On protaganist complexion/gender, customized to suit player

I'm not sure whether I should post this idea or not, but I can't see the harm. It says more about anyone who reacts poorly than it does me for making this thread.

So, the Doom community is pretty diverse. Beyond that, the gaming population is diverse in general. The Doom Bible had female marines, it had non-white marines. Doom 64's marine was black (at least, in first person, but then just like Strife, I don't think the 3rd person player sprite was necessarily representative of the protagonist). Quake 3 had the Crash character. I think the reason they covered the 2016 Doom player up with full armor was so that non-white non-males could more easily place themselves in the role.

If the protagonist is supposed to be you, why hasn't anyone made any skin packs yet to account for more than the typical "white dude"? Sure, it would take time and effort to create, but I'm surprised this hasn't even been attempted yet, AFAIK. Not that there haven't been similar things, but I mean a host of variants on the standard Doom marine. The existing Crash skin is poor quality and wasn't made to address this kind of thing anyhow.

Perhaps there could be the following:

Sounds:

femsnd.wad - Female player sounds

andsnd.wad - Androgynous/gender neutral player sounds

Sprites:

lightbrownmalspr.wad - Lighter brown skin tone, male

darkbrownmalspr.wad - Darker brown skin tone, male

blackmalspr.wad - Black skin tone, male

whitefemspr.wad - White skin tone, female

lightbrownfemspr.wad - Lighter brown skin tone, female

darkbrownfemspr.wad - Darker brown skin tone, female

blackfemspr.wad - Black skin tone, female

whiteandspr.wad - White skin tone, androgynous

lightbrownandspr.wad - Lighter brown skin tone, androgynous

darkbrownandspr.wad - Darker brown skin tone, androgynous

blackandspr.wad - Black skin tone, androgynous

The sprite WADs would include first person weapons, 3rd person sprite and a status bar face. The male weapon sprites would obviously just be recolors of the existing set. Androgynous could have slightly less arm hair and slightly thinner arms. The female set would have even less arm hair and even thinner arms.

None of this is really necessary, but I figure, why not? Makes the game expressly more inclusive.

I'd really like to see this too, but I think the reason it hasn't been done is that it's very difficult and time-consuming work that, I have to admit, tends to feel better spent on creating things like brand new monsters or weapon sets that build a new gameplay experience. Creating player portraits that actually look right (especially when you want to avoid looking like you've created a racial caricature), creating a complete new set of player sprites that look anatomically accurate, or overhauling an arm on a weapon sprite are some of the most challenging spriting jobs you can do in this game, and I'm not sure I'm up to them. At least with monsters, you don't have to deal with the uncanny valley. I wouldn't really know where to start on creating the sounds either.

The first thing to do is probably see if anyone has already created sound sets that seem like what you're looking for. You'd probably only need two player sprite sets, fortunately, since race isn't visible in the player sprite. (Edit: nm, yes it is) (Edit: given that the space suit is pretty bulky, you might only need an androgynous set to cover both female and androgynous). And then it would be on to the portraits and arms. I remember that one of the Doom Alpha-based projects has a few new player portraits (including two women and a black man) that look quite good, but I can't remember the name of the project. (Edit: found it)

I would like to create female player sprites for Heretic eventually, but it's definitely daunting. Thankfully, at least portraits are not an issue in that game.

Why it hasn't been done yet? I'd probably be inclined to assume that a project such as this seems much more like community maintenance than an actually exciting opportunity to pursue.

It could be very rewarding if someone were able to sculpt an attractive and anatomically accurate female form in pixels for the entire Doom marine sprite sheet that isn't some chunky frankensteined edit of the existing sprites.

As for feminine sounds, I couldn't be pushed to find a woman or prepubescent boy to record audio of them screaming and grunting for a non-ambitious project. (though you could probably steal something pretty good from a porno maybe)

in any case, Doom has existed for 20 years and at this point I would assume a greater majority of players are perfectly comfortable playing as the OG doom guy, so something like this may only appeal to a fraction of people who really cannot pretend they are who they believe they are without graphics they cant see from a first person perspective in their single player games anyway. In a game like Doom that does require a lot of imagination, I dont see any motivating reason to do a massive favor for those types of people however many there

may be.

These aren't reasons anyone shouldn't do it. But it seems much more interesting to either realize a vision of a Doom experience you've always wanted to play in, or something that would get much more attention for much less work

3 minutes ago, 40oz said:

(though you could probably steal something pretty good from a porno maybe)

Best. Idea. Ever.

Tennis or sports in general are not good enough for female grunts and screams anymore? At least they would be more fitting to the fighting spirit.

My current project I've been working on features a female protagonist, but this is do the wad being story driven. It isn't entirely meant to be you, it's meant to be you playing a character, while you fill in the blank of who she is in a way (not like it entirely matters considering personality does not affect the game what so ever). I was originally going to make player sprites but because it would take up time, as well as be unnecessary since it's a singleplayer only wad, I only made hud and death sprites, as well as some weapon sprite edits. (There are new sounds of course)

I think regular doom guy works enough because no one really cares about who they are when playing wads of any sort. you can figure out who you are and why you are there pretty much from the get go in most cases, and making a "new" protagonist seems to only be for story oriented wads, style, or just for the sake of fun.

