Best luck to you, dude. Making games if fucking hard and the very fact that you already managed to get the game to release on Early Access is an achievement, wanna play good games and I will keep an eye on your game. As there isn't an option of going 2d, there are a few tricks you could study to see if they are feasible to make things looking better.Thanks a lot Infinitron for making a post about Dead Monarchy. Also regarding the feedback, it's totally cool and I completely understand where you guys are coming from. 2D art undeniably has its advantages, especially in Battle Brother's case. There is hardly any animation so you don't need to worry about animating, things like spears that attack over 2 tiles are easy to put in and flails that require somewhat accurate physics simulation is just another thing you'd drop in. You can abstract things like the human body to cut down on costs and in some ways it is easier to create unique abilities since things are abstracted, IE rotate.
In my case, I'm not a 2D artist and so it really came down to what was feasible. With the little money I had, do I hire a 2D artist to create custom art assets and limit the scale of the game due to my shoe string budget or do I leverage some of the Unity store assets like trees, rocks and then hire a 3D modeller to do very specific things like helping me to design some armors. Those were the hard decisions that I had to make to even make the game a possibility. There is 2D stuff on the asset store too, but it is not to my liking, so hardly any of it was usable.
3D in a sense is easier to work with as some of you guys have said, especially when it comes to level design. However, I believe Overhype had some issues with level design when it came to creating things like maps with large infrastructure like when you attack a bandit camp, dungeons with narrow interiors or a building on a battlefield that you also want to have an interior inside. Now, I have no doubt in my mind that Overhype could solve these issues and still stick to 2D art, but in my own case I don't think I could have made it work. I had to balance my budget, limited time and also limited skill level. I honestly am just another gamer that was crazy enough to decide to take a shot and make a dream game.
All in all though, I appreciate all the comments, thanks again guys!
The city screen, I dunno why you surrounded the village with mountains that are so close together hugging the village, it caused in me an strange impression as it doesn't look like a natural village/fort. Maybe you don't even need to remove the mountains, only to change how they look, I dunno...
The black space around the fighting arenas is really contrasting with the bright lighting, is it feasible for you to create an skybox and a false horizon? You don't need to create a huge walkable space, just extra outside the arena space and a skybox to pretend there is something beyond the the arena. If it isn't, wouldn't restricting the camera be a better option to hide the ends of the arena? I get you are going for a tabletop game arena style but the realist 3d graphix look with free camera and an arena with hard borders are kinda conflicting.
About the lighting, the intense lighting without shadows is really making the tree models look unnatural and washed out, are you going to do a lighting pass? There are a few tricks you can do with lighting to hide the low fidelity of the tree models and grass and make the models look better than they are.
Thanks again for the support, the fact that you are interested in the game and keeping an eye on it is enough for me! I'll be the first to say that the town looks like shit, no doubt. It was my first go at level design, but it's not going to stay in there forever, I actually plan to replace the building models themselves too. As for the black void, another good point. It honestly does irk me, I have put it down in my notes. If I can't do a decent looking skybox, I could probably just create some filler terrain that is less detailed, maybe add in LODs. Then at the worst, if someone really needed to squeeze out performance, I could just create a toggle for it. As for lighting, yeah I'm not great at it, there is still a lot in Unity for me to learn. So when I do get around to it, I do want to take another look at lighting especially the lighting in towns too. Thanks again for the awesome feedback!
