Tile

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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, which encodes such combinations as single bytes. For example, a west-facing glider is an available DAT tile, corresponding to 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, known more generally in game development as a sprite.

Types of tile

Tiles can be informally grouped into several categories, based on their behavior.

Layers

Tiles can also be grouped based on whether two different tiles can coexist in the same cell. If two tiles cannot, they are said to exist on the same layer. The set of layers is defined by a combination of ruleset and file format.

Lynx

The original game was designed around having two layers:

  • Static tiles — including both terrain and items
  • Actors — everything that can move

The game's internal data structure defined a level as a single 32×32 layer of static tiles, plus one optional actor per cell. It was thus impossible to create otherwise intuitive combinations like a key on top of gravel, because both the key and the gravel would have had to occupy the same space.

This format was restricted to the Atari Lynx game itself. Emulators have generally needed to load levels in the DAT format, which

MS

Strictly speaking, MSCC was only designed to play the original levels, so it was likely intended to obey the same layering restrictions as Lynx. However, it takes an unusual approach to layering: each cell is a stack of any two tiles. Internally, a gravel tile looks like this:

  Gravel
  Floor (nothing)

If Chip then steps into this cell, the gravel moves down, and he takes its place:

  Chip
  Gravel

When he leaves, the gravel will move back up and a floor tile will fill the empty space, returning things to the first diagram.

The DAT format invented for MSCC inadvertently exposes this arrangement to level designers, allowing a level to have any two tiles stacked atop one another. The game wasn't designed to handle two actors or two static tiles in the same cell, so various unusual effects may occur. Combinations of tiles that are technically possible to create in a DAT level, but could not have been represented in the original Atari Lynx game, are called invalid tiles.

Steam

Steam rules are designed for the much more expansive set of tiles available in Chip's Challenge 2 and introduced much greater flexibility in layering. From bottom to top, the layers are:

Each cell must have a terrain tile — in fact, CC2's C2M level format enforces it — but every other layer is optional.

(Internally, it may be the case that thin walls and canopies are part of the same tile and thus the same layer, as they're encoded together in C2M. From the perspective of players and designers, they behave as separate tiles.)

For Chip's Challenge 1 tiles, the most notable improvements are the ability to place an item on top of any kind of terrain and the ability to place thin walls, in any combination, atop anything else at all. The other new layers are dedicated to new CC2 tiles: the no sign (which combines with an item underneath), swivel doors, and canopies (which are specifically for hiding everything below).

Chip's Challenge 1 tiles

  Chip   Computer chip   Chip socket   Exit
  Floor   Hint   Thin wall   Wall
  Invisible wall   Hidden wall   Recessed wall   Blue wall
  Water   Fire   Ice   Force floor
  Dirt   Gravel   Ice corner   Random force floor
  Flippers   Fire boots   Ice skates   Suction boots
  Blue key   Red key   Green key   Yellow key
  Blue lock   Red lock   Green lock   Yellow lock
  Block   Teleporter   Thief   Bomb
  Green button   Red button   Blue button   Brown button
  Toggle wall   Cloner   Tank   Trap
  Fireball   Glider   Bug   Paramecium
  Ball   Walker   Teeth   Blob

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.

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