Development: Adding Skin Tone Options and Extra Gender?

[Thoriére]

Okay, so I believed I found a resource thread that would help me out with this earlier, but I was mistaken.

I'm sure everyone that has played X/Y remembers the options at the very start of the game that allowed for one to choose the skin tone of the player, and considering how fantastic a feature that was, I want to bring it back in a ROM hack. It is my understanding that a large number of POC (people of color, etc.) feel underrepresented in media; as an example, Pokémon games are Japanese in origin, and many of the people in Japan have relatively pale skin. The appearance of a pale character (regardless of race) may work well for east Asians, but people in South Asia tend to have darker skin (i.e. natives of the Philippines, etc.), and some are hurt by a lack of accurate character presentation. My non-white friends were overjoyed when they had the option to choose their skin tone, and though it may not seem very significant to a pale person, it allows for a more complete immersion into the game, and therefore a richer experience.

As great as that aspect of gameplay would be, however, what I'm perhaps more concerned about is the option to add a third gender. Now, I understand that this is perhaps an alien concept to many (if not most) people, allow me to explain. Quite a large body of people feel as though they are perhaps somehow "outside" of the gender binary, perpetuated by society's male-or-female normativity. As a result of this distinct feeling, be it gendered or non-gendered, people with this identity often feel very restricted by society as a whole. Some people on this (extremely broad) gender spectrum may consider themselves a bit more male/masculine or female/feminine, so this may be something that isn't as big a deal for them, but for others, it may seem surprisingly devastating.

Now, social justice crash-course aside, I want nothing more than to optimize each player's experience, and with that comes extensive research on code, whichever aspect it may be servicing. I understand that this could make scripting quite a bit more grueling; the checkgender script would have to be modified. I would like input on adding sprite data and selection options, as well as altering this script command.

Thank you for your time, and feel free to move this thread if it's in the wrong place. I assume this requires quite a bit of ASM, so I'm posting it here. I'm requesting additional information on this topic, as well as help researching and refining methods on this.

Cheers!

 

[Telinc1]

This is actually a pretty good idea. Now, I don't really care about these things, just as long the game's not racist to certain races. As for implementing this, it definitely wouldn't be easy. I don't know GBA ASM, though judging from other projects, this cannot be created with just a simple ASM routine - you would probably need to code it in C and then compile that into the game (kinda like how the Ruins of Alpha puzzle was done). Not to mention the amount of graphics and checks you would need - some things that come to mind immediately are the overworld sprites (~3 or 4 of them per gender, with a ton of frames each), backsprites and the trainer sprites.
While this is definitely possible, I don't think it will be very easy to create.

 

[Deokishisu]

I think that the skin-tone and non-binary gender choice would be great to see in hacks. I'm not sure how you would be able represent everyone who is not on the binary with just a (singular) third gender though. However, as an LGBT person myself, it's pretty awesome that you even considered it and tried to give an explanation!

The skin tone hack might be easiest to do when combined with the routines floating around that change the hero's OW sprite. I believe JPAN's engine can accomplish this. You would just have to ask the hero what appearance they'd prefer after the introduction, and insert the other skin tone sprites separately. The third gender could in theory be done this way as well, but it'd be clunky. Preferably someone would have to hack the gender routines to accept the third value, and have checkgender and such expanded to accommodate that value. This wouldn't be useful to just add a non-binary gender. You could chose to use Boy1 or Boy2 with this sort of routine as well.

 

[Thoriére]

This is actually a pretty good idea. Now, I don't really care about these things, just as long the game's not racist to certain races. As for implementing this, it definitely wouldn't be easy. I don't know GBA ASM, though judging from other projects, this cannot be created with just a simple ASM routine - you would probably need to code it in C and then compile that into the game (kinda like how the Ruins of Alpha puzzle was done). Not to mention the amount of graphics and checks you would need - some things that come to mind immediately are the overworld sprites (~3 or 4 of them per gender, with a ton of frames each), backsprites and the trainer sprites.
While this is definitely possible, I don't think it will be very easy to create.

The game certainly wouldn't be racist! No matter just how real a problem racism is in many people's lives, this game will not include it. I don't think I actually know how the Ruins of Alph puzzle was created, I'll probably have to look into that more carefully. As I'm just getting into knowing my way around C a bit better, I'll probably ask someone who's a bit more adept at it for advice.

