Personally I enjoy all three viewpoints. Firstperson is more difficult (
imo), 3rd person looks the coolest, overhead gives an oldschool/newschool kind of look.
As for the sprites, I am (as of right now) planning on doing it, as my friend likes to put it, Starcraft style. Different sprite for each angle(well each direction, not each smaller angle) and different sprites for each view. This might end up looking bad so I would have to try something else. Worst comes to worse the lines dont look to bad alone right? :P
And regarding the code.
PM me if you want it. Right now I do not want it public yet.