One of my favorite parts of PMU is the effort made to make this game better over the years. There is of course the effort of staff, bringing us great dungeons, hosting new events, and coding new features. However, I think a severely underappreciated group over the years has been players contributing their artistic talents to this game through the years. Especially as someone with 0 artistic skill, it’s incredible looking at the work done by players that has really gone the extra mile on a sprite.
For example, take a look at this Golurk sprite! It could have been easy to just have the sprite walk, but the person who sprited Golurk (Soulja) thought about what made more sense with the Pokemon, and made the walk something that reflected that. Not to mention how great the sprite looks!
Or take a look at Stufful here by OrginX. Beyond the fact that this sprite is super cute, it also has this amazing attack animation where it scuttles a bit like a puppy would as it attacks. It would have been really easy to just make the sprite headbutt as it attacked, but Orgin thought about how Stufful would actually attack, and brought it to life!
Players don’t just contribute Pokemon sprites! In recent forum threads you can see Deleca giving item sprites (https://forum.pmuniverse.net/t/rescue-team-dx-item-sprites/37800) and Dibei drawing up amazing tilesets (Sweets Tileset (and etc...) - Entry #2) which reflect other ways by which PMU’s players can improve the game!
As can be seen, players do a really great job in making PMU great. Unfortunately, there is no credit toward these contributors anywhere in the client or game! This saddens me a lot, as these players have put in so much effort and people deserve to know. For the most part, we only find out who did what through word of mouth, or through the forum thread if it’s posted. Now, I personally know a couple spriters, and they’re too humble to ask for credit or anything like that lol and say that they’re “just happy to see the sprite in the game”. But to me it just sounds right to see these guys given their due acknowledgement.
As for how the credit is given, while a credit page is serviceable, I think it doesn’t do justice to the work these guys have put in. Instead, I’d love for these spriters to be one with their work, in the form of various NPCs spread through the wide PMU world! They could take the form of one of the sprites they worked on, and just have a short blurb. I think this would be neat for a couple reasons.
- It gives credit in a form that people wouldn’t just gloss over. Everyone I know tries to talk to all of the NPCs in an area at least once.
- It’s a lot more interactive! I’m not a spriter, but if I were, seeing credit for my work in game somewhere that I can walk to and talk to would be amazing.
- It fills the map a lot more. PMU’s map is incredibly big, and that’s great! However, it is also somewhat empty in some points. Scattering NPCs of players/staff who contributed like this would make the map seem more filled.
Now, not everyone who has contributed to the game has done Pokemon sprites. As a result, they would not really have a Pokemon to be an NPC of in the game. In addition, this still does not give a spot where all of the contributors’ names can be seen, as they would all be scattered under my suggestion. As a result, from talking to someone else, I also want to suggest another area where contributors can get credit – the Tanren Library! This map has been a “work in progress” since Tanren came out more than 5 years ago. I’m assuming no dungeon or anything is meant to be in there, so this would be a great area to co-opt to give credit all of the spriters and contributors. A certain number of contributors and spriters can be mentioned each floor. The top floor can always have a “work in progress” sign at the stairs, allowing more space for additional spriters/contributors to be mentioned down the line.
In closing, I only put up a rough idea of what this could be. However, overall I think giving credit to people who have put in work in this game is incredibly important. The strength of PMU is not in any one gameplay element, but in its community, and I think the members of the community who go above and beyond to keep the game running should be recognized!
