Uplift

By: ollycb

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A tile-based game is a game that uses tiles as one of the fundamental elements of play. It has different meanings depending on how it is used. There are many traditional games which use tiles, but when referring to video games, normally a tile-based game means a game which uses tiles as part of its graphic output.

Traditional games

Traditional tile-based games use small tiles as playing pieces for gambling or entertainment game. Some Board games use tiles to create their board, giving multiple possibilities for board layout.

Each tile has a back (undifferentiated) side and a face side. Tiles are usually rectangular, twice as long as they are wide and at least twice as wide as they are thick, though games exist with square tiles, triangular tiles and even hexagonal tiles.

Traditional Tile-based physical games

• Chinese dominoes games
• Dominoes
• Mahjong (may be played with special playing cards instead)
• Rummikub
• Scrabble

Tile based games that use non-rectangular tiles

• Blokus
• Exago
• Triominos
• Tantrix

Tile-based board games

• Alhambra
• Betrayal at House on the Hill
• Carcassonne
• Diceland
• Fjords
• Settlers of Catan
• Zombies!!!

Video games

A tile-based video game is a type of video or computer game where the playing area consists of small rectangular, square, or hexagonal graphic images, referred to as tiles. The complete set of tiles available for use in a playing area is called a tileset. Tiles are laid out adjacent to one another in a grid; usually, some tiles are allowed to overlap, for example, when a tile representing a unit is overlaid onto a tile representing terrain. Tile-based games usually simulate a top-down or isometric view on the playing area and are almost always two dimensional.

Tile-based games are not a distinct game genre; rather, the term refers to the technology a game engine uses for its visual representation. For example, Ultima III is a role-playing game and Civilization is a turn-based strategy game, but both use tile-based game engines. Tile-based game engines allow developers to create large, complex gameworlds efficiently and with relatively few art assets.

Early video game consoles such as Intellivision were designed to use tile-based graphics, since their games had to fit into video game cartridges as small as 4K in size. Regardless of their outward appearance or game genre, all Intellivision games are tile-based.

Notable tile-based video games include:

• The Ancient Art of War
• Centipede
• Civilization series
• Dig Dug, Bomberman and Super Boulder Dash, all of which highlighted the presence of tiles to create a scrolling video game version of a board game
• Heroes of Might and Magic series
• Gold Box D&D RPG series
• Neverwinter Nights on AOL, the first graphical MMORPG
• Pac-Man
• Rogue
• SimCity
• Ultima series
• Utopia, Intellivision

Most early tile-based games used a top-down perspective. The top-down perspective evolved to a simulated 45-degree angle, allowing the player to see both the top and one side of objects, to give more sense of depth; this style dominated 8-bit and 16-bit console role-playing games. Ultimate Play the Game developed a series of computer games in the 1980s that employed a tile-based isometric perspective. As computers advanced, isometric and dimetric perspectives began to predominate in tile-based games. Notable titles include:

• Ultima Online, which mixed elements of 3D (the ground, which is a tile-based height map) and 2D (objects) tiles
• Civilization II, which updated Civilization’s top-down perspective to an isometric perspective.
• The Avernum series, which remade the top-down role-playing series Exile with an isometric engine.

Hexagonal tile-based games have been limited for the most part to the strategy and wargaming genres. Notable examples include the Genesis game Master of Monsters, SSI‘s Five Star Series wargames, the Age of Wonders series and Battle for Wesnoth.

Some entirely 3D games have been tile-based; one notable example is the Neverwinter Nights series from BioWare.

Some games, like side-scrollers, are technically also tile based (that is, the playing area is made up of graphic tiles), but are normally not referred to as such.

Early tile-based games shipped with pre-constructed levels or generated levels at game startup (for example, with SimCity and Civilization) or on the fly (as with Roguelike games). A feature of tile-based games is that they allow for the creation of easy to use map editors, and many tile-based games come with an editor that allows players to construct their own levels. While completed levels for a game may hide all traces of tile-based technology, use of an editor for such a game strips away all polish and reveals a game’s tile-based framework.

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The text of this article is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

The court’s ruling upholds a British law which stipulates that both of the partners must consent to all stages of the in vitro fertilization process. Evans and a number of pro-life groups have argued that the embryos have a right to life independent of the male partner’s decision.
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There is a nice image from their study on Technovelgy (link below).

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From the Physicians for Human Rights website:

Ethical codes endorsed by the American Medical Association (AMA), including the World Medical Association (WMA)’s 1975 Declaration of Tokyo, which was elaborated in the 1991 WMA Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers (see links below), state clearly that “where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the doctor as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially [emphasis added].�

Link [NPR]

Link [Physicians for Human Rights]

Scientists have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit.This is hotter than the interior of our Sun, which is about 15 million degrees Kelvin, and also hotter than any previous temperature ever achieved on Earth, they say.

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“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

-Albert Einstein

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On-going outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in poultry in Asia and, more recently, in Europe have raised concerns about the source of infection and the risk to humans from various exposures. On present evidence, the vast majority of human cases have acquired their infection following direct contact with infected live or dead poultry. WHO is aware of recent concerns that the virus could also spread to humans through contact with contaminated poultry products. To date, no epidemiological data suggest that the disease can be transmitted to humans through properly cooked food (even if contaminated with the virus prior to cooking). However, in a few instances, cases have been linked to consumption of dishes made of raw contaminated poultry blood.

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In North and South America, it is estimated that just under half of the region’s children will be overweight by 2010, up from about 28 percent. In EU countries, about 38 percent of all children will be overweight should present trends continue _ up from about 25 percent in recent surveys, according to a report published by the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity.

“We have truly a global epidemic which appears to be affecting most countries in the world,” said Dr. Philip James, the chairman of the International Obesity Task Force and the author of an editorial in the journal warning of the trend.

The study lays the blame for this trend on greater access to junk foods and sedentary lifestyles (read as gamers, bloggers, etc.). Public health authorities are concerned that obese kids will, in turn, become obese adults who will suffer from increased rates of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke.

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Will this be the next big gadget? I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one to try it out.

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