Rather large request.. RPG in the making..

Ok, heres the deal.

I'm making an RPG based off the game Super Mario RPG Legend of the 7 Stars. Now, seeing as this is my FAV game of all time, I'm thinking about going all the way with this. i.e. MANY custom models. Aside from the obvious.. (Mario, Peach, Bowser, Geno, Mallow) i'm thinking about possibly going with a FULL modelization (a word?) of the game. i.e. every monster ect. Now, I really dont know if this is possible.. well, not possible.. just feasible.. lol.. i really dont know the time involved for such a task. Can you just can take the models out of the game..? bah, I dont know jack about modeling.


Well, just give me some feedback on what everyone thinks.
Basically if I cant make this rpg amazing, i'm not planning on doing it at all then.

What you are proposing is a very daunting task. I don't want to discourage you but you will need a good sized team of skilled modelers, skinners and animators to take on such a project. These people are in short supply in this community. I'm not saying it's impossible so you can still try, but it will be difficult to assemble a full team capable of creating so many characters. Also the characters in the game you are talking about are 2D sprites, not 3D models so you can't just convert them to warcraft 3. Although, there is something you could try and as far as I know no one has tried this so it would be quite interesting to see someone base a campaign on this.

You could actually use square polys that are billboarded(force to face the camera) and skin the sprites from the game onto them. It would be the best compromise if you wanted to really get the map done. What you would need to do this is just have a couple people who can mdl edit some billboarded polys with animated skins.

Now if you used this method you wouldn't be able to do war3 style cinematics or pretty much any kind of camera motion except zooming and panning because as soon as the camera rotates it will look wierd because the billboarded polys will rotate to face the camera.

Yeah, what he said. Kudos for saying it far more diplomatically than me, snips :)

Hmm.. thats what i was figuring.. well, how difficulte do you believe it would be to just develope the main characters? (mario, bowser, peach, geno, mallow)

I dont know much about modeling or skining, but i thing it would still probably take a long time.
You might just want to use villiagers' models for the people and just change the skins

That is still a good number of models. The difficulty of the project will just be hard as opposed to impossibly hard.

I'd suggest not making the models from scratch though. See if there are any models that are existing that you could model edit. If you do that your project will go from hard to medium difficulty. Often you can achieve very good results with just model edits and a good skinner. This would allow you to probably make every unit that you just listed whereas making them from scratch you might get lucky if you get 2 or 3 in game unless you get very lucky and get the interest of some talented people.

So my personal recommendation would be model edits or try the sprite idea I suggested before. You'd be a pioneer I think if you did the sprite thing, it could start a trend.

Edit: I'm not trying to sound pessimistic it's just good to realistically analyze how you are going to put together your project. You don't want to take on too much and not finish your project. Even if the campaign isn't exactly what you envisioned you'll feel great when it actually gets completely finished. Post your ideas into the team gathering forum if you haven't already done so and see how much support you can drum up.

It will also be hard to make the maps, and triggers, costum spells, and icons. That will also take a long time.
You might want to get a few people to help you with this.
I might be able to help but I dont know what i could help u do