Creating a repeating, animated background

[Mantoid]

Okay, so I want to have a tiled background which is animated. However, the number of tiles I need is in the thousands so even on HWA it's going to be a problem.
One method I thought of for achieving this was by using the Background Images object. I would use the 'pattern' function and then keep changing the image loaded in. Sadly, this particular feature doesn't seem to work with HWA; it just doesn't display when you set it to 'pattern'.

So, is there a way of getting a tiled animated background (preferably with 1 object), that doesn't completely eat all of a computer's resources?

[BrandonC]

I think the HWA build actually doesn't calculate the graphical part of active objects outside of the screen, so it might be safe as long as you take precautions to assure that they use as little resources as possible. For example, deactivate outside of frame, make invisible outside of frame (which I think is automatic anyway), and so on.

I've never experimented with this, so it's defiantly something you yourself will want to toy around with, but HWA is pretty capable from personal experience.

[Pixelthief]

Sadly I need exactly this feature too. As far as I can tell, its the only way to create a parallax background all within a single layer (adding multiple layers creates unacceptable slowdown), and even has that perk of letting you create animated backgrounds! However, I talked with Greyhill and he said he has no plans of updating the BIO until HWA is out of beta, which makes me a sadcat

If anyone does find an alternative, I'd really love to be notified

(the BIO is the only object which can display BEHIND the background layer on the same layer, yet load images dynamically at runtime, as far as I know, and even has that spiffy pattern function which I desperately need)

[Atom]

I need a related feature to preview a area off screen to a area on screen but using the same frame, apparently it's not possible to do because it's not drawn or something.

Im guessing in games it would slow things right down having this however i wanted it in a app. Copying the whole frame and setting each object with globals is not efficiant and annoying to setup. At least the option to enable drawing of off screen objects would be great because then you could use it in situations like that. It would be set off as default so causes game makers no slowdown etc.

[Pixelthief]

Yes atom it really is a difficult problem; MMF2 only draws the area of the screen that you actually *see* inside of the window; the rest of the frame area is simply never drawn at all. The only way to do what you want right now would be to have the drawn area be larger than the window frame, which is perfectly possible- I do it in my engine too actually, since I have a rotating screen area in a square display, and thus a 640x640 drawn area can only display a 452x452 bounded rectangle in its bounded circle. The way I did this was by having a 452x452 frame level that has a 640x640 frame subapplication of the *real game*.


However, if you wanted to preview *any* area of the frame from *anywhere* else, it would be ridiculous; you'd have to have MMF2 drawing the entire frame each frame, and if its something like a 3000x3000 area, thats unrealistic; it would run at 10 FPS at best.

I guess the most efficient way *would* be to replicate that area of the frame in a different window. Maybe instead of actually trying to port over that area of the frame, you could *replicate it*, like how a minimap works in most games; create a graphical token for each object within the area and load the tiles. If you don't use a tiled engine, getting backgrounds would be difficult.

[Atom]

What i wanted was to have the preview and adjustment controls in the visible app area. Then render the objects on the same frame and preview them.

The main part is done and works fine, the preview returns a black area because it's not drawn. It wouldn't animate but refresh when a button was pressed. Im fairly if the option to render the non visible area was added then using extensions like normal to preview it would work fine.

[Pixelthief]

Yes its not really possible to do right now with existing extensions, since MMF2 will never draw areas outside the draw area. But depending on how your engine works, it could be quite possible to 'simulate' the area >.>