Tiles

Tiles are 8×8 pixel art definitions embedded directly in your source code. They're the building blocks for both sprites and backgrounds on the Game Boy.

Defining a tile

tile heart:
    ..3333..
    .333333.
    33333333
    33333333
    .333333.
    ..3333..
    ...33...
    ........

Each tile has exactly 8 rows of 8 characters. Each character represents a pixel color:

Using tiles

Tiles are referenced by name when calling sprite and background functions:

# As a sprite
set_sprite(0, x, y, heart)

# As a background tile
set_bg_tile(5, 10, heart)

Tile 0 (blank)

Tile index 0 is always a blank (all white) tile, reserved by the system. Your defined tiles start at index 1. This means the background starts fully blank.

Multiple tiles

You can define as many tiles as you need:

tile player:
    ..3333..
    .333333.
    .3.33.3.
    .333333.
    ..3333..
    .3.33.3.
    .3....3.
    ........

tile ground:
    33333333
    22222222
    22222222
    22222222
    22222222
    22222222
    22222222
    22222222

tile platform:
    33333333
    33333333
    ........
    ........
    ........
    ........
    ........
    ........

Design tips

• Use . for transparency in sprites (color 0 is transparent for sprite objects)
• Background tiles are not transparent — all 4 colors are drawn
• You get up to ~384 tiles total (shared between sprites and backgrounds)
• Tiles are stored in VRAM and can be viewed with the Tileset debug panel in the IDE