Shmup background animation.

[Nirel]

Hi
I made this looping background, I want to move back and forth in frames to make it look like you're getting closer or further from the background, this is also supposed to parallax with moving fish in the middle.
Please tell me what you think of the idea, if it's viable, and how I could make it better.
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example with the rocks from http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=17752.0
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[Phoenix849]

Well, I don't think getting "closer" to background even makes sense in space.

[PsylentKnight]

Well, I don't think getting "closer" to background even makes sense in space.

Pretty sure that's water?

[questseeker]

Beware of contrast problems. The "water" ranges from almost black to almost white: what foreground enemies and objects are going to be easily distinguishable in both cases? You might try limiting the use of bright colours (for example, small specular highlights in moving waves and ripples rather than large blobs) to optimize for bright foreground objects.

[Nirel]

Well, I don't think getting "closer" to background even makes sense in space.

Pretty sure that's water?

It's technically Space water and you're supposed to fight some generic fascist cyborg alien zombie fish type enemies.

Beware of contrast problems. The "water" ranges from almost black to almost white: what foreground enemies and objects are going to be easily distinguishable in both cases? You might try limiting the use of bright colours (for example, small specular highlights in moving waves and ripples rather than large blobs) to optimize for bright foreground objects.

I thought about having important objects in strong colors to circumvent that but you may be right, I think I'd try to get the game to a playable state and see from there.

[Indigo]

Nice application of index painting.  makes for a cool effect - it'd be great if you can get the engine to dynamically render it rather than have to bake it out as an animation.  I'm assuming you used index painting methods on the tiles too?

[Nirel]

Nice application of index painting.  makes for a cool effect - it'd be great if you can get the engine to dynamically render it rather than have to bake it out as an animation.  I'm assuming you used index painting methods on the tiles too?

Hi I love your work! If I would know how to make the engine do it I could do  much cooler stuff, but I'm just 1 person and a hobbyist artist and programer, I only used dynamic indexing for the tile walls because that's when I found about it(it saved me a lot of time).
I think this method is really good with AA animations so I'm going to use it for the avatar that's supposed to change according to life status.
This is how it looks so far, it's also just 1 ramp as you can see, so it would be easier.

I've made a thread about it here, if you have any pointers I'd be more than happy to hear. http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=18076.0

[DawnBringer]

If you could also make the rocks separate (move to the sides) as the player gets closer to the ground...that could enhance the depth effect.