Skip to main content

Backgrounds

Each of your scenes requires a background image that defines how that scene should look.

You can add backgrounds to your game by including .png files in your project's assets/backgrounds folder.

Color Requirements​

Manual Palettes​

When a scene is using manual palettes, background PNGs must only contain the following four colors:

#071821
#306850
#86c06c
#e0f8cf

Download the GB Studio Palette Swatches for:
Adobe Photoshop
Aseprite
Piskel

Colors that are not one of the above hex codes will be matched to the nearest color. Unlike sprites, the color #65ff00 can not be used in backgrounds.

Automatic Palettes​

When a scene is using automatic palettes, you may provide color images as long as they obey the following rules:

  • Each 8pxx 8px tile may use only 4 colors.
  • The scene can only contain a maximum of 8 unique 4-color palettes.

Monochrome tile data will be created automatically from your color image, if you intend to support monochome devices you may need to provide a monochrome override image

Size Requirements​

  • Backgrounds are divided into 8pxx 8px tilesets so the total image size must be a multiple of 8px in both width and height.
  • A background has a minimum size of 160px x 144px (the GB screen size)
  • Both the width and height of a background must be less than or equal to 2040px.
  • The width of the image multiplied by the height must be less than or equal to 1,048,320. For example an image with the width 2016px will have a max height of 520px (because 2016 * 520 = 1048320)

Tile Requirements​

"Monochrome" and "Color + Monochrome" Games​

In most scene types, for games using Monochrome or Color + Monochrome color modes, a background image can contain no more than 192 unique 8px x 8px tiles at once due to memory limits. This means that even using the smallest background size possible you must repeat about half of your tiles. Where possible repeat tiles between images as they will be grouped together saving on total game size. It is recommended to use a tile map editor such as Tiled to ensure your backgrounds conform to the pixel grid.

The exception to this is scenes with their Scene Type set as Logo, these scenes can use a 160px x 144px sized image with no limits on unique tiles but note that in Logo scenes you are unable to use Actors or display a Player.

"Color Only" Games​

When using the Color Only color mode background tile limits are doubled, allowing up to 384 unique 8px x 8px tiles per scene.

Monochrome Overrides​

When using automatic palettes, monochrome tile data is automatically generated from your color image. However, the generated shades may not perfectly match your intentions. For Color Only mode, this won't be an issue. If you plan to support monochrome devices, you can provide a second image as a monochrome override by naming it the same as your color image with a .mono.png file extension.

For example, when using automatic palettes on the following image without an override:

assets/backgrounds/parallax.png

The scene will look like this on monochrome devices:

By providing the following override image the scene will look as you expect on both color and monochrome devices:

assets/backgrounds/parallax.mono.png