NES background palettes and how to use them

Entry posted by atari2600land April 23, 2021

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Even with all my problems I have, I took a lot of time to go work on my NES game last night. I tried to use another palette for the seaweed. I tried and tried and went to bed then got up and tried some more. I FINALLY got the seaweed green like I wanted it to be, with the score remaining white like it was.

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Apparently the way NES colors work is that the screen is divided into 64 separate squares. Each square can have its own palette consisting of 4 colors. There are only 4 palettes available for the background. So in theory, one could make a background of 16 separate colors, but no more. The sprites work a similar way. There are four palettes for the sprites, each palette having 4 colors. What I've been doing with the sprites is having one palette for the burger/fry/onion ring, one palette for a strawberry milkshake, one palette for chocolate, and one for vanilla, which works out to 4 palettes (what a coincidence!) What I was having trouble with the backgrounds was I was having trouble trying to tell the program, in C, which background palette to use. But I think I worked it out. I tested the game on a real NES and it works great.

What I'm going to do next is compose some underwater music for this level, and then figure out how to make it so when level 1 ends, level 2 begins. I bought Doodle World a few weeks ago, but never played it yet. I hope to have some new Tiger Quiz Wiz cartridges delivered in the mail today, so that will be interesting.

Mom is still worrying about everything. She can't do anything, she's just worried all the time. She can't drive, she can't do this, she can't do that. If only there was a way to jump start brains that are broken, reboot them, and have her working like she was before. But there isn't. All that I have is pills. That aren't working. At least I have a sister that can help out driving us places (I never learned how to drive. I was worrying about failing the drivers test when I was 16. I guess I can worry about irrational things as well.)

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