Quote:
...and there goes all the simplicity! =)
Honestly, better attribute resolution than 8x8 is cool and all, but where would you find the bandwidth to update the background when each tile has 8 sets of attributes? In the best case scenario (no redundant bits), we're looking at 30 NT bytes + 60 attribute bytes for a simple column. This might be cool for cutscenes, but wouldn't make much sense in a game that scrolls, unless the game was able to turn this on an off, making the mapper even more complex.
Honnestly a solution I find just as viable would be to have the attribute/colour data depend on the tile number itself, rather than it's position on the screen. That way attributes would be linked to pattern tables instead of name tables. I belive that'd fix this problem, but it would not be possible to re-use a tile for different palettes across the screen.
We could even use CHR-ROM for this, since you're likely to want to have some bunch of tiles always having the same palette everywhere in the game. By banking different CHR-ROM in a particular place that'd change which tiles uses which colour. Pretty cool, no? Of course that'd kill all the simplicity, as already said.
As for sacrifying half of CIRAM for fined attributes I think it makes sense because if you have finer attribute you can scroll with single-screen mirroring with no glitches, so a second nametable is only needed for a status bar or special effects. But many games do not necessary need status bars, a few sprites can be enough to display information.