If at some point I find myself in a place that I can afford to revisit all of the playable character's animations to add anticipation, windup and so on, I don't think I need to bother the Rivals of Aether devs, I can just study zoomed-up, slow-motion footage. I did something similar to study the exact way Street Fighter IV does hitstop, for example.
Yeah, that's a good point. I guess I did fall right into that trap.
I just mean that getting to the upslope on that curve requires far more knowledge and time than I anticipated. It's been like taking a long drive and looking at the clock thinking you're almost there and seeing that you still have 7 hours left to go. And then you look again after what feels like an eternity and you're still 6:40 away.
Yeah, I'm not talking about weeks or even months before, but if I'm fortunate enough to get selected for the SEC and then have an actual successful crowdfunding campaign, I'd like to get all the moving pieces in place and do a dev sprint for a chunk of content and see how long things really take to get done with everything moving full speed ahead, then from that I hash out a much more accurate release window. I just don't want to sign up with someone and end up in dev limbo for an extended period of time, continuously pushing the game back from my initial pitch to them.
No worries, and you're right. Getting across what differentiates the game in a concise manner, especially in something visual like a trailer, has actually something that's always been a big struggle for me.
First off, it's fundamentally Ogre Battle, and I don't think there has been an Ogre Battle or an Ogre Battle-like since Ogre Battle 64. Unfortunately, that game is both super niche and a complete mishmash of genres (seriously, even on Wikipedia the games are listed variously as JRPG, SRPG, TRPG, real-time tactics, and real-time strategy) so I can't really rely on it as a descriptor. Then, on top of that, the combat is sort of like SRPG-style systems laid on a JRPG turn-based combat base. Like Ogre Battle or Final Fantasy Tactics, it's class-based and your enemies are (mostly) all drawing from the same class pool and skills. If you've played Battle Chasers: Nightwar, it actually plays out similar to that in that, in that all of your various parties should be composed of various roles that make the party actually work, except it's across all the classes instead of 6 characters. Then there are a few layers of stuff under that (elements and skills, alignment, formation) and things are already ballooning well beyond concision with just genre and combat alone.
The comment about the colors is a good look, too. It really became apparent to me as I went through the trailer over and over and over. I've gotten better at a lot of stuff when it comes to spriting, but colors are still a weak point for me. I think that between now and whatever the next step is, my focus is going to be getting all my art up to date (including with the palette) and getting an extended gameplay walkthrough together to answer your initial question.
