Pinned Palette Rows

Pinned Palette Rows

The tiles in one sheet often use different palette rows. Palette Row sets one row for the whole view. A pin shows selected tiles in a fixed row.

Pins change only the display. They do not change the file. They are saved in the project.

Start from the project you made in Getting Started.

1. Pin by hand

GFX14 has pipes, ?-blocks and ground. In row 0, they all show in the background's colours.

1. Select GFX14.
2. Set Selection to Rectangle.
3. Set Palette Row to 5.
4. Select tiles $10 to $15: the green pipe.

5. Click Pin. Also in Palette ▸ Pin Selection to Palette Row and the canvas right-click menu.

6. Set Palette Row back to 0. The pipe stays in row 5.

7. Pin tiles $16 to $19, the ?-block, to row 6.

A white ring shows the row of the view. A blue ring shows the row of the selection.

To remove pins:

• Unpin removes the pins in the selection.
• Palette ▸ Unpin All removes all pins.

You can undo both.

2. Show and hide pins

With Show Pinned Palette Colors (Shift+P) off, all tiles use one row:

Show Palette Rows shows the row number on each pinned tile:

These two settings apply to the app. They are not saved in the project.

3. The base row

Pins are relative to Base Palette Row. If you change the base row, all pins move with it.

4. On a tilemap

Each tilemap cell stores its own palette row. On a tilemap, the Pin button is Set Row. It writes the row into the selected cells.

1. Select Background stamps.
2. Set Palette Row to 1.
3. Select the first four cells: the first stamp.
4. Click Set Row.

This changes the file data. To save it to the ROM: File ▸ Write.

In the project file

Each pin is [first pixel, count, row]. Pixels are counted in tile order, 64 pixels per tile:

"palette_regions": [[1024, 384, 5], [1408, 256, 6]]