Originally posted by: AceEbb
- I understand that the sprite size limit is 8x16 or 16x16. Could the 8x16 sprites be oriented in any way (long side horizontal vs. vertical)?
The sprite size can be 8x8 or 8x16 (NOT 16x16). 8x16 sprites can only be oriented vertically (8 being the width, 16 being the height).
Originally posted by: AceEbb
- The color pallette limitations are 3 colors plus 1 background color, and the background tiles had a similar 4 color limitation. Can background tiles be arranged to create an image which overall consists of more than 4 colors? For instance, could my avatar work on a real NES?
For sprites the color limitation is 3 colors per each 8x8 or 8x16 sprite plus transparent (background layer will show through). For background tiles the limitation is 3 colors plus a global background color. Your avatar uses 5 colors so it can't be used as is.
Originally posted by: AceEbb
- There are sixteen 3+1 color pallettes allowed at once, correct?
There are only eight 3 color palettes, plus the global background color. Four of the palettes are for background, and four are for sprites.
Originally posted by: AceEbb
- I recognize that many games have sprites that are larger than 16x16, and this is acheived by a programming trick of combining two sprites. Could 8x16 sprites be combined 16x16, any limitations there?
Yes, it's not so much of a trick, but more just placing two smaller sprites next to each other, producing a bigger sprite. The main limitation is that there cannot be more than 8 sprites on single scanline (the rest will not be shown), so the maximum width of a big sprite like that would be 64 pixels. But in practice you'd almost never want to make such a big sprite, because there would be little to no space left for other sprites.
There's also the global limit of 64 sprites maximum on the screen at any on time.
Originally posted by: AceEbb
- Also, what is a reasonable limit on how many sprites to combine in this fashion? Would more than 2 be unrealistic for a real game?
Many games combine more than 2 sprites. I would say over 10 starts to be unpractical.
Originally posted by: AceEbb
- What is a realistic limit on sprite frame animation? i.e how many frames is feasible in a real game?
It depends, but I'd say the sprites are usually animated at around 10-20 Hz rate (3-5 frames per second). But there's no technical reason why NES couldn't handle 60 Hz animation for sprites, it would just use more CHR-ROM space. There are some games with really fluid animation.
Originally posted by: Firebrandx
I'm not much of an expert on the sprite and background limitations, but there are the MMC chips to consider. Just look at Castlevania 3 for example. It was able to have backgrounds with a full 16 colors, with each 8x8 tile able to handle its own color assignments. Some of the more impressive graphics I've seen in an NES game.
This rumor actually isn't true. Castlevania 3 uses the normal 16x16 color attribute blocks like any other game. MMC5
could handle 8x8 attribute blocks like you said, but CV3 doesn't use that feature (because it was ported from the Japanese version, which used the VRC6 mapper, which
doesn't support that feature).