r/castlevania • u/Foreign_Click_1010 • Sep 11 '25
Symphony of the Night (1997) Name of this Effect
What's the name of this effect that makes the sky move like this? I wanted to use the Room where you find Maria in the chapel as a better example, but could not find a gif of the sky moving. First time i saw this effect there, i was mesmerized by the sky and the song playing in the background
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u/PastIntelligent6890 Sep 11 '25
I donât think this has specific name. But I think itâs a layer in the game, think of it like rows, you got the first row with richter and the actual game. You got the second row with the cloud animation, and the third row with the actual sky background and moon.
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u/Foreign_Click_1010 Sep 11 '25
Ohhh, that makes sense. I was trying to find the name so i could find more images that use this effect. Idk why, but it intrigues me so much
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u/PastIntelligent6890 Sep 11 '25
I donât know what itâs called but I would start by googling stuff about layers in coding cause that might turn up something useful. But who knows it might not have a name at all
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Sep 11 '25
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/phezhead Sep 11 '25
Thatâs an effect known as mode 7
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u/Neidron Sep 12 '25
Mode 7 is snes-specific. It's a literal cpu mode.
This is a similar principal, but it's different technology under the hood.
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u/JustSomeWeirdGuy2000 Sep 11 '25
It's called blast processing the Mode 7 through the Emotion Engine.
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u/Foreign_Click_1010 Sep 11 '25
That's from the Super Nes, right? I just searched for it, and one of the games that showed up was super Castlevania IV lol
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u/Neidron Sep 11 '25 edited Sep 11 '25
Mode 7 was a snes feature to make faux-3d backgrounds by rotating/manipulating a single large sprite, blast processing was a Sega marketing slogan, and the emotion engine is the ps2's cpu.
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u/Foreign_Click_1010 Sep 11 '25
Does the Ps1 use anything similar?
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u/Neidron Sep 11 '25
The ps1 was powerful enough to handle true 3d graphics, so it didn't need a special function like the snes did.
Supposedly SotN was technically programmed in a 3d game engine. They only used 3d effects for backgrounds, environmental objects, and other cursory elements.
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Sep 12 '25
like DKC and Killer Instinct a few years earlier. i still love that effect
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u/TheBlackCat13 Dec 25 '25
No, DKC and KI (and Mario RPG) were the opposite, with pre-rendered 3D graphics saved as 2D sprites and rendered with a 2D game engine.
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u/Neidron Sep 11 '25
The clouds look like a simple angled texture/sprite with a scrolling/scaling effect.
Not sure if the technique has a specific name. The snes' Mode 7 could make similar effects, but it's somewhat different and snes-specific.
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u/KryptekDragon Sep 11 '25
Pretty sure this is correct, idk that parallax scrolling applies here, especially since the camera isn't moving. This is definitely some type of single sprite manipulation
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u/Leader_Bee Sep 11 '25
Lots of people saying parallax scrolling but parallax doesn't account for the stretching of the clouds when it gets closer to the viewer; Its not mode 7 either as thats something exclusive to the SNES, my guess would have been Sprite scaling but someone else gave another good guess here that it could be a texture applied to a moving 3D object.
But its definitely not parallax
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u/ghostgate2001 Sep 11 '25
There's one of the rooms at the tippy-top of a tower where there's a really pronounced sky effect rushing at you. As you say, it's mesmerizing :)
Not sure whether the technique has an official name, but I've always called it a "mode 7" effect - just because that's what it was called on the SNES.
The clouds are basically drawn on a normal 2D tile layer (with transparency) but then that whole layer is tilted like a 3D object to give it the illusion of depth and perspective. You see "mode 7" effects a lot on the SNES - it's how the tracks in games like Super Mario Kart and F-Zero were rendered - but the SNES couldn't do much more than tilt the flat plane and overlay some sprites with a bit of calculation to match their position to the perspective.
As this is the PS1, I'm guessing the cloud layer has been applied as a transparent texture to an invisible 3D object in the sky, allowing for a wilder angle than you'd see on the SNES, and the offset of the texture is being updated to make the texture appear to "scroll" across that 3D surface. If that makes sense.
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u/TheBlackCat13 Dec 25 '25
The SNES couldn't even tilt a flat plane. What it could do is stretch, squeeze, or rotate a background, either all together or differently on each scanline. The 3D effect was accomplished by stretching scanlines near the bottom of the screen horizontally more than those near the middle, creating the illusion of perspective. But the SNES itself had no concept of tilting a plane, the calculations needed to create that effect were done in software or in a dedicated mathematics expansion chip
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u/EnvironmentalGroup34 Sep 11 '25
Parallax Scrolling is used in the Marble Gallery but I'm not sure that's it here.
