SpritesMind.Net

Does anyone know if the whole energy bar area is done with sprites, a BG layer, or some combination of both, and if it's a combination, which parts are using what?

I ask because there's clearly some stages that look to be using the two background layers for some full overlapping parallax, yet they still also manage to display the energy bar area on top while showing the rest of the visuals of both background layers behind it.

Now, in some stages it's fine because one of the backgrounds is never shown high enough on-screen to eat into the area of the screen where the energy bar is shown, so I can imagine it could be done with simply the window feature on those stages, but that's not true of all of them, like Zangief's and Vega's stages for example.

I'd just like someone to clear this up for me so I can understand how the Genesis is effectively showing three fully overlapping graphical layers in some stages when the Genesis can technically only show two fully overlapping background layers, and any HUG/GUI elements that use the window feature can only show a single BG layer directly behind wherever it is displayed due to the window feature taking up part of one of the BG layers itself.

So, again, I just want to know if the whole energy bar area is done with sprites, a BG layer, or some combination of both, and if it's a combination, which parts are using what?

I'm especially curious as to how it's done on Vega's stage, as I really don't see how they could use sprites for either the background fence layer or the entire scene on the other background layer, so I have to imagine that whole energy bar area is done with sprites there, yet there's no visible sprite flicker even when the two fighters are jumping up into and overlapping with the energy bar area visually.

It is sprites, even for Vega's area. Play the game in Blastem and enable the priority layer window, and you'll see how they did it. It's used for a lot of stages around the top of the status bar.

So it's the HUD that's sprites even in say Vega's stage? Or are some of the parts of the background there sprites?

The HUD is not sprites (well, not all of it. The names and the timer value are):
The dark red and green are BG layers (priorities). And the dark purple-pink are sprites. You can see that just the top left and right pieces are sprites on the fence. When the screen scrolls up though, there's no need for them and the full BG layer replaces them. Almost all stages do this. So the usage of sprites around the HUD are dynamic and depend on the place of the HUD when scrolling. But the majority of the HUD is not sprites.

Ah, very interesting. And a very smart way of getting around the background limitations there. Thanks for posting the details.