And lets be honest, I can't speak for everyone but I really don't want "myself" in my entirety as the character in a doom wad. Sprites, sounds, and all. I would find that incredibly weird and awkward.

I feel like this could be managed a lot less cumbersomely if the D16guy was adapted into sprite format, and the player sounds were replaced by various impact noises and perhaps suit warning beeps ala Half-Life's HEV suit. 

Whenever I write stories for a .wad idea (kinda like writing practice, writing a story of how do the maps play), or whenever I explain the plot to the player, I take care to only mention that you are a dude or a girl when needed for a story. For this latest single map, I thought up of a story of a politically activated high school student (protesting against UAC's actions on Mars and its moons, cuz human ettiquete) riding home to save his parents FROM THE DEEMONZ! (and he is late of course), because I thought up if it ever happens to be finished AND to have a sequel, you would have to save your friends, and they would all be like "Thanks dude!" "Thanks man!" (oh and a romantic interest or two :P )
 

stupid personal story below

Basically, I don't really see the need for diverse Doompeople. Maybe just because diversity isn't really a issue since you weren't supposed to look at your face but what is in front of the trigger. I consider Doomguy to just be a placeholder to the player's face, and since the jump from platformers (where your player character was supposed to be seen all the time) to first person shooters didn't went that super-smooth with regards to the player's immersion, I guess the face was there just to make you sure that no, you are not a floating shotgun. You are actually a human holding one. That, or for gaming-illiterate people to be able to read just how screwed they are (bloody faces = not exactly paragon of healthiness) without looking at the numbers (they had to focus on what they were pointing at), and old times were the old times. It was enough to draw a human face to make you sure you are a human and are probably roleplaying as the guy behind the trigger, and if you saw something else besides a cautious smug face looking left and right, or one with eyes glowing, you should probably get worried.

I just use female voices from Quake 3.

I once photoshopped the doomguy to be a different race just out of curiosity.  I also once lightened the skin tone of the chaingunner.

don't you dare start a flamewar over this, thank you

---

Anyway, I've seen some (white) female sprites in a 90-s TC. I think it was Aliens Doom 3, it's somewhere in the archive's "/themes" directory. They were quite decent IMO. The fist sprite in particular looked great.

edit: @DoctorGenesis that's it

Is this what you were referring to @bzzrak?  https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Aliens_Doom_3_-_Aliens_versus_Predator

16 minutes ago, bzzrak said:

don't you dare start a flamewar over this, thank you

 

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...really? This is a satanic game with gore, blood, demons, death, HELL and you wanna make it politically correct?

I mean, that's OK, but... kinda strange.

(I know "politically correct" is the wrong word here, I'm exaggerating a bit. :] )
 

 

 

I'm not really sure what blood, gore, and hell have to do with it, and the OP didn't accuse anyone of being politically incorrect. Why not be able to play as other types of people? If there were actually female or non-white player sprites, I would use them sometimes. From a player's perspective, there's no reason this type of content shouldn't exist. As I pointed out before, I think the only problem is that almost no one in the community has the skillset to create it.

Whoever decides to work on this: just do a good job on the sounds. The only reason I've never played as the assassin in Hexen 2 is because I CAN'T TAKE THAT WOMAN'S VOICE! It's not even a woman's voice -- it's like a caricature of a woman's voice. Just awful. Actually, that's why I almost never play as a female character in any game.

My unsolicited $0.02.

10 minutes ago, 42PercentHealth said:

Whoever decides to work on this: just do a good job on the sounds. The only reason I've never played as the assassin in Hexen 2 is because I CAN'T TAKE THAT WOMAN'S VOICE! It's not even a woman's voice -- it's like a caricature of a woman's voice. Just awful. Actually, that's why I almost never play as a female character in any game.

 

My unsolicited $0.02.

Meanwhile on the other end of the female-voice-acting-in-old-shooting-games spectrum, I think whoever voiced Blackbird from Strife did a pretty good job while at it, and if there was anything bad about her voice acting, it probably had to do about the lines she had to read :D

11 hours ago, Blastfrog said:

Makes the game expressly more inclusive.

I wholeheartedly agree to this. <3

I wouldn't have any problem with skin packs -- being able to customize the game to your heart's content is great. I think there are more exciting opportunities to pursue, but if anybody wants to make something like that, more power to them.

I don't know if it's any help, but I made a black doomguy for 20skins.wad. Literally nothing changed other than the skin color. Feel free to use it.

Edit: Pretty much never seen a good female doomguy variant. They all just look like slightly slimmer versions of Doomguy at best and hulking long-haired men at worst. The one and only skin I've seen that struck me as even remotely female was crash from skulltag, but even then she was oddly cartoony and totally incomplete.

I personally like the idea of having more varied yet true to orignal style statbar faces as a community resource allowing for people to have a more unique feeling megawad with it having a new/different protagonist.

