How are Buildings Made?

[First Spear]

The buildings in Dracula and Safecracker are large and great-looking. Is there a particular methodology to making them work across Cards and scrolling well?

 

Thanks.

[GroovyBee]

Managing the graphics resources available on the Inty is always interesting when making games. You have to decide what you can reprogram on the fly (animated player and enemies normally), what can be pre-shifted (wasting several programmable cards) and what can be static. If you use colour stack mode you can also use the GROM bloxels to make things go further as well. At the end of the day, it all depends on the game's background and its visual style.

 

In Dracula and Safecracker there are fine detail graphics amongst large expanses of single colours. That way, the limited programmable tiles go much further and you can make use of the GROM bloxels. For example, the pavement cracks in Dracula look like they are done in the '/' GROM card (I'd have to check in jzintv to be sure) so that'd be one more programmable card free that could be used for something more visually interesting to look at.