Yesterday, I implemented the fade transitions between combat mode and travel mode. The transitions are performed by way of a special state context. A state context represents a gameplay state, and implements the functions handleEvent, render, renderUI, updateLogic and addFrameTime. The two main state contexts are currently Travel Mode and Combat Mode, but I implemented the mode change as a special context that does not handle input or logic, only addFrameTime to fade out from one level and fade back in to another.

I was dinking around last night with Cam Studio and VirtualDub and I took this crude video of the new GC in action. It's choppy, so you can't really see the smooth camera switches, since I suck at making videos. The video is just a minute or two of current GC gameplay. It begins in Travel mode (at the moment only distinguishable as that mode with no UI or trees or anything but dirt and mountains) then a few seconds in I hit the magic key to generate a combat map and it fades to the combat map where there are 2 player controlled units and 4 really, really stupid AI units. A couple turns of combat are shown, after which I hit the magic button again (in the real version, escaping from combat won't be quite that easy) and return to Travel mode.