Tile
Tile refers, broadly, to any distinct element within the world of Chip's Challenge. For example, Chip himself, the iconic computer chips, locked doors, and pushable blocks are all tiles.
Other uses of the term include:
- Elements like the toggle door, which are really a collection of multiple tiles (the "open" and "closed" states are internally distinct in every Chip's Challenge game), but which act like a single entity that changes state.
- An element and its facing direction, especially when editing for the DAT format. For example, a west-facing glider is an available tile, encoded in DAT as the byte
0x51
. - A combination of tiles that functions as a single unit, especially if it alters the behavior of its parts. For example, a "fireball cloner" is really a fireball on top of a clone machine (which prevents the fireball from moving), and a "no green keys" sign is really a green key beneath a no sign (which prevents the key from being picked up).
- One of the square positions within the grid of a level, which may contain multiple elements. For example, "invalid tile" can refer to a stack of tiles expressible in a DAT level but that would be impossible on the original Lynx game. More pedantically known as a cell.
- One individual square of artwork used by any version of the game. Also known as a sprite.
In Chip's Challenge 1
MS also has the clone block, used to indicate the direction of a block cloner. This is a tile in the sense that it can be placed within a level, but it exists as an editing trick and is not intended as a distinct game element. In all other rulesets, dirt blocks have a direction like every other moving object, so a separate clone block is unnecessary.
Invalid tiles
These tiles are possible to place in a level due to quirks of the DAT format, and may have interesting properties, but only exist as accidents and aren't defined within the normal rules of the game.
- Fake exit
- Swimming Chip
- Drowned Chip
- Burned Chip
- The Combination tile
- Three unused tiles
One of the unused tiles found new life in the "pgchip" patch for MSCC, which replaced it with the ice block from CC2.
See also
- The MSCC tileset (in the sense of spritesheet)