Large background effects (like the Tram in S&M)

[tamper]

Hi,

I've been replaying Sam & Max recently, which despite it's 2D cartoon style art, actually features some 3D pre-rendered animation in some backgrounds - most notably the tram/cable-car at the Ball of Twine, or the helicopter at the World of Fish. I suppose the point is not that its 3D, but that it constitutes quite intense background animation.

I got to wondering how this could be best done in AGS (if at all). These types of animation (well the tram at least) are animated while characters are controllable, so its couldn't be an inserted video-scene.

I guess that leaves having either an animated background (which would be a LOT of frames) or else a really large sprite pasted in place.

Has anyone had experience of implementing something like this?

t

[Joseph DiPerla]

I think I know what your talking about. Kairus did something like that in his Garfield Game Demo.

The intro featured something like that, with a truck. You could do a search for garfield on the forum and see where the game could be downloaded.

Maybe you can ask Kai for help on that.

JD

[Scorpiorus]

I guess that leaves having either an animated background (which would be a LOT of frames) or else a really large sprite pasted in place.

As the number of background frames are hardly limited, the sprite (a char or an object) is the only thing left to try.

~Cheers

[BOYD1981]

i don't really have an answer for this, but, can backgrounds not be scrolled some way so all you'd need is a background that is seamless when tiled then have it scroll horizontally and save on the animating, unless ofcourse you mean something different (been a while since i played S&M)

[Hollister Man]

Actually, that is the best way I have found to animate a background that needs lots of frames (this won't work right if you have objects or charaters, but you could prolly make it work)

Here is a bit of code I used to animate a ten frame background.  It cycles forever, but you could play with it to your liking.

function room_a()
{
 // script for room: Repeatedly execute
 SetViewport((320 *(bgframe/3)), 0); //the /3 is just to slow it down.  It was going WAYYYY too fast.
 bgframe++;
 if (bgframe>30) bgframe=0;
}