I’m running into an issue with loading standing map sprites. I don’t know enough about the subject to properly attempt to address it, and from what I can see in questions, this hasn’t been brought up before.
As you can see, certain map sprites aren’t loading properly. The ephraim map sprite in the first image should be a dragon vein. In another image, the icon is hovering over the top of a general with the bottom half being a dread fighter sprite. The bottom image should be obvious as to what is wrong.
I think the issue is that there are too many “large” map sprites being loaded as lowering the amount of large map sprites helps with the issue, but I was wondering if other people may have found this before or have an idea of what exactly is going on.
If anyone has other ideas as to how to fix this, please let me know. I’m not exactly sure where to start to address this issue.
I’m no expert on the matter, but to me this looks to be an OAM issue. Map sprites have two different limits: the amount (as in how many at once) and how many different ones there can be. To my limited knowledge there is no other way to fix the problem but to reduce the amount of map sprites and/or the variety of map sprites present.
You might want to wait for another answer before you start fixing this issue.
I’ve encountered this issue before, it is indeed an OAM issue, if it’s what I think it is. Too many tiles being used, and overflow is starting.
As Zarg said, there’s no silver bullet, only workarounds. What’s worked for me is:
Lowering the number of unique map sprites that appear on the map. For example, if there are 2 fighter and 2 mercenary enemies (and no player units of either). I could change the fighters to also be mercs, reducing the number of unique sprites loaded at once.
Reduce the size of existing map sprites, as in changing 32x32 sprites to 16x32 or 16x16, or 16x32 standing sprites to 16x16. This can greatly reduce how much OAM is used.
I notice that the map in question seems to have a number of promoted monsters. A lot of these vanilla sprites are 32x32 for seemingly no reason, as they don’t need that much space. @Pikmin1211 and I made smaller versions of these map sprites some time ago, and if you’d like, I’d be more than happy to share them with you. These solved my issue.
If you’re unsure, I’d pop open your ROM on No$GBA and check the OBJ window. You can take a quick peek at how the OAM looks like in a more visually friendly manner.
You can see that the 16x32 sprites take up twice as much of the available space. 32x32 ones take up 4 times as much so I’d recommend against having map sprites of that size unless it’s for a final boss or something of that sort.
Here you go. I think Pik and I meant to make these free to use, but just never packaged them up. These reduce the size from 32x32 to 32x16, saving a bit of space. If you’d like them for more monsters, just give me a holler.
If it’s your intent to make them free to use, it might be better to just do that instead? Those were the only 32x32 ones I’m using, which is why I asked for them.
