Uh... Start with all the palette entries set to black and use the fade command to fade the palette in? Use sprites for the overlay effect? (Sorry, only read part of your post now. I will comment later on the rest.)
So...for the palette part I go first
Palette $0,$0,$0 as complete black? So let me do the code scenario below:
Palette $0,$0,$0: Rem The screen is 100% black
fade 5: Wait 150: Rem We do the nice fade effect
Palette $FFF, $FFF, $FFF: Rem the palette is back to normal again.
Would that be it? For the special character font effect would I be drawing my fancy font style in the icon editor part and then write a routine that checks the character input from the keyboard and display that image based on the character inputted from the keyboard on the X,Y coordinate specified? So for example I would write a routine like this:
Sub StyleFont(X,Y, Character)
if scan code (Character=A)
Paste Bob X+NX,Y+NY, A
Add NX,16
else if code (Character=B)
Paste bob X+NX,Y+NY, B
Add NX,16
and so on? Of course I would be checking with the X,Y coordinate with the NX if I am so close to the edge of the screen on the right side and if I do then I increment NY by 16 (so the character goes down one line) and set NX=0 and so on. I will add other things into the equation too if necessary, but I just wanted to ask if the pseudo code I wrote about what you are talking about? Finally, one last question promise. In terms of ART I stink. I want to be able to download some cool image fonts from the internet and import them into the icon editor in AMOS. Is that possible?
P.S "For the visual screen effect...I am wondering is there a demo I can download or source code I can learn from..to show different visual screen effects, like split screen, grid effect, etc...things that you would say cool instead of fade in and fade out effect?"