The main menu of AD2 is still pretty much a blank screen! Albeit a red blank screen, with a couple of white rectangles sliding into place..

So is the addiction of the game at this point, that it's quite easy to click the mouse, and accidentally play for 20-minutes.. whoops!

I have managed to tweak a few ingame things, though. And the Menu -> Game -> Menu transitions are more or less working, except for one small thing.
I'm not sure how to fade in a level, at this point.
The last game started off with the small image of the map, it scrolled to the center of the screen, and then zoomed in to become the real map.
This time, that can't happen.
Unfortunately, the switch from 3D background to 2D background has killed that nice little effect, so I'm going to have to come up with something nice, and fluffy, in a vein attempt to beat it..
I'm not sure what that is, though!

Last time in the main menu, you had lots of little maps to flick through. This helped you choose which map to play at a glance. Unfortunately, this time, that probably isn't going to work, since each map can be 160x160 pixels.. Unless of course, I only show a couple of maps onscreen at once.. Which I'd rather not end up doing..
I'm currently considering an on-the-fly map doodler.
The player clicks a level name on the left, the previous map slides out, and the new map slides in..

This way, not only do I limit how much is onscreen at once, but I can also redraw over the same map image, over and over again.. That's SO much easier to do, since we're not holding every single map in memory, all the time!!! (yikes!)

Also, I'm thinking that I might leave the map in memory.. I haven't added any real changes to the level at this point.. So, a level layout is always the same, even if you splatter it with blood!
What this means is, if you start the same level again, I can quickly get it going without then having to sit and re-render the whole map each and every time.
Obviously, picking a different map will require the re-render, but I'll probably be able to do that during the map doodler thing, and keep everything up to speed..
Maybe!
Either way, it'll mean you can restart the same level quicker this time, which is always handy.

Now, less of the typing.. time to get back to that menu.. again!

(Oh, and the editor now loads and saves without any issues.. I've been playing 3 or 4 different levels )