Problem Solving: Lighting (Patreon)

Benefitship contains several different backgrounds, each with variations for day, night, and night with lights off. The thing is, the character sprites were designed for day, and are illustrated in such a light. This means that putting them on the unlit night background makes them look way too bright, and feel out of place.

Luckily, Ren'Py (the engine we used to make Benefitship) comes with a way to tint characters! So we used that to tint the characters in a colour that made them blend better into the background, the colour changing depending on the conditions of the background.

I also noticed that the jump from day to night felt a bit abrupt. This was easily fixed by simply putting the night version on top of the day version and making it slightly see-through. Thus, they blend together, and give a reasonable emulation of a cloudy afternoon/evening.

This new "mid-day" version also has its own colour tint.

All this combined gives you the delightfully integrated look that you see today!