ID:117036
 
Last thing I decided to do before going to bed was to tweak the base icon a little bit more. If nothing else, the conversations on my earlier posts convinced me that having no defined neck did make the base icon look like it's wearing a helmet, when it's supposed to look like it's wearing nothing in particular.

(Not that it's naked, mind you. Just that nothing about what it's wearing has been defined.)

I tried playing around with the stance, because some people favored a more flat-footed/narrow stance. I like the slightly wider one because it implies action to me. After trying it both ways, I realized there's really no reason to limit it to one or the other... I already know I'm not making "pants" or "boot" overlays because the level of detail's just not enough to be worth it, and all the body overlays I have so far work fine pretty much regardless of what the legs are doing.

So I just have to make sure that any skirt/kilt/robe icons have enough "flare" to cover the widest available leg icon, and it's good.

I'm toying with the idea of making a variable torso, but that's less of a slam-dunk because I want to have a wide variety of torso overlays, and some of them might look weird hanging off a thinner-than-default torso. But I can test the idea. I can probably manage a slightly thinner one, at least.

...dang, now I'm realizing how it would be fairly easy to make height vary by +/- 1 pixel and then just change the offsets for the item overlays. This is quickly getting waaay more complicated than the retro roots should support, but then again, one of my favorite parts of the game concept is the idea of mashing up modern gaming ideas (like character customization) with way outdated ones (like monochrome blobs).

Next set of screenshots will probably be customized characters with various headwear. I'm pretty pleased with how the head accessories have been turning out... they do so much to differentiate a character that I'm leaning towards letting players pick a cosmetic "default" head item that shows when nothing is equipped (and that they can choose to show when they have a head item equipped). So you can start with a wizard hat or a crown or horns or whatever as part of your character's defined "look".