Parallax 3 Ways (+ Lerp() & Silky Smooth Scrolling)

[Pixelated_Pope]

GM Version: GM:S v1.4.1757
Target Platform: Desktop / Mobile (Should be applicable to everything but HTML5)
Download: Example File

Summary:
A video tutorial series that covers 3 different styles of parallax scrolling.


Video 1 deals with the basics of what parallax is, and then covers super basic scrolling. It then jumps into "interpolated" scrolling, commonly used in fighting games, which uses the built in lerp() function.

Video 2 deals with infinite scrolling for a top down space game, and throws in some other fun stuff like zooming and rotating the view as well as using the display manager to dramatically improve the visual quality of all of these effects.

If you have any questions let me know. And be sure to check out my Youtube channel for more GameMaker content including my tutorial on Resolution and Scaling as well as a video series to help teach you advanced debugging techniques.

 

[eddx]

Nice tutorials! But can you advice, how to do parallax effect in TDS games with tile layers?

 

[Pixelated_Pope]

tile layers

With tile layers? It should be possible using the same ideas, but instead of changing a background position, you use tile_layer_shift() to re-position the layers. But I've never done it myself.

 

[lienthealien]

Hi @Pixelated_Pope , i have a question the quick way i found to achieve this was:
1. creating an object
2. add a create and step event set the speed increment of the tile scrolling clouds_x+=1; ( it only works for values sspeed >= 1)
3. and in the draw event i do this:
draw_sprite_tiled_ext(spr_clouds_1,image_index, clouds_x%background_get_width(bk_city_clouds_1) , y, image_xscale , image_yscale*1.25, c_white, 1);

It works but i can't make the clouds go slower or it looks awful.

sspeed < 1

sspeed = 1

I'm not sure how to make it smooth.

 

[lienthealien]

Ok i turned of this "interpolate colors between pixels" and the flickering is gone, now i'm trying to make it move smooth.

 

[Pixelated_Pope]

Ok i turned of this "interpolate colors between pixels" and the flickering is gone, now i'm trying to make it move smooth.

So what about it isn't smooth once you turned off interpolate colors? Remember you only have as many pixels as your appsurface / game window allow. So there is a limit to how smooth something can be.