Does anyone know how they managed to make the Pixelart of the World look so good?
Like, how do they manage to have the textures on all surfaces face the camera? Especially with the diagonal surfaces, how is the pixel grid still aligned with the rest of the game?
Also I can't really notice the transitions between surfaces, which would usually be just straight lines. But like seen in the image, the border of the top of the cliff doesn't seem to be one.
Edit: Okay, like someone else mentioned they addressed this in part on the latest Dev-Stream. Here is the timestamp for anyone interested. But I will also try to explain it to the extend of my understanding.
So it seems like the textures aren't actually uv-mapped onto the surfaces in the way most games do it. Instead they are "projected" onto it, probably using the same direction the fixed camera angle uses. That way it doesn't really matter how the surface is oriented, as long as it somewhat faces the camera. That also means the order the geometry gets rendered is still the correct one from a 3d perspective. For the sides you would usually not see without the perspective camera, they use lower resolution textures with a bit less detail, since the pixels would otherwise look too small at the steep viewing-angles.
Now the thing with the texture borders not being restricted to the straight edges of the 3d objects is just that. They let them overhang slightly, which is mainly noticeable in the parts where they show the world from a different angle. But with the limited camera angle and projection this is barely noticeable in-game.
Definitely shows the experience they collected over the years, and the fact that they don't use an off-the-shelf engine that allows them to do these custom rendering methods in a performant way (my potato-pc had no problems running the demo).