Hypothesis on Layer 4

[monktroid]

Hiya,

I'm deep in learning right now, made some big jumps in understanding yesterday.  One thing I'm  considering is if it would be possible to inject layer 4 into the game as another background.  The obvious limitation is that it can only hold a 4 colour palette.   In so doing however, you could theoretically add simple 2 layer scrolling to the backgrounds of the game.  Has anyone tried this before?

[snarfblam]

The obvious limitation is that it can only hold a 4 colour palette.

From what I can tell, only mode 0 supports four layers, and in this mode, all layers will be four-colors-per-tile. Also, if you're starting out, you're going to have a much better time starting with relatively simple things instead of trying to reach deep into the guts of the engine and re-arranging them.

[Smiley]

It'd also be easier to make a new game from scratch than make SM use layer 4.

[monktroid]

The obvious limitation is that it can only hold a 4 colour palette.

From what I can tell, only mode 0 supports four layers, and in this mode, all layers will be four-colors-per-tile. Also, if you're starting out, you're going to have a much better time starting with relatively simple things instead of trying to reach deep into the guts of the engine and re-arranging them.

Yes, my bad, i hadn't spotted that. I'm pretty sure I saw an hack that set layer 3 to behave like another layer in a background. Be interested to see the code behind that. Think it's a competition entry from a while back.


suffice to say, i'm a learner who likes to start hard! I code for a living so it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't infuriatingly difficult! :D

[snarfblam]

Well, sure you can do things with layer 3, with some limitations I'd assume. Water, acid, rain, etc reside on layer 3. Not a SM hacker myself, but I'm guessing it's still not a great candidate for your first SM hackins.

[benox50]

You should ask DSO, good luck having him interested, he made that tech demo with layer 3 has a BG with custom scrolling.

I agree with you about how useful that could be in rooms that dont use layer 3, you could put it behind layer 2 as a simple filler instead of black.

[monktroid]

You should ask DSO, good luck having him interested, he made that tech demo with layer 3 has a BG with custom scrolling.

I agree with you about how useful that could be in rooms that dont use layer 3, you could put it behind layer 2 as a simple filler instead of black.

definitely.  It's on my to do list.  Obvs I'm starting off with other stuff at the moment. Mostly, just getting down the address modes and Qwertie's tutorial.  It's reassuring how familiar it all is (I've worked in C, Java, Groovy, PHP and JavaScript so I'm pretty agnostic with computer science) even if it's lower level.  One thing I'm investigating that could definitely be feasible is developing BTS traps that fire stuff off/trigger stuff when samus steps on a "pressure plate".   I really want my mod to be slightly less shooty enemies and more puzzles etc.  I'll keep you posted :)