While traveling in Mongolia I noticed endless knot or eternal knot patterns everywhere, particularly on people’s fences. In Mongolian it’s Ulzii Khee (Өлзий Хээ) which translates to “auspicious pattern.”
Doodles #
Here are some drawings from my notebook.
At first I was trying to combine the eternal knot with the “Cool S” doodle kids used to do in my childhood. (Apparently other people’s childhoods, too, dating back to the 1970s according to Wikipedia.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_S
Here’s a seventies style instead.
And some ideas about expanding the knot in different ways.
The Tileset #
It took me a couple tries to figure out where the edges of the pattern should be. In hindsight it makes sense that there would have to be two ropes vertically and two horizontally in each tile. If there was only one then I can’t alternate over under over under.
This minimal version covers some simple scenarios.
Something interesting to notice about this: unlike the original design, these are not a single strand. The 3x3 box on the left for example has three strings: two which form a cross and one which forms a square.
Also, this minimal tileset has some limitations. Look what happens when it’s not a simple box.
I need to define more tiles.
…
Working from the 47-tile template and things are going well so far. Already more patterns are possible.
I wasn’t sure at first what to do with the “T” tiles.
In this image, there is one T that has two ropes going nowhere. I was thinking maybe I’d force it to be a cross like the intersection just below it.
Here’s what I ended up with instead.
I like that a little Apple command forms in the template when I do that.
Here are test cases for the remaining tiles that need to be arted drawn.
And after:
Results #
Get rid of the hot pink template and add a fill and minor shading and here’s the new tileset.
Pretty fun to play with it and see the patterns that can be created.
Of course, it should all be rotated 45° which breaks the pixel art. Hah. I wonder if there’s a different way to tile this so it works at a 45° angle. I was thinking there might be a diamond tile shape in Godot but nope. I could rotate the entire TileMapLayer 45° but again, pixel art won’t look good.
I might dabble with that later but for now, here’s the above image rotated.
Oh yikes.
I didn’t realize I can’t actually make the original eternal knot pattern with the tileset I created. Here are some attempts:
Wow. Whoops. The original has a row of four holes and two rows of two but I can only do odd numbers of them.
That’s… kinda hilarious.
Well, it was fun anyway, and I think now I’ve got a pretty good idea about using Godot’s TileMapLayer and Terrains so mission still accomplished.
If I have more time with my notebook in the near future I might try to solve that and the 45° rotation. And maybe make another tileset with the “cool S” style. (-: