alright, I think I got what I could from that sketch...fil and I already have 3 long-term projects (spherrets, vikings, partisan) and there's no use in starting a 4th.
here's another doodle....there's an idea behind it but I haven't run this past Fil, so don't put too much stake in this:
I think I've become more commercial in style over a year without any major pixel art, but at the same time this makes work faster and more attractive. Long story short, where I left partisan there were a lot of confused points, I was halfway to revamping large swaths of tiles, but hadn't really done that yet...animations were strange, colors...etc.
What I want to do, if i have the time, is rebuild from the ground up in this fast-paced bright style on the theory that I could get to where I was and past pretty fast. I thought about doing 3d for a bit but I don't have the skills to do that quickly yet and partisan began as a pixel-project and I know Fil wants to keep it that way too.
One thing you'll notice is hey, aren't these tiles not 48 pixels across? Damned straight - they've been cut by a third! Characters though will remain the same size.
The reason behind this is mainly that the animations required the player to step very far forward for every attack, and most melee weapons fought similarly no matter how we tweaked them. Now there can be distinct advantages and disadvantages to more weapon types, with more weapons being able to hit farther than the simple adjacent square. This should even the playing field for more acrobatic characters, such as fencers, and characters who rely on intercepting a more mobile enemy, such as a heavily armored guard with a halberd. Pikes will now threaten more ground, covering a wicked 3 square distance. This will also make side-arms more important, with each character carrying smaller weapons in case of close-combat emergencies, where their primary weapon is too long or big to properly hit the squares immediately in front of them. The focus would be less on battering and more on out-thinking the opponent. We'll also be able to make guns less predictable in terms of what square they hit, without losing additional plausibility. A lot more of the heavy-hitting weapons, such as great swords, dutch axes, etc will now require hitting multiple squares, friend or foe, to reduce gangbanging. If you want to hit a guy from all sides, you'll need to do it like Brutus and Cassius. Animations will also be simplified and reduced to the bare-bone frames to reduce my chances at poor decisions as well as make things run faster and look a little more punchy.