Will we need additional art work for perspective changes.
I mean, I guess it depends how great the change is... At the very least we would need art assets operating on different layers (which isn't hard to do I imagine).

It's not so much additional art as sort of a partial perspective change. When you're at the bottom, the walls probably seem high, and should be stretched out (and you can't even see the sky). In the middle, everything is unstretched. Closer to the top, the top of the mountain seems flat, and the area looking below is stretched, and you can also see the area beyond the valley and the sky above.

That makes sense.
So we could probably do this with only a few art assets, and then edit them depending on the perspective?

I think we only need one art piece, we just need to stretch it and squish it. (Not sure how to do this though)

So I think we should start working on the actual game, because we're losing interest FAST, and we've all put too much effort into this to leave now. I have faith in you guys!

But yeah, episode 1 of this game doesn't take that long, it starts at the town, and ends after the final battle, not too bad programming wise.

If you really want pressure to finish, the world is supposed to end tomorrow. Get it done before then.

As for the picture, I'd suggest hand drawing a poster, then snapping shots from various angles. You don't have to stretch it so much as do perspective from the ground, from sitting, and from standing looking down/up.

If we're cracking on with the game then we really have to gather/create resources. Scripts and tilesets and the such.

Do we have a sprite artist?

I'd assumed we were just converting the sprites that got made in the hero and character pages. I can churn more such sprites out fairly easily, and the only thing needing to be done with them is make them transparent and three frame instead of four.

Mainly then we just need a mapper, and a battle coder, and a script (as in the kind that writes story, not game script) writer.

I wouldn't consider myself a tremendous writer, but I can certainly take a crack at writing, so long as I get some honest feedback to help me.
mapping won't be too difficult for layer 1, but later layers will be a lot more specific.

In the meantime, we can start drawing out progression. We know our heroes start in the center of the first town, which means they spiral out, have a short journey, then we have the siege on the dungeon/castle.

I'm thinking we start set on the majority of our heroes, they discuss the siege, and then the discussion turns to the missing member of the party. The team exits to the left, then the screen pans over (I'm thinking upper right) and we see our missing hero walking out of one of the shops. We go from there.

We'll need a few subtle hints that the heroes are in a game. Little things. Self awareness. This is where the dialogue gets tricky.
I'll leave the floor open for any other suggestions.

Sorry for the noobish question, but what system is this on. Last I heard was 2003

VX (or was it VX Ace) with XP sprites. I can do sprite conversion (but I'd wanna not steal anyone's thunder, since it is tedious, and there are probably people actually better at this).

I could probably write a fair script too, with some placement help from Sparrow and others (i.e. I'd need to know which characters to talk to, how many, etc, I'd basically need to see a map with NPCs).

Characterization and major plot events is the big part, I'd have to do it in pure text form, because I'm not messing with VX anymore. The minor townspeople is a bit trickier, and I hate having them all say generic things like "Please help our king." I've always believed NPCs should be unique characters and not necessarily concerned with your plot at all. But yea, it may need some splitting up, since there are many approaches to dialogue, so this should probably be co-op style writing.

Layer 1 should probably involve:

1. Backstory (Intro screen is probably enough, talking about the villain rampaging and such, setting up heroes)
2. Town (where you buy gear)
3. Mini-dungeon (on the way to the dungeon, also helps learn team function/controls)
4. Cutscene to villain (establishing character, probably after a first boss)
5. Villain Castle (puzzles, prisoners, treasure, etc)
6. Final Boss
7. False End & Layer 2

This sounds like alot, but it probably takes 30 min to 2 hr to play (the later mainly if you go exploring, or really suck and have to grind).

I gotcha on the townspeople, one my favorite parts of game design is giving the npcs little personalities and sidequests. I'd love to take a crack at some of em.

Also:

1. Backstory (I think we have the full story of Rasquel somewhere in these pages, I might have added it to the outline page)
2. Town (I'm assuming this is the big ditch in the ground, we have a main idea of it, we just need to flesh it out a little)
3. Mini-dungeon (We should give the option to skip it maybe, but the players will say, "It'll give us a chance to warm up before the real fight")
4. Cutscene to villain (Oh, so it's still going to have cutscenes and stuff, but it's still an mmo)
5. Villain Castle (I think we've got this down)
6. Final Boss (Should we actually let them beat the boss? Or does he use his special attack?)
7. False End & Layer 2 (Is this where the game ends?)

3. Not really in favor of skipping (it's basically a cave in the way of the castle, and it's so absurdly short and easy that you'd miss out on the tutorial section without it)
4. We shouldn't really reveal that it's an MMO until it's actually time to do so (although it should be hinted)
6. Let them almost beat the boss. Let's say he opens the box/urn and then he gets defeated, like "that did nothing" after it releases a cloud or something that covers the screen. After the boss collapses in a heap, the fog or whatever "lags" and maybe we have (slightly fake looking, so people don't keep resetting) blue screen picture.
7. The "ending" should be rather jarring, as in you are really about to reset, until you notice this always happens and it's not a glitch. Who is why it's important it should be real looking but only so real. And it has to go away quickly, by user command. Dialogue would be an important touch here, having the users go "Oh crud" or something after seeing the blue screen for about 3 secs would be key to making sure people don't keep resetting.

3. Oh alright, that makes more sense. I thought it was just going to be like, some dungeon on the side that player is forced to go to. I just wanna make sure it's not too gimmicky.
4. Mkay, so it looks like a legit game up until then. Minus small things in dialogue and game atmosphere.
6. I like that idea, I think I know a way we could do that.
7. Sounds good, maybe 2 seconds of glitch, then it stops for a second, then the dialogue comes.

Sounds good. Should we start on game script? Or is there more stuff to hash out?

Ahh, let's just do it. We'll do this forum style (boldface each section and then post) rather than attachments, so we can hash it out section by section.