Anthony: the character styles have not been decided yet, however at this time it is considered they will be full 3D in a toon fashion (maybe manga-esk).
Sybixsus: We've always been influenced by arcade/console/retro games and we are certainly aiming for a more consoley type rpg then say Never Winter Nights style. The combat system being planned at the moment however is a real time combat system very much like Ys or Legend of Mana where the player will be able to walk around and hit things without the need for a seperate screen. As a fan of Final Fantasy games I'm still annoyed at the amount of pausing of the game when combat ensues, we prefer to have a continuous gaming experience where combat and exploration happen within the same environment.
Cyberseth: we do still have a lot of work to do on area graphics and atmospherics. This includes the exploration of various methods for toon shading, shadowmapping and environmental atmospherics such as rain and fogging effects. Our biggest headache so far is to get the shadowmapping looking right as we have been using YAL but unfortunately the surface fingerprinting routines just don't want to work so I'm now considering a true import->lightmap->export of shadowmaps contained within the .b3d files. I'll post updates as and when we are happy with the results, which as Anthony suggests may even be without true shadowmapping. It all depends on how it all looks when put together.
Sybixsus: We've always been influenced by arcade/console/retro games and we are certainly aiming for a more consoley type rpg then say Never Winter Nights style. The combat system being planned at the moment however is a real time combat system very much like Ys or Legend of Mana where the player will be able to walk around and hit things without the need for a seperate screen. As a fan of Final Fantasy games I'm still annoyed at the amount of pausing of the game when combat ensues, we prefer to have a continuous gaming experience where combat and exploration happen within the same environment.
Cyberseth: we do still have a lot of work to do on area graphics and atmospherics. This includes the exploration of various methods for toon shading, shadowmapping and environmental atmospherics such as rain and fogging effects. Our biggest headache so far is to get the shadowmapping looking right as we have been using YAL but unfortunately the surface fingerprinting routines just don't want to work so I'm now considering a true import->lightmap->export of shadowmaps contained within the .b3d files. I'll post updates as and when we are happy with the results, which as Anthony suggests may even be without true shadowmapping. It all depends on how it all looks when put together.