Popular background features on Scratch young game designers should know about

One of the fundamental aspects of any game is the journey of the characters involved in it. They travel through various locations and structures throughout the game which construct the background. So, it is crucial to have a detailed grasp on backdrop creation while learning to create a game on platforms like Scratch. The goal is to create a seamless set of backgrounds where the characters can move about freely performing the tasks assigned to them for the game. Here, we discuss about the three basic features of Scratch that are necessary to enable the characters travel seamlessly through various locales.  

Backdrops 
In real life, we follow maps while travelling from one place to another. Similarly, characters within a game also follow maps of the areas where they need to travel. For this reason, two separate backdrops need to be created, one that acts as the ‘top’ part of the map and the other that acts as the ‘bottom’ part. The backdrops keep connecting as and when the characters move between them.  

Borders 
The feature that comes right after backdrops in terms of importance is borders. They are required to connect the backdrops. This, in turn will help in ‘teleporting’ the character to another backdrop. Here, the backdrop itself is able to detect the character moving towards the blue border, and prepares it for change of backgrounds. Here is a simple way to go about it: 

• Open the game making page on Scratch. 
• Choose the ‘Sprite’ option and select the ‘Line’ option under it. 
• Set the position of the Sprite to 0 or -180. 
• Right click on the ‘Line’ Sprite and click on the ‘Duplicate’ option. 
• Now set the Duplicate’s position to 0 or -180.  
• The Line Sprite and the Duplicate serves as the teleport point between the two backdrops that was in turn connected by the borders. 

Teleporting 
When a character touches a border line, the codes in concern detect that and direct the character towards teleporting into the corresponding backdrops. To prevent characters from accidentally teleporting to their current location, separate codes need to be allotted for separate backdrops. For the characters to look like they are really moving from one point to another on the map and not just jumping from point A to B, the characters are usually made to go back to their set position and then start teleporting.