The way I have it is the tilemap is drawn to the graph screen (plotSScreen, 9340h) and certain 'events' such as NPCs, the player sprite, items, movable boulders, and anything else blocking paths are drawn to two other buffers (one buffer for the sprite mask, the other for the sprite data). Then during the LCD update, I just take the three layers and mash them together. My LCD updating code is basically:
     ld hl,gBuf
     exx
     ld hl,buf0
     ld de,buf1
     exx
     ld a,20h
colm:
     out (16),a
     inc a
     cp 2Ch
     ex af,af'
     ld b,40h
rowm:
     ld a,(hl)
     exx
     or (hl)
     ex de,hl
     xor (hl)
     ex de,hl
     inc de
     inc hl
     exx
     inc hl
     out (17),a    ;79 t-states is enough
     djnz rowm
     lcddelay()
     ex af,af'
     jr nz,colm
     res lcdupdate,(iy+asmflags)
     ret

While the tilemap is drawn with aligned sprites (it is more 10 than times faster than my general sprite routine, I think), scrolling the screen will still take a speed hit and the difference will be noticeable from scrolling up/down versus left and right. By my estimate, scrolling the screen left/right will be about 4 times slower, so I will have to add in additional code to keep scrolling consistent.

Here is a screenshot from another project where I wrote a tilemap routine:

That is with basically no delays, but also no smooth scrolling. This is an example from the same project with smoothscrolling:

Since Pokémon Amber uses a different gBuf setup, (and since tilemapping and whatnot is done from an interrupt), I don't know how speeds will compare. However, that is basically the same technique I plan to use. Shift the screen, shifting in the appropriate sprite data. This is why it will shift in whole tiles 1 pixel at a time. I won't have to do anything too complicated or slow.

(screenshots are from the OmniRPG - Coding discussion)
I wonder if I should use those tiles? ...

To answer DJ_O about the missingno. question, I don't plan to add that in.

Now I have another small update (I am afraid that I am concentrating too much on details, now). A few days ago, I had some scrolling done, but it didn't scroll in the new tiles, making it bad looking. I now have smoothscrolling finished for up/down, but now I need to finish left/right. Luckily, I have an idea for how to make it work (and it will be about the same speed as scrolling up or down). As well, I found a small issue with my code that was actually slowing down animation significantly. I was resetting the wrong flag in a routine, causing the tilemap to be redrawn and the LCD to be updated every time the interrupt fired (instead of when a tile went to the next animation frame). After fixing that and taking out about a 1000 cycles of code on top of it, I had to increase the animation counter from 16 to 128 to make it reasonable


Oh, I also added an in-game menu with options that don't do anything (except the Options menu and Exit). I forgot to include it in the screenshot, but maybe I won't next time

The character sprite does actually have a walking animation, but it isn't very good and you can't easily see it. I am thinking of making the character sprite 16x16, keeping 8x8 tiles, but I haven't decided on that yet (you can see a lot more on screen with 8x8 tiles and 8x8 character sprite).

HI!

Also, that is looking awesome

The character sprite does actually have a walking animation, but it isn't very good and you can't easily see it.

Feel free to use those from Pokémon Monochrome if you want

Quote from: Xeda112358 on July 20, 2013, 09:09:40 pm

The character sprite does actually have a walking animation, but it isn't very good and you can't easily see it.

Feel free to use those from Pokémon Monochrome if you want

That is the furthest along faithful rendition of the original Pokemon games that I think I have ever seen for the 83+/84+. Why am I only learning about it now!? Does this have it's own topic? Because it's very worthy of one.



Oh, and your version looks good to Xeda...
But in all seriousness, I suspect your version will get a lot more awesome given time. For only having worked on it for about a week or two it seems, a lot of good progress has been made.

Quote from: Xeda112358 on July 20, 2013, 09:09:40 pm

The character sprite does actually have a walking animation, but it isn't very good and you can't easily see it.

Feel free to use those from Pokémon Monochrome if you want

How did I forget about Pokémon Monochrome I even remember working on that rectangle routine with chickendude. But really, those sprites are wonderful!

How large are your actual Pokémon sprites? I was thinking of using 24x24. Your sprites look so good!

+1

I finished work for today and I don't work tomorrow, so now I might actually get more work done!

Also, you and chickendude are excellent programmers o.o I would try to help with Pokémon Monochrome, but I am afraid that I won't be familiar with your style .__. But I might look through it to find optimisations (but it looks very fast already!).

I am going to try to use some of your tiles/sprites to see how it looks.

Okay, thanks! I might try to draw the pokémon sprites myself by looking at those images (I drew the Aerodactyl in the intro myself).

As for a screenshot, I used your player sprites (they look so much nicer!) and I used ideas from the other tiles (like for the buildings).

I am still impressed by how fast your tilemap and scrolling works! I scroll 2 pixels at a time to make it a little faster (only 4 LCD updates every time the player moves instead of 8 ).

EDIT: Oops, screenshot: