Z order for an rpg -need help

[Christina]

Can anyone help?
I'm making a SNES-style rpg, and I want my obstacles (backdrop objects) on a layer above the player character, so that she can pass behind them. Obstacle collissions have been solved by an invisible detector on another layer.
My problem is making the player character go *in front* of these backdrop images.

I *could* make all my obstacles active objects, but wouldn't that require loads of memory and cpu power?

thanks in advance..

file is here: Download

[Dynasoft]

The best way is to make anything you can walk behind into an active object, and use the layer object's sort by Y pos function.

[Christina]

is this really how they programmed it in, say, pokemon or Tales of Phantasia?... Won't it make a huge difference in performance?

[Mico]

I turn background objects that need to be positioned in front of active objects into active objects because I don’t know any better and because I don’t see any noticeable difference in speed.

[Christina]

cool then!

thanks to both of you!!

[Mico]

Also as an extremely competent visual artist, you will be tempted to add a bit of animation to your active background objects. It’s so hard to resist that extra bit of movement! − and extra work!

[Christina]

that's so nice of you mico!

and yes it's hard to stop sometimes...

[Alonso]

I is rather inefficient to have your bg's be huge actives. Instead (what I do, at least), have the bg's repeated twice--one in the original layer, being behind the player. The other, in an invisible layer in front of the player sprites. For small objects, yes, use actives or active box objects.

[Edit] Obviously, whenever you want the player to be behind the backgrounds, make the 2nd layer visible.

[Dynasoft]

is this really how they programmed it in, say, pokemon or Tales of Phantasia?... Won't it make a huge difference in performance?

IIRC in pokemon they made the walls so that you could never walk over and under the same tile. i.e. the walls were all at least as thick as you were tall.

[Christina]

awesome you guys.
Cool piece of info this one