Is there a shader or way of making it so that when a sprite is currently being lit by a light then it uses a different texture? For example you have a big 10x10 area with 1x1 black squares, when a light is shone on the squares they become pink.
What to recommend here is highly dependent on the larger context of your app. It is possible to do something like you describe with a shader (though you’d have to write it since I cannot think of one posted on the net that already does this), but simulating the light using distance and angle calculations may also be a solution. it all depends on the needs of your app.
In your shader, use a dot product to determine at a most basic level how much light this square is receiving. You want the dot product between the light direction and the surface normal. Something like this:
if(dot(normalDirection, lightDirection) != 0) {
//this area is being lit at LEAST a little, so make it red
return half4(1, 0, 0, 1);
} else {
//not getting any light, make it white
return half4(1, 1, 1, 1);
}
The dot product will be 1 for total light exposure, and 0 for none. Values inbetween are varied levels.
This is a super crude example, but what you want to do is entirely possible if you are willing to write a custom shader.