I have Snow and Swamp a quick look. They look like they are withing restrictions.
As for hardware restrictions, one that I find good fun, and not too hard to check for errors, is C64 hires bitmap mode. It basically is 2 of any of the 16 C64 colours per 8x8 pixel block in a 320x200 pixel image. Try something like that sometime. It's good fun, makes you think.
4 being grass, graveyard, snow, mountain.
Yeah, maybe I'll increase the color count a little, could be helpful here and there. I'll tweak them to be unstretched RGB555 values, too- that sounds fun.
Thanks for all the advice. The hardware restrictions is an art-fetish I kind of share- I hope to be as knowledgeable as you someday.
4? You mean including the Leavy Star Ocean type thing? That one and these three GBC titled ones keep in line with the NES tile restrictions, apart from the GBC Grass one, which has 2 bits which are slightly problematic, but not really. One being the stones stuck in the grass, and the other one being the stairs going into the ground. You have more than 4 colours in a 16x16 area in those, which is no-go for NES, unless you would be using a really fancy cartridge with extra hardware, which exists, but was rarely if ever used in commercial games. But you could just remove the dark green on those bits and would be fine.
That, and obviously you did not use NES colours. But, what fits in NES fits in GBC no problem. You could make things A LOT more colourful if you made it GBC specs. Perhaps worth making a pass of them all and polish things up a bit, differentiate some of the colours more, like grey rocks on the Grass one or something like that, different colour grass here and there, and so on. GBC uses RGB555, which means lots of colours, and not really a small fixed palette. An easy way to do unstretched RGB555 is to make sure your hex values for the colours always end in 0 or 8. So the brightest colour would be F8F8F8.
I learned it all, and still am learning, because I am interested in old hardware restrictions and limitations a lot. Just a kinda art-fetish I have, hehe.
Neat- anything about these 4 mockups that breaks NES restrictions?
Also, it's super-cool how you know all this stuff. How did you learn all of it?
Well, anything that fits into NES restrictions fits into GBC restrictions as well.
And any of the 8 palettes can be changed at any time, screen to screen, while the screen is on, for say flashing effects. Or you could have only 7 palettes or less palettes used for a couple of screens and switch to other palettes during that time, in scrolling games.
@ptoing: Oh, thanks for clarifying. Can the eight palettes change from screen to screen, or do they remain the same the whole time? Because if they're the same, then this still applies to GBC restrictions, right?...
I think the purple is a little too bright. Might want to tone it down just a bit.
I think you are somehow underestimating what the GBC is capable of, in terms of colour. It's not a NES.
To clarify the differences between NES and GBC regarding tiles:
NES: 4 palettes, 1 colour is global, 3 extra colours per palette.
GBC: 8 palettes, 4 colours each, no global colour.
You draw a lot of interesting stuff. I like this pictures, makes me wonder how a game using them would work. Why dont you continue them?