---I was in a grumpy mood the other night and I'm sorry that I came across pretty harsh.
Anyways, my main thing is just because something was done poorly in the past or has (even a lot of) bad examples doesn't mean it can't be done right. I just am getting a little tired of new ideas somewhat consistently getting shat upon here. I admit all ideas are not great and maybe even most ideas aren't good. But they should be given a fair chance.
-----
so as with any background; if it's animated it just kind of goes without saying, imo, how they should be done but again, this is rather subjective. I know how I would design something like this but at this point it seems rather pointless to go into detail. Becaaaaaaaaaause it seems that people just keep doing it their way anyway regardless of many multiple suggestions/rants to tell people to do it a different way Which I'm not saying is right or wrong...
----

I *think* I might prefer Nepster's suggestion of using objects). Using objects would at least give you more freedom for being artistic.

Quote from: GigaLem on April 19, 2017, 03:16:22 AM

someone's background could have twinkling stars

I feel that namida's approach to this in his LemPlus Space style is more suitable for stars: Make them (moving) background objects with random start frame. This offers a lot more freedom than a fixed twinkling star background.

Quote from: möbius on April 20, 2017, 01:03:48 AM

By "this" I meant moving background images. I thought the bees were that, apparently they are not. Maybe they are just an object.

The bees are moving background objects, and can be hidden by the appropriate setting.

wait what??? I'm so confused now. I have not yet used this feature yet. If I get time soon I will look into this because obviously I'm missing something. IfIf this already exists, then why is there even an issue of moving backgrounds not being possible?

Sorry, GigaLem. It was not my intention to upset you. So please let me try to explain my point in a hopefully more neutral way:

Why do we have background images?
Apart from automatic paving, background images are just moving background objects (which should better be named as moveable background objects) without animations nor the ability to move around. So why do we have these two different types of objects? Graphic style designers and level creators could do everything (almost) equally well if all background images would be turned into movable background objects. But players of said levels want that the game runs smoothly even for large levels with lots of objects and on an old computer. As backgrounds have to be drawn on the whole level, i.e. on a very large area, they tend to create a lot of work for the computer. So we tried to optimize the drawing procedure and it turned out that it can be optimized very well, as long as the background is static, i.e. does not change from frame to frame. So to be able to use this optimization, background images were created that deliberately do not have all the features one could imagine.

As a graphic style designer: If I have a sprite for a background, what object type should I use?
No trigger object, a.k.a. decoration piece:

• If the piece is an exit top.
• If you want to trigger more rants by Simon.

Moving background:

• If your object has any kind of animation.
• If your object should (have the ability to) move around in the level.
• If your object should only appear a few times on the screen or if you want to give the level designer the frexibility to put it whereever they want it.

Background Image:

• The rest: If your object is not animated, and the background should be paved with this image.

I hope this helps you to decide what kind of object to use. So, GigaLem, please add your color-changing background as a moving background object.

Moving backgrounds may have an animation (e.g. the stars in namida's Space style). So they can have subtle back and forth movements, ... You just can't do it with a static image and setting a movement in the level editor, but have to set the animation already when creating the style.

...and making too many "decoration" objects is not nice either as this adds a lot of menial work for level designers, and would deter people from making levels in that graphic set.

Currently this is true, but when we (hopefully soon) move to the new file-type version, you will be able to resize background objects. So the workload of level designers is to place one object in the level and set its size correctly, instead of selecting the correct background image. I think we can ask this of level designers.

The main problem with having it as moving background is that i have to place it myself over and over and over again, [...]

Sorry, but this is the best solution we can currently offer you. For future improvements that tackle exactly this problem (and are already coded), please see the second half of my reply #19.

[...]where as a animated background does it for you without slowing neolemmix down

This is simply not true: An animated background will either slow down NeoLemmix or will require two to three times as much memory as the current NeoLemmix version.