I think that the skin-tone and non-binary gender choice would be great to see in hacks. I'm not sure how you would be able represent everyone who is not on the binary with just a (singular) third gender though. However, as an LGBT person myself, it's pretty awesome that you even considered it and tried to give an explanation!

The skin tone hack might be easiest to do when combined with the routines floating around that change the hero's OW sprite. I believe JPAN's engine can accomplish this. You would just have to ask the hero what appearance they'd prefer after the introduction, and insert the other skin tone sprites separately. The third gender could in theory be done this way as well, but it'd be clunky. Preferably someone would have to hack the gender routines to accept the third value, and have checkgender and such expanded to accommodate that value. This wouldn't be useful to just add a non-binary gender. You could chose to use Boy1 or Boy2 with this sort of routine as well.

I believe I did hear something about JPAN's engine working for this; my idea was to ask more of a question such as, "Do you prefer to be seen as masculine, feminine, or androgynous?" and, though that can be a bit cissexist, considering that not all non-binary people can or want to appear as "androgynous" and the actual fact that being non-binary can certainly be seen as an umbrella term or an entirely separate identity, but I also considered an option in which the player is asked for their pronouns as well as their "presentation" (put in quotation marks because "passing" is a pretty trashy concept imo).

I'm also part of the LGBT+/MOGAI community, and the lack of a third gender option has bothered me quite a bit. And, of course, I want to create better options for myself and others. I'm aware of the unfortunate fact that many people won't feel entirely represented by one extra gender option (or by they/them pronouns, as some non-binary people do use neopronouns such as xe/xem or ey/em, and sometimes it/its), but it's only the first step, and I think it'll bring some peace to people in the community.

Now, I figured that I could work around the sprites by expanding the area around where the player sprites are located (or simply expanding the table to add them at later offsets and assign them as a choosable value) and using ASM/C to code a few new question options. I'm also looking into skipping most of the intro and possibly naming the player from the overworld. I know how to do those things, at least for the most part, but I'm lost as to hacking the checkgender option. There wouldn't need to be a checksprite option in later scripts because the player is essentially assigned a permanent sprite after they pick their gender. Does anyone know how to do this?

 

[LocksmithArmy]

I love the skintone idea... i feel that wouldnt be too hard to implement since both characters use the same palette, just change a few of the palette values, or even point to a new palette. the hard part is implementing the choice itself...

I dont however feel the "non binary" gender is worth persuing. For instance simply adding a third would be silly since people may not identify with that role either. Physiologicly or phychologicly most people outside the relm of male/female are fine identifying with one or the other. LGBT is a silly argument because they are all either male or female, their orientation has no effect on who they play as with the exception of the T part... and in that case, they identify with the opposite gender, not some third Option.

Now there are physical people who may not be able to claim one or the other easily, but they do identify with one or the other moreso. If its that hard for any person to decide, i suggest choosing the character that dresses most like you, or looks the coolest to you... you could simply redraw both characters to look "more" androgenous and replace most gander choice text with gender nutral terms (in fr there arent that many he she statements)... instead of asking boy or girl, just ask which they look like... or something.

Your argument is as valid as wanting or make overweight or short main characters... y not give all the options skyrim has for making a main character, a truly customizeable pokemon character.

FYI: i am an LGBT supporter, my best friend is of that community, i just dont feel you need a third(or other) gendr option to make u feel more special.

 

[Touched]

This is more of a graphical problem than a code problem. These changes aren't anything that hasn't been done before (backsprite changes, overworld changes, sprite changes, oak intro, etc.). The main problem is getting the appropriate sprites.

That being said, the more options you add, the more difficult it becomes to script and stuff, if you wanted to allow scripts to address personalisation choices (like the checkgender command does). There is no formatted text engine, so replacing pronouns and gender-specific words is a bit more labour intensive.

 

[anonyboy]

Baiscally it could be easy, you'll need to tone the hero skin into many shades and add them as dynamic OW's in the extended pal slots, make a choice based script that runs the Hero Switch to the one you like (By setting a var i think, it's very simple but it takes palette space, even thought you just assign those in the slot that the hero colors take in the VRAM (can be easily found in the OW Data.)

 

[Thoriére]

I love the skintone idea... i feel that wouldnt be too hard to implement since both characters use the same palette, just change a few of the palette values, or even point to a new palette. the hard part is implementing the choice itself...

I dont however feel the "non binary" gender is worth persuing. For instance simply adding a third would be silly since people may not identify with that role either. Physiologicly or phychologicly most people outside the relm of male/female are fine identifying with one or the other. LGBT is a silly argument because they are all either male or female, their orientation has no effect on who they play as with the exception of the T part... and in that case, they identify with the opposite gender, not some third Option.

