Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
good practice to hand-retouch the image before reducing the number of colors to get
the file size reduction while keeping a good image quality.
The following figure represents the result of a progressive so called palettization of
an image from full-color to only two colors. With some additional hand-retouching, it
is possible to obtain a smaller file size without losing too much quality.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds are the images that stay behind the game objects of a game. They
are very important because they represent the environment where the game action
takes place and strongly affect the visual appeal of a title. If your game doesn't have
nice backgrounds, players may be turned off and they won't download it and play it.
Depending on the gameplay characteristics of a game, it can have fixed or scrolling
backgrounds. Fixed backgrounds are generally used on puzzle games or titles where
the game action takes place in a single screen. Tetris, Puzzle Bobble, and Pang are
examples of games with fixed backgrounds.
In this definition, the term "fixed" only refers to the fact that the background of the
game doesn't scroll. It is possible in fact that animation occurs in the background of
the game. Anyway, if no scrolling is involved, we call it a fixed-background game.
Scrolling backgrounds, on the other hand, is a feature of a game where the screen
represents only a portion of the total game level. Super Mario Bros, R-Type, or even
soccer games where only a portion of the playfield is represented at a time, are ex-
amples of scrolling games.
In a 2D game, scrolling can both occur on the horizontal and vertical axis or both at
once. In Super Mario Bros, for example, the character can run from left to right (and
vice versa), but he can also jump on platforms to climb to a higher section of a level.
