Single image backgrounds - Is there a way to do this, or a reason I shouldn't?

[DireSloth]

Hello, RPG Maker community! I'm a fairly new developer, currently teaching myself how to make my own pixel art for VX Ace games - see my attachment for an example of where I'm at.


I think I've got the hang of making looping tiles, autotiles, and transparency, but I realized the tileset I'm making for my current game won't actually go anywhere other than a small one-screen room. I feel like there should be a way to make a single image to serve as the background instead of a painstakingly constructed tileset, letting me create a detailed one-off environment much quicker. I could then use a completely transparent tileset just to determine what objects can be passed through. I imagine overusing this would make the game file larger and performance worse, but as long as the image is smaller than a ~500x~500 tileset it wouldn't be that big a hit, would it? Is this a common technique, and how do I go about it?


Apologies if this is a common question, I couldn't find anything and I feel like I can't describe this well enough to search for it. Thank you in advance!

 

[Andar]

That is called parallax mapping in this community, because it uses the parallax option (originally intended for true parallax pictures) to replace the tileset map.


You'll need a script to fix the parallax to the map, but there have been half a dozen such scripts available for years on the master script list.


You should find several tutorials on parallax mapping on this forum, search for them for the details.