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From my experience, a big active doesn't slow things down with the HWA runtime. I use it alot to make darkness effects, and it hasn't had any effect on performance.
Just use a variable to transition from day to night time. HWA shouldn't cause a performance hit, also the resolution your using adds speed to your game as well as the amount of colors your using. There are also objects like the overlay object that can handle that.
What's the window size? I would just use an overlay of some sort that fills the window and then apply whatever effects you want on the objects in the frame. It might help slightly with performance but it'll make life easier for you.
Your window is 2000 pixels wide!? My screen isn't that wide!
Remember that nighttime isn't just about making things dark. I would personally make all colors a little bit blue, and of course make everything darker.. But if you are to see things clearly, maybe you should have the character, platforms and everything in the front, so that you can have a different lighting on the things you want to see. Not completely bright, but a little bit brighter than the background for instance. You could also (with the use of parallax scrolling) make a moon that showed when nighttime was there, and a sun when daylight was around.
Bah, I am babbling 
but in general, try to use shaders and layers, like color shaders on different layers, and maybe clever use of some sort of layer with a multiply effect to create lighting (not to be confused with "lightning"). I have been using the multiply layer effect lately to make light/shadows, and it looks very nice!
Your window is 2000 pixels wide!? My screen isn't that wide!
Sorry Lb,..it's a scroller. The window is 640x480 but game is 2000x480. Sorry about that!
Remember that nighttime isn't just about making things dark. I would personally make all colors a little bit blue, and of course make everything darker.. But if you are to see things clearly, maybe you should have the character, platforms and everything in the front, so that you can have a different lighting on the things you want to see. Not completely bright, but a little bit brighter than the background for instance. You could also (with the use of parallax scrolling) make a moon that showed when nighttime was there, and a sun when daylight was around.
Bah, I am babbling
You're not babbling. Shaders sounds like the ticket, but I've never used them before or if I need to use them in this case. What I'm trying to do is this: The game is played in snow and it's snowing out. You know how at night when it's snowing it still looks kind of bright outside even though it's at night. I'm looking to do that effect. I think it would be a really great effect if it can be done. Here's a pic of the window the game is in,.but remember it's a scrolling game 2000 wide.
Moonlight! Just darken the sky and put a big shiny moon up there, and have 'it' light up the playing field.
There are so many ways to achieve this type of effect now. It used to be tricky and only a few people could do it. Now there are lots of options. With the ability of Layering, and parallax scrolling, plus the effects and shaders such as subtract and add. Remember it's not usually completely pitch black at night with star light and the moon usually illuminating the environment somewhat. Even in a cave you could add light coming from minerals on the cave walls and such.
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