Which style do you prefer? (some violent content inside)

[Mouth for war]

Ok so I'm sooo interested in making a RPG... I'm not using AGS for this though every aspect of making real-time battle in AGS seems difficult. In this program it works perfectly! I just wanna know what style people would prefer. The fantasy style or the modern style? The thing is that I really want to make a fantasy RPG...BUT...the characters I'm using are already featured in another game and the owner made the sprites public domain and that is really good but it doesn't feel perfectly right.

I suck at fantasy characters that's why I decided to use them. In the modern style I'm making, I do everything on my own including characters.

First the semi-original, traditional fantasy



And the fully original, modern

[Armageddon]

I prefer pixelized but it seems like a cheap way to unify your lack of style.

[Mouth for war]

Yeah I have a nice little story too for that fantasy game and there would be a huge open world where you can kill every single character if you want, including important questgivers hehe...but it really bugs me to use someone elses characters

[Weston_Kaunk]

@Mow

"little story too for that fantasy game and there would be a huge open world where you can kill every single character if you want"

How would you figure to prevent game breaking kills then? If quests/world exposition is delivered through characters.. are you figuring a 3'd omniscient narrator?

[Mouth for war]

Attacking an important character would give you a warning but if you ignore it it's up to you. Or do the quest and whack them after the quest is finished. I wanted to provide as much freedom as possible

[Weston_Kaunk]

@Mow
Then how do you propose story to the player? If the game is formatted quest to quest and the player can kill everyone without listening to there quest then you'd have to make none of the quests directly related to eachother, otherwise player gets to a point and the game expects him to know a specific point or how to do something and they won't know it, because they killed the people that were suppose to tell or teach them that. Plus, unless the enemies are generated in relation to the player's level then you wouldn't have control of the difficulty curve. Curve is tied directly to the narrative. Like the overarching theme, the reason for leveling up and upgrading gear. Levels/quests can only come down to two purposes directly forwarding the plot or grinding/item finding to forward the plot. If every character is kill-able and contingent to the plot then the plot would have to be something on a larger scope that isn't necessarily tied to any one individual characters, i.e. politics, religion, philosophy. So the only way you could really have a narrative behind a completely-free-to-kill world would be by having each death classified to certain counters then have them add up to trigger some world change --considering character's in themselves don't specifically matter--. Like say you're in a top down hack and slash and you're dropped into the middle of a city as a runaway thief, the room of each dungeon is randomly generated around you containing gear/guards/and differing classes/races of civilians. Each kill is a global int and triggers changes to the environments spawn seed as you progress the levels. You kill a civilian wearing a "vote for Pedro" pin without slaughtering all of the guards(because that would lead to the kings knights being called in and they're more difficult) and the law enforcement figures the opposition elect is in conspiracy of murder, and in four dungeons he's been thrown in prison, Pedro is voted mayor for district and he brings in tougher guards and upgrades the locks on all the security. Where if you knew(by environment clues/background chatter) That the other guy was corrupt and killed in a manner that made the Pedro voters afraid and the other guy's voters feel safe then you end up with a rougher crowd of civilians who fight back because the guards don't enforce the law as much so you're dealing with stronger numbers over stronger foes..

My point is if there is unscripted killing of characters then there must be something within the design that builds that into the overarching narrative. Otherwise on the whole the game won't have a point. It'd be like reading a book where you could off any character you wanted, unless the author reassures you that it means something and the story still leads to a great(and otherwise different) ending then all you're doing is cutting out later chapters of the book. Dem repercussions and player sense of autonomy and all. 

[Armageddon]

@Weston
Ever play Fallout 3 or Skyrim? They let you kill anyone you want and don't care if it makes the game unbeatable. They put a lot of trust into the player and if the player wants to kill people then he can. But there are also hundreds of side quests so if you break the main story you're only making about 10% of the quests unplayable. Making the amount of side quests needed to off balance is a huge task though which would take far too long for one person without them feeling very grindy like go kill 10 of these or whatever. I really don't think he should care if the player chooses to kill main people, give them the choice and respect the player's agency over the world.

Also don't worry about "curve" in Morrowind you can pretty much go to the last room where, iirc, there are some lvl. 100 flying monster things that you can kill at lvl. 1 or run past. It makes the game very hard but it's playable. Leveling enemies kind of sucks though, I'd go with the more modern take like Skyrim and FO3.

[Weston_Kaunk]

@Armageddon
That's true, my Morrowind character isn't well know, but he beats polar bears to death with his bare fists.. while naked. Same with most things actually. But in that game I accidentally sold a cube I need to progress story and it didn't warn me so he's only 2% in to the story, sidequests are fun when I find them but not nearly as interesting if I can only get glimpses of the rest of the story, meh. I think those games are a bit of a separate matter, the amount of quests anyone would have to make, it's frightening. Thinking about it in those games if you kill a guy it still triggers a global int with the lawmen, and you become wanted in that city, so that'd play to the character narrative of being wanted or feared. I'm just saying stuff's gotta happen other then just losing potential quest, like it should turn into hide-the-body/ransack-the-place/kill-anyone-that-knows/defeat-the-guards quest.

[Mouth for war]

I would have covered it ALL and made a fantastic game but f*** it...the fantasy RPG is off...I'll make something else.

[Mouth for war]

I think I FINALLY found the right style to work with What do you think?

[Darth Mandarb]

Love the perspective (or lack of).  The only thing that is off (to me) is the lighting.  The way the window is "glowing" just doesn't look right (and the light cuts off abruptly at the edge of the building).

I did this paint-over very quickly (I'm at work) to just give some ideas:

- made the over-all tone more "blue" to represent night time (wasn't sure it was supposed to be night time but took a guess)
- added lighting from the other window (couldn't do much with the original)

Just some ideas, I hope it helps!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Definitely go with Darth's suggestion.  Also, I far prefer the isometric view to the top-down.  The tiles look less messy because of the added distance.

[Mouth for war]

Really nice edit darth :-) actually it will be a mix of iso and top down. i also like iso more but a little more work is required with it