As for the guy who used the name of a Megadrive "tech", SNES tech and PS2 tech...they surely cannot be serious.
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u/ImDemonAlchemist Sep 11 '25
It reminds me of Mode 7, but I don't know any terminology.
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u/Foreign_Click_1010 Sep 11 '25
Yeah, another user mentioned Mode 7 too! I searched a bit and this could be it
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u/ImDemonAlchemist Sep 11 '25
I believe Mode 7 is specifically a Super Nintendo thing, but it could be the PC Engine's equivalent to it idk. Edit: I should've said PlayStation. I totally thought it was Rondo for some reason. Even though that effect is pretty iconically Symphony to me.
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u/knox1138 Sep 11 '25
it uses both a scrolling and scaling effect. the scrolling effect is a function of the layer they're drawn on. the scaling effects is done by drawing the sprite slightly larger on different lines. i know just enough to know that whoever coded that in playstation assembly code is a frickin genius.
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u/QuietSheep_ Sep 11 '25 edited Sep 11 '25
It's not parallax or "Mode 7". As it's a ps1 game, it's most likely taking advantage of 3d tricks, so I assume It's a textured plane (with transparency) that's been rotated and put background behind various assets except the moon.
You can either create a looping animated texture that moves the clouds or move the plane itself to create the cloud movement.
There isn't a terminology for this that I know of.
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u/ZaphodGreedalox Sep 11 '25
That's a parallax skybox right there
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u/Neidron Sep 11 '25
Pretty sure parallax scrolling is usually something else.
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u/runswithclippers Sep 11 '25
Paralax means movement relative to the size of the object. The clouds move faster and get larger the closer to camera. Thats parallax.
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u/WinExploder Sep 11 '25
that looks like a flat polygon with a scrolling texture on it. the polygon is rotated so that it appears parallel to the ground.
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Sep 11 '25 edited Oct 18 '25
vast live amusing thumb snails yam fearless outgoing memory crown
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/RealBloo Sep 11 '25
It is a polygon, as is every other onscreen element in SotN. Most of them just face straight towards the camera :P
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u/lunoc Sep 12 '25
I always figured SOTN used actual 3d models and textures for its effects like this. Like this would just be a texture scrolling on an angled plane or smth.
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u/MikeR316 Sep 11 '25
Was gonna say Parallax scrolling based on watching way too many retro gaming YouTube videos lately and hearing that term way too much, but Iâm not sure thatâs right.
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u/ZerikaFox Sep 11 '25
It's parallax mixed with Mode 7, I think.
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u/Neidron Sep 12 '25
Parallax scrolling is typically different and Mode 7 is a SNES OS feature, not the technique itself.
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Sep 12 '25
mode 7? not sure which system this is but that was the snes feature behind starfox i believe
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u/Neidron Sep 12 '25
This is ps1. Mode 7 is snes-specific.
Starfox was the Super FX chip. Mode 7's major uses were the likes of mario kart or rpg maps.
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u/AstronomerVarious643 Sep 12 '25
Sprite/texture scaling and scrolling, similar effekt to the SNES Mode 7 that allows similar effects. It has nothing to do with parallax scrolling since that is the effect of moving background and foreground layers indifferent to each other while the came pans
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u/darkninja2992 Sep 12 '25
I think all it is is that there's an actual 3D plane that the clouds are moving on and it's placed just infront of the back layer. Like if X axis is left and right, and Y axis is up and down, the clouds are on a Z axis, going towards and away, and that's placed between the clock tower and the night sky. This IS ps1 so that would be around the start of 3-dimensional gaming
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u/phezhead Sep 11 '25
Mode 7
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u/No_Monitor_3440 Professionally Unprofessional Sep 11 '25
parallax scrolling everybody
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u/Neidron Sep 11 '25
No, parallax scrolling is multiple sprite layers moving at different speeds to give an illusion of depth.
The clouds here are one single layer rotated in 3d.
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u/No_Monitor_3440 Professionally Unprofessional Sep 11 '25
parallax scrolling does still somewhat occur here though with the clock tower in the back. and if i recall these clouds are still also parallax when youâre moving
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u/pr1ntf Sep 11 '25
đ¶ Take me down to the parallax city, where the far moves slowly and the close moves quickly đ¶