A decision has been made - instead of focusing primarily on coding features the immediate goal is prototyping a starting area.
Obviously this is a very important thing to get right - it might actually be the most important area of the entire game since this is where players decide within the first 15 minutes if they want to keep playing the game or look somewhere else.
I thought about the games I've played in the past, and how they handled things. It's important that players are given a chance of action without too much tutoring - and especially without too much OOC, like a "Tutorial Island" would be - yuck.
Not wanting to start the player in a city I've decided to dump the player in a campground in the middle of a forest, with opportunities to find a few easy opponents before being introduced to the first "dungeon" - a small cave.
I haven't exactly made the cave yet... the trees and the grass kinda sucks, and the opponents are still those pesky skeletons, but at least it's a bit better than my first tech-demo area.
Basically the idea is to limit the immediate scope of the huge task this game is to a small "vertical slice" that will also serve well as a demo if I want to go for greenlight.
Interesting how you got up to 70+ FPS while the character was not moving, but dropped to barely above 30 in the grassy area.
Okay, on to the game in the video. Sound would be a massive help. I checked twice to see if the video was muted or my system. Next if you want player into the action fast, I think you are still taking to much exploring to get to an encounter. Diablo 2 had the player within 10 tens of exiting the town area connect with a monster.
What are you building the game with? This is great information to always include at the bottom of the post.
Looks like a promising start.