Finally managed to update to Godot 4.2.1. Not sure what they changed exactly, but...huzzah Some of my textures got detached from their objects, but hardly a big deal. Got something weird going on with the animations, too. Not sure how I feel about them introducing a brand new AnimationMixer feature in the middle of a major development (as opposed to refining it for, say, Godot 5), but we'll see what happens

Anyway, got the transitions into and out of battle working. As with many things, they are functional, not pretty. I don't have any fancy transitions just yet. All I have is the working code and minimal animation, just enough to show it is working and where the fancy stuff needs to go

But the point of this is that now I can add in some enemies, go into battle, defeat them, come out of battle, NOT accidentally re-enter into battle, and carry on with my day. I think I will need some kind of greater array to track the enemies of a particular larger area rather than map-by-map. This way the player can clear an area and explore more freely, versus every time the map loads, the enemies also reload. As long as you stay in the area, the enemies will not respawn. EXCEPT if you make camp/go to sleep. Haven't decided. Then, obviously, if you leave, enemies come back

Eventually, I will get around to actually making enemies. I'm just...I'm not an artist. I'm not. I'm not even a doodler. I hate art days. I'm a writer and a coder and an idea maker. I am 30% lefty and 0% artistic

Unless you're asking me to sew Then I can whip up just about anything you like, even without a formal pattern