Use case

Living backgrounds for HTML5 games

Opening soon: objects and characters can be made today.

A living background is your background picture with only the parts that should move moving: water, fire, leaves, flags, lanterns, smoke from a chimney. Everything built stays still, and the loop repeats without a seam.

Why parts, not a video

A full-screen moving picture is the most expensive thing a game can show: it does not compress well and it fills memory. A living background keeps the picture as one still and animates only the parts that move, so it costs little more than the still itself.

Making one

1. Upload the background, composed for your layout (a phone background is its own composition, not a crop of the desktop one).
2. Name two to four things that really are in the picture and should move. Concrete beats vague: "the river flows to the left" moves the river; "the scene glows" moves almost nothing.
3. Mark the area your game board or UI covers; motion under it is dropped.
4. Review the loop, then export.

Good to know

• The camera never moves and nothing new enters the picture.
• Mist that should keep travelling suits a scrolling layer in your game better than a loop, which must return to where it started.
• When they open, living backgrounds are on every paid plan, Premium quality on Pro and up. Pricing.