AYUSSHMUP Devlog #3 - "Animation"

Right, as promised, this devlog is about the animation of the purple quadrangles in the background. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, here's the screenshot from the last devlog.

Sorry for the recycling, I'll upload a new screenshot tomorrow, I promise.

Prologue

With the background animation, I have two choices:

1. I take serprex's suggestion and make the quadrangles dance around merrily, changing size, but doing it in proportion to each other, to prevent unsightly gaps and overlaps.

2. I take Nighthawk and Cesque's idea of making it parallax. If I understand correctly, this means that the various layers of the background will move at different speeds to each other, probably in a downward direction, because it's a SHMUP.

In the following chapters, I'll discuss how I would go about each of the methods, and how I think they might look.

Chapter 1 - "Transformation"

I've never done anything like this before, and it seems quite challenging, but, with a little perseverance, I'm sure I can pull through.

My current theory on how I'm going to achieve this is by altering the sizes of various part-surfaces before drawing them directly to the screen. I'd need to make sure that if surface[64] got bigger, surfaces [63],[65],[73],[74],[75],[53],[54]&[55] got smaller.

I'd probably randomize the surface_to_grow value, and then randomize the amount by which it would grow and the maximum size that it would grow to. It may be a problem if sufaces next to each other grow, but I'm sure I can figure a way around it, such as the theoretically easy idea of checking whether a surface is growing before shrinking it, or more challenging idea of not allowing surfaces next to each other to grow.

Then, on a surface basis, I should probably try to make individual rectangles grow and shrink, but that might be difficult.

If I can figure out a way around these silly surfaces, which is rather obvious now that I think about it, maybe I should just get rid of them. Well anyway, I'll see.

How will it look? It should look quite good, but may get irritating, so I'll have the option to turn it off somewhere.

Chapter 2 - "Parallax"

This'll be infinitly easier than transformations, but where's the fun in that?

I'd probably need to scrap the surfaces, and then allow each rectangle colour to move at a certain speed. Then I'll just need to decide which speeds look the nicest.

How will it look? The colours are rather samey, so I'm not sure it'll work out too well. I could be wrong though.

Chapter 3 - "Goals"

Life has a terrible way of preventing me from doing things I really need to do. Like work on AYUSSHMUP.

Yep, that's right, I didn't get my goals completed yesterday, due to a variety of colourful diversions, ranging from helping my mother with her email at a webcafe because the phone got cut off, and letting my sister play The Sims 2, because, in all fairness, she's paying me, and would've pestered me about it all afternoon.

That, and Fedora Spade Episode 4 was released =).

Goals For Today

* Yesterday's goals. With all this stuff I've gotta do today, I have no time to retype them!

* Animate the background. I'm currently leaning towards transformations, but we'll see what happens.

Epilogue

Here's to hoping I actually manage to get some things done today. Stay tuned for the final verdict in the great transformations vs parallax war!

F1ak3r