Famicom Party

Background Scrolling: Progress Update

June 17, 2021

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Time for another update on progress. I'm getting a better handle of how I want to approach background scrolling. Conceptually, it's very simple: you figure out the X and Y offsets you want to scroll to, and you write those numbers to an MMIO address. But there's a lot surrounding that simple mechanism that needs further exploration. We need to talk about camera systems (i.e., deciding when and how much to scroll the screen), using "scroll seams" to scroll across more than two nametables, formats for storing background data to make them seam-friendly, and how to handle things like status bars using split-screen scrolling via "sprite 0 hit". It's a lot to cover, and I'm still debating if it will all fit in a single chapter or not.

My plan for how to work all of this into the spaceship example is to give our vertically-scrolling game a horizontal nametable layout. That way, the status bar can be drawn in the second nametable, since a horizontal split scroll is much easier than a vertical split scroll. Any vertical scroll will then require using a seam and incrementally loading new background content. I'm thinking of taking the "set decoration" approach from Super Mario Bros. - a few screens worth of repeating background content, with occasional modifications layered on top. (Actually doing those modifications - and creating a format to store them - will likely become its own chapter.)

Given the scope of the chapter, I think it's going to take a few more weeks before it's ready. I've read a lot about seam scrolling in the past but I've never had to implement it myself, so this will be a fun learning process for me. Once background scrolling is finished, I think the next important topic to tackle will be controller input. That will provide the baseline for making "real" games.

As a total side tangent, I was recently gifted an NES! It's the first time I've had one since I was a kid. I spent a little time scouring eBay for good deals and I've built a small collection of favorites. Sadly, the console itself doesn't work with my TV yet - the seller believes it's a case of bad A/V cables, but I'm fearful that the RF unit on the motherboard will have to be re-capped. My new cables should arrive early next week, so I'll find out soon.

"What games did you get?", you might be wondering. Here's what I've picked up so far: