AM2R has workarounds everywhere. When I get stuck with a problem, there's times when the best way to solve it is to avoid the situation altogether.

This happened with subtractive blend modes. Whenever I used them, the transitions to the map screen broke, and artifacts appeared on the screen. Every once in a while I start to experiment, and I did find a way to solve that problem... a workaround within a workaround.





But what do you want subtractive blend modes? - you might ask.

Among other things, it can be used to create a real, multi-source lighting engine.





The one in confrontation just supports the light emitted by Samus. In a couple of minutes I was able to do some surface magic and come up with a pretty fast lighting engine. With this new tool, I can make some of the existing areas more atmospheric, and change the way certain places are designed.





For example, the lower part of Area 3 was going to be just a vertical shaped breeding grounds area, with a different tile. Now it's a dark and mysterious place, with bio-luminescent plants and insects that light up parts of the area.





Gammas look pretty scary? Try fighting one in the dark, only seeing its electrical attacks.













Now, before you scream "What??? Another feature that's gonna delay the game even moar????!?", it's current implementation involve adding a variable to a room, nothing else. I do have to add a property to the enemies or objects that emit light, but that's pretty simple. I still have to test it in more systems, and optimize it a bit, but for now it's looking really good.





About the rest of the progress... The lower part of Area 3 is being modified to fit better with the dark room motif. The tilesets are being expanded, adding much more variety, and sticking a little more to the overall area design of the rest of the game. The upper part of Area 3 has some small unique mechanics that I'm still tweaking.





It's been a couple of difficult months, and having a small project, even something that goes well, means a lot. Thank you very much for the awesome support you showed, I really appreciate it.