@Ymedron, Seiseki:
Right, lowercase letters with different height are usually more easy to recognize. The font I did there with the funny "t" is based on the gaelic-celtic typeface, that's why the unusual letters.
@Seiseki:
I actually taught typography, but that seem like a hundred years ago. "The lower cap letters should follow the same line" seems a sensible guideline, but some letters (d, p, b...) do seem a bit inflated when I strictly follow this rule (in pixel-height not percieved height).
@Mathias:
Well, both palette and perspective communicate the player that he/she has to put effort into the game. But to be honest it was just me being lazy: I don't have to struggle to manage an own palette, and don't have to draw that much directions for the actors.
@Helm:
I already spotted you on that blog in the comments some time ago.
I dropped shadows in my initial game design because it emphasizes the small cheats I've done with inconsistent lightsource shading. Beside that day-night cycle is also intended, and a static shadow could be awkward,I thought. Nevertheless I did gave it a go now. I'll be studying those screenshots, though I'm trying to avoid that much noise, as I'll display a lot more interactive objects, and they'd go lost in that much noise.
@BladeJunker:
Yeah, I'm still not quite sure why a large number of games do use white as skin color.
Slanting is now scratched, but I'm putting text AA on ice for a while until I find a way to pull it out nicely with these colours.
I wouldn't really like to use lo-caps text. I always read, that non-capital lowercase letter are much legible. I might do some experimenting there though.
So I haven't progressed that much this time. There's a new sceenshot:
With (my) programming limitations in sight I decided to use 50% black dither for shadows. It's probably not the finest, but it does work, and I try to avoid larger pure black clusters, for they will be used for non-visible areas.
Changed the wattle and daub tile colour to white, inspired by those "Knights of Legend" screenshots.
And a bit more text test. I chose to carry on with the last font: it still has some fancyness and maintains a clear and recognizable typeset.
Also tried a different style on trees:
It looks quite good in 1X in my opinion, but somehow falls apart if magnified.
