Umplix, I planned to use everyone whos art I use + OGA moderators + Danimal for his thread which caused me to make that game + that spambot who necroposted in his thread making me read it, who would be an annoying retired necromancer, who would force dialog with player whenever he's near similar to Noober from Baldur's Gate + some other OGA users like in that example with Bart in a basement.

But I'll have to change the whole idea, because after further development I realized that I can't design non-stupid, non-boring and non-repeative ARPG combat. Path of Exile also has this problem as it's dominated by 1-button builds who just walk from room to room and spam 1 skill. Then there's a problem with melee, again, same as in many other ARPGs, where you have to guess when enemy is in range, although in many ARPGs player character will automatically aproach the target.

I wanted to change game into sci-fi or post-apo and make it focused on ranged combat, grenades, stimulators (very short term strong self-buffs, like +move speed or +damage resistance) and cover. And without "skills" or "abilities" at all, since players will spam 1 anyway. And no, cooldowns is not an option, as they will only distract the player forcing him to constantly look at the skillbar, or just run away from enemy until CD is over or just do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 skill combo all the time, which won't change anything in the end.

So I'll need to change player's focus from combat to group management and make truly tactical ARPG where NPC placement is very important, and this is possible only with heavy focus on ranged combat, AoE (grenades) and cover, without melee. This will make combat non-repeatative and player won't need to spam anything. Because right now, at current stage, NPCs just run to each other and just swing weapons in melee range and there's nothing tactical about it. Even if I implement all kind of skills and spells, it won't change current situation, unless everyone is ranged.

But... the proplem is: top down view + ranged combat isn't good combination, as I already tried to do that in the past and it was terrible and felt clunky. It's also very weird with different screen aspect ratios and different players will have different game experience depending on how wide their screen is. Which means complete remake of a game and probably turning it into Fallout4 clone with ability to pause game and switch to strategic view where you can give orders to your NPCs at will. With a focus on settlement building, NPC management (farmers, laborers, scientists, guards) and territory control. I don't think I'll create a story and characters with dialogs, as it's too ambitious + I don't even have an idea for a story, but to make "Domination" game mode from unreal tournament on a huge open world map with ability to build/upgrade something on these domination points? Shouldn't be hard. So it won't be an ARPG or RPG, but rather strategic shooter with light RPG elements (inventory and stats).

And I want to make it open source project, which will be my very first open source project at all. So in case something goes wrong (I again abandon yet another project because of realizing that it's boring), it won't be wasted as someone else might find it useful, as it will have the code for movement, inventories, open world cells loading and off-screen simulation on distant nonloaded lands, settlement building, AI, etc. And it'll be a Unity project, so it's not really an open source, but essentially it'll act as open source, it'll simply require unity (which is free) to actually open/edit it.

I abandoned that game due to inability to design adequare and interesting ARPG combat mechanic.

As for death, I planned: players would respawn possibly losing highest skill rank on death, and if all skills are 0, then losing XP, even going into negative, unless player pays in soul gems (alternative to gold currency, which would also be used for enchanting, respec'ing and may be something else). Also whole inventory would drop on death. As for player party's NPCs - their souls would stay at town for some time allowing player to pay in soul gems to resurrect them. But you'll never see that, since I'm making Fallou4 clone without quests (at least for now) and with complex settlement management and AI controlled factions who will also manage their settlements. With some neutral hostile factions (raiders, mutants) being in between and causing trouble for everyone. Technically it's not hard to make such game, the only problem is to optimize meshes and textures and armature skeletons for my low end machine, so I can play my own game myself. There's a lot of 3D free-to-use meshes for armors and clothing which I can reshape into needed body shapes and then optimize them, then there're post-apo buildings meshes, etc. Another problem can be animations, mixamo has them, but most of them look ugly and even silly, e.g. there're literally 0 adequare female walk animations, they're all either too clumsy or too exaggerated, I can edit them and mix them, but I'm not very good animator. So if we ignore animations and 3d optimization, then everything can be done pretty fast and easy.

Once basics are done, I'll share this project here on OGA with instructions how to set everything up and build it into standalone game. I also comment everything in the code to explain stuff, and later may be write some documentation. So even if I again abandon this proejct for some reason, at least people will have an access to open world walking simulator where you can spawn NPCs, buildings, directly control NPCs like in RTS, and shoot things.

As for usernames, due to generic nature of my current game (there will be no story), the idea of using OGA users is no longer relevant. May be later, once the basics are done, I'll add some non-generic NPCs and pre-built settlements similar to cities in Fallout4, where OGA users can act as NPCs.

Edit:

If you want to look at my abandoned project, it's on current OGA jam:

https://vrs1.itch.io/oga-fall-game-jam-2022-arena

NPC control will look the same like in this game. With the only exception that my new game will be 1st/3rd person and you'll be able to pause game and use strategic view whenever you want and during that time you'll be able to control friendly NPCs, thus making it a tactical shooter. Strategic view will also be used for settlement management and structure building, just like in RTS games.