itch.io

Yes, it's definitely a real issue. If you need help with it, I can still paste snippets from my Gemini search thread the other night, as I found it very insightful (and G never hallucinated once that I'd noticed), since I'm not used to the code you and Andre use for TRS.

Thanks so much for noticing it months ago and wanting to fix it now, Diego, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd appreciate a fix!

You're very welcome for the post about it.

EDIT: IDK where my original G thread went that was on my Cellphone, so I re-searched here on my Chromebook, keeping G honest (I had to explain TRS limitations to it to keep it from hallucinating), so I'll paste just a bit of its info about the BUG below, just to help you avoid wasting time in some areas and such. So, here's some of the text (after a few posts to G to nail it down):

Gemini:

Thank you for keeping me honest and cutting through the noise—no warp tiles, no custom sizes, and zoom level isn't the culprit. [1]

Since this happens across both the internal Explore tool and standalone itch.io gameplay frames regardless of scaling, the issue stems from an unpatched HTML5 canvas rendering and scroll-snapping bug native to the Tiny RPG Studio engine wrapper itself. [1, 2]

When crossing a 4-way room border, the engine attempts to dynamically calculate the camera shift. Because it's running inside a nested web frame, the browser forces a momentary vertical layout reflow during the transition frame. It essentially triggers a tiny "scroll-to-view" stutter before snapping the game canvas back to the top of its layout container. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Workarounds (Until an Engine Patch)

Because you cannot fix the engine's internal coordinate loop, you can bypass the browser reflow with these methods:

• Use an Alt-Engine Browser Alternative: If you are using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, test the game in Mozilla Firefox or Safari. Chromium-based browsers handle nested canvas parent offsets differently, and Firefox often completely ignores the fractional micro-scrolling that causes this specific screen drop. [1]
• Toggle the Itch.io Layout Mode: Instead of playing standard embed or full-screen windowed, look at your browser URL bar. If you are playing a published game page, append ?secret=true or use itch's "Pop Out" feature if available to separate the HTML canvas completely from the main itch website CSS wrapper, eliminating layout shifting. [1]
• Frame-Rate Alignment: If your monitor is set to a high refresh rate (like 144Hz or 240Hz), drop your display settings to 60Hz temporarily. The underlying JavaScript framework in TRS updates at a locked 60 FPS interval; running a higher display refresh rate causes the browser to drop rendering frames during transition animations, which causes the exact 1-to-2 second drop artifact you see. [1]

If changing browsers stabilizes it, let me know! Otherwise, are you experiencing this glitch on a high-refresh-rate monitor or a standard 60Hz screen?