2 hours ago, bzzrak said:

...really? This is a satanic game with gore, blood, demons, death, HELL and you wanna make it politically correct?

I'm actually not much of a fan of political correctness. This is about inclusivity, which is different and something that I am fully behind.

I am in favor of advocating for social justice. Real social justice, not the kind where people's heads are so far up their ass that they aggressively attack people over perceived problems that are all in their head. Most people that would be labelled as "SJWs" by the alt-righter types I would consider to simply be "SJAs" (social justice advocates). The "SJWs" are only the most extreme people who have lost all sense of reality and perspective, and those are few and far between. There are people who are otherwise an "SJA" at all times, but might slip into being unreasonable on rare occasion.

That being said, I don't want to derail my own discussion, so please focus on the project idea rather than what is/isn't politically correct or anything like that.

2 hours ago, Impie said:

I just use female voices from Quake 3.

Hmm, perhaps I should look into those. Official id assets, better than using any random sound from elsewhere. If they're not too fitting, I might want to look into the Sound Series General library that was used to make most of Doom's sounds.

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

I don't know if it's any help, but I made a black doomguy for 20skins.wad.

It could be useful, I'll check it out. Thanks! :)

1 hour ago, Tracer said:

While we are on the topic...I have always thought that there should be mods made for the True Crime games so that I can feel that my race is better represented in the game.  I also want a Donkey Kong 64 mod so that Donkey Kong can be a human.  I want my species represented.  

 

Hell, everything should be everything.

Those are all absurd examples that have no bearing on this idea. The character is supposed to be representative of the player in Doom. I figured that perhaps the women who play Doom might want to immerse themselves more in the game than with the default player skin. Is that such a bad idea?

2 hours ago, Arctangent said:

I feel like this could be managed a lot less cumbersomely if the D16guy was adapted into sprite format, and the player sounds were replaced by various impact noises and perhaps suit warning beeps ala Half-Life's HEV suit. 

Ehh. I like the idea of the classic Doom marine being unrealistically under-armored. It's like "I'm such a badass space marine, I don't need to cover my arms!" Even Doom 3, for its shift in tone and style, still did this. The lower tech feel of not having advanced HEV style stuff is also nice, feels more like you, the marine, are the powerful one, and you're not just relying on the armor. I thought the idea behind Gordon Freeman unrealistically surviving was because the HEV suit was a key asset in physical survival, in tandem with his brains to make smart decisions in order to not get himself killed.

3 hours ago, Maes said:

Tennis or sports in general are not good enough for female grunts and screams anymore? At least they would be more fitting to the fighting spirit.

Unless you're talking about HDoom. :P

Pretty much all the voices I use in my mods are from Sounds Resource. You might get lucky there.

2 minutes ago, DoctorGenesis said:

If we're gonna talk about racism and Donkey Kong, DK was voiced by a black guy on the (horrible) TV show.

That's a show I could've gone the rest of my life without remembering...

Why was it a musical on top of everything else?!

Do people actually want to make their game characters similar to what they look like in real life? I was always much more interested in being someone I'm not while playing. For example, I usually choose female characters when that is possible. Feels more exciting to experience something different.

34 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Do people actually want to make their game characters similar to what they look like in real life? I was always much more interested in being someone I'm not while playing. For example, I usually choose female characters when that is possible. Feels more exciting to experience something different.

That's certainly valid, too, but I thought that Doom was a power fantasy where you are the marine. In keeping with the whole power fantasy thing, of course the character would still be a muscular badass. Just not necessarily a white and/or male one.

Again, it's worth noting that Tom Hall had similar ideas even back in '92. Yes, they were actual characters with their own identities and personalities, but the idea of inclusion/diversity among the playable marines was there before the game even entered production.

I'm using a personal weapons mod which replaces the doomguy with a female marine. I got some resources from various projects and turned them into my own mod with my own decorate and some custom sprites, though the gameplay is exactly the same. Sometimes I need a break from the original assets.

17 hours ago, Maes said:

Tennis or sports in general are not good enough for female grunts and screams anymore? At least they would be more fitting to the fighting spirit.

Azarenka's shrieks wouldn't be replacing the grunts, but the BFG.

16 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Pretty much never seen a good female doomguy variant

@nxGangGirl made a pretty decent doomchick.

I'm gonna need a scrawny and not quite white, but light skinned Doom marine in order for me to self insert better.

But jokes aside, if you wanna be inclusive with Doom by adding variants of the player, I think a bigger issue would be the HUD hands. I have seen good female sprites somewhere on the Zdoom forums, as well as a female HUD face which I've seen being used in some mods. But I have really never seen a set of female hands. The default arms are too burly and hairy to pass off as a woman. Closest I've seen to female arms were the arms on the weapons Amuscaria made for demon eclipse.

These are all heresies. Doomguy must remain a buff, WASP jarhead in order to cater to Doom's original crowd in 1994: acme-ridden nerdy teens that played computer games before "gaming" was a thing, secretly wishing they were him.

actually i played doom in 1994 and thought of doomguy as a school bully and guided him into crushers