Pan Docs, “Pan Docs: Tile Maps”

Cite as: Pan Docs, “Pan Docs: Tile Maps”
Original: https://gbdev.io/pandocs/Tile_Maps.html
sha256: 80e7fb0233cf76f3bf6771ca90ff4eeef5f918db0242b197884d07eaa66eebaf
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20260905222522/https://gbdev.io/pandocs/Tile_Maps.html
Accessed: 2026-10-21
Licence: CC0-1.0 (the gbdev/pandocs repository's license)
Credit: The Pan Docs authors, begun by Pan of Anthrox and maintained by the gbdev community; see https://github.com/gbdev/pandocs/graphs/contributors.
Notes: Read from the live page as deployed from the pinned master commit. Used for the two 32 by 32 tile maps and the window that overlays the background without scrolling.

Cited on

The Game Boy's video RAM holds two 32 by 32 tile maps, each 256 by 256 pixels, and either can be shown as the background or the window; the screen shows 160 by 144 of those pixels.	`VRAM Tile MapsTile Indexes`	Wiki
The window is a second background layer whose top-left corner sits at screen position (WX − 7, WY), set by WY and WX (`$FF4A`-`$FF4B`); it can't be scrolled and always starts from its tile map's top-left tile. From the line where LY equals WY, the PPU switches from the background to the window when the line reaches WX, drawing the window's current row, and that row advances once for each line the window is drawn on; at WX 7 and WY 0 it covers the whole background.	`Window`	Wiki