@eishiya Aw thanks!!

I don't know if my way is applicable to yours, but the way mine works is in this order:
- player touches the "warp" spot on the ground
- controls are relinquished from the player (they can't move or pause)
- the transition effect passes over the screen (mine is an image; this is probably very suboptimal)
- when the transition is completely covering the screen, THEN the player warps to the next map

(didn't realize there was a text limit, continued in the next reply!)

@bonbonbunny I implemented it yesterday. I had to delay the activation of the next map and keep the previous map active for a while. Before, it would load the next map too quickly, before the transition got to play.

@eishiya Oh that's great that you got it!!!!! Pretty much the same thing I was trying to describe, but I took too long. 😅

@eishiya (continued from previous reply)

- this probably varies from engine to engine but in Game Maker I have to spawn in the transition image in the new map, placed so that the screen is still completely covered
- finish the transition effect
- controls are returned to the player (they can move again). c:

Also while all of this is playing out, I actually disable the warp from working, since the player is still touching it from step 1 and the effect would just play forever otherwise.

@bonbonbunny You got me worried about controls during transitions, so I went and checked. Apparently past!me had the foresight to disable input processing during transitions, I'm surprised.

In my engine, the transitions are tied to level activation and deactivation so nothing needs to be spawned in, buuut it is possible to mess up the loading zones while making levels to get the player stuck in an infinite loop of loading :'D I might have to do something about that one day >>