Minimizing and Reusing Geomorph Tiles via Twisting - CityGenerator/Megacosm-Generator GitHub Wiki

Following the "On Geomorphic Tiles and-Powers of Two" article, lets discuss how to minimize our tile usage.

Finding the Minimum set of Tiles

Each tile has four sides. Each of those sides is connecting (open) or not connecting(closed). This results in 16 variations of a single tile. (Those of you with a CS background may notice a binary pattern here.)

geomorphfullset.png

Many of these, however are identical with merely a difference in orientation:

geomorphsettwisted.png

If we untwist them, it boils down to 6 type:

geomorphset.png

As far as artists go, a full set of tiles only requires those six patterns; the rest are redundant.

##Mapping Patterns to Images

So, what's the best way to store and map each image?

Lets break this down- take a sample tile with an open top, left and bottom, and a closed right.

1011.png

This can bee seen as type 5 with two degrees of rotation. So how can we determine this programmatically?