"You can even consider starting out with the guy there, and then zooming him out while making him transparent until he is invisible,"
Haha! Making the character more and more transparent doesn't speed up the rate at which transparenct objects are rendered, so by zooming out until he fills the screen your framerate would like drop below 1. :-) That's only an option with 3D acceleration, which I won't be using because my game is targetted at a large number of people with crappy PC's.
I do plan on using the player characters for more than just seeing their backs though. I haven't decided how or if the main menu will be laid out and if they will be on it, but there's a good chance they will. And there will be a bunch of cutscenes to explain the game's story. And the photo in the back of the shop will be a front view of the character rather than a creepy horror ice cream guy from a google image search. :-)
Haha! Making the character more and more transparent doesn't speed up the rate at which transparenct objects are rendered, so by zooming out until he fills the screen your framerate would like drop below 1. :-) That's only an option with 3D acceleration, which I won't be using because my game is targetted at a large number of people with crappy PC's.
I do plan on using the player characters for more than just seeing their backs though. I haven't decided how or if the main menu will be laid out and if they will be on it, but there's a good chance they will. And there will be a bunch of cutscenes to explain the game's story. And the photo in the back of the shop will be a front view of the character rather than a creepy horror ice cream guy from a google image search. :-)