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Hi guys. This would be my first post . I'm a huge Sonic fan (obviously) as well as a video game music aficionado. I'm not very skilled at developing games, so I stick to making music. I will post more stuff here eventually. Hope you like it (FLAC, MIDI) - warm, happy stage music made with VOPM + sampled drums (TheEightBit's Ultimate Genesis SoundFont)

"Constructive criticism" is absolutely useless if you have no tact in delivering it. Why should anyone ever take your opinion seriously if you just sound like you're attacking them? You're out of line. If you didn't like the lib, give your opinion that you didn't like the lib. But that last little comment was completely and totally unnecessary. There is a very clear difference between criticizing and being flat-out insulting. It doesn't make you sound professional, and it damn sure doesn't make anyone think any higher of your opinions just because you're so extreme with them. It just makes you sound like a little prick.

After seen a post asking about a tutorial about BG's, i decided to make a tutorial of how to make a decent background. This is what i do for making my custom BGs. No bg show here can be used, so no ask about having it. Please, rememer that my 1st language is not english so there will be a lot of mispellings, grammar errors and vocabulary fault, so excuse me about it, notice me about something that is hard to understand or edit it if you have power to do. 1st step: Creating an idea This is the most important step. Think in what you want and try to make it as background is the most important thing. So, make a clear image in your mind of what you want. Once you has been done it, split that into parralax and ground. 2nd step: Pallete It is very important to define wich colours you are going to use. It is ugly to watch a level using objects defined in different palletes. Diferent styles of browns ore blues can be annoying. Just define a pallete. Define how meny colour tunes you are going to use. Parralax and ground can have different palletes. I ussually use 3 colour palletes. The basic, the secondary and the aditional pallete. Each piece that composes a tile, should use just one colour pallete, or 2 in objects that have more than one colour, but no more. For example, grass uses the green pallete and the flowers in the grass uses the red and yellow palletes, but because flowers have 2 colours. Using for example blue and red in the same flower would look good. Using colours is a really important thing. Be sure that your pallete has enough colours to work on pieces. A sonic game uses like 3-6 colours for one pallete, but depending of the colour quality, it could have more or less. Also be sure ground has more less the same colour pallete than the sprites you are going to use. Having sprites with 64 different colours would look out of place in a 4 colour scenary. Also be sure to have enough contrast between the different colours of the pallete. A bright place has bright colours, sure, but shadows always exist, so be sure to have a dark colour to draw darker parts, or else it would look plain. Lets use this pallete for the example. 3nd step: Ground layer 1- Tiles A background is composed of different tiles. The join of all the tiles is what makes the ground. The tiles can have any size and each tile can have a different size. But for a "better" join of the tiles i recommend you to use 16x16 or 32x32 tiles. If you need bigger tiles, just multiply that, so you can have 32x32, 64x64, 128x128, 32x64, 64x32 and a large convination of those numbers. Having a 16x16 tile will make you have problems when trying to make all them to fit. Even more problems if tryin to use an non 2 multiplier number (like 13 or 34). So just use 16, 32,64, 128,256... 4rd step: Ground layer 2- Internal ground Ground is composed of different kind of tiles. I ussually split it in floor, ceiling and internal ground, but it can also be splitted in walls and any other kind you want to. Now lets begin with the internal ground. Just make the standard squared tile. make a 32x32 square and draw on it using the selected palletes. What to draw depends of your idea. Some sand, a metallic ground, leafs, wood, and anything you want. Be sure it does fit itself in the 4 directions. Make a copy of the tile in a 3x3 square and see if everything fits correctly. If not, continue editing. Bricks always fit but not brick ones are hard to fit. If you cant draw yourself yuo can pick tiles from other backgrounds, convinate them and edit them. Sometimes flipping, inverting colours or mixing gives interesting results. Once you have the main tile done, make new tiles. The more tile variety, the more interesting will the background be. If you have not enough ideas, try looking at other backgrounds. But for sure, make all them to fit between them.