DementedPurple wrote:
And I don't mean to be rude, but I'm sorry my curiosity annoys you. I doubt you were any better when you were 12 years old. I have a hard time believing you were ever a newbie. I'm just curious about something that I have a passion for, and I'm looking at the pros for help.
That's not what I was talking about at all. I was talking about the fact that your questions are very basic and could be answered by simply looking them up or by doing a tutorial first.
You don't ask questions that simply indicate a lack of understanding.
For example, if you asked: "How do I update the screen during gameplay? Whenever I update it, the graphics get corrupted", then the answer might be: "You can only update a limited amount of background data per frame because it has to be done during vblank. You cannot update your whole screen every time. You need to design your game in a way that you can do partial updates. If it doesn't work like that yet, you need to redesign your general code."
This is a question that might justify an answer because even though you read the technical documentation, you might not yet be aware of the fact that you have only very few time during vblank.
A question like: "How did SMB do the status bar?" is also quite justified. But as soon as someone points you to sprite 0 split, you shouldn't ask: "What is a sprite 0 split?" Because
that's something that is clearly explained in every beginner's tutorial and wiki and can be easily googled.
Likewise, the two CHR banks is one of the most basic stuff: One bank for background, one bank for sprites. (With the option to use the same bank for both.)
Since you're wondering how "Donkey Kong" has two CHR banks on screen, making it sound like this was some kind of special programming trick instead of the very thing that almost every single NES game does, I have to come to the conclusion that you didn't even read the beginner's tutorial. That's why I advised you to do so.
Yes, I have been a newbie myself. And when I asked a question about something very basic and an expert told me: "You will know this as soon as you finished the introduction tutorial", then guess what: I finished the introduction tutorial first. And
then did I ask further questions that were still not clear to me. But often, doing the tutorial first already removed a lot of questions from my list.
Don't try to figure out stuff by asking about every single thing piece by piece. Take a tutorial and work through it.
If you have problems with a certain chapter, ask a specific question about that chapter.
If you have a question that wasn't covered yet ("They showed me how to draw the background, but how can I get it to scroll now?"), don't ask yet. Continue with the tutorial until you have finished it. Maybe the topic will come up and you'll learn it anyway.
If it doesn't come up, you have plenty of time afterwards, asking everything that the tutorial didn't cover or that you didn't understand.
And P.S.: Your "How does a computer work" question is not analoguous to the issue at hand. This one here is more about asking how a counting loop in C works: Asking this means you should do a tutorial first. Because you clearly didn't do a tutorial yet. Because if you did, you would know how a loop in C works and wouldn't have to ask.