TobiObito4ever

Regular Mapping - Actually efficient.

Parallax Mapping - "Duh... Let's blow all my memory on a 10000x10000 image file because I am too lazy to do it properly! That's a wonderful idea! Derp... Why is my game slow, crashes all the time, and take forever to load?"

Don't get me wrong, Parallax Mapping isn't that bad as long as the maps are pretty small, but: A. I am really tired of people complaining about things that are caused by their own bad habits and B. 90% of parallax maps I have seen are just tilemaps with a few touch ups.

@Kayzee I don't think you should be so hard on parallax mapping. Some people can make really good level designs by drawing them.

I have a little fan game I'm working on, and there are certain levels that represent characters' minds, so a regular map really doesn't cut it. If I visualize a character's psyche to be represented by a giant sunflower, there's no way I can regular map that and make it look good. The solution is to use a parallax background.

You might be surprised what you can do with custom tilesets and large event graphics or other sprites. But in any case, like I said, Parallax Mapping isn't that bad as long as the maps are pretty small. I think it would be fine to use, for example, the kind of static backgrounds that old PlayStation RPGs used. But parallax background aren't really often used that way from what I have seen. Instead of a high quality background that is only a screen or two big, it looks to me like most people just take a screenshot of a huge map and draw things over top of it.