Thanks for the tip! That's a great way to keep track of the perspective!
I am actually not sure what to do with the view. The frontend is supposed to use square tiles, which suggests straight top-down view (though that could probably be changed). I'm thinking of keeping things symbolic (there will be no sense of scale to the sprites anyway) and having the sprites viewed mostly from the front- that way I could convey more detail on the creatures (those bother me the most)
The biggest problem is that the graphics set has to combine a clear representation of the terrain map (from a design perspective as well) AND clean/readable creature/object graphics.
I feel like I'd be more free to pixel the way I want when drawing things from about the eye-level, but at the same time I understand the need for a sense of uniformity to the tileset.
Huge dilemma for me! Guess I'll try doing a bit of both and see how it works.
E: yeah, I did some renders to check what things look like and I think 1/2 topdown is the most I can manage here
1/4
1/2
3/4