Good GBA mode 0-2 (or 1-3?) graphics tools.

[Drew Sebastino]

I know there are a ton a tools that can create bitmap pictures on the GBA for bitmap modes, (obviously) but does anyone know of a program comparable to pcx2snes except for the GBA that would help make tile based graphics? It would also be nice if it had a screen mode like pcx2snes, as you wouldn't even have to make a tilemap yourself because the GBA does not have tile priority on BGs.

[ccovell]

AGBGfxCon worked okay for me. It can create optimized tiles & tilemaps -- BUT it does skip unique tiles a few times per image.

http://www.gbadev.org/tools.php?showinfo=147

[DoNotWant]

jharbour.com/gba/gba_files.zip
Download and check the tools folder. I think gfx2gba is what you are looking for.

[Drew Sebastino]

jharbour.com/gba/gba_files.zipDownload and check the tools folder. I think gfx2gba is what you are looking for.

You know, it looks alright and all, but I don't think it has quite enough options for what I wan't to do. (Just kidding! )

Options.png (10.66 KiB) Viewed 2012 times

It actually looks perfect! I also see that the folder it came in had some other goodies, but I haven't investigated yet.

Oh, also, does anyone here know what kind of graphics format the GBA uses? I'm talking like planar or packed pixel and stuff.

[Shonumi]

Oh, also, does anyone here know what kind of graphics format the GBA uses? I'm talking like planar or packed pixel and stuff.

I have no idea how planar stuff works on the SNES (looks pretty crazy to me) but I can assure you it's not what the GBA is doing By packed pixel, you're talking about how Mode 7 uses 1 byte per-pixel, correct? I guess it would be better if I went over the BG Modes for you.

The GBA's tile based modes (Mode 0 - 2) can either be 4bpp or 8bpp. It's up to programmers, as long as they watch how much VRAM they use. The bitmap modes are different. Modes 3 and 4 are 16bpp and 8bpp respectively, so the first basically uses every color the GBA can compute (all 32768 of them), and the other uses all of the 256 colors in the BG palette. Mode 4 uses less VRAM, so you can buffer two 240x160 images at once. BG Mode 5 is just like Mode 3, except with a reduced resolution (160x128) but like Mode 4 it allows you to buffer an additional frame. This is all just about BGs, not OBJs mind you.

You should really have a look at GBATEK if you're ever curious about the GBA -> http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm

[tepples]

GBA 4-bit tiles are nibble-swapped Genesis tiles. I've written a tool that can be set to emit GBA 4-bit tiles, but it doesn't handle nametables.