tile in every fourth row is purple. You will see these artifacts in the final product.

Check out what this guy has done:

http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/reality/Research/pdf/R046.pdf

This tiling is aperiodic and exhibits very little visible high-level structure. I would guess that it's because the tiling there is based on a substitution system rather than being constructive like yours, but I have nothing to substantiate that claim. Nevertheless the screenshots look good.

Have you written a renderer yet? Ideally you'd write a tile-based renderer that takes an arbitrary tiling and lets you pan/scroll with mouse+wheel. You should be able to write this with SDL/GLFW in a couple hundred lines of C. Then test out the different algorithms.

>>27
I was ging to finsh it and look for repetitions later, :)
The blue tiles being sorted as they are is intentional because of the corners they can only be sorted like this.

The main problem I had was with turning the tiles. And this is my first time writing a program that uses something that is supposed to be graphical.

Thank you so much for the link, and the rendering tip I will certainly look into that :)

>>27
Hey look, he's also a Klan member: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/slides/fire.mpg

>>28
I was ging to finsh it and look for repetitions later, :)
...but you can see the repetition in the link you posted. Just look at the colors. They are very repetitive, and you can see that the repeating tiles (blue and purple) are not rotated at all in the repeating pattern. It sortof defeats the purpose of an aperiodic tiling.

Anyway I'm very interested in this as well. If you haven't written a renderer yet by this weekend I'll write one and pastebin it here.

>>30
If you would have read the text beside the image then they would state that they tried to make a pattern but failed in the end (lower left corner).
But the purple and blue tiles are being rotated as much as the other ones.
The one thing I haven't implemented yet would be that the green and aqua tiles should be flipped horizontally sometimes.

I don't think this is a good algorithm for tiling textures in a game, because as >>27 mentioned there is a lot of high level repetition.
The main difference is that in games they do not care whether the tiles could be tiled periodically they just don't want to.
Whereas the mathematical approach here is that there should be no way to tile these ones in a periodical manner.
This is why I don't try to randomize this. They should break down their periodicity anyway.(Assumed they are designed properly).

The blue tiling will be repetitive but this repetition is because of the corners. Repetitions other than that should break down quickly.

I don't think I will be able to write a renderer because I don't now ANYTHING about graphical stuff(A bit winAPI but thats it).

>>31
I did actually; I looked elsewhere to see the real tiling, and it exhibits the repetition I mentioned. It might not look as bad due to the rotation though. Just to clarify, I'm also >>13,17,27,30. I'm pretty sure it's just you, me, and a troll.

I thought about writing a renderer but I figured it's pointless without the tiles. A set of robinson tiles that can link together appropriately is not easy to make. If you can get the tiles, I'll make a renderer for it with GLFW.

>>31
An easy way to render something like this would be to create a C++ class that holds 4 vertex and a texture for each tile.  Probably the most basic thing you'd learn to do in Direct3D (or OpenGL).

I thought this was a pretty frivolous idea at first, but after seeing the water texturing, could have some really nice uses in making a pattern less noticeable.

So is anyone working on that graphical renderer?

>>34
Silly boy, we do not program here.

: (

>>34
Nope. Needs tiles.

>>36
Cut them out from here...
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/symmetry/aperiod.htm

write a script for evaldraw instead

save time

http://advsys.net/ken/download.htm

>>38
;__;
I think that this guy has done more that I ever did.

>>37
I meant a tiling that can actually represent a real-world surface - grass, water, etc.