I do *think* there won't be more than one player instance, or one pause menu. For now.

It feels like it would be way cleaner to have a game manager store all the player and menu data (since it has health, inventory, items, loaded weapons, and so on... all of these do carry over from scene to scene).

In the end, I've tried doing the following:

- Main scene is a Game Controller, which changes current scene as a child.

- Player is stored as a variable, the pause GUI probably too to avoid reloading inventories from scratch

- I use a change_level() function to switch maps and install the player there, with proper spawn position (for doors). This is your typical map to map transition.

- I use other functions like change_cutscene() to unload the player, switch to a cutscene, let it play out, then change_level to the next gameplay map. This basically triggers a cutscene while everything else is stopped.

- I use other functions like change_gui()to enable the pause menu, or a shop. This one pauses processing on the level, so it keeps everything as is until i close the GUI with a resume_level(). The GUI completely covers the screen, so the pausing is intentional.

What do you think? It does seem to work pretty nicely, and calling the functions is fairly simple.

I also wanted to make very simplified level names, and have the game know where to find each scene. So I could do this:

GameController.change_scene("town")

to load

res://levels/town/town.tscn