Games with 16x16 background tiles

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calima
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by calima »

What were you making?
none
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by none »

calima wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 7:42 am What were you making?
I was continuing work on Rem. I had been changing the games theme / style around a lot. It's already a while ago, but I've got some screenshots left over...
untitled-nq8.png
untitled-nq8.png (42.49 KiB) Viewed 993 times
The water is supposed to be animated with HDMA here. I wanted a large interconnected world but the art style doesn't lend well to compression / tiling etc
Screenshot_2021-04-11_19-52-16-2.jpg
This scene was more or less functional at one point.
part1b.png
part1b.png (28.83 KiB) Viewed 993 times
This is how dialogue was supposed to look like (ala monkey island dialogue cutscenes). I had a few of these but they also don't tile / compress well.
ship3.png
Again, same issue... starship for intro cutscene (it's on its own layer for a scrolling flyby with the planet in bg)
MSonage
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by MSonage »

I know some games that use this setting...
Tom & Jerry, Jim Power The Lost Dimension in 3D, Melfand Stories and Magical Pop'n.
creaothceann
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by creaothceann »

none wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:31 am the art style doesn't lend well to compression / tiling
S-DD1 can decompress tiles...

Also, a scene that does use some repeated tiles does fit into the SNES era graphics style.
My current setup:
Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-GPM-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

creaothceann wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:51 pm
none wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:31 am the art style doesn't lend well to compression / tiling
S-DD1 can decompress tiles...

Also, a scene that does use some repeated tiles does fit into the SNES era graphics style.
I guess if a whole game was going to be made in Mode 3 with 256-colour images and be some kind of interactive graphic novel or something then it could make sense to not repeat tiles--could actually look really nice if such a thing existed--that would be a real rare case though and take up a lot of space methinks. :-o
Myself086
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by Myself086 »

iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:09 pm
creaothceann wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:51 pm
none wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:31 am the art style doesn't lend well to compression / tiling
S-DD1 can decompress tiles...

Also, a scene that does use some repeated tiles does fit into the SNES era graphics style.
I guess if a whole game was going to be made in Mode 3 with 256-colour images and be some kind of interactive graphic novel or something then it could make sense to not repeat tiles--could actually look really nice if such a thing existed--that would be a real rare case though and take up a lot of space methinks. :-o
You got it completely wrong. The repeated tiles refer to the blackness around the cave or the dark green sky. 8bpp takes too much space and the game is large. These images would do very well with multiple palettes of 4bpp. (De)compression relies on repetition for its efficiency.
iNCEPTIONAL

Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by iNCEPTIONAL »

Myself086 wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 3:06 pm
iNCEPTIONAL wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 1:09 pm
creaothceann wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:51 pm

S-DD1 can decompress tiles...

Also, a scene that does use some repeated tiles does fit into the SNES era graphics style.
I guess if a whole game was going to be made in Mode 3 with 256-colour images and be some kind of interactive graphic novel or something then it could make sense to not repeat tiles--could actually look really nice if such a thing existed--that would be a real rare case though and take up a lot of space methinks. :-o
You got it completely wrong. The repeated tiles refer to the blackness around the cave or the dark green sky. 8bpp takes too much space and the game is large. These images would do very well with multiple palettes of 4bpp. (De)compression relies on repetition for its efficiency.
Eh, the game I'm talking about doesn't exist, so how do you know what would be in the visuals or how big it would be? lol I was talking about a hypothetical situation where someone making a SNES game might not actually use lots of repeated tiles because their game would just be a bunch of high colour stills basically, like an interactive graphic novel. And in modern times the limits on cartridges sizes would be less of a worry. But for that guy's game, yeah, obviously it's a whole different situation.
Last edited by iNCEPTIONAL on Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.
93143
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by 93143 »

none wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 10:31 amRem
That looks really impressive.

I notice the pic with the ringed planet and water is 16 colours. I posterized it to SNES RGB resolution and it dropped to 10... is there some sort of gamma mapping going on here that I'm not taking into account?

Does this game have anything in common with the castle exploration/puzzle game with blocky raytraced shadows that I remember from last time?
creaothceann wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 12:51 pmS-DD1 can decompress tiles...
S-DD1 also seems to be able to support up to 16 MB of ROM, plus maybe a few more in parallel with the chip. Combined with the hardware compression, this is a substantial boost over what you can do with a bare SNES (ExHiLoROM is a bit under 12 MB, and if you go absolutely nuts mapping ROM into every spare nook and cranny you can get a couple more).

I think emulated S-DD1s can go up to 256 MB, but the real chip didn't have the pinout for that.

If the S-DD1 isn't enough, you could cheat and use the MSU1...
psycopathicteen
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by psycopathicteen »

Alisha's Adventure uses 16x16 background tiles. I use it for both CPU speed, and also out of laziness. I use 8x8 tiles for BG3, because of color limitations.
none
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by none »

93143 wrote: Mon Jul 04, 2022 4:36 pm ... is there some sort of gamma mapping going on here that I'm not taking into account?

Does this game have anything in common with the castle exploration/puzzle game with blocky raytraced shadows that I remember from last time?
iirc, i was trying different posterization algorithms when i made that image, it's not an actual in-game screenshort. i originally created it with a bigger palette.

it's still the same basic engine and the player character's sprite is an updated version of the old one, for example. I basically recolored it, made some minor changes and added some additional animation frames e.g. for climbing and also I had made the player controls / physics a little "tighter".

about compression, i guess i could even do software decompression, it's just that space constraints are still a problem.
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rainwarrior
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by rainwarrior »

jeffythedragonslayer wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 6:24 pmCan anyone recommend some games that use 16x16 background tiles?
Nekotako is one I saw recently that was using 16x16. (Free demo ROM available: here)

I think it's especially convenient to make a statically loaded level and not have to do background data streaming as you scroll around. Nekotako is only 2x2 screens but the same concept would work with rooms twice as large.

Dottie Dreads Nought also uses 16x16. (Free ROM: here)

In this case it's doing background streaming as well. Here the advantage is just lower memory footprint, and ease of updating. When you break a block in the level it's a lot more convenient to update 1 tile instead of 4.

Super Bomberman is another 16x16 example. I think also mainly for the reason that it's easier to update 1 tile instead of 4 when you need to change a block.
psycopathicteen
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by psycopathicteen »

Something that makes 8x8s harder to use is when you're doing multi-directional scrolling, you must take into account the intersection of the 2 scrolling seams, if you're using a 64x32 tilemap.
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jeffythedragonslayer
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by jeffythedragonslayer »

psycopathicteen wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 1:27 pm Something that makes 8x8s harder to use is when you're doing multi-directional scrolling, you must take into account the intersection of the 2 scrolling seams, if you're using a 64x32 tilemap.
Why is that harder? Is it not enough to have one subroutine that updates tiles to hide the vertical seam and another separate one that updates tiles to hide the horizontal seam?
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rainwarrior
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by rainwarrior »

When scrolling/streaming you need a background that's wider than 1 screen so you can hide the scroll seam off-screen.

For 8x8 tiles, that means you need at least 2 nametables wide (2 screens wide), and that means you have to deal with coordinates that split across two separate nametables.

For 16x16 tiles, 1 nametable is already 2 screens wide, so it's simpler. All your coordinates address the same 32x32 nametable.
psycopathicteen
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Re: Games with 16x16 background tiles

Post by psycopathicteen »

Also, with tile maps that are 512 pixels tall, you can just scroll in a top and bottom screen, whereas if you only have 256 pixels to work with you would have to wrap the top of the scroll seam around vertically.
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