Lots of great stuff there. Thanks for the help guys.
@Plash: Spaces are an old habit from my uni days when the professors would hammer into us how TABs rendering on different systems cannot be assumed to be consistent while spaces could, we'd lose marks on assignments if we used TABs for indenting.
Mind you now that I've tried it I've noticed that the MaxIDE keeps my indent level if I return after using them (it doesn't for spaces) so this is another huge plus for using TABs for indenting... now I just have to break those years of training.
@Sledge: Good call on the variable name for sf, spent so much time on all the others and that one slipped through :(
I like the relative positioning version for scrolling the stars you used. I'm updating as we speak.
And thanks for letting me know how problematic the tilemapping would be, I thought that it would save on processing if there was only 3 or so image objects to handle, but now I've stopped to think about it I realise how silly it is to try optimise this much.
Yes they are animated - basic at the moment (sinlge layer scroll with varying speeds) but I've created a larger 'star' version and want to play around with kind of a 'twinkling' effect as they scroll - so rather than keeping them as points to Plot I've converted them to Pixmaps and I'll do a variable speed 3 stage animation as they 'grow' and 'shrink' by a couple of pixels while keeping their relative positions. It'd be nice if I could apply opacity levels on a per pixel basis - but I've not seen an easy command to do that and I'm not sure how to do that on my own via code... yet! I'm thinking 3 layers at the end, with the back going slowest and only being 1 pixel while the top moves fastest and has the largest 'growth' animation. Then I get to add in the player ship :)
Once again thanks so much everyone you've all helped a great deal!
Back to the drawing board :)
@Plash: Spaces are an old habit from my uni days when the professors would hammer into us how TABs rendering on different systems cannot be assumed to be consistent while spaces could, we'd lose marks on assignments if we used TABs for indenting.
Mind you now that I've tried it I've noticed that the MaxIDE keeps my indent level if I return after using them (it doesn't for spaces) so this is another huge plus for using TABs for indenting... now I just have to break those years of training.
@Sledge: Good call on the variable name for sf, spent so much time on all the others and that one slipped through :(
I like the relative positioning version for scrolling the stars you used. I'm updating as we speak.
And thanks for letting me know how problematic the tilemapping would be, I thought that it would save on processing if there was only 3 or so image objects to handle, but now I've stopped to think about it I realise how silly it is to try optimise this much.
Yes they are animated - basic at the moment (sinlge layer scroll with varying speeds) but I've created a larger 'star' version and want to play around with kind of a 'twinkling' effect as they scroll - so rather than keeping them as points to Plot I've converted them to Pixmaps and I'll do a variable speed 3 stage animation as they 'grow' and 'shrink' by a couple of pixels while keeping their relative positions. It'd be nice if I could apply opacity levels on a per pixel basis - but I've not seen an easy command to do that and I'm not sure how to do that on my own via code... yet! I'm thinking 3 layers at the end, with the back going slowest and only being 1 pixel while the top moves fastest and has the largest 'growth' animation. Then I get to add in the player ship :)
Once again thanks so much everyone you've all helped a great deal!
Back to the drawing board :)