Wang tiles were invented by Hao Wang in 1961 for mathematical reasons, but they find great use in games for making tile based art which gives results

Using Wang Tiles to Simulate Turing Machines

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2021-07-22 09:00:07

Wang tiles were invented by Hao Wang in 1961 for mathematical reasons, but they find great use in games for making tile based art which gives results that don’t look tiled – both with 2d tiled textures, as well as 3d tiled models.

Apparently Wang tiles are also able to execute Turing machines, and so are thus Turing complete – meaning they can execute any program.

Wang tiles are rectangular tiles where each edge will only fit with other specific edges, but that for any specific edge, there is more than one possible tile that can fit with that edge. By fit with that edge, I mean they are seamless when put together, without any visual artifacts to hint at there actually being a seam between the tiles.

This is useful for graphics because this lets you have seamless tiled graphics, but the specific configuration of how the tiles are placed can be completely randomized, so long as their edges are all compatible. The result is tiled graphics that doesn’t look at all tiled, due to visible patterns being much less noticeable than with traditional tiled graphics.

Here is an example I made. The graphics are programmer art but hopefully you get the idea. This was made with 16 tiles, where there were two different edge types per edge.