[Aezeal]

Well as I said I always prefer a good story and system above graphics (I'm playing dom 3 which should say enough) but I thought sprites could be nice.. of course it's extra work and I know you shouldn't start with it untill later after the most important things are done. (but the fact you have placeholders, so I assume you can somehat easily replace it once you have sprites, sounds great) Anyway IF you can use some spere (which could already more functional than just ascii signs I guess,) to remain behind the symbol you MIGHT be able to use the general outline of a creature too (small humanoid (goblin), humanoid (human, orc), large humanoid (troll, ogre) cavalry (for cavalry) and something for huger creatures (and maybe a special dragon one for the dragon endboss (ok ignore me if you want ). nothing fancy but the general size and outline will give lots of information and you'd only need like 6 outlines (simple sprites) to cover most encounters in the world, (I'm sure someone here could make soem very functional ones), you could then just use a color for whatever you use the color now (or as I suggested before) and one or more symbols inside it

I was wondering will your game be GB like in it's story, with loads of quests and sidequests (which means loads of text you'll have to write, or more daggerfall like with a lot of general phrases while raoming the lands and searching for loor and maybe some generic quests which can be repeated with generated targets etc and only a main quest which is entirely handwritten or something else entirely. (of course BG is great, but daggerfall's model with all random stuff might be easier for you... you'd probably need half a small asian country to write BG like text for the whole game)

I must say you are a little harsh in you comments about modern game though, there are plenty of nice ones out there. Personally I do like Oblivion and Fallout 3 a lot.

anyway about what I started with.. I just love to brainstorm and really like the idea of this project.. but I can't programm anything and have no idea about what you will do.. so if I'm way off and this is not usefull at all just stop me in that track (stopping me completely will be harder ).