Paralaxing ...

[zick]

I heard that there is the ability to add paralaxing to maps ... I attached an animated gif (I know, sue me) of something I'd like to see added to the paralaxing engine. It shows all the layers working in conjunction and demonstrates what I believe would be a cool effect.

Pardon the crudity, I threw it together in 15 mins ...

The bottommost layer is a "celestial body" layer for some object that doesn't move in a panorama (the sun, the moon or moons, the stars)

I didn't include it in this demo, but I think it be cool to have a "clouds" layer for something that moves whether or not the map is moving or not, like how clouds will always move because of the wind.

Then you have the "panorama" layer for mountains, a valley forest or village, etc. that travels slower than the main map.

You've got the "map" layer with some tree objects and a little stick figure guy.

Finally you have a "tree wall" layer for something at the edge of the map that moves faster than the main map. This can be a tree wall, a castle wall, a cliff, a picket fence, etc.

[Jaxad0127]

Given our viewing angle, it'd have to be used for stuff in the ground or water, not skyline.

[zick]

Given our viewing angle, it'd have to be used for stuff in the ground or water, not skyline.

Wait ... huh? I don't understand ...

[DarkWater]

That is jaxese, let my try to translate.

"There is nothing I can say that would be useful, so I am just going to state the only thing that I see wrong with the picture and comment on it." It is kind of like a non answer, you will get used to them. In short, you are between, I dont care and dont like it.

The parallax effect can be really cool, like fires and torches. Unfortunately, it would be whole waste of time trying to get it to work on the current server and the new server has a long list of things that need to be fixed first.

So I am stuck between, find it fun and maybe next year.

[Jaxad0127]

This game is not a side scroller, so parallax like your example isn't useful. Parallax can be used to give interesting effects in other areas, like stuff beneath the player (like in a pit, or water under a bridge or ship).

nonsense

Go do something useful, please, or at least stop wasting everyone else's time.

[Crush]

Recently we added support for background images which can scroll parallax like the foreground images used for fog, sandstorm and cave spotlight effects. The technique is the same, just that they are behind the map tiles instead of in front of it. I created a nice demo for the botcheck area with four layers of stars scrolling parallax in the background.

But unfortunately we can not use these yet because a lot of people still play with older client versions which don't support them. To show the backgrounds, parts of the map have to be transparent, and this causes ugly graphic bugs on older clients.

[zick]

This game is not a side scroller

This is not a side scrolling demo, it just happens that the guy stays on the same horizontal line. Remember, I threw that together in 15 mins. I can spend some more time making it look professional, showing the player moving up an down, etc. But this was just a quick and dirty demo.

But unfortunately we can not use these yet because a lot of people still play with older client versions which don't support them

What if it was a backwards compatible, or maybe old clients ignored the code ... New clients can understand the code.

---

Anyways, would you want me to spend more time on this making it look better. I think it'd be cool to have various types of paralaxing (a planet that stays in place, a tree wall that scrolls faster than the map moves).

[Jaxad0127]

But unfortunately we can not use these yet because a lot of people still play with older client versions which don't support them

What if it was a backwards compatible, or maybe old clients ignored the code ... New clients can understand the code.

It can't be backwards compatible. Clients that don't support underlays will get graphical errors.

Anyways, would you want me to spend more time on this making it look better. I think it'd be cool to have various types of paralaxing (a planet that stays in place, a tree wall that scrolls faster than the map moves).

Go ahead. It might be useful in some areas.

[Crush]

Screenshots and a zip with the proof of concept (you will need a server where you have GM rights to warp yourself to botcheck to see it).

http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9250

[Rotonen]

We can always just screw older clients and force people to update to what is our official recommendation. Whether or not that is nice to affected people is a completely different issue.

It all boils down to how small of an amount of people are we talking about there. Statistics anyone?

[Matt]

We can always just screw older clients and force people to update to what is our official recommendation. Whether or not that is nice to affected people is a completely different issue.

It all boils down to how small of an amount of people are we talking about there. Statistics anyone?

There should be statistics based on the update thingy, but I can't find the URL.

[Jaxad0127]

Since midnight on Platinum: http://updates.themanaworld.org/versions.php
Logs: http://updates.themanaworld.org/versions/

[Crush]

Well looking at these numbers it seems like over 80% of our users already use clients which support backgrounds.

Does anyone have an idea how we could create a map which showcases this feature (without spending hundreds of man-hours on new tiles)?

[Jaxad0127]

Well looking at these numbers it seems like over 80% of our users already use clients which support backgrounds.

Note that we no longer support clients older than 0.0.29.1.

[zick]

I redid my demo ... The problem is it's to big to make an animated gif ... I made it in flash, but the forums don't accept flash. Anybody know of some free flash host?