Should Freedoom guy wear gloves?

[Blastfrog]

May as well have a thread on the issue. Should he wear them in the weapon sprites or have bare hands?

[fabian]

Couldn't care less. Whatever doesn't get in the way.

[40oz]

These are the hard questions when it comes to making an iwad.

[andrewj]

40oz said:

These are the hard questions when it comes to making an iwad.

Heh.

I think the current fists weapon sprites look good, and should be kept.

Hence everywhere else he should wear gloves.

[MrFlibble]

With gloves, PWAD compatibility increases (from an aesthetic perspective at least). Without them, Freedoom gets more of a separate identity, and it is also consistent with the concept art.

I think this is one of the issues that can only get a satisfactory solution if the PWAD-compatible and "own identity" sub-projects are separated into different IWADs. If this route were taken, I'd vote for bare hands with bracers, as in the concept art.

[esselfortium]

MrFlibble said:

With gloves, PWAD compatibility increases (from an aesthetic perspective at least). Without them, Freedoom gets more of a separate identity, and it is also consistent with the concept art.

I think this is one of the issues that can only get a satisfactory solution if the PWAD-compatible and "own identity" sub-projects are separated into different IWADs. If this route were taken, I'd vote for bare hands with bracers, as in the concept art.

I'm not sure if I follow how "does the player wear gloves or not" could have any impact on pwad compatibility. The artwork in Doom wasn't even consistent about whether or not the player wears gloves.

[MrFlibble]

I simply reiterated what was said here.

I think that Doom is more or less consistent with gloves: Doomguy just takes them off when he uses the brass knuckles/chainsaw. Also I think every piece of concept art shows him with gloves. They're only missing from the player sprite IIRC.

[Tarnsman]

MrFlibble said:

I think that Doom is more or less consistent with gloves: Doomguy just takes them off when he uses the brass knuckles/chainsaw. Also I think every piece of concept art shows him with gloves. They're only missing from the player sprite IIRC.

So Doomguy has gloves on in 3 weapon sprite sets, no gloves on in 2 weapon sprite sets, no gloves in his player sprite, gloves on the box art, and this is consistency?

[Da Werecat]

Chainsaw has gloves. So you only have brass knuckles and player sprites (that are small and not really seen all that much outside of multiplayer). No consistency, but the gloves are clearly prevalent. Custom weapon creators seem to share this idea as well, which is all that matters in this case.

[schwerpunk]

Doesn't exactly make sense, but fits the theme: What about medical latex gloves? Could be any colour, and visually distinct from Doom.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

Wouldn't making a pool be a better idea than just shooting the question and picking a random answer?

I would vote for either no gloves (keep consistent with the cover box character, and only give him bracers), or if it's really required to give him gloves, then fingerless black leather biker gloves, because rule of cool. Absolutely everybody looks good on these.

[MrFlibble]

Da Werecat said:

Chainsaw has gloves. So you only have brass knuckles and player sprites (that are small and not really seen all that much outside of multiplayer). No consistency, but the gloves are clearly prevalent. Custom weapon creators seem to share this idea as well, which is all that matters in this case.

Right, I was wrong about the chainsaw.

PWADs with custom weapons certainly do have gloves to be consistent with the original game for which they were intended. Anything different from a generally similar look, which was achieved with the older weapon graphics set, will be contrasting with any custom weapons that might be found in a PWAD.

[Memfis]

Should wear gloves so that you couldn't tell whether it's a man or woman. And make the status bar face more androgynous.

[RestlessRodent]

Memfis said:

Should wear gloves so that you couldn't tell whether it's a man or woman. And make the status bar face more androgynous.

What about the grunts the player makes?

[andrewj]

The face on the statusbar is also clearly male.

Supporting a female player character is something which would need engine support, so it's beyond the scope of Freedoom I think.

[raymoohawk]

i suspect memfis was being sarcastic, but i for one think the sounds and appearance of the player would be better off as unisex, it would be tricky of course because of the shared sounds, but not imposible

[andrewj]

I suspect making a good androgenous face would be the hardest part.

[Varis Alpha]

it might just be me, but it seems a bit silly to strive for making the PC androgynous just for the sake of giving the project originality. like, i don't have a problem with it, but i feel there's higher priorities on the list than that, especially when the current PC is clearly male. if there's going to be an effort in making the PC's gender ambiguous, though, maybe there should be more of an effort put in to make this fact apparent, instead of just saying "hey wouldn't it be cool if the PC's gender was ambiguous/different?"

besides, i haven't heard much of any complaints about Freedoomguy's mug before, so i feel that makes it even more of a non-pressing issue.

[raymoohawk]

i would totally be willing to do the new sprites :)
but i have to do the monsters first

[RjY]

No gloves, and a broken manacle around one arm, like the title screen. And keep Karlface, it's hilarious.

