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Is there a way to parallax a background without having to make it an active object? The reason being, when it is an active object it's order has to be in front, and it blocks out the ground backdrops and anything else thats not also an active objects. any help appreciated, thanks.
Well I don't know what your situation is but try doing a qiuck teleport and paste image into background. (Set position of object, then paste image into background, then set position of object back to previos position.)
You could either change the X and Y coefficient of each layer in it's properties, or use a system box with an image on.
Although there might be newer ways of doing it in MMF2, the Background System Box worked like a charm in MMF1.5. Mobile like an active object, but in the back and light on resources like a backdrop object. While I was diggin' through one of my old platformer engines just to make sure of the name of the object, I stumbled upon this nifty comment detailing the formula I used for a pretty spiffy lookin' parallax effect.
Here's what the basic events look like -
XPos: ( ( X Left Frame - ~XW~ ) - ( ( X Left Frame / ~X~ ) mod ~XW~ ) )
YPos: ( ( Y Top Frame / ~Y~ ) mod ~YH~ )
~XW~ is the width of the pattern you're scrolling, ~X~ is the horizontal speed you want it to scroll at (the bigger the number, the slower or "further back" it is), ~Y~ is the vertical speed you want it to scroll at (not used in this example), and ~YH~ is the height of the image.
Note: For reasons unknown you often have to make the images REALLY big in the level editor or they won't be displayed correctly in the game. It seems to depend not only on the size of the image, but the size of the level. Just start out with 2 or 3 times the size of the actual image and tweak if needed.
Background system boxes are still great for simple repeating parallax backgrounds - if you want to edit the background in more detail, then you can add a couple of layers behind the main one and set their scrolling coefficients as needed.