FolioTier 2

@fade

Fade the prior stage state to a color, hold briefly, then fade in the pending state.

Demo

@fade

Hello.

Three states — prior, color hold, pending. The overlay rises to full opacity, holds for ~30% of the duration, then fades out. The plateau is the cue that distinguishes @fade from @flash and @dissolve.

Parameters

ParameterKindRequiredDefaultNotes
durationnumberno1.0Combined seconds for the fade. Range `0.1`–`3.0`. Half the duration fades the prior state to `color`; the other half fades from `color` to the pending state.
colorstringno#000000Color held at the midpoint of the fade. Hex literal (`#rrggbb` / `#rgb`) or theme token. Defaults to black. Use white for a sunlit fade, theme accent for a tonal beat.

Canonical example

Folio
bg black
@fade
bg bg-kitchen-morning
@fade
say "Emma": "A whole night, gone."
Ren'Py
scene black
with fade
scene bg kitchen_morning
with fade
e "A whole night, gone."

@fade is the canonical "time passes" transition. The prior stage state fades out to color over the first half of duration, holds at color for a single frame, then fades from color into the pending state over the second half. It's the right tool for scene breaks, chapter transitions, and overnight time skips.

Notes

@fade is three states: prior → solid color → pending. Use it when the color hold itself is the beat — the screen goes to black (or to white, or to a meaningful color) and the audience reads the hold as elapsed time. For a direct A → B blend without a color in the middle, reach for @dissolve.

A common pattern is two @fade lines bracketing a black bg:

@fade duration=1.2 color="#000000"
bg black
@fade duration=1.2
bg bg-kitchen-morning
say "Emma": "Hours later."

When only one @fade line is needed (a single scene change with fade-through-black), the shorter form @fade after a bg line reads correctly:

bg bg-bedroom-night
@fade
bg bg-kitchen-morning

The importer's deterministic pass keeps bare with fade as transition fade and lifts parameterized fades to @fade duration=N.

See also

  • @dissolve — direct cross-fade without a color hold
  • @flash — short color punctuation, no scene-state change
  • transitiontransition fade is the no-parameters form