Mobs

I've made top-down retro-style games/demos before, and there always comes a point when I question the choice to go with top down. And that point is always the same: NPCs and characters, also known as mobs. Or, more generally, any game object that makes the world interesting. The problem, you see, is one of perspective. Here is Stickman.


Stickman was born a couple seconds ago in Blender. Pretty leet, yeah? That image is Stickman from an isometric perspective, and from that viewpoint you can see all his sticky awesomeness. However, here is Stickman in the top-down perspective.



Ugh. While Stickman still has awesomeness, so much of it is hidden when viewed from this perspective.

It's when I face the limitations of the top-down perspective that I get frustrated. So often, I spend hours making a character look just right in Blender, only to have it end up appearing to be an indeterminate blob when rendered top-down.

So right now, I'm doing the old, familiar wishy-wash. Do I continue investing time and resources into the top-down perspective, or do I switch the submap view to an isometric perspective? Each format has it's drawbacks. Even 3D has drawbacks. I've tackled the isometric format before, so I understand how much more work it is than the simpler top-down format, and while the results make the extra work worthwhile, I started this project to avoid some of the complexity.

I hate making decisions.