why can't charmaps be 16-bit

[Bellie]

you'd expect

charmap "你", $0000
charmap "好", $0001
charmap "！", $0002

db "你好！"

to assemble into 00 00 00 01 00 02 in the rom, but it actually assembles as 00 01 02. if you try to force 16-bit values:

charmap "你", $0100
charmap "好", $0101
charmap "！", $0102

db "你好！"

it just errors out. why?

[Eldred Habert]

This seems to be about the same as #97 (please see there for further details): there's no reason against them (see #265 for implementation ideas), but they would require a lot of effort to implement in the current codebase, and neither of the current maintainers are up for it.

[aaaaaa123456789]

It's probably worth mentioning that you're expecting the assembler to treat the number of digits you write as meaningful, which it never does. That's the source of your initial confusion here. $02, $0002, $00000002, and even just 2 are all the same exact value — they will not be processed any differently. charmap "！", $0002 is exactly the same as charmap "！", $02 or charmap "！", 2.

[Bellie]

It's probably worth mentioning that you're expecting the assembler to treat the number of digits you write as meaningful, which it never does. That's the source of your initial confusion here. $02, $0002, $00000002, and even just 2 are all the same exact value — they will not be processed any differently. charmap "！", $0002 is exactly the same as charmap "！", $02 or charmap "！", 2.

well, you could always have a charmap16 or something that expects there to be a 16-bit value, and normal charmap could keep being 8-bit

for instance,

charmap16 "A", $01   ; will be treated as $0001
charmap   "a", $0002 ; will be treated as $02

[Eldred Habert]

charmap16 would be a restricted version of #97 and #265. And, anyway, the problem is in the complexity of implementing of emitting 16-bit charmaps, not in the directive itself.

[SnDream]

Hi, try using a customised version of rgbds that adds support for 16-bit charmap
https://github.com/SnDream/rgbds
Currently at version 0.6.1
example: https://github.com/SnDream/pokecrystal_cn/blob/release_cn/charmap_cn.asm
There is a MACRO version of #97 without compiling custom rgbds, but it's not well suited to existing large projects.