looping backgrounds depending on certain conditions

fmakawa

Hi Folks,
So I'm working on a shooter and its one of those vertical multi directional types. Now I want to have like the old games like Gunbird such that you can only move further on the maps essentially only after you've removed the baddies on this section of the map. But since you're moving (or giving the impression of movement) I'm trying to figure out how I can loop backgrounds until those baddies are defeated and then allow for the background to transition to another loopset. I'm trying to avoid running out of ground to fight on. Kinda like mini endless shooters on the same scene.Any ideas?

Toque

Could only see gunbird 2. Played it. Seems like player slowly moves up in a large scene.

You could spawn background tiles from above that move down. Obviously you need the right tiles to do it and spawning correctly. Best if they can overlap a little without notice.

Is that what you mean by looping?

Hopscotch

@fmakawa how do you loop your background at the moment?

Do you spawn new backgrounds at the top, or move the ones leaving the bottom back up?

Either way, the background can have a rule, changing its image according to the phase of the game.

The phase of the game you can set by a game level phase attribute. Then change the phase from e.g. "desert" to "ocean" when all enemies are defeated. You can even have a transition image in between to make the two types of background merge nicely.

fmakawa

@Toque. Actually it depends on the stage. There are some stages where it is clearly looping the same base image until you defeat a minor boss for example and only then does it move on. Technically allowing for an endless scene if you don't defeat the boss/requirement. Isn't spawning background tiles resource intensive?
@Hopscotch I had been using the wrapping method to make the looping backgrounds but soon realised that wouldn't work for this. Might have to try the transition image thing.