Lucas Scharenbroich’s Generic Tile Engine has reached v1.0 alpha and has been released for public testing and feedback.Here is a partial list of the features supported by GTE in its current state:
- Tiles of size 4×4, 8×8, or 16×16
- Up to full-screen (320×200) playing fields
- 8-way scrolling
- Independent Foreground and Background tile layers (for parallax effects)
- Fringe tile layer
- Mask tile layer for per-pixel masking of sprites, e.g. put sprites behind fences
- Up to 32 dynamic tiles on screen
- Up to 32 sprites on-screen
- Up to 256 tiles on-screen per layer
- Support for Windows BMP files
- Compiled sprites with support for horizontal and vertical mirroring
- Use of Object Attribute Memory (similar to the NES) for controlling sprites
- Logical palette binding
- Interrupt-friendly. Interrupts are never disabled for more than a few hundred microseconds.