Fourth Age screen shots

[Aezeal]

seems like I won't be able to convince you all... well I'll admit if the story and gameplay are very very good there are possibilities.. but they'd have to be Baldurs gate like quality or else some pplz (me) might rather play BG..

Still can't wait for a sample to play.. screens don't mean much to me (especially if it's only symbols ) and then I might be convinced.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

seems like I won't be able to convince you all... well I'll admit if the story and gameplay are very very good there are possibilities.. but they'd have to be Baldurs gate like quality or else some pplz (me) might rather play BG..

I'm not sure what you're trying to convince us about. I'd like to have good-looking graphics for Fourth Age, but good sprites take lots of time. Because of that, Fourth Age probably won't have good sprites, at least for a while. I hope you can agree with this part, at least.

I think this leaves only two choices: symbols, or sprites that aren't accurate (e.g. "those halberds are really muskets", or "that inquisitor is really a shopkeeper"). I don't think there are other feasible options which require so little extra work.

From those two choices, IMO symbols are a much better choice for a project like Fourth Age. I think this is the only thing where we disagree, but since you said you don't want to even try good games that use ASCII symbols instead of sprites, it's quite a disagreement.


P.S. There aren't enough symbols to represent every nation, so eventually it might be necessary to start using sprites. However, that's way to the future of this project (when it's important to know who's the flying Caelian and who's the true-blooded Abysian who can make your spear catch fire). There might even be ways around that, but at that point sprites would probably be a better option.

[Aezeal]

Wellll.. if you don't mind symbols anyway you could model troops by using more than one symbol of course... a symbol for race, a symbol for type (of something) and a symbol indicating armor/weapons (maybe it's power in 5 degrees) since at a glance you probably can't see wether the enemy is wielding a used or somewhat used halbard but you MIGHT see the difference between a nearly broken one and a heavily enchanted one.

But maybe that is already in your minds since I have no clue about this sort of thing and it might just be annoying

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on 1 you could do a symbol indicating race (and different colors for)

on 2 you could do armor type (color indicating quality)

on 4 weapon type (color indicating quality)

and on 3 something else that is probably usefull but I'm not thinking of.

or just different symbols on the 4 places and color indicating race (so they seem to fit together better and not like a clown with 4 different symbols in 4 different colors.)

well probably not a good/usefull idea anyway but just what I was thinking of without knowing anything of the genre.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

or just different symbols on the 4 places and color indicating race (so they seem to fit together better and not like a clown with 4 different symbols in 4 different colors.)

well probably not a good/usefull idea anyway but just what I was thinking of without knowing anything of the genre.

Actually, I had a similar idea about representing the unit's nation/allegiance/race with a two-color circle (if the circle below the 'h' isn't just a placeholder).

The problem with this is that it gets harder to understand, and that at that point sprites would be better any way. Good sprites make it easy to tell undead apart from living troops, and different weapons from each other, and the difference between heavy and light armor and various shields.