You have to understand that having a smile when you're dead is, ehh... crazy ridiculus! it's really embrassing when you play a game and when you kill someone he doesn't seem to be dead. An easy way to make emoticons is to make different faces for every peson that'll be changed:
For 3 seconds if the person kills someone
Forever when a person dies (joke, only till respawn)
And when he seems to be bored till next move.
But this is not a solution, it'll slow down the game heavily, so only 1,7Ghz computers 'll run it. BUT here is an another idea: Make smileys over player's heads! this smileys will apear when you write the smiley in the chat box. But you won't make it, belive me. Why? So...:
They'll make the game glitchy(I mean the graphics mainly)
Aaand! You'll copy that from other 11,000 online games and it's boring to see that smileys everyday....
Oh, the HP faces. I meant, to see thet undone face is a bit scary, it's possible that'ch you'll have only to rerender the face, otherwise the remoddeling of a face will take max 2 hours.
AND PLEASE<>IF YOU'LL MAKE THIS, ADD IT TO NEXT VERSION ONLY, BELIVE ME, THAT SPEAKS EXPERIENCE.