Gombolo wrote:how important is a background.
I mean planets, debris and stuff like that?
Backgrounds are highly encouraged but complex ones aren’t necessarily required.
Functionally, backgrounds can be a core component of a shmup’s level design. Unique background stage elements can serve as a visual aid to the player, helping them keep track of stage progression and associate visual landmarks with enemy placements. This can aid the player in their mental routing. E.g. a player could remember that ‘boat’ enemies will appear in the part of the stage when they see the ocean and position themselves to combat them. In many games the background is essentially a game element by design:
Any Garegga player will tell you that you can predict some of Blackheart’s attacks by looking to where the horizontal ‘center’ of the cloud canyon background is.
The pursuit of aesthetics generally favours visually appealing backgrounds. With the exception of
ChoRenSha, most
every game in the top 25 shmups of all time list has unique level backgrounds. A well designed background can go a long way in giving a game character.
Ark wrote:Negative:
A background can be a distraction to the foreground, if its too busy and blends with foreground.
A background has to work within the game (theme) you are creating
These points are valid; and more visually complex backgrounds require more time and effort to create them. However, Even a minimal, infinitely-repeating pattern background like ChoRenSha uses is usually preferable over no visual elements and just solid black behind the foreground (with exceptions, like GameBoy shmups or games of the late 70’s proto-shmups variety using very limited color pallets). I've seen
freeware dojin games get away with a basic repeating grid background quite nicely, so I'd typically recommend
some sort of visual bg element.
At the end of the day, if your game is set in space, it ought to be easy enough to add basic white dots for stars -
even computer space had those.
