My art showcase (Character Portraits - April 03)

[ptoing]

thefox: That would be same difference to me as an artist, since I still have to make sure to have 2 separate sets, right? but having more variety in a level would be cool either way. Also, is there any way to store the colour data separately from the bitmap, so that the colours could be disregarded when counting metatiles. As in have the colour stuff stored in the level data or something.

Also made a new little mockup, actually got some game mechanic ideas for this.



Player variants for different health levels.

[Alp]

Also, is there any way to store the colour data separately from the bitmap, so that the colours could be disregarded when counting metatiles. As in have the colour stuff stored in the level data or something.

Yes. Color Attribute data is commonly stored as part of a metatile. (2-bit)

My (cancelled) NES game used something like this:
.db $T1,$T2,$T3,$T4,%PPSSCCCC
T = Tile Number
P = Palette Attribute
S = Special Attribute
C = Collision Data

[ptoing]

I take it Special was for stuff like damage and slippery and the likes? And more bits for collision because slopes?

[Alp]

I take it Special was for stuff like damage and slippery and the likes? And more bits for collision because slopes?

Special was for spikes, pitfalls, and ice, yeah.

My game was a Zelda 1 clone, with quadrant-based tile collision. Each 8x8 tile had it's own collision.
For a platformer, I would recommend an extra byte to handle the slope data more accurately.

[thefox]

thefox: That would be same difference to me as an artist, since I still have to make sure to have 2 separate sets, right?

This could be handled by a conversion tool. So you'd feed in the 512-metatile level and it would handle the rest.

Also, is there any way to store the colour data separately from the bitmap, so that the colours could be disregarded when counting metatiles. As in have the colour stuff stored in the level data or something.

It's possible. Whether it would be beneficial comes down to the level layout. Although I believe that most people would be inclined to store the color data in the metatile (just as a general rule).

[ptoing]

thefox: Just checked. In the case of my reduced mockup that is 274 metatiles it comes down to being 247 if colourdata was stored separately. And that imo is worth it, because I am not using some of the possible metatiles in the 274 one, so what you could do would amount to a lot more. For example the rocks look cool in all of the 3 monochrome palettes I am using, but I don't use all of those possible tiles.

[ptoing]

Bunch of faces, each face uses 4 tile palettes of its own. Will do more until I reach 16 faces.

[DragonDePlatino]

Awesome stuff as always, ptoing! I love how bold the attribute borders are in the more organic characters. It's not something I'd ever be able to do, but you pulled it off quite nicely.

[tokumaru]

Very impressive! Much more colorful than anyone would expect from an NES!

[AlexE]

These are majestic, dude. Instant fan of what you've got right here.

[Drew Sebastino]

You've done an awesome job at dodging the attribute borders (I particularly like what you did with the bat ears)

However, the third face over and one down looks a little... questionable...

[tokumaru]

However, the third face over and one down looks a little... questionable...

Who? Dickface?

[Drew Sebastino]

Yeah...

[tepples]

Any worse than the Ballchinians from Men In Black II?

[ptoing]

However, the third face over and one down looks a little... questionable...

You should have seen earlier iterations of him, without the hat.