[HighFrictionZone]

AMD Phenom II X6 2.8 GHz, 8 GB ram, Windows 7 64-bit. Smooth as butter.

[Hayate]

Works fine for me, 60fps. My dxdiag.txt: http://freetexthost.com/qn263agp5c

What kind of code does this use? Any chance it could be backported to GM5.3a?

[KingofHarts]

Are all animated backgrounds done with pallete color swaps? I want to find a way to draw sprites onto the background to make more dynamic backgrounds. Anyone know yet? I've tried a couple things, nothing works...

[Mercury]

Hayate, on 31 August 2011 - 11:06 AM, said:

Works fine for me, 60fps. My dxdiag.txt: http://freetexthost.com/qn263agp5c

What kind of code does this use? Any chance it could be backported to GM5.3a?

No, the extension I'm using for it is tied to GM8.0.

KingofHarts, on 31 August 2011 - 11:39 PM, said:

Are all animated backgrounds done with pallete color swaps? I want to find a way to draw sprites onto the background to make more dynamic backgrounds. Anyone know yet? I've tried a couple things, nothing works...

Not all background animation in Sonic is done by manipulating the palette. For instance, SBZ's smokestacks are animated by swapping out whole tiles. GM doesn't have animated tiles, though. One option is to put objects wherever there's animation and make them move along with the background; another is to use a shader extension and write a custom shader for it (but that's pretty difficult and advanced, my attempts to do so are still incomplete).

[KingofHarts]

Mercury, on 01 September 2011 - 01:44 PM, said:

Not all background animation in Sonic is done by manipulating the palette. For instance, SBZ's smokestacks are animated by swapping out whole tiles. GM doesn't have animated tiles, though. One option is to put objects wherever there's animation and make them move along with the background; another is to use a shader extension and write a custom shader for it (but that's pretty difficult and advanced, my attempts to do so are still incomplete).

I've tried inserting objects into the background to follow the background... I've even tried getting my parralax object to insert sprites in the same fashion that it places background images. Cant get it to work.

[Caitlin]

What I did for the water in Pokemon Azure was set the background to one frame of the water animation. Then, in an object that was present in every map, it would change the background to a different frame of the water animation. The water would animate under static tiles without too much fuss. For example, you could have an object that draws a single frame of the Scrap Brain Zone smokestacks, tiled, and switches between different frames (defined as backgrounds) on a timer. Then, above that background, you draw the normal SBZ background with transparent holes in it that allow the smokestacks to appear. Set them both to the same parallax speed and there you go. It can get complex for larger, more detailed backgrounds, though.

As for the demo in the original post, I reached ~58fps. I imagine that would plummet once you brought the actual engine that this would be attached to into the equation. I'm running on 1.3ghz, 1gb ram, 128mb video ram I believe.

[KingofHarts]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will take the idea and go try it again... hopefully I can get it to work. I'm building a Sonic Engine... Obviously why I'm interested in this. I can get 60 FPS no prob... I'm running on a lil bit higher specs than you are, but you are correct, attaching this to an engine will slow things down a bit... My primary concern is making sure I can get it to work... then, I wanna find ways to increase speed to ensure it can run smoothly.