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Interesting tilings

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Maaartin
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Joined: 05/15/2011

Most game use either rectangular or hexagonal tilings, and I'm looking for something more fancy. There's a nice list of uniform tilings on the wiki, but I'd prefer something irregular. Actually, I'd like something even more crazy like Penrose tilings. However, I don't know how to assure the following conditions:

  • No matter in what order and where the tiles get placed, all tiles will fit nicely together (so that when you converge after expanding in different directions you don't end up with an unsolvable puzzle).
  • The different tiles (if any) and different positioning possibilities must be easy to tell apart (so that a player can't mistakingly place a tile which just nearly fits).
  • The tiles should not be to eccentric, so that they provide enough place for placing meeples (nearly round shapes like hexagons are ideal, very long triangles are bad, and so are non-convex tiles).
  • The tiles should all provide about the same place for meeples (a meeple must fit on each tile, so bigger tiles waste place). Actually, I could use some tiles where two meeples fit, so this condition is not that important.

Any ideas and examples of interesting tilings and games using them are welcome.

InvisibleJon
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Joined: 07/27/2008
Tessellation...

You're exploring the realm of tessellation. I recommend reading the wikipedia article on it:

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

...then taking a look at this useful Escher/tessellation fan site:

http://www.tessellations.org/diy-basic1.shtml

I also suspect you'll find the java tessellation tool on the following page fune and useful:

http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Tessellate/

I hope this helps!

Argebie
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Joined: 10/31/2011
Sunda to Sahul

Check out the board pieces for Sunda to Sahul. I've never played it but it looks like what you're aiming for. Personally, although I'm amazed at how well the art works together no matter how you set up the board, Sunda Sahul's board looks a little intimidating to put together, I think you could definitely improve on it.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4961/sunda-to-sahul

Maaartin
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Joined: 05/15/2011
Thanks to both

InvisibleJon wrote:
I hope this helps!

Indeed, it did.

Argebie wrote:
Check out the board pieces for Sunda to Sahul. I've never played it but it looks like what you're aiming for.

Not exactly, but it's nice. As I found out in the comments, if the Sunda pieces didn't have the jigsaw protrusions and indentations, they would be rhombi. They're a special kind consisting of two joined equilateral triangles. This alone could possibly work for me. Actually, it may happen that non-fillable single-triangle holes get created, but I think I can live with it.

Now I see that it's not that simple: Here I see that there are at least two different types of tiles. Does anybody know more about it?

In case somebody's interested, there's a simple game called Cronberg based on laying such rhombi. I'm aiming for a more complicated game using the interesting tiling as its board (where the tile-laying is just a small part of the game, just like in Tikal).

The comments also led me to a puzzle-like game called Chaos Tiles based on two different funny shapes. I'm pretty sure I'd hate anybody making me to play it, but it's a problem of mine rather than of the game.

Argebie wrote:
Personally, although I'm amazed at how well the art works together no matter how you set up the board, Sunda Sahul's board looks a little intimidating to put together, I think you could definitely improve on it.

The aesthetic aspect of the game is currently something far beyond my horizon...

hotsoup
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Joined: 08/28/2009
Here's a game with what

Here's a game with what appears to be an unusual tiling: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/53804/cirkis

GreenO
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Joined: 11/14/2011
Penrose tiling

Cir*kis certainly uses Penrose tiling. Cool. It's available in a local discount book store chain, I'll have to pick a copy up.

Strangely coincidentally, I was looking at using Penrose tiling for November's GDS, but I'd just found this site then and bottled out of entering until I'd seen a showdown run from start to finish. I love the way the tessellation works around a 5 segmented decagon- that should lend itself to a board game design with up to 5 players. My idea was to have the tiles represent oil fields a sea shared equally through segmentation by the five nations that border it; and with this sort of tiling the fields would cross the segment borders leading to potential conflict and the voting in of sanctions against any nation that did it.

"Rigged". It's on the back-burner.

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