Now there are physical people who may not be able to claim one or the other easily, but they do identify with one or the other moreso. If its that hard for any person to decide, i suggest choosing the character that dresses most like you, or looks the coolest to you... you could simply redraw both characters to look "more" androgenous and replace most gander choice text with gender nutral terms (in fr there arent that many he she statements)... instead of asking boy or girl, just ask which they look like... or something.

Your argument is as valid as wanting or make overweight or short main characters... y not give all the options skyrim has for making a main character, a truly customizeable pokemon character.

FYI: i am an LGBT supporter, my best friend is of that community, i just dont feel you need a third(or other) gendr option to make u feel more special.

I'm glad you like the skin tone options; even as a white person, I think they were something largely missing from the games themselves, and I was disappointed when they didn't include it so much in ORAS (though I do understand the reasoning behind it).

I don't necessarily agree with you, and I do think that because you aren't necessarily a part of the community itself, you may not share our opinions. I don't want to start a war over this, I'm only letting you know what my opinion is, just as you did to me.

This is more of a graphical problem than a code problem. These changes aren't anything that hasn't been done before (backsprite changes, overworld changes, sprite changes, oak intro, etc.). The main problem is getting the appropriate sprites.

That being said, the more options you add, the more difficult it becomes to script and stuff, if you wanted to allow scripts to address personalisation choices (like the checkgender command does). There is no formatted text engine, so replacing pronouns and gender-specific words is a bit more labour intensive.

It would definitely be a bit difficult, but the sprites won't be too much of a problem for me. I'm also collaborating with a non-binary person of color on the sprites, and they appreciate what I'm trying to do. Thanks to everyone for the help.

Baiscally it could be easy, you'll need to tone the hero skin into many shades and add them as dynamic OW's in the extended pal slots, make a choice based script that runs the Hero Switch to the one you like (By setting a var i think, it's very simple but it takes palette space, even thought you just assign those in the slot that the hero colors take in the VRAM (can be easily found in the OW Data.)

I think I'm going to be using an expanded ROM, as well as JPAN's engine, so the graphical aspect shouldn't bee too much of an issue. I have a pretty basic idea on the rough script, but I'll probably check back to confirm in a little bit (may just merge it with this post unless someone else comments).

 

[Mickey`]

For the intro, I don't know how to implant it, but for the player's OW, you can easily change it. I've already done this hack (in a French ROM) :

Changing OW's (Part 1)

I also made a hack to change the sprite on the Trainer Card :

Changing OW's (Part 2)

We can make them work together easily.

So, If we make a different OW and a different sprite for each skin tone, it could be pretty easy to implant this feature in a hack.

 

[ThomasWinwood]

I dont however feel the "non binary" gender is worth persuing. For instance simply adding a third would be silly since people may not identify with that role either. Physiologicly or phychologicly most people outside the relm of male/female are fine identifying with one or the other. LGBT is a silly argument because they are all either male or female, their orientation has no effect on who they play as with the exception of the T part... and in that case, they identify with the opposite gender, not some third Option.

There are people who are uncomfortable with identifying as male or female both; it can't hurt to try and make them feel welcome and comfortable too. That said, your argument that they might equally dislike a third option has some degree of merit - IMO the optimal solution is decoupling the choice of pronoun from the trainer design and providing third options for both. (There are as far as I know no other manifestations of gender in the games.) Someone might wish, for example, to appear as Brendan but be addressed with the pronoun "they" or even "she", and that wish should be accommodated.

 

[Thoriére]

There are people who are uncomfortable with identifying as male or female both; it can't hurt to try and make them feel welcome and comfortable too. That said, your argument that they might equally dislike a third option has some degree of merit - IMO the optimal solution is decoupling the choice of pronoun from the trainer design and providing third options for both. (There are as far as I know no other manifestations of gender in the games.) Someone might wish, for example, to appear as Brendan but be addressed with the pronoun "they" or even "she", and that wish should be accommodated.

Exactly. I definitely had this concern, so I'm considering looking into a feature n which I could simply give a pronoun entering option; people have different presentations, after all! And as I believe I said earlier, some people use pronouns such as xe/xem, ey/em, ne/nim, or it/its (neopronouns, which I myself am more comfortable with than he/him at times). I'd probably have to liquidate the checkgender command entirely and make a checkpronoun command instead, but I think it's worth it, to be quite honest. Someone created those commands, after all.

