![Officer [Platinum Rank]](./images/ranks/officer4.png "Officer [Platinum Rank]")
I've been quietly working on my own RPG for several months now, and I finally have a couple of screenshots to post. I've hired a professional artist to do the artwork, and we're in the process of establishing the overall look of the game. I know a lot of RPG fans hang out here, so I'd like to hear what you think of the game's visual appearance.
Some caveats:
1) this is a work in progress, and we're still making adjustments to some of the art (for example, the grass isn't quite right yet). But it's enough to give you a good idea of where we're going with the overall look of the game.
2) I tend to like bright colors (probably from my love of comic books and cartoons), so we're looking to go with a more "painted" look for the scenery - similar to Torchlight.
3) Ignore the stick figures and the plain gray wall with a door (near the bottom middle of the screen). Those are placeholders for character and building artwork that hasn't been done yet.
The first screenshot is the game's dialogue screen. I know you probably can't read the text in this reduced screenshot, but that's ok - it's just temporary text anyway, and not worth reading. The empty frames on the left side will eventually contain the portraits of the character you're talking to and your main character's portrait below.
The second screenshot is the merchant screen. Please ignore the items in the inventory - I don't have any icon art yet for the game's inventory items, so I borrowed some of the art from my Dirk Dashing games. I promise there won't be any tranquilizer dart guns or first aid kits in my fantasy RPG.
I liked BW's merchant screen design, so I'm doing something similar. It's offset to the right a bit to leave room for the portraits of the party characters, which will be on the left (similar to what Spiderweb Games does with their RPGs). Like theirs, you'll also be able to click the portraits to switch to another character's inventory. I've also left room for the in-game toolbar along the bottom, which will contain some quick use slots.
One thing that's different about my merchant screen from the one in the Eschalon games is that I've added an explicit "Identify" button, rather than right-clicking to identify an unknown item. (I'm trying to look ahead toward the day when this game might run on tablet devices.) Basically, you'll left click the Identify button and then left-click on an unknown item in your inventory to pay the merchant to identify it for you.
For the character art, we're planning to use super-deformed (SD) characters similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. It will greatly reduce the animation cost and still look pretty good. And I think it will fit with the "painted" look of the scenery. Here's a pic of what those kind of characters would look like:
http://blog.rpgmakerweb.com/wp-content/ ... ection.jpg
So what do you think of the game art so far? Love it? Hate it?
