Cinematics

[ZippyRedPlumber]

I plan on making a story based platformer, but How do I make bitmap screens on 7800 Basic let alone making a title screen?

Is there any tools I should use?

[+Muddyfunster]

The 7800 uses a tiled display so the easiest way would be to make a screen using tiles or sprites. 7800 Basic can handle screens made this way really easily. The 7800 is a beast when it comes to sprites. The advantage of using tiles is that they can be easily reused, mixed and matched. My project EXO uses tilesets for each level and mixes them to make a varied display.

 

You can use the Tiled program to make tilemaps that can be imported into 7800 Basic for your levels or you can roll your own routine for handling screens. There are examples included with 7800Basic on how to do this with Tiled.

 

For title screens, you can load your "bitmap" elements as banners or sprites and display them.

 

There are some examples of using this method in my thread here using banners and sprites to build a title page.

 

Check the examples that come with 7800Basic for examples on using tiled and tile maps. 

 

For tools, Atari Dev Studio has a build in sprite and tile editor which is very good. It is also excellent for code editing and as a development environment. I also use GIMP for working on larger banners / title pages. with GIMP you will need to save your graphics as .PNG format and you will need to save them as "indexed" instead of "rgb" as 7800 imports indexed PNG only. You will set the index in GIMP before you save depending on the number of colours you are using (depending on whether you are using 160A or 160B).

 

 

[BydoEmpire]

If you want to use 7800basic, which sounds like it'd be a good choice, options and processes are explained pretty well here: https://www.randomterrain.com/7800basic.html

As Muddyfunster said, there are tons of examples, too.

Edited February 26, 2021 by BydoEmpire

[ZippyRedPlumber]

Portions of the game would use 320 hi-res mode for scenes, is this possible?

Edited February 27, 2021 by ZippyRedPlumber

[+Muddyfunster]

Anything is possible  There are lots of games that use 320 mode, but you need to remember the limitations of each mode when you are thinking about your design, especially when it comes to the use of colours.

 

320 modes are far more restricted than 160 modes in how colours can be used and the palettes that are available.