ive told a mod about the shitload of bulcrap in this thread and im sure he will take care of it, maybe split it or remove it.
ps.: its sad to see that I, as austrian who speaks german as native language and learned english from cartoons (honestly) is more capable of speaking and writing the language than an american who probably speaks englisch as his mother language... oh well...
Ill try to stay on topic from here on out. one may delete this tab.
I LOVE the super mario sunshine graphical style. thats pretty makeable with gamestudio. and i know what im talking about i do toon games all the time in various ways. you dont actually need a shader for this graphical style. it would help, but its not neccesary. maybe you could add an option that lets the user decide if his system is strong enough for a shader, however, a toon shader barely eats any recources at all
as for your models, id say take them to 1500 polys roughly. less is okay for small objects and environments, but for characters you should use a little bit more. and a good modeller can do wonders with 1500 polies, believe me
do you have a test game set up? with various crappy test models and levels to check if your code and your system works? if not, thats the best way to start. create your entire game from start to finish with small ugly models. dont care about graphics. concentrate on game and gameplay first.
once this is done, draw characters and levels on paper. if you cant draw, ask a friend who is talented. they dont have to be perfect. its toon after all, one can take liberties with that. especially the levels. draw a few keyplaces and then give your level artowrk to a level designer. he should draw you the layouts with descirpitons on paper and walk you through the entire levels on MSN or something. once you are happy with the levels, all artwork and description is set, almost any half good level designer can build them with the right documentation.
same goes for your models. draw them /let them be drawn and then show them to a modeller. talk with him about animation, what tasts the characters have to perform ect...
once you got your assets together, all you have to do is replace your test levels and test models and then youre in beta. what is left? details, checking if everything works, alot of testing and finetuning. you should definately do this with somebody who actually knows what he is doing and have somebody you dont know test your game. if somebody you know does it... well those people tend to lie and make things nicer because tehy dont want to hurt you...
well, thats how I would reccomend you should do it^^
