BG Tiles?

rimoJO

Member
Hi, everyone! I've been happily working on my little game, but I keep feeling like something's missing. The skies. The walls. Whatever's behind the main character. It's just one. Solid. Color. It's pretty frustrating, actually, for me to look at my game and see the character, the ground, and literally nothing else- so that leads me to ask this question: how does one even make backgrounds? A few NESMakers have done it before- and their games stand out- so I wish I could do that too. Because what's a game without backgrounds? ...So any help would be nice.
EDIT: NOTE: And something moving as well, possibly?
 

TurtleRescueNES

Active member
BG tiles area easy, really. Open up your graphic editor, and design some elements. Lets say a cloud. How create a new asset that uses that cloud sprite. That asset should be a null, or walkable type so that it does not interfere with the player. Now just drop it on your game's screen.

Animated background tiles are not supported in this version of NESmaker.
 

Mugi

Member
my game uses chr ram bankswitching (animated background tiles.)
that feature is hand baked and not available in nesmaker currently. Joe said it's coming in the upcoming 5.0 version.
 

rimoJO

Member
oh ok, thanks. way too excited for 5.0... anyways, is it possible to make one big background, and it follows you throughout the level?
 

Mugi

Member
you mean a parallax scrolling background ?
technically yes, but in this mapper, you woud have to use sprite0 for creating that, and because the HUD of nesmaker engine uses sprite0 already, you would lose the hud completely.

if you would use a sprite hud like my game does, then sprite0 can be used for that, but even so, this mapper is not really suitable for proper parallaxing because it doesnt have a scanline counter, so it's not really worth it.
 

rimoJO

Member
Ah. In my game, a hud isn't needed. It's a one-hit kind of game. I'm just thinking a mountain in the background. oh well.
 

Jonny

Well-known member
Regarding moving backgrounds, I was thinking of attempting to use a couple of monsters that dont react with the player as background elements.

For example a flickering candle or a haunted house portrait with moving eyes; That sort of thing. Not the best or most technical way to go about it and could only probably have a couple per screen to keep within limitations for sprites but I'm going to try it out. Might be a total disaster! If the bank switching comes first I'll try that obviously instead.

Regards your background graphics in general. I've been starting with a screenshot of the style I want as inspiration (doesn't need to be a NES game) and looking at how they put the tiles together. I usually end up with something that looks a lot different but working from a screen shot helps with things like composition, what looks good for mountain levels, cloud height, stuff like that. Unless you're a pixel art wizard, it's always easier to start with something as inspiration rather than a blank sheet.

I've done about 7 levels of graphics and I found the outside woodland level the hardest to get half decent with the limited tiles available. I'm using paths for some of it becasue I ran out of tiles. I wouldn't say my woodland / outside graphics are fantastic but you are welcome to have them and use as they are or adapt them?

Let me know if that would be helpful and I'll give you some links.

** sorry, just realised how old this post is, you've probably sorted it by now **
 
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