 

[Deokishisu]

Exactly. I definitely had this concern, so I'm considering looking into a feature n which I could simply give a pronoun entering option; people have different presentations, after all! And as I believe I said earlier, some people use pronouns such as xe/xem, ey/em, ne/nim, or it/its (neopronouns, which I myself am more comfortable with than he/him at times). I'd probably have to liquidate the checkgender command entirely and make a checkpronoun command instead, but I think it's worth it, to be quite honest. Someone created those commands, after all.

Scripting-wise, you could use a variable to identify the pronouns the player would want to use, and then buffer them into a script. Actually, perhaps a third gender option may not be necessary if you carefully design the male/female characters and then add the pronoun choice. It will be more labor intensive scripting wise, but absolutely worth it.

 

[diamondeyes]

I think the easiest way to sort it is to use the 'force male gender option' patch so there's just one option to pick, and make a protagonist who looks androgynous so it could represent anyone. or you could make a light skinned version and a dark skinned version and replace the male and female sprites with it so there's 2 options to pick.

 

[AtecainCorp.]

Ok. I like this Idea. But,... One thing is undefinded. For your feature you must rid Trainer Sprites Limiter. And the question is where that limiter is.

 

[Mickey`]

Another idea for the skin tone, you can load the same OW but with different palettes. It's not too hard to do that.

 

[AtecainCorp.]

So... If someone going to implement skin tone,. It was been good to make them for Ruby, Emerald and Fire Red. Not only for FR.

 

[Thoriére]

Scripting-wise, you could use a variable to identify the pronouns the player would want to use, and then buffer them into a script. Actually, perhaps a third gender option may not be necessary if you carefully design the male/female characters and then add the pronoun choice. It will be more labor intensive scripting wise, but absolutely worth it.

I think the easiest way to sort it is to use the 'force male gender option' patch so there's just one option to pick, and make a protagonist who looks androgynous so it could represent anyone. or you could make a light skinned version and a dark skinned version and replace the male and female sprites with it so there's 2 options to pick.

Those are excellent ideas, actually. I think the gender force choice is definitely a possibility, though I'd prefer to add the race choice feature on its own, like in X/Y.

Spoiler:

The only difference I would suggest would be to have, rather than two pale options, a pale, medium, and dark option, but that's neither here nor there. If it's not possible to do that, or too outlandishly difficult, the skin tone option would likely be reduced to a binary choice and would replace the gender option.

If I didn't design a fully androgynous player and simply left the male and female binary with pronoun options, it would do well to eradicate the idea that one has to "pass" to have their gender be valid, but I'm also a bit concerned that it would enforce non-binary erasure in and of itself (though I do personally believe that the pronouns are the most important part of the whole ordeal).

Ok. I like this Idea. But,... One thing is undefinded. For your feature you must rid Trainer Sprites Limiter. And the question is where that limiter is.

So... If someone going to implement skin tone,. It was been good to make them for Ruby, Emerald and Fire Red. Not only for FR.

Okay, so if I understand you correctly, you think I should find the limiter and eliminate or move it? And about the R/S/E/FR/LG compatibility, I could modify all of those ROMs to have this option if someone were to want to play the exact game with these options and put that in the Sideshow Showcase, but this hack itself is an overhaul hack for FireRed, and I don't particularly want to put the entirety of that hack on other ROMs when the actual version base itself has nothing to do with the majority of the hack; I mean, everything is being replaced.

Another idea for the skin tone, you can load the same OW but with different palettes. It's not too hard to do that.

Yeah, thank you. All I would need to do is overwrite the "male" and "female" sprites with the one "androgynous" sprite with two different palettes. I believe that OW Editor Rebirth can do this? Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Mickey`]

Yes, you can, but you will have only 2 skin tones available.

 

[vuurvlieg]

I'm a non-binary person of colour. My hack is going to have (surprise!) a non-binary person of colour as the protaganist but I would love the option to have multiple genders and ethnicities. Excited about any progress on this!

 

[U.Flame]

I realize this is an old thread but I feel it's worth noting that an extra gender option can be used for other things. Since scripts can split with gender, I was thinking of some ideas of hacks that use that for something else, like a character select instead of a gender select, and have the game be different depending on the choice. Adding a third "gender" adds to the possibilities, be it another character or whatever the gender option can be turned into. More choices never hurt.