Battle screen help. Options

[SpringHeelMark]

Hello old friends, (Been here like 7 years I think, just under different names.. I forget my passwords and old emails if I don't come here for a while)

ANYwho, I'm working on my first major release, It's an old school RPG for mobile devices.

Basically I've encountered a problem. I don't want to go with the transitional transition to battle screen with a nice background matching the 'tileset'. Well in all honesty I do, but I'm running low on funds. What I'm thinking would be a good idea as a replacement for the transition to a battle background, is to have the enemies fade in on the left side of the screen, then have the hero jump to the right side of the screen thus commencing the battle. He would jump back to the center after the battle restoring control to the player.

As you can probably imagine though, this looks awkward just on top of the map (enemies might appear on the left side of the screen on top of trees and what not). I was wondering if you guys had any ideas to throw my way? Maybe a circular gradient that blackens all but a circle making it look like a little stadium? I have no idea. I can't really think of any game that uses a system like this that I can draw inspiration from.

Are there any games that have a style that does not utilize battle backgrounds, but rather effects applied to the level?

Also this obviously isn't made using an RPG maker engine, I just thought a place filled with nice people who are interested in old school RPG games would be perfect.

Thanks guys, hope I was clear,
Mark

[SpringHeelMark]

Hey thanks for that, that's actually a really good idea.

I'm creating the game myself (including pixel art and coding) from the ground up in flash cs6.
There's a poke'mon-like system where you can befriend enemies if you weaken them enough. I won't fully go into it but that's kind of where the similarities end though.

Chrono trigger would work kind of great with this system, if you wanted a certain monster, you could exit the cavern and go back in to that monsters area to try and get one.

I'd still like more suggestions if anyone else has any!