A few quick (stupid?) questions

[soop]

Tons of PCE games have parallax... layers just make it easier to do. Whether you use h-int trickery, dynamic tiles, sprite overlays/underlays, or a combination of any of the three... ultimately, it's pretty easy to do, but just not as easy as on a layered system. Complex, multi-directional backgrounds are difficult with only a single layer, but that too doesn't mean that it can't be done... Frozen Utopia's Jungle Bros' later scenes feature semi-complex multi-directional parallax pulled off via a combined strategy of dynamic tiles and sprites.

Ok, so dynamic tiles are basically animated background tiles, correct?

[nodtveidt]

Ok, so dynamic tiles are basically animated background tiles, correct?

Yeah. You copy new data to VRAM at the address of the tile you want to change. That's the most efficient way of doing it. If you've ever seen the Monolith prototype videos... I use dynamic tiles for the three-layer lower parallax in the village, and then again in the dungeon for the distant red brick patterns. Both areas also have sprite underlays for additional parallax. The Jungle Bros demo uses the h-int parallax technique together with sprite overlays for depth, though later areas use dynamic tiles with sprite overlays to really look nice. It's not too hard to do, but it can take a lot of prep work.

[soop]

Ok, so dynamic tiles are basically animated background tiles, correct?

Yeah. You copy new data to VRAM at the address of the tile you want to change. That's the most efficient way of doing it. If you've ever seen the Monolith prototype videos... I use dynamic tiles for the three-layer lower parallax in the village, and then again in the dungeon for the distant red brick patterns. Both areas also have sprite underlays for additional parallax. The Jungle Bros demo uses the h-int parallax technique together with sprite overlays for depth, though later areas use dynamic tiles with sprite overlays to really look nice. It's not too hard to do, but it can take a lot of prep work.

I see!  Ok, so I can see that that would be a great way to get the rails in...  You'd only need about 6-12 different tiles, I'd imagine.

Really looking forward to more tutorials by the way.  How many more do you think you'll do?

[nodtveidt]

"Crash course" is only 11 tutorials. I might do some game-specific tutorials later on... I'm working on a vertical shooter engine right now that I might eventually turn into a tutorial, and of course I'll also do a comparative tutorial on the differences between hucard productions and CD productions.

[soop]

"Crash course" is only 11 tutorials. I might do some game-specific tutorials later on... I'm working on a vertical shooter engine right now that I might eventually turn into a tutorial, and of course I'll also do a comparative tutorial on the differences between hucard productions and CD productions.

Fantastic!  You're a huge asset to the community, and I really like your style of tutorial.  It's very much how I learn best, and (perhaps because I'm more interested) one of the best programming tutorials I've read.

[sunteam_paul]

As good as they are, I don't think using dynamic tiles for the rails is going to be a good solution, especially with the train speeding up and slowing down, while the rails move at the faster background speed. It's a recipe for disaster.

[spenoza]

I think it would be a better idea to alter the perspective a little and simply make it so the track and wheels are obscured by the foreground. Then you can just have the train cars flying by.