RENNEVA'S PROFILE

author=Liberty
Yes, there is. Parallaxing is basically this (or what it used to be called before... well, whatever. History lesson not necessary). Basically, draw your background and set it as a parallax in the map options. Then you'll want to cut out the pieces that are supposed to be set to the same level as the hero (things they can't walk on, but aren't overlapping them) and put them on a chipset (yeah, I know 'no tilesets', but this part you don't have to mess around with the patterns or anything. Just straight copy/dump). After that, anything that is supposed to be overhead, make into a picture (and if you have multiple overhead layers, then make a series of pictures. The lower the picture number, the lower it's height on the z plane, so picture 1 would show up below picture 2).

To get an idea of how it would work, check out Sunset Over Imdahl - it's a game made in the early-mid 2000's and used this technique.