Creating elements in sidescrolling platformer

butterbean

So I have a question about a couple of elements of a sidescrolling platformer that I have yet to attempt, and wanted to see how others are approaching it:

1) How would I spawn, say, a creature in a sidescrolling platformer running the other direction of the player that is non-collidable, and just an added element for looks

2) Also, if you have a tree in the background, and want to animate leaves falling, would you create the tree as a separate image, and then spawn leaves in that position? If you spawn leaves, would it be relative to scene, or relative to actor? And you'd find a place somewhere on the X and Y axis correct?

These are simple questions, but I just want to see how people are approaching this!

Thanks

(sorry haven't been on here as of lately, and should have posted this under game design support, my apologies!)

JGary321

1) Spawn actor, non collideable, move to (maybe an area off screen), destroy actor.
(this is my guess, haven't actually done it)

2) I thought about doing animated backgrounds in my game. I thought about the leaf thing also. I was going to make the tree separate from the background & then animate the leaf (or leaves) falling from the tree. I wouldn't do the spawn actor or anything like that. In my opinion making it an animation would be easier.

butterbean

1) that sounds about right, I'm going to try it

2) I think animating the tree would be easier too than spawning leaves and animating them

Also, in a sidescrolling platformer, I have gravity added to the scene, and all the elements, but I want clouds to be able to pass through, and since gravity has been added to the scene, they move in an angle downwards.

How do you prevent this? I tried constrain to y axis, but that didn't work.

Should I change the physics of the clouds?

Thanks!

JGary321

I haven't tinkered with gravity yet, so I'm not sure on that one.