Actually thats a big help. Is the tile numbering run left to right, top to bottom? i.e. the tile at 0,0 (top left) is tile 0 while 2,0 is tile number 8 in a 4 column tile-set?
2,0 to me means the third column in the first row, which would be tile number 2. 0,2 would be the first tile in the third row, which would be tile number 8 in a 4-column tileset. (I almost always put the horizontal coordinate first -- x,y)
The limitation of 256 (0-255) seems to be inherent in the game code however.
Yes, version 1.x does limit you to 256 tiles per tileset. Although you can get around it in some ways. I think you can have more than 256 graphics in a tileset (by editing the GDP file directly in notepad if nothing else) and then use the extra tiles in a sprite template. You can't, however, use more than 256 tile types in a layer because each tile only has one byte.
I was hoping to use a 1024 by 4086 .bmp image with the first 128*128 block set for transparent and then load the tiles sequentially.
That comes out to exactly 256 tiles (if you mean 4096, not 4086)... did that not work?
While this results in an arbitrarily large number of tiles it does allow for a seamless and non repetitive sky layer for background. I could of course use a larger tile size but the game core seems to dislike that. I tried using One tile of 1024 by 4086 but the game ran at a very low frame rate.
I think a lot of graphics cards/drivers limit you to "textures" no larger than a certain size, like 2048 or 1024. Although that probably doesn't have anything to do with it because the "texture" is the whole tileset, and the size of that isn't changing -- just the size of the tile you're picking from it. But if you're drawing 1024x4086 pixels every frame, that's a lot more than what you can see on the screen. But I suppose the clipping should have made it only copy what it needed to. So I'm not sure why it was slow. If you think it was the tile size, why not try a happy medium tile size like 512x512?
The overall map size is 8192*1024. The sky layer is 5184*576 due to a lower than 1 to 1 scroll rate. I was hoping to automate the task of arranging tiles within a layer, without having to use the editing screen. The editor will only show a 2*2 block of tiles when the tile size is greater than 256*256
Are you talking about the map editor and the ability to select which tile you're drawing? That will scroll vertically if your tileset doesn't fit on the screen, but not horizontally. So you just have to make sure your tileset is not wider than your full screen map editor display.
Now I need to write a script for the playable sprite(s) to set a constant velocity that is modified by the left and right arrows. I want it to slow down on a left arrow and speed up on a right. I would like to slow the rate of change in direction as well; open up the turning radius.
So you will probably be setting the player sprite to be an "Inert" or "Scripted" sprite, then, so it is not directly affected by the keyboard? "Inert" will still allow the sprite to automatically participate in collision detection and animation and inertia. "Scripted" will leave most of that up to you in the script.