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Border and OBJ Commands

SGB Command $13 — CHR_TRN

Used to transfer tile data (characters) to SNES Tile memory in VRAM. This normally used to define BG tiles for the SGB Border (see PCT_TRN), but might be also used to define moveable SNES foreground sprites (see OBJ_TRN).

 Byte  Content
 0     Command*8+Length    (fixed length=1)
 1     Tile Transfer Destination
         Bit 0   - Tile Numbers   (0=Tiles $00-$7F, 1=Tiles $80-$FF)
         Bit 1   - Tile Type      (0=BG Tiles, 1=OBJ Tiles)
         Bit 2-7 - Not used (zero)
 2-F   Not used (zero)

The tile data is sent by VRAM transfer (4 KiB).

 000-FFF  Bitmap data for 128 Tiles

Each tile occupies 32 bytes (8×8 pixels, 16 colors each). When intending to transfer more than 128 tiles, call this function twice (once for tiles $00-$7F, and once for tiles $80-$FF). Note: The BG/OBJ Bit seems to have no effect and writes to the same VRAM addresses for both BG and OBJ ???

Each tile is stored in 4-bit-per-pixel format consisting of bit planes 0 and 1 interleaved by row, followed by bit planes 2 and 3 interleaved by row. In effect, each tile consists of two Game Boy tiles, the first to determine bits 0 and 1 (choosing among color 0, 1, 2, or 3 within a 4-color subpalette), and the second to determine bits 2 and 3 (choosing among colors 0-3, 4-7, 8-11, or 12-15).

SGB Command $14 — PCT_TRN

Used to transfer tile map data and palette data to SNES BG Map memory in VRAM to be used for the SGB border. The actual tiles must be separately transferred by using the CHR_TRN function.

 Byte  Content
 0     Command*8+Length    (fixed length=1)
 1-F   Not used (zero)

The map data is sent by VRAM transfer (4 KiB).

 000-6FF  BG Map 32×28 Entries of 16 bits each (1792 bytes)
 700-73F  BG Map 1×28 extra row, 32 entries of 16 bits each (64 bytes)
 740-7FF  Not used, don't care
 800-85F  BG Palette Data (Palettes 4-6, 16 little-endian RGB555 colors each)
 860-FFF  Not used, don't care

Each BG Map Entry consists of a 16-bit value as such: `VH01 PP00 NNNN NNNN```

 Bit 0-9   - Character Number (use only $00-$FF, upper 2 bits zero)
 Bit 10-12 - Palette Number   (use only 4-6)
 Bit 13    - BG Priority      (use only 0)
 Bit 14    - X-Flip           (0=Normal, 1=Mirror horizontally)
 Bit 15    - Y-Flip           (0=Normal, 1=Mirror vertically)

The 32×28 map entries correspond to 256×224 pixels of the Super NES screen. The 20×18 entries in the center of the 32×28 area should be set to a blank (solid color 0) tile as transparent space for the Game Boy window to be displayed inside. Non-transparent border data will cover the Game Boy window (for example, Mario’s Picross does this, as does WildSnake to a lesser extent).

A border designed for a modern (post-2006) widescreen television may use the center 256×176 pixels and leave the top and bottom 24 lines blank. Using letterbox allows more tile variety in the portion of the border that a widescreen TV’s zoom mode does not cut off.

All borders repeat tiles. Assuming that the blank space for the GB screen is a blank tile, and the letterbox (if any) is a solid tile, a border defining all unique tiles would have to define this many tiles:

  • (256*224-160*144)/64+1 = 537 tiles in full-screen border
  • (256*176-160*144)/64+2 = 346 tiles in letterboxed border

Because the CHR RAM allocated by SGB for border holds only 256 tiles, a full-screen border must repeat at least 281 tiles and a letterboxed border at least 90.

It turns out that 29 rows of the border tilemap sent through PCT_TRN are at least partly visible in some situations. The SGB system software sets the border layer’s vertical scroll position (BG1VOFS) to 0. Because the S-PPU normally displays lines BGxVOFS+1 through BGxVOFS+224 of each layer, this hides the first scanline of the top row of tiles and adds one scanline of the nominally invisible 29th row at the bottom. Most of the time, SGB hides this extra line with forced blanking (writing $80 to INIDISP at address $012100). While SGB is busy processing some packets, such as fading out the border’s palette or loading a new scene’s palette and attributes, it neglects to force blanking, making the line flicker on some TVs. This can be seen even with some built-in borders.

To fully eliminate flicker, write a row of all-black tilemap entries after the bottom row of the border ($8700-$873F in VRAM in a PCT_TRN), or at least a row of tiles whose top row of pixels is blank. If that is not convenient, such as if a border data format doesn’t guarantee an all-black tile ID, you can make the flicker less noticeable by repeating the last scanline. Take the bottommost row (at $86C0-$86FF in VRAM) and copy it to the extra row, flipped vertically (XOR with $8000).

The Super NES supports 8 background palettes. The SGB system software (when run in a LLE such as Mesen 2) has been observed to use background palette 0 for the GB screen, palettes 1, 2, 3, and 7 for the menus, and palettes 4, 5, and 6 for the border. Thus a border can use three 15-color palettes.