I'd like to see animations have check boxes for alternate drawing techniques.
The techniques would be add, subtract, multiply and divide, as is found in the gimp and photoshop. This would cause an arithmetic effect on the alpha of an image, in the pixel drawing routine.
For example, if two actors overlapped, with actor one being z depth 0.25 and actor two being above that, and actor two has its pixels set to draw as multiply, and actor two is all 50% grey(rgb 127, 127, 127), then any part of actor one under actor two would be darkened 50%. This would be great for shadows.
I assume that GE uses Z or perhaps actor depth drawing, so a quick check at this stage would allow GE to draw shadows correctly on the fly against objects, as well as other tricks such as glows, explosions, flames, sunsets, nightfall, perhaps reflections.
It would be a vast step forward in flexibility and allow game creators an extra element of professionalism.
Would that be hard to add in?