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Just don't use 8x8 mode, because boy I feel like I'm wasting my entire day getting this layer 2 background in. I even tried using metatile compression and all it does is make it even more confusing. For every other level background I'm just going to use 16x16 tiles because I'll never get this game finished with 8x8 tiles.

Tools, man.

No tools exist for tile maps.

I have a theoretical idea on how to do tile maps... by making an actual SNES program for it, and then saving it in SRAM.

It is much easier to whip up a small pick and place program you run on whatever OS you normally use, or use a ready made program such as Tiled and write a data converter. Much more convenient and flexible ~

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I know there's one for the GBA. I heard there's an extra palette bit and one less priority one, so couldn't you use the upper 8 palettes (that would look the same as the lower 8 in the program) to represent higher priority? Or is the order of all the bits mixed up? It should still be easier to convert a tilemap from this than from anywhere else.

I never knew that. Is the GBA and SNES's format close enough to do it?

edit:
Just looked it up, and the GBA has the color bits and hv-flip bits arranged differently.

Apparently, it's a little different (it would be too easy if it weren't... )

The top format is the SNES, while the bottom is the GBA. v=vertical flip, h=horizontal flip, o=priority, p=palette, and c=tile number.


It should still be easy enough to make a program that rearranges this. I don't know if there's a 16x16 tile mode on the GBA, but if there isn't, at least it's not impossible to do that manually.

Edit: Why did you ask the question if you were just going to look it up?

Spur of the moment type of thing.

I did exactly that with Tiled not long ago.


I did that too, built a debug mode into my game allowing me to edit the map as I play it and save to SRAM. It worked, but it felt too slow and painful to do the volume of map editing I need to do.

Either way the volume of level design I've planned for myself is prohibitively large, but... making progress, and the Tiled converter is the best method I have so far.

I need to learn more about Excel now, and all this time I thought Excel was only good for making schedules and counting money.

Another option can be a user friendly compression format. I remember Alp showing some kind of multi-directional RLE, and I think SMW uses something similar. I'll look into both Excel and different compression formats and decide what I like better.

I use Excel a lot simply due to the simplicity of VBA code, and the fact that any problem you have with it will have an easily found google solution. It's not the fastest or the most powerful language by far but if all you need to do is crunch big piles of numbers around it's convenient. I have to use it for work anyway so there was no learning curve for me.

I tried to make all my VBA uploads here as complete as possible but don't really have the motivation to program functions I have no plans to use. I'm more than willing to build onto it to make it suit others' needs too, but so far there's been no demand. (only thing I recall not covering specifically was a few functions can't do 8x8 tiles)

Just for the heck of it, I tried out making a 16x16 version of the map, and I am surprised at how much more intuitive it is.

Romancing SaGa and Secret of Evermore uses 16x16 tiles, most games uses 8x8 by tradition but I suspect many of them uses 16x16 metatiles internally. 16x16 has the advantage of saving VRAM since your map can stay 32x32 all the time and you won't need to hide borders. However if for some reason you have to reuse parts of 8x8 tiles then you're wasting VRAM.


There is none.

But then the GBA's screen is 240 pixels wide, meaning you don't have to make your map 512x256 pixels to hide the seam at the side. Though the GBA lacks 2bpp modes, it moves sprite tiles to a separate, dedicated area of VRAM, letting you use the whole 64K for background tiles and maps.