1) Open your image in Photoshop.

2) Locate the 'Crop' button on the left hand side tool bar, click and hold until some more options appear, and then click on the 'Slice Select' tool when it appears.

3) Click on the 'Divide' button at the top of the screen (on the Slice toolbar)

4) Choose how many times you want to cut the image up, and what sizes you want them at. It should be set up to divide them all equally by default.

5) ???

6) Profit!

From there, you can alter the size of your images so that they are all multiples of 32 pixels. Or you can resize the image first, and then cut it up. So long as you don't need to enlarge the images too much, you shouldn't see any noticeable loss in quality.

Yup, using the slice tool. There are plenty of tutorials online for how to use it. Here are a couple I found on the first page of a google search:

mediacollege.com/adobe/photoshop/tool/slice.html

adobepress.com/articles/article.asp

That will cut up the images to whichever size you choose. From there, you just import them into Construct as usual and align them.

EDIT: Something else worth mentioning: I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's easier on the VRAM or loading times... or something... if the image sizes are a multiple of 32 pixels. So 500 would be 512. 1000 would 1024. There's a possibility I'm crazy and making this all up in my head, but I think that's the reason textures in games are always saved in these slightly odd sizes. Something about it just makes it faster/easier to process. Might be worth tweaking the images a little first (extending the height to 1024) and then cutting them down to 512 instead of 500.

7500 is insane! I wouldn't want to go any higher than 2048.

Do you know how to use Photoshop's offset tool? That can help a lot with getting images to tile. And then of course you can just import it into Construct as a tiled background. I understand the frustration though. I'm an artist and would love to use dozens of large unique parallax backgrounds on each of my levels, but that cursed VRAM keeps getting in the way :P

Let me know if you need a hand with the Photoshop work, and I'll see if I can give some pointers or lend you a hand.

Sorry Raiper341, I'm not sure what you're trying to do.

Do you mean you want to know how to make the screen follow the player as he moves along the level? Or do you mean you want the screen to shake when the player is hit by an enemy or collides with an object? Or something else entirely?

Still, that bug could turn out to be a really cool feature when making rocket elevators/teleport lifts in games, just move the block the player stands on and they go with it!

This is true! Thanks for your help with the other issues. Guess this one is just going to take more experimentation than usual before I get it working well.

Sounds like Ramosalvaro knows the answer! <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

But he only speaks Caps Lock Spanish <img src="smileys/smiley19.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Haha! Oh man...

So I've checked the unbounded scrolling box, and used an invisible wall to stop the player getting in view of the black edges. Pretty much exactly the same solution I already had: starting the player roughly 1000 pixels into the level and using an invisible wall. But I may as well tick the unbounded option too in case someone with an insane screen resolution plays. Better to see a black edge than have snapping backgrounds.

I've also had to bite the bullet and just learn through trial and error where the backgrounds need to be placed on the Y axis when using varying Y scroll speeds. Took a while, but it's all working well on various resolutions now (from 1280x720, right up to 1920x1080), so yay!

The crazy issue now is the bonus question(!) I asked about. Thanks to JayJay I got the Obstacle boxes to vanish and appear at will. But his guess about the issues that would lead to were a little off:

"Have to make sure the player doesn't stop sprinting in the middle of one though I guess."

Stopping in the middle turns out to be fine. The player just gets moved up a bit as the object appears from beneath him. Nothing catastrophic there. But... Pressing the shift button to start sprinting while already on top of an obstacle (such as a big tree root) not only teleports the obstacle box off the screen, but also takes the player along for the ride <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Time for some coffee. My brain hates problem solving without a caffeine injection.

They are looping images, yes. I have four large images with transparency (png files) each on their own layer. I then have each layer set to scroll 10% slower than the layer in front. So the first background layer scrolls at 90% speed, the second at 80%, etc.

You can only see the first two layers of the background in the video. The third and fourth are of the tree tops leading into the distance, viewable when the player reaches higher sections of the level. I then want a FIFTH layer showing mountains in the really far distance.

They're large images (each 2048 pixels wide, and either 1024 or 2048 high) so I might have to cut back on the ambition in order to save VRAM. I'm testing it on three different systems, and so far getting smooth gameplay on all three. It's early days though, and I've obviously got a heck of a lot more to add before it's anything like a playable game.

I've made a quick video to show the problem,

I'm starting to throw things together to see what works. It's all work in progress of course, animations, sprites, textures, blah blah blah the usual "please don't crucify my artwork just yet" comments <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle">

I have two issues with the scrolling background at the moment. The first is that it always seems to 'snap' to the edge of the screen, and 'snap' out again when I move away from the edge. I could always have the player's starting position sufficiently into the level so that the edge of the screen is never encountered, but I would rather figure out what's causing the issue and learn how to avoid it in the future.

Secondly, the Y axis looks a little funky. I think it's because all the layers are set to 100% Y scroll speed, so my eye is telling me that it looks odd since they all move up or down at the same speed - whereas they should be slightly offset. However, changing the Y axis scroll speed led to my background appearing at odd locations (I could just about see the tops of the trees. The rest of the background was buried below the player's position).

Any advice on how to deal with Parallax backgrounds? The only tutorials I could find were for C2.

Bonus Question: Those tree roots my wolf runs right over? I want them to have collision detection. Easy enough - I've created small invisible boxes with the 'solid' attribute, the standard approach in CC platformers. But what I also want to do is have a sprint ability where holding down Left Shift makes the wolf run faster and ignore small obstacles like the tree roots, running right over them unhindered. I looked for a way to disable the solid attribute through events, but couldn't see the option. Eg:

Left Shift button is down --> Obstacle: Disable Solid Attribute

Left Shift button is released --> Obstacle: Enable Solid Attribute

Is there any way to achieve this?

Many thanks for reading, and for any advice you can provide <img src="smileys/smiley12.gif" border="0" align="middle">

Glad you got it fixed <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I have the GTX560 ti and don't have any issues with the latest Construct Classic build (latest drivers too). Definitely not the card unless your drivers are out of date.

Yep, like we said, you can't just import a gif file. You first have to find a program that can separate all the gif files into individual frames, and THEN import those frames.

For example, I have this gif image that I created:

<img src="http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc212/darkstorne/Wolf-GIF-1.gif" border="0" />

Since I put that gif image together, I have all the individual frames saved as png files, and it's those png files that I import as my animation.

If it's your own animation, that you created, then you should already have all the individual frames you need. If you just stole someone else's gif and want to use it in your game... moral issues aside (and legal, if you plan to make money from this) you'll need to find a way to cut the gif up into individual jpg or png frames first. I have no idea what program can do that, but I'm sure there are free ones out there if you use Google.

Great find, thanks Funky.