Okay, here''s another one... Suppose I have a great game idea for GBA and want to create mock-up screenshots using Photoshop. I know the resolution is 240x160 but the colors are giving me a headache... I heard there are two 256-color palettes (each entry has 15 bits), one for the background and one for the sprites. I also heard that one palette entry is reserved for transparency - I assume this is in the sprite palette? If there''s only one transparent color I shouldn''t create any semi-transparent (say, opacity 50%) sprites, right? Also, how do I make sure the colors in the mock-up are "possible" on the GBA? That is, if each palette entry contains a 15-bit color, does this mean I have 5 bits for RED, 5 bits for GREEN and 5 bits for BLUE? If I''ve understood correctly, I should first do a color reduction to 15 bits, then do a further adaptive reduction to 256 colors. The first step makes sure the image contains only tones the GBA can display, and the second reduces the simultaneous number of colors to what the GBA can handle. The trouble is, I don''t know how to do a color reduction to 15 bits in Photoshop. Any ideas? ... or am I just taking this too far? Got any clever shortcuts? - Lasse

You can have 256 colours per sprite/backdrop layer.

Realistically, you can create full colour mock-ups without having to do too much enhancement, the GBA allows something like 32,768 colours at once and yes, you can do colour blending, so 50% opacity is fine.


I can''t be any more specific, due to the license, but I don''t see why you can''t just do some full colour mock-ups without worrying about restrictions.




Marc Lambert

marc@darkhex.com

Ise, go to gbadev for GBA-tech information.

Thanks for the replies. I wanted to ask this because I am not sure what is doable (performance, memory, etc. considered). I don''t want to end up in a situation where I send a potential publisher fancy screenshots and they notice they are beyond the graphics processing of GBA - they might simply mutter "amateurs" and ditch the proposal?

But judging from the replies (also in the "Visual Arts" forum), I guess the performance limits aren''t as serious as I feared.