yes balancing between complexity and fun is essential. e.g. I always wanted to play mount&blade, it has great functionalities, but somehow I got nervous after some minutes... another good game was battlestation midway, but with too many hotkeys to remember, especially if you play rarely...

Hey guys,

as promised ;-) here are a bunch of new screenshots, which (imo) show the progress of the game very well. Please tell me what you think!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/85xufmjnp5z77ft/shot_0.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dmbhhmrcjfs0gke/shot_1.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/njb3kpdx9r6dvsj/shot_2.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/klonwlqqkmuo0ug/shot_3.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ye1qbd9o07g0l66/shot_4.jpg

they do not appear, just put here the links without image embedding (I could get them after pressing quote button)

I loved screens without a character, they have nice style, kind of a tale. But I don't really like the character model.. looks weird to me.

I like the building and tree models, the terrain textures/colours, and the lights too. Yes, the character is not really a nice guy
What I don't like is the water from close look, the grass entities, and the very rare tree and other vegetation placement: use much more (some hundreds), or group them at small areas instead of the consistent positioning, it would be more natural - and it's valid also for the grass, use a lot in groups or do not use. And those high slope hills are also a bit bare/lifeless. Use more bush entities, they are low cost in performance, but gives more life to the level.
But the overall concept is okay, I think these are easy things and only detail refining I mentioned above.

The water is too bright and the haystacks seem to be hovering. Otherwise, this looks most excellent. Good progress!

Lovely, cd_saber, absolutely lovely.

The water is kinda ugly and looks like the most basic watershader ever
Other than that, I like it a lot. Everything fits together, you did an amazing job texturing the terrain, there are quite some details everywhere and I really haven´t seen many gamestudio levels with such a quality.

Thanks a lot for all your comments! Please go on giving suggestions as they really help me noticing things that arent that good.

@sivian: i will try your idea with the grass groups out to see how it looks. but we have always to remember that we cant have an unlimited number of grass entities to keep the fps as high as possible. Therefore we always have to find the right detail/fps ratio!

@slin: Yes, i know, the watershader does not look that good. What i really like to have is a reflect/refract shader... if anyone know a free, good looking shader, please tell us... (but it has to work with shade-c)