thank you all very much for your feedback and support
@7heSama: I like you fog-of-war idea, I don't know if I will add it for the specific stage I'm thinking of, but it could be cool to add in a different stage as a gameplay mechanic.
haven't gotten much done, been feeling a little bit of the pre-christmas blues. however coffee and a surprise day off of work tomorrow has given me some motivation, so I got some stuff done.
first, there's a very subtle transition effect between screens. the gif is 30fps & the game runs at 60fps so that's why it's kinda hard to see here. wanted it to be as short as possible to not hinder gameplay.
in addition to looking nice, this also serves a secondary function. but first I need to explain what I'm doing.
to simplify the art style even more, I have decided to render all tiles to a surface with no alpha. but why??? well, the reason is so that I can also draw sprites to the same surface, then draw the whole surface with half alpha as the background. but ... why would you want to do that?
this means I could animate background objects (such as manipulating image angle, like the tree branches), without causing any alpha overlap between multiple objects and tiles as well. this would look more professional and would fit in line with the overall art style.
however as a result of my tile drawing method, there is a slight delay where tiles are not drawn when a room starts. this is less obvious with the transition, basically.
once I start adding animated background objects the method will become obvious, but right now the only thing being drawn is tiles so it it has no effect yet. this also means that there is (visually) only one background layer.
I wanted to do this to make sure that the gradients are never hidden by too much tile clutter, as I feel the gradients are an essential part of the atmosphere and aesthetic. this is also why I made the lights hard-edged.
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