lots of people like to poke fun at BYOND games that don't use original graphics, but i love using someone else's graphics. not that everyone's icons are up for grabs, and you can't throw any image into your project, but there are graphics out there which are public domain.

whenever i try to make icons, they usually have a particular look to them. which is good, because it gives all of the graphics a unifying style, which i think is one of the most important aspects of the graphics. but, they always have that same unifying style, so that my graphics don't look original to me; i've seen them a million times before.

the unifying style is what i think is most important. people bash games that use RPG maker graphics because they are ugly. but, i think that the games are ugly because they also throw in icons from many other sources, so there's no common style. you can make a nice looking BYOND game if your graphics are just enlarged versions of 16x16 icons. it gives a nice, "low-rez" look that can even make the game better (dragon warrior online, for example). but, when you start throwing 32x32 icons into that same project, and graphics from every SNES game under the sun, things start to look like crap.

in my a project i've been working on, i recently went through and revamped all the graphics. i also added some animations to the mob icons, and added effects for attacks (blood, fireballs, lightning, etc). the game seems a million times better now.

graphics are a way of relaying information to the player. displaying information using the map screen is not just "glitz", and quite often it is the best way to display information. there are lots of ways you can relay information to the player: graphics, sounds, statpanels, chat messages, and probably even more. its good to know which methods of displaying information are best for which things.

statpanels: statpanels automatically update, so if you need to display stats that may change, a statpanel is a good place to do this. for an important stat that the player would need to check often, it would probably be better to use a HUD. statpanels have a good amount of built-in functionality, and are good for displaying text and some graphics.

chat messages: chat messages are rather permanent. you can't scroll up forever, but if you missed something you can probably go back and check. this is not always needed. its nice to be able to scroll up and see how much damage you did 20 attacks ago, but is being able to check that a priority? maybe it is important. but, if you have a lot of attacking going on, it could end up flooding the chat log.

it also depends on what else you use the chat log for. if there may be some very important messages in there, you might want to avoid using it for a lot of unimportant messages so the important ones don't get lost in the mix.

sounds: sounds can relay information to the player which would be very hard to describe using other methods. you could output a text string describing what something sounded like, or you can just play the sound. these could also be used like some graphical effects. instead of having an attack animation, you play a sound. this way the player knows they attacked, but their chat log doesn't get flooded. however, sounds are ambiguous because you can't tell where the sound is coming from. it would be hard to tell that it was you making that attack sound and not someone else.

graphics: graphics give you a great deal of flexability. you can flash damage values on the screen for a short period of time, show attack animations, or show the player's health meter. you also have control over the location at which things are displayed, so you don't run into the problem that sound has. also, since you can create and remove the graphical effect at any time, you're not locked into the permanence of chat messages. and, while HUDs don't have a great deal of built-in support, you can display values on the screen and have them update live like a statpanel.

its not just a matter of what graphics you use, but how you use them. if you're using original artwork, thats great. but, if you're using that artwork poorly, thats not so great. so, when you're judging a game on its graphics, don't just see what graphics they have, check and see what they do with them.

well, by animation i don't mean a good animation. in this project of mine, your character would be standing there holding a weapon in the same pose the whole time. by making a few different poses for each character, and just changing to a different pose when you attack, its something that designates you've attacked, even if it doesn't look too much like an attack.

also, you can potentially attack as fast as once every tick, so there's no time for a full animation. and, if it output a text message in the chat log every tenth of a second, that could be very annoying.