CompuServe Messages

That's an excellent idea, and close to another one I had earlier, and the two could be merged! How about, in addition to what you suggested, the .BXP could perform random TRANSFORMS (rotation at random 90 increments combined with optional horizontal and/or vertical mirroring) on the cells? When used with properly-designed tiles that can tile seamlessly on all four edges regardless of which edges "connect" (such as sand or granite or woven cloth, etc.), there would be an effect of a much larger bitmap than is actually used! The two could be combined so that you could specify multiple tiles, and specify the rotations and mirrorings that each could handle and still appear seamless (if seamlessness is a concern — it wouldn't be for a brick wall or bathroom or ceiling tiles, etc. — such tiles could be, if square, rotated and mirrored in any manner without concern, while bricks and other non-square tiles could be rotated 180 but not 90 or 270 , while some other tiles might not tile well if mirrored vertically but do if mirrored horizontally — such limits could be specified in the controlling text file). A sample controlling file for floor tiling for a short hallway (10 tiles wide, 20 tiles long) with three specific 64×64 pixel tile images which could be rotated and mirrored in any manner might look like this: TOTAL-TILE = 10×20 EACH-TILE = 64×64 U-OFFSET-PER-ROW = 0 V-OFFSET-PER-COL = 0 TILE-1 = TILE1.GIF ROTATE ALL MIRROR ALL TILE 2 = TILE2.GIF ROTATE ALL MIRROR ALL TILE 3 = TILE3.GIF ROTATE ALL MIRROR ALL For a brick wall with four brick-image tiles at 64×16 pixels, each row shifted ? tile to the right from the previous row to simulate bricklaying, for a total wall size of 40 bricks wide by 20 bricks tall: TOTAL-TILE = 40×20 EACH-TILE = 64×16 U-OFFSET-PER-ROW = 0.5 V-OFFSET-PER-COL = 0 TILE-1 = BRICK1.TIF ROTATE 0,180 MIRROR ALL TILE 2 = BRICK2.TIF ROTATE 0,180 MIRROR ALL TILE 3 = BRICK3.TIF ROTATE 0,180 MIRROR ALL TILE 4 = BRICK4.TIF ROTATE 0,180 MIRROR ALL Unfortunately, it would NOT save on memory. .BXPs produce actual bitmaps that are the full size of whatever is needed, and uncompressed to boot. It would, however, save CONSIDERABLY on DISK space!