Originally posted by Ladidaim currently backporting stuff to the minimalist status bars, since theyre a bit outdated by now. however, one thing i'm itching to attempt is to upload the tilemap to the nonvisisble part of the layer 1/2 tilemap, rather than to $6000. Less troublesome, but also more difficult since the upload destination would have to change when the layer y-position changes. i may or may not consider using the technique in the smb3 status bar, depends on how successful i am
just an update on this: initial testing of the technique has been proven to be successful. by using both layers 1 and 2, you can technically have a 4-line status bar tilemap (aka smb3 status bar) exist by essentially taking up 0 space in VRAM (so far ive only tested 2-line for the minimalist status bars, but there's no reason 4-line wont work)
the problem with writing to mario's GFX is that it'll only work if the status bar is a bottom one (smb3), since mario will not show up later during screen rendering, and NMI which occurs soon afterwards reuploads mario's GFX. a top status bar would require reuploading mario's GFX during the fblank between the status bar and main screen rendering... yeah. also, if lag occurs, some weird shenanigans happen with mario
by uploading the tilemap to the nonvisible parts of the layer tilemaps, there's no need to worry about reuploading the parts that have been overwritten, because they're offscreen so their appearance doesnt matter (and layer updates will fix them later, and by then we're writing to a different offscreen section)
one "drawback": smkd's vram patch is required. also, zsnes compatibility returns
as i mentioned, i'll consider implementing this technique into the smb3 status bar. but it will definitely be in the minimalist status bars, meaning they will finally actually be isolated from the layer 3 tilemap