Hello everyone!

I am trying to develop a game that is top down. Now what I have come to realize is that there are two types of top down games. One like this:

And others like this:


Now what I am going for is the mouse control of the bottom one, but the visibility of the players whole body in the second one. I want the mouse control because it is a shooter game, but I also want the visibility of the players body so that the user can customize and see the other player's customization when online. So is there a way I can easily see customization with the full- top down approach (second one)? Or possibly more than 4 way control (using the mouse like in the full top down)?

I realize that for the partial top down approach (first one) people usually have 4 different images of the player but would I have to have 360 images for full 360 degree player movement with the mouse? Please help

Thanks,
Brent

If you want completely smooth aiming, then there is no simple solution. The best I could offer would be rendering actual 3D models but that requires considerably more work, both for programming and creating the art. Even more work if you want to stay in the graphic style of the first screenshot because the shaders will not be completely trivial.

That said, do you really need complete smoothness? I would guess at the size of those sprites eight pre-painted directions would be completely sufficient on the visual side. Movement and shooting could still happen completely smooth, just display the character sprite closest to the direction.

Mouse is a hopelessly bad input for a top-down shooter. You really need an analog stick for that to work, or keyboard control with significantly different game design.