Make game runs smoothly

[DavidN]

After realizing that if I had absolutely gigantic scrolling levels some people had a lot of slowdown (but only some people, strangely - the issue is because of the way that the collision masks are calculated), I've tended to still use many different layers while editing a level initially, then to "pack" the backgrounds and foregrounds together on to a single layer once the layout is reasonably finished.

It seems that where layers really come in useful at the moment is for "backdrops" that you need to be in front of other things on the game layer, and status displays, titles, and so on. For the parallax backgrounds, I'm afraid I reverted to the older method of using an Active System Box to hold the backdrop, and moving that around myself through the event editor.

[astrospoon]

Active System Box huh? do you know of an example file that uses that for parallax backgrounds...? Id be interested to see how it is done...

-Andy

[DavidN]

Well, this one's getting on a bit now, but it's the one I originally learned from!

http://www.create-games.com/article.asp?id=1255

(The example file doesn't exist any more, but the steps to get the basic idea going don't take long.)

[astrospoon]

Ahhh...

this is why you cant import your own graphics for a background in The Underside or Knytt Stories. They use this method which does not allow for it

A shame you can't change the image at runtime