Top down strategy game project

[Vaieti]

Heya everyone! This is my last year of high-school in Quebec and I have to do a large scale project on a passion of mine. I chose to try my hand at learning C# and start making a tile based strategy game à la Fire Emblem. Because of my lack of experience in programing in general, I do not believe I will have functional AI comportements for the deadline date, but I want to try and take it further after and continue to work on it in my free time. The other aspect that I will have to work on is spriting and creating tiles in 16x16 pixel art. 

Now I know there is quite a lot of knowledgable individuals on this site about the aspects I have mentioned and wondered if anyone had tips for any of them. I really wish to make something of this and anything would help.

[Parrhesia]

Moved to Concepts because there's no end product yet. I don't have the knowledge to help, but it sounds interesting - though maybe going into a little more detail on the advice you're looking for would help? Most of the FE-likes here hack either FE7 or FE8 as a base, though there's at least one project that built an engine from scratch.

[vanguard333]

I must admit that I am inexperienced at this; though I am part of the Game Design Club at my university, I'm not part of the programming team; I just help come up with gameplay and story ideas. 

One thing I would suggest is that you look at some of the free game engines that are available, play around with them and see how they work, then decide which one would be best for what you're making. 

The first one I would normally recommend would be Unreal Engine 4, since it has a lot of developer-aids (especially for graphics) and it's such a popular engine that people like to post their own code for common gameplay mechanics (such as level-select and lock-on) to help others save time. However, it uses C++, not C#

There is a free game engine that I know of that uses C#: Unity. It's the game engine that my Game Design Club uses. The engine's website has a lot of videos for teaching how to use the engine, but it has very few, if not no developer-aids at all compared to Unreal. It's still a good engine. 

However, both these engines are designed for 3D games (and side-scrolling 2D games in Unity's case), not top-down 2D games. I have no idea what engine to recommend if you want your game to be top-down 2D. 

[Vaieti]

2 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I must admit that I am inexperienced at this; though I am part of the Game Design Club at my university, I'm not part of the programming team; I just help come up with gameplay and story ideas. 

One thing I would suggest is that you look at some of the free game engines that are available, play around with them and see how they work, then decide which one would be best for what you're making. 

The first one I would normally recommend would be Unreal Engine 4, since it has a lot of developer-aids (especially for graphics) and it's such a popular engine that people like to post their own code for common gameplay mechanics (such as level-select and lock-on) to help others save time. However, it uses C++, not C#

There is a free game engine that I know of that uses C#: Unity. It's the game engine that my Game Design Club uses. The engine's website has a lot of videos for teaching how to use the engine, but it has very few, if not no developer-aids at all compared to Unreal. It's still a good engine. 

However, both these engines are designed for 3D games (and side-scrolling 2D games in Unity's case), not top-down 2D games. I have no idea what engine to recommend if you want your game to be top-down 2D. 

I have a few IRL sources who can help with a lot of the programming part and will definitely ask a lot of those general questions to them directly. I will use this thread mostly for specifics in getting advice in game design and artistic guidance. 

My IRL sources have all recommended Unity over Unreal since C++ requires a lot more parameters that can be overwhelming for beginners. I know that making it top down could be harder but it’s definitely possible.