Like it or don't this is going to be a tile based engine. I have come to see this as a design challenge and thats what makes it fun. I will be creating most of the assets my self so I need to be realistic about what I can do on my own. if there is one thing that the explorer can do well at this point it would be tiles. most of this is do to the work I was doing with the gui and procedural texturing. I just couldn't figure out how to bring this into a game but now it seems all to clear.
Bookmarks