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DS development > Direct or extended bg

#168073 - rapidlord - Thu Apr 09, 2009 12:34 am

Hi All,
I am begginer to NDS and have couple of questions if anyone have little time to help me.

1. Extended - 256 colors x 16 palletes
Is this apply to engine on start and all screens in game need to use those 16 predefine pallets , or i can use 256c x 16 for each screen i have.

2, Direct Bitmaps BGs - this is very little documented
I have lots of static screens, so .. can i use 256x192 true color bitmap to draw background, and 5~6 smaller for example 50x50 true color bitmaps for animation like clouds faces etc. Similar as in win32 with bitblt to draw whole scene. Or should i stick to BG tiles/objects and extended pallets.

Point is that there is not much animation and action on screen , but images are rally beautiful/complex and i would like to keep them that way when i put them on screen.

Thank you

#168078 - TwentySeven - Thu Apr 09, 2009 2:18 am

Try and use the hardware features as much as possible.

Emulating existing hardware features using software blitting is fairly slow on the DS.

Using the 3d hardware to draw in 2D would allow you to use truecolor textures as "sprites", giving you what you're after.

#168083 - sverx - Thu Apr 09, 2009 11:50 am

I never used it but there should be a 15bpp BMP mode that could be just what you need for your background.
Maybe you can read the example here (uses MODE_5_2D and background #3 in BG_BMP16_256x256 mode)