Trouble with singleton and scene changes (Beginner Apologies)

SnapCracklins

Hello. I am new to Godot (and game engines in general outside of avid reading) and I am trying to make a simple scene change operation. I have a Global script and a Control node as a scene handler with the typical ColorRect/AnimationPlayer children that I see in many blackout tutorials using a modulate alpha ramp for the animation. I am using a Button node on each of the two scenes (A ColorRect with a label of "Hello World" and a button on each) to swap back forth. I also am using a Timer node on each scene as a "Buffer" to hold the scene while the fadeout is running. Yes, it's a starter project so I can understand these concepts better so bear with my naivety please.

So the Scenes (outside of the main Control, named stageHand) are: ColorRect - - Label - Button - AnimationPlayer - Timer

The scene change works, my scenes are being instanced from code and a handler (Control Node) object. I am disabling buttons on changes, I even have a global variable that ticks up every time I hit a box. Fade In and Fade Out animations work, but there is a "stutter" between them where the next scene flashes in at the instancing before the fade-in animation begins. I am sure the solution is using a ColorRect on the handler (stageHand) rather than scenes, but when I configure the scripts to do this, the blackout does not show up (my guess is its rendering behind the Child instances) and I have found zero documentation on sorting ColorRect boxes. No errors getting thrown up on code so I am a bit stumped. I am sure it is something simple. All help appreciated.

Autoloading this script for Global at start:

And then this script is in my "main" autoload node, the "stageHand" Control object. (Just noticed an obsolete variable, isFade, is there. I was using that as a boolean to determine which animation (fade or fade-in) would play but it didn't help.)

Then this is the code in my scenes. It's the same in both except in the second scene it swaps back to Scene1, of course.

SnapCracklins

Oh and the stageHand object:

Control Node -> - ColorRect - AnimationPlayer

GlyphTheWolf

Hello,

There is some tips about what I see in your code: 1. If you load scene yourself and add its instance by get_tree().get_root().add_child() then get_tree().change_scene_to() seems unnecessary since it do exactly the same. 2. ResourceLoader.load() may cause stutter since it loads resource in the main thread (unless you call it from another thread, but then you need to be carefull not to load the same resource twice from multiple threads what may be tricky since scene have all tree of dependencies, so it may be not easy to determine what triggered the same resource loading from 2 threads at the same time). To avoid that you should check either ResourceInteractiveLoader or carefully prepare loading thread. 3. Nodes order matters when it comes to scene changes. When you use get_tree().get_root().add_child() or get_tree().change_scene_to() it will add your new scene as last child of root, so it will be on the front.

If you want achieve effect I guess you want you can do that both ways:

Each scene handle its own fade in and fade out Then you need to assure that each new loaded scene will be hidden behind black rectangle before you add it to the scene tree, so you need to save your scene with black rectangle already visible or make that rectangle visible before you call add_child()

There is one scene dedicated for "loading" Then you can prepare singleton Node called "CurrentScene" and another singleton which is your "SceneLoader". Make proper order in autoload: first should be "CurrentScene" and "SceneLoader" should be always kept as last one. Then your "SceneLoader" should play animation on rectangle it holds but new scene should be added always as child of "CurrentScene" that way you will assure proper order, so your new loaded scene should be behind fade in/out effect (which is child of "SceneLoader"). There is one issue with that solution. First scene your game loads is always put as the last child of root, so it won't be child of "CurrentScene" singleton, but you can overcome that by just putting some "splash screen" as first scene and then change to menu with your logic already (but it need to care that special case when "CurrentScene" have actually no children at all and then use last root child as current scene).

Maybe that isn't very clear at the first glance, so I could prepare probably some simple demo if you need (and when I find some time for that).

SnapCracklins

Thanks for that advice. Nitty gritty details like this are something I need to get better at (as you can tell by my sloppy coding). It seems I can't summon child nodes from control nodes so that could be part of my problem too. I'll have a crack at it using your methods too. Maybe I can figure it out soon enough.