#29392 - identitycrisisuk - Fri Nov 19, 2004 3:25 pm
So I've moved onto backgrounds now and I think I'm finally getting my head around the basics of them and how the char and screen base blocks work. So I've got one map already that was fairly simple to create, results in tiling a 64x64 image into a 256x256 bachground and I've worked out how to blend it with things (it's gonna be a fog layer that constantly moves and has no relation to other backgrounds used for level objects and paralax scrolling).
I've been designing my level with MapEd which I really like but the one snag for me is that it uses all of your tiles across different levels and gives you output data that refers to one single 256 colour palette, when I want to keep it as individual 16 colour palettes for each layer tileset. Not too much of a problem to then split up your layers and export them separately though.
Only problem I can then see is how you put all your tiles in memory. If they're separate then you can't just pack em into a char base block as tightly as you can because surely the maps will be refering to the tiles as if they start from the beginning of a block, when you might have put them after another set of tiles. So I guess the answer is to use more than one char base block for all of your tiles. I was thinking of doing something like this.
SBB0 - BG0 tile map
SBB1 - BG1 tile map
SBB2 - BG2 tile map
SBB3 - BG3 tile map (if I use it)
SBB4-7 - free, possibly could be used for something, temp map storage or something?
CBB1 - BG0 tiles
CBB2 - BG1 tiles
CBB3 - BG2 tiles
What's peoples opinion on that? I'm not perfectly happy myself, it seems like there'll be wasted space here and there though I don't know if that matters or not. Plus I've left myself no space for tiles to be used specifically with BG3 so I guess I would have to offset them in one of the other blocks and either make my own map editor that would take that into account when creating the map entries or offset the map entries in the game as needed. I might get away with it if BG3 ends up being an information layer so it won't need as much mapping and I'll just be programming where to place text, energy bars, stuff like that.
I've been designing my level with MapEd which I really like but the one snag for me is that it uses all of your tiles across different levels and gives you output data that refers to one single 256 colour palette, when I want to keep it as individual 16 colour palettes for each layer tileset. Not too much of a problem to then split up your layers and export them separately though.
Only problem I can then see is how you put all your tiles in memory. If they're separate then you can't just pack em into a char base block as tightly as you can because surely the maps will be refering to the tiles as if they start from the beginning of a block, when you might have put them after another set of tiles. So I guess the answer is to use more than one char base block for all of your tiles. I was thinking of doing something like this.
SBB0 - BG0 tile map
SBB1 - BG1 tile map
SBB2 - BG2 tile map
SBB3 - BG3 tile map (if I use it)
SBB4-7 - free, possibly could be used for something, temp map storage or something?
CBB1 - BG0 tiles
CBB2 - BG1 tiles
CBB3 - BG2 tiles
What's peoples opinion on that? I'm not perfectly happy myself, it seems like there'll be wasted space here and there though I don't know if that matters or not. Plus I've left myself no space for tiles to be used specifically with BG3 so I guess I would have to offset them in one of the other blocks and either make my own map editor that would take that into account when creating the map entries or offset the map entries in the game as needed. I might get away with it if BG3 ends up being an information layer so it won't need as much mapping and I'll just be programming where to place text, energy bars, stuff like that.