[raymoohawk]

RjY said:

No gloves, and a broken manacle around one arm, like the title screen

i concur with this :)

[MrFlibble]

RjY said:

And keep Karlface, it's hilarious.

Yes, please.

However, I would welcome a version with several selectable characters, as in mods/TCs that use Hexen code. That's certainly beyond the scope of an IWAD project, but I don't think it's beyond the scope of Freedoom in general.

[Voros]

RjY said:

No gloves, and a broken manacle around one arm, like the title screen. And keep Karlface, it's hilarious.

Speaking of the title screen, what's with it?
A giant hand cuffed arm
Icon of Sin or something
Player holding a black sword (?)

[robotdog1]

Voros said:

Speaking of the title screen, what's with it?
A giant hand cuffed arm
Icon of Sin or something
Player holding a black sword (?)

If you checked the latest version of freedoom, it was changed to a more "Ultimate Doom-esque" Pic with Freedoomguy fighting off an Orb monster and a giant Worm with an Angle grinder

[Voros]

I see, apparently the SSG, imp, cacodemon, and etc were taken from sodaholic's wad "sodafd.wad".
With extras.

If you ask me, FDguy should have grey gloves to fit his regular suit colour.

[fraggle]

MrFlibble said:

With gloves, PWAD compatibility increases

PWAD compatibility has nothing to do with making Freedoom's art look like Doom's. Please don't assume this or continue to promote this false idea.

We want Freedoom to have as much of an individual, unique art style as is possible.

[Da Werecat]

PWAD compatibility relies on Freedoom's art following certain Doom tropes. This way anything that was made to fit into Doom will fit into Freedoom. It seems that you simply don't care about compatibility beyond the most basic technical sense (i.e. "at least it's playable").

[MrFlibble]

fraggle said:

PWAD compatibility has nothing to do with making Freedoom's art look like Doom's. Please don't assume this or continue to promote this false idea.

The idea does not originate with me, but I find Da Werecat's reasoning on this matter convincing. I have played PWADs with custom weapons, which of course have gloves, and the old weapons with gloves were quite consistent with the modded ones.

I suppose that this discussion would not take place if there were clear, unambiguous guidelines on where the limits are beyond which Freedoom's similarity to Doom becomes infringing on the latter's copyright. So far, these limits are unclear to me.

I should also say that I do not think superficial differences, no matter how numerous, really contribute to the "unique style" of Freedoom. Things like mega-armour recoloured in red, or no gloves for the player, seem like a deliberate attempt to try and not be Doom, but I believe that a true separate identity cannot be built on the basis of negation of something else. Especially considering that many of Freedoom's assets have been consciously created to resemble those of Doom, specifically for PWAD compatibility.

That said, I do like Sodaholic's sprites. They are great work, and the fact those are digitized photos has additional value.

I think that the decision on the gloves should be made in accord with the project's philosophy. Here I can only agree with what Jon said (in regard of a custom palette but it really applies to the whole project as well):

Jon said:

One of the goals of Freedoom is/was to support playing PWADs. PWADs might have their own additional graphics which would be mangled in unpredictable ways by a radically different palette.

If freedoom ever split into the "base" compatibility IWAD and a freedoom "game" PWAD, it could be done in the latter.

[RestlessRodent]

If it were me and I were running around Freedoom's environment, I would want to wear gloves because who knows how dirty those monsters are. There are also radioactive environments and other hazards such as blood pools, so the gloves may have extra protection against that.

[fraggle]

Da Werecat said:

PWAD compatibility relies on Freedoom's art following certain Doom tropes.

I understand where you're coming from but I completely disagree.

PWAD compatibility for the most part means texture compatibility - ie. you can play a PWAD and the walls, floors and ceilings will have textures should mostly make sense in the context of a mod that was made for Doom's texture set.

When textures are wrong, we get bugs filed and can objectively see that a compatibility issue exists. What you're describing is far more vague and subjective - "weapons have a different style and don't look like they match". And as far as I can tell this discussion is speaking entirely in hypotheticals - if we don't slavishly follow the art style, then someone might complain about a mismatch when playing some particular mod. It doesn't make for a very convincing argument.

At some point when talking about compatibility you have to accept that perfect 100% compatibility with all Doom mods is never going to be attainable, and this seems like a good cutoff point - ie. at the point where we have entered the realm of entirely subjective. Ultimately if the art style is different the game is still entirely playable.

But there's a deeper point here that I really want to stress. It's really, really important that Freedoom should have a distinct art style and be as original as possible. We've been pushing in that direction already by eliminating some resources recently which looked or sounded too close to the Doom versions. If you don't understand why, understand that copyright is not simply a matter of "I drew it myself so it's okay". As an example of how broadly copyright can be interpreted, read about this lawsuit for example.

That's why I was intentionally forceful in the language I used in my previous comment: please stop promoting this idea. Because doing so has the potential to be an existential threat to the project. When you talk about "compatibility" to this extent, what you are really talking about is copying Doom.