I'm going to release a public beta of the map engine soon and there will be a poll so I need you all to vote. The poll relates to 4-directional or 8-directional buildings. First I should explain about the map engine, I think I would be crucified for calling it "3d" but it does emulate a 3rd-person "camera-view" using MGC's excellent mode7 in a unique way.
There's 360 degrees of rotation and about 80 degrees of vertical angle using the keys "wasd", you can zoom in and out with "q" and "e". The engine supports animated tiles (which is mainly good for water tiles, but it does make the flowers look better too)
Now back to the 4/8-dir buildings.. It looks much smoother with 4 directional buildings because at any vertical angle they look pretty good, but the iso sprites needed for 8-directional buildings don't look right at low vertical angles.. I'm trying one last sprite from scratch to match an angle that centers in the best range to display at all angles, if it doesn't work then I will just use boring 4-direcional sprites for buildings, but hey, the building can face 4 ways too so towns can look very different from other games. On the other hand, if it works out, then the game will look much better and have 2x more depth, but it will take me about 6 or 7x as long to sprite all those horrible iso sprites.
New iso sprites I've already made include an iso-ledge and 2 iso-fences.. Yay it's all coming together. :D
I don't want to talk up the battle system because it's not really a priority until the map engine can prove it's worth, but I have tested that it's working with the engine and made some major alterations to test it's potential.
It is an ABS, no less than the great Mr. Mo's ABS, and if you recall it had npc vs npc combat which will play a major part in this battle system. I don't want to give too much away because I haven't even started a lot of the things I've planned for this battle system, but I will tell you that it's realtime (I felt the pauses involved with turn-based would be far too painful) and that you will not control the Pokemon, they will fight for themselves using a pre-determined set of rules set by the player a.k.a. "Gambits". Ok now I've said too much, the gambit system isn't anywhere near finished yet..
Some more news, your party Pokemon will follow you around the maps and every pokemon is planned to be shown as an overworld sprite. The pokemon in your PC will be limited by the amount of npc's you can fit in Oak's ranch, and you will see them there..
I know I may have a lot on my plate but dw, it's a big plate.
The beta will give me a chance to see how fast the engine runs for all of you, and also show off the 8-dir sprites in a whole new way as well as my camera and movement scripts for mode7.
I'm still very flustered atm so I do little bits and pieces when I can, but it will all calm down soon enough.
I'll upload some screens and probably do the poll if you wanna check back later.