Suddenly? Yes, they leave out the palet problem, or the problem of more then one sprite, or just stop the text!
The Introduction to Nintendo DS Programming of Jaeden Amero
is an exception, but unfortunately his examples have variables in it that won't compile in my PC (such as the temporary oam: toam ). (Due to my first try in PALIB and installing not the latest version of devkitpro?)(I have to try to run it in Visuall C++ express...)
What is the problem with sprites, these beasts being so well managed nowadays in DIRECTOR or FLASH?
well, for a start they have to be put in the nds, in the memory
the ds has to be prepared for this in the videomode
you have to prepare the sprites images in certain formats
these images consisting of (tiles bits broken up) and palettes have to be included using the makefile monster.
Who did ask this makefile monster to join the party?
If coming from DIRECTOR, FLASH you have to rethink your sprites ideas:
for instance: if working with a 256b color palette, there is only one palette so what you actually construct is one big image and you pick out the sprites by an extra index.
So you load the whole alphabet as a sprite, and you get the E by indexing on 4 (starting with 0 of course). Then your sequence of letters has all the same palette.
Nice example:
http://liranuna.drunkencoders.com/misc-projects/tileoptimize/
Examples can be found in devkitpro, but if you look carefully the examples are depending on the makefile and sometimes using grit, or other similar but different progs (gfx2gba), sometimes reading in bmp files, all kinds of possibilities, but my experience was that: ok this is functioning, but why?
examples of devkitpro online for the latest updates:
http://devkitpro.cvs.sourceforge.net/devkitpro/examples/nds/
so we have to scramble sites and blogs to get an idea how this works.
for me the main problem was getting a view on the problems! (The differences with my previous encounters with sprites...)
List of problems
0. which programming environment to use: (after installing devkitpro)
1. the dependency on the makefile (functioning in the folder devkitpro...),
2. what is the grit (or others, gfx2gba, .pcx) relation, how to make the images readable for C and the nds
3. how to prepare the nds video mode (seems easy!)
4. how to get these data and palettes into the right spot in the memory of the nds
Solutions and answers:
0. which programming environment to use:
Programmers notepad is ok, but running slow and not always compiling the examples in the same way.
Visual Express C++, quite a monster but in my experience far more suited, you have to rebuild the examples using: http://www.devkitpro.org/index.php?s=cpp
1. the dependency on the makefile (functioning in the folder devkitpro...),
.... is still a bit unknown territory for me, related to devkitpro, study in progress
2. what is the grit (or others, gfx2gba) relation, how to make the images readable for C and the nds
....idem, the main problem being not grit but the dependency on the makefile, study in progress
examples in devkitpro:
Complex_2D, has all the OAM and sprite functions, reads in a pcx image
Sprite_Bitmap, makes its own (simple) sprites
some homebrew have .git and .grit files (by wingit.exe)
some homebrew use gfx2gba.exe and get .tls and .pal and .map files
some read the image immediately
3. how to prepare the nds video mode (seems easy!)
All kinds of choices for sprites you need a text mode (texture mode), for the screen with the sprites, MAIN or SUB, see (for instance)
http://www.tobw.net/dswiki/index.php?title=Graphic_modes
or the very extended (but suddenly stopping)
http://www.dev-scene.com/NDS/Tutorials_Day_2
or again on dev-scene:
http://dev-scene.com/NDS/DOCgraphicmodes
For this problem you can compare the examples and learn a lot about this Videomode.
4. how to get these data and palettes into the right spot in the memory of the nds
to get the picture of the OAM memory, look at this here (a french site but the picture is universal!) http://www.dev-fr.org/wiki/nds/doku.php?id=dssprite
you can see what 's happening with your sprite, data-part gfx, it gets split up in tiles!
but what happens with the pallette, they dont tell!
This we can read in Nintendo DS Programming of Jaeden Amero
a few very useful details about tiles and palettes, coming from this text:
There are two ways to tile sprites, 1D and 2D. In a 2D layout, the sprite memory is treated like a giant image from which sprite tiles are obtained by making a box the size of the sprite and placing it over the giant image. In a 1D layout, the sprites are layed out in a linear fashion,
Sprites can be made of tiles that use 16 colors or of ones that use 256 colors.
liranuna gives a picture, this is my own:
Tiles that use 256 colors are twice as large as tiles that use only 16 colors. Another advantage of using 16-color sprites is the ability to use 16 different palettes. When using 256-color sprites, each sprite (and tile) must use the same palette. When using 16-color sprites, we can have one sprite use one 16-color palette and another sprite use a different 16-color palette, even though both use the same tile data.
then you have to prepare the OAM, well this is everywhere the same and easy.
see again: Nintendo DS Programming of Jaeden Amero
then you have to get your spites in, this is low level, and all these functions can be put away in a sprite.c file, but there is no general sprite.c file around! Everyone makes his own, which is much more detailed then is shown in the examples.
in full tradition of all what is written on the nds:
more in blog sprites details!
text in progress
