Nostalgic Assets Workshop: NAW

Graphics Editor Suite for NES development · By nesrocks

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Flip tiles problem.

A topic by PabloDev created 88 days ago Views: 48 Replies: 2

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PabloDev88 days ago

Hi, in the screen area, is it not possible to apply a horizontal flip to a tile without affecting the tile in the Tileset area?

When I do it, it affects all the tiles.
Is it really not possible to do that on the NES?

Let's suppose you have this 8x8 tile and you want to build a square using flips — do you really need 4 tiles, one for each part of the square?
I didn't know that. I thought the NES allowed flipping background tiles to make better use of memory.

nesrocksDeveloper88 days ago

Hi PabloDev!

Yes, this is how the NES works. The only property you can set for a background tile's attribute is the subpalette to use.

Sprites attributes are much more complete on the other hand and can be flipped vertically and horizontally, can be placed in front of or behind the background, as well as being assigned one of 4 subpalettes exclusive to the sprites.

Curiously, the Sega Master System is the other way around: BG tiles can be flipped, but not the sprite tiles. I think that if they did this to cut costs, then Nintendo chose the better place to apply this feature as sprites tend to have more need for it than BG tiles, in general.

So, yes, if you want to build a square on the background you're going to need to use several different tiles. That's just how the NES works.

PabloDev88 days ago

Ok I had no idea about that, thanks!

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Nostalgic Assets Workshop: NAW

Flip tiles problem.