How do I add backgrounds to maps?
Fri, 2014-01-17 14:34
So I recently started making maps, and I love it. I drew some, and took some off games while modifying them a little so they properly work on Hedgewars. I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right forum section, so please change it if it's wrong. I guess it could fit in graphics but it's just a support question. How do I add backgrounds to maps? What I want to do is have a mask that covers places without ground, like an image behind the map. For instance, I could make some fence behind a grass field or rooms with walls behind. Don't tell me this isn't possible, because it is. The map Harbour Heaven does it.
I've been on this website for over 4 years and have only two forum posts
this isn't possible! :p just kidding,
did you check out http://code.google.com/p/hedgewars/wiki/PresetMaps -> Optional files (for advanced features and adjustments) yet?
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I'd just like to add a minor usability note for people using mask to make background stuff.
Please, for the sake of the player, consider blurring or darkening the background content, preferably both.
That way they can easily tell what's background. We don't do that for the nets on the basketball map, but that's a limited special case, and people seem to have grasped what's going on.
Also, keep in mind that using a lot of this on a large map will spike vRAM usage quite a bit, and, if there's blurring going on, make for a pretty large PNG.
For example, there's one shoppa map, Tetris, that uses this just to make the background more attractive (without creating a custom theme).
That map has a png that is 3x the size of the ropes map (due to lack of empty space). It has a mask.png that is 89% empty space, but a map.png that is only only 3% empty space. As a result, the map uses 32MiB of vRAM instead of more like, oh, maybe, maybe <10MiB as a guess. This isn't too big deal for a 4096x2048 map on a normal computer, but worth keeping in mind if you do something larger.
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Oh, what the heck. 1PLXzL1CBUD1kdEWqMrwNUfGrGiirV1WpH <= tip a hedgewars dev