hey scout =D
here is the basic idea explained in as much detail as i can manage:

firstly, your data needs to be in a readable format. if you have 4*4 tiles it doesn't seem like you'd need a full byte to designate which tile is to be drawn, but, for simplicity's sake, we'll do just that. there are plenty of half-byte tutorials out there for you to read once you have the basic idea.

take the map you want to draw, assign a unique one byte value to each type of tile you are going to be drawing, and, reading from left to right, top to bottom, convert your map into a string of those byte values.
for example, if   is assigned to 00,   to 01, and to 02, and you had the following map:
 
 
   

it would translate to:
[000001
[020102
[000202

once that's done, you need to take the images to be used for your tiles, convert them to hex data, and store them in order. although it makes the tile images take up four times what they would as 4*4 images, the absolute easiest way to handle this is to convert your images as if they were 8*8 images instead, leaving a four pixel buffer of blank both to the right of and beneath your desired image. this will make each of your images take up 8 bytes of data.


i bet you know that much already, though, and the real question is how to draw any arbitrary 24 wide by 16 tall chunk of this map on the screen.
that can be done with the following code:
:for(L,0,23
:for(M,0,15
:PtOff(L*4,M*4,{M+[the y offset, in tiles, of the spot in the map you want to draw, starting from the uppermost tile row in the map being zero]*[the total width of your map, in tiles]+L+[the x offset, in tiles, of the spot in the map you want to begin drawing at, starting with the leftmost tile collumn in the map being 0]+[a pointer, like GDB1 for example, to where you stored the tilemap you converted earlier]}*8+[the pointer to your tile image data]
:end
:end

or, with real arguments inserted:

:for(L,0,23
:for(M,0,15
:PtOff(L*4,M*4,{M+B*N+L+A+GDB1}*8+Pic1
:end
:end
where:
A= xoffset
B= yoffset
N= total map width, in tiles
GDB1= tilemap data
Pic1= tile image data

this method is simple, but it can be optimised a good deal (and there are plenty of threads showing how for that as well which you should be able to understand once you get the basic idea).
good luck!

i got an error loading gnome 3 under virtual box as well. it looks nice, though

as of today, i am done with highschool, so i will no longer be too busy to work on coding things. however, before i start this up again i'm going to work on the axe contest first (i actually started my entry on the way home earlier ), and i have one other idea for a small project that i might whip up after the contest as well.

hopefully at that point i won't have become so lost in my own source code that i need to start over. it's well commented, so, in theory, that shouldn't be an issue.

WOOO!
i'm not sure if i'm willing to make this my primary OS just yet, but it's still exciting
good luck eeems; i'll be here to help with testing things, as always.

you've definitely done enough around here, dj. thanks for everything.

very nice...
is this based on some other game of the same or a similar name?

ooh, cool =D
this game comes standard with rockbox, so i've tried it before and some of the levels are rather challenging. from a quick test, it looks like it's a little slow, but otherwise gameplay isn't all that bad. however, i can't find any way to quit. pressing mode takes one to the title screen, from which point any key simply returns to gameplay. pressing 2nd+on, however, succesfully turns the calc off, causing weirdness/RAM clears upon restarting. this is on my recently aquired 84+ BE running os 2.30, so maybe it uses new bcalls that 2.30 doesn't support?

EDIT: i just tested it on my 84+SE running 2.43 with the same results =/