Well. BG's are made out of 8x8 tiles, and the total tile number is limited. The editor, when importing, tries to reduce the tile number, by merging similar tiles. For example, if you have a big part of your image filled with a solid color, only ONE tile will be used to fill the whole area.
So, to improve the quailty, you should:
- First, enable the grid in your image editor, and set it to 8x8. That's how the BG is split into tiles.
- Avoid gradients. Especially if they fill a big part of the image. These need lots of unique tiles.
- Align vertical and horizontal objects to tile boundaries.
- Make copies of the same object exactly the same, rather than "a bit similar"
- Make copies of the same object be aligned with tiles the same way. That way the same tiles will be used for both copies. Look at NSMB's clouds in the BGs, for example.
- Make sure BG areas that are always off-screen are filled with a solid color. For example, if your level only scrolls horizontally, fill the rest of the BG with a solid color.
These tricks work if your BG is hand-drawn and you can modify it. If it's a real photograph, then making it look good will be way harder.
These are some tricks that can improve photographs:
- Choose simple photographs. Simple means that it doesn't have a lot of detail, that it has big areas filled with more or less similar colors.
- Split the photograph between the two BG layers. That way you'll have the DOUBLE tile space.
For example: Top BG: 256 transparent pixels, 256 photo pixels. Bottom BG: 256 photo pixels, 256 white pixels. Make the two BG's scroll the same speed, and it will look like they are just one. (BTW, i need to implement this trick into the editor)
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