Making use of the LayerToCanvas expression and setting the layer's parallax to 0 is one way of dealing with this issue, but I'm having difficulty getting the text to line up properly with the buttons that I placed behind it. Kinda baffled by this one. This method still seems like a roundabout solution, and I get the feeling there's a simpler way of doing things.

In the game that I'm working on, I have text that appears over my character's heads. This text is on a layer with a scale rate of 0, because I don't want the text to shrink when the camera zooms out. However, the x/y positioning of the text in relation to the character gets messed up as I zoom in and out.

I've been trying to figure out the equation I'd need to use in order to keep the text properly aligned with the characters. (Currently I'm just setting the text position to character.X and character.Y) I imagine it's not a terribly complicated equation, but math is sadly not my strong suit, and the solution has been eluding me for the past hour or so..

I've actually constructed a bunch of levels, minus a lot of the detail I plan to add later. I just didn't notice performance issues because my computer is pretty speedy. Then I looked at the Task Manager and realized that the game was using like 1.5 gigs of RAM. It looks like I'm going to have to basically go through and replace every object in every layout that was a part of my giant "mega-art-object"... manually. Trust me, I am kicking myself right now for not recognizing this sooner! :D

Bear in mind I'm not putting anywhere close to 500 objects in any individual layout, as the game is broken up into compact, Metroid-ish size rooms. The issue I was having was purely due to me storing wayyy too much art in a single object.

I think I might not have explained myself well enough. <img src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

I actually read that article prior to starting work on this game. I'm doing my art in a similar fashion to Rayman Origins-- using lots of smaller pieces of art that comprise a layout, and reusing this art whenever possible. When I referred to my "300 pieces of art" that I was using, that's what I was referring to-- smaller pieces of art, not an entire background.

I'm just trying to figure out the most memory-efficient way to get this art onto the screen.

I've been working on a game for awhile and currently have a lot of the background artwork completed. Up until now, I've been placing each piece of art in a separate frame of a single object (which now has around 300 frames). This was a pretty bad idea on my part, because placing the art object into a scene causes the game to eat up TONS of RAM, since all of the art assets are loaded into memory.

I'm considering two options:

• Split the assets into about 12 individual "art" objects, as opposed to 1. My game has around 12 different varieties of backgrounds, so each object would contain the relevant assets.

• Create an individual object for each piece of art. So, 300 objects with 1 frame, instead of 1 object with 300 frames.

I think the latter approach would be better from a memory usage standpoint. I'm curious if there would be any major disadvantage to using this method, in terms of performance?

I get the feeling that there's a simple solution to this issue, but I can't for the life of me figure it out.

I added the tint effect to one of my layers. Then I realized that I didn't want that effect to be present for the entire layer, just parts of the later. I'd like to accomplish this by creating a sprite, adding a tint (or tint mask?) effect, a non-normal blend mode, etc. to it, and placing it over certain parts of the layer. So far, no luck in figuring out how to make the part of the layer behind the sprite look the same as if I had added a tint effect to the entire layer. Any suggestions?

I suppose that would work, but I guess the issue there would be that I'd have to make all of my solid walls into physics objects, which could potentially be bad for performance even if they're just sitting there.. ah well, it's no big deal, I'll find a workaround. Just thought it seemed a bit odd that there's no built-in way to ignore jump-thru and only jump-thru.

Tried that before-- the problem is, once a collision has occurred, the smooth "falling" flow is broken. When the grenade "jumps down", the Y vector gets reset.

I've attempted one solution where I track the Y vector number prior to the collision with the jump-thru floor, and then set the Y vector to that number immediately after the collision. Unfortunately, the "falling" flow still gets ever-so-slightly broken using this method.

I'd like to have enemies in my game stand on a jump-thru platform and toss grenade-like objects down at the player below. These grenade objects would ideally be able to use the platform behavior because of all the built-in physics that come along with it. But, I'd also need the grenade to pass through the jump-thru platform instead of resting on it. Is there any way of getting a platform object to completely ignore collisions with a jump-thru object?

...OK, I just solved my own problem.. Just had to set the Size property to a negative number.

Nevermind!

This may be a really stupid/obvious query. I'm working on composing the backgrounds for my game out of sprites, and I'd like to find the optimal method of mirroring these sprites.

I'm aware that there is a mirror button in the sprite editor. However, if I were to just create two animation frames (one mirrored and one not), this would double the amount of hard disk space I'd be using.

I'm also aware that there is an action that sets objects to 'mirrored', but this would only take effect after the game begins.

What I'd like to be able to do is place a sprite onto a layout and just say "ok, mirror this sprite", so that it immediately appears mirrored within the editor. I would expect this variable to be controlled within the Properties window, but I don't see a "mirror" property or anything like that. Am I missing something here?

That was a really good idea. I changed my implementation to use this method.. works like a charm. Many thanks.