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Star pattern

As explained in Classic Game Programming on the NES: Make your own retro video game

A star pattern is graphical data defining one of the alternating appearances used to render a star character.

A star pattern is graphical data that defines one alternating appearance for a star character. Writing different patterns to the PPU makes stars twinkle. section 13.2.1

Twinkling stars

A game places ten stars randomly, stores their VRAM locations, and changes their character pattern periodically. Compile and run it in the emulator to verify different star placements and visible twinkling. section 13.2.1

How Classic Game Programming on the NES: Make your own retro video game covers it

How deep it goes
Explains placement, address storage, timed PPU writes, and cleanup, but does not detail the pattern graphics themselves.
Examples
Demonstrates ten randomly positioned stars whose patterns alternate during gameplay.
What it assumes
Assumes familiarity with NES assembly, PPU addresses, VRAM writes, and NMI timing.
What you can do after
Build it from scratch by storing star addresses and updating their PPU character patterns during NMI processing.
How it connects
Connects star patterns with tile patterns, name tables, VRAM, the PPU, random number generation, and NMI routines.

Related concepts

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Classic Game Programming on the NES: Make your own retro video game. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.