[MUD-Dev] The importance of graphics

[Edward Glowacki]

On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 06:15, eric wrote:

> My personal opinion on the subject is "be subtle", I think clean
> effects are more immersive than flash. In other words some effects
> look cool and neat, but don't particularly add anything to the
> experience, and for some actually detract.

I like this observation.  There are a lot of great things you can do
with graphics that really add to the game, but aren't "flashy".  An
example that's fresh in my mind (because I've been playing it a lot
lately) is Final Fantasy Tactics (a single player game for
PlayStation).  The graphics for the individual characters aren't
terribly fancy, but you can gather a lot of information about the
character's status from them:

  - Normal living characters are shown on the screen walking in
  place.

  - Characters affected by "haste" walk (in place) twice as fast.

  - Characters affected by "stop" stand there without moving.

  - Characters that are heavily injured slump down to one knee.

  - Dead characters lie on the ground in a heap.

etc.

These are the same type of cues we look for in our everyday lives,
so our minds can readily absorb the information.  It's a very
elegant solution.

The thing I like about the graphics in FFT is that in addition to
the essential subtleties in the character animation, the game has
some incredibly cool graphics for spells and attacks.  But even
though they're "really nifty", they're still very tactful and fit
perfectly within the game.  Overall, it's a very polished product,
and that to me is a major component of a great game.

-ED

--
Edward Glowacki			glowack2 at msu.edu
Michigan State University	
"...a partial solution to the right problem is better than a complete
solution to the wrong one." (http://uiweb.com/issues/issue14.htm)

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