How do I make such depth with layers?

[Emerson3]

Hey CLickteam,

How do I make games with amazing depth like this? This is actually from a game created with Clickteam Fusion! I do use layers, but it doesn't seem to look as good as I would like? Also, how to achieve the blurriness of backgrounds that are layered far back?

4.jpg

Thanks Clickers!

[schrodinger]

You should look into Fusion shaders (there are great packs available online)
and build a solid experience with external software for photo retouch

perfectioning these two should end up in obtaining great looking depth/visual effects!

[Emerson3]

Schro,

If you don't mind, what are shaders? And how do I use them?

[schrodinger]

I'm surely not the most experienced on shaders, I rarely use many effects,
so this is only general and raw info:

pixel shaders are tools able to transform "whole bunchs" of pixels during runtime,
imagine you can apply "filters" to alter colors, lightness, shape etc. of your images on screen,
they can be applied selectively to single objects, or to whole layers, allowing for a great variety of visual tricks.
You can add shaders to Fusion just by downloading .fx files and placing them in the "effects" folder.
Fusion comes with few builtin effects, however enough for good visual effects (as in Snail's tutorial we talked about before)


As for external photo retouch, I've considerably more suggestions to give,
so if you want to bump in I could suggest some free softwares to start

[Emerson3]

Please do sir!!!

[schrodinger]

Mmmm, if you are a starter in digital retouch I would suggest Paint.net:
http://www.getpaint.net/index.html
It has a considerable amount of features and a nice and clean interface,
cons: a little slow

Other great and widely used option is GIMP:
http://www.gimp.org/
It's pratically full-featured.
cons: I find his interface less likeable

Payment options:
I personally use and endorse PaintShop
I use this since it was Jasc (now it's Corel)
It has changed a bit its interface in last incarnations (I preferred prior to X versions) but it's always clean and arguable.
It has the same (at least, the needful ones) features as the most widely acclaimed "Photoshop", for a tenth of the price, and it's faster.

These tools, once mastered, would be invaluable for obtaining good looking graphics.

If you plan to do from-zero drawing,
for a "natural" hand drawing software (plus a drawing media like Wacom's), I'd suggest Autodesk Sketchbook and/or ArtRage (both payment, but old free versions are available),
while if you like vectorial art, you should take a look at Inkscape (free).

[mobichan]

Honestly, that image appears to only be blurring the background layer to create depth. I would recommend blurring it in a paint program as schrodinger suggested. Using a shader for something like that is just wasteful, imo. Unless you need it to do something that a static image won't do well enough?

As for software, if you plan on working in the industry, get ready for Photoshop. If this is just a hobby project, I would suggest GIMP.

[Emerson3]

Thanks Mobichan. I've heard from enough people to think that most game creators have some sort of paint/photo software to create better backgrounds and graphics. I'm going to start shopping around. I am working on my first game which is for my job. After that's completed, I do have a dream game that I want to create that hopefully could sell and others can enjoy. Thanks for the response!