Running out of space for tiles.

WhatDothLife

New member
So im having a lot of trouble with tiles. I cant seem to fit everything i need into the few tilesets that a screen allows. Whether im using screen specific tiles, the double main setup, or paths, i still ultimately run out of room before ive made all the graphics i need.

Yet i see other games with beautiful tilesets. -uncompromisingly beautiful even.

Moreover, palettes make this even more of a nightmare. Since you can only really have 3 unique colors in a palette, its difficult to make transition tiles. (I.e. making my grass transition to dirt.)

Yet these other games manage their colors flawlessly.

I know its possible by using multiple palettes, but im completely lost on how to set it up so that the colors work together the way i need them to.

To compare, one of the games that seem to to address this issue perfectly, is Adventures of Panzer by 9Panzer

What really caught my eye here was how some of the tiles in the background had shading to really give it some depth. Im baffled that hes able to make so many variations of similar tiles, and still have room for unique objects like different platforms and decorations. I try the same thing, and i end up using most of my space for these shaded/slightly varied tiles to where theres maybe 3 or 4 more squares left for platforms and whatnot.

Heres a link to the game's page. And if the creators themselves wanted to chime in with some insight, it would be infinitely appreciated:



How do they get so much out of their tilesets? Is there a process/trick for achieving this that im just not seeing as a novice?

Adventures of Panzer isnt the only one either. Most of the people uploading demos seem to have this concept down. I just didnt want to hunt them all down to explain the same issue over and over again.
 
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Jonny

Well-known member
Unfortunately there's no trick to it in NM really, just a lot of trial and error. Finding what works, reducing down tiles, making compromises. Everyone is working to the same hardware limitations. I don't know about Panzer but to put it into context, I've re-done some of my tilesets maybe 10 or so times. It's not easy to get backgrounds looking as good as panzer. If you share what you've done already maybe people could give tips on how you can reduce the amount you're using.
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
I'd suggest to study how others did... use generic tiles you can use in different cases, and that would look different just with different colors...
Also, try to always set your colors in the same order in the subpal (from lighter to darker ones... or from darker to lighter ones... any order) and keep that rule for all your subpals. It will help to make your tiles for being able to use different subpals on any screen.
 

9Panzer

Well-known member
@WhatDothLife Thanks for the compliments!
What @Jonny and @dale_coop are saying is 100% correct. In my case I literally went back and redid my tiles dozens of times as I learned how to work with the tool we have. I actually did my entire development thread in the forums here ... you can really see things being built as I progressed. you can see that here: https://www.nesmakers.com/index.php?threads/the-adventures-of-panzer-development-thread.6688/

If you look at the way things progressed for me you can really see how I built it :)
 

chains

Member
It would be indeed. My approach now is to create a proof of concept for what I want to do. Then I'll do a lot of clean-ups and optimization in the code and the CHR.
 
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