(GCN) X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse - Version 2.0

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After loads of file removing and arrangements, and tremendous amount of game testing with the Gamecube's Assets, I present you...

Download (Click on the large image above.)

If you currently have the patch downloaded, be sure to check out on latest posts for any minor fixes to keep your assets up to date with its current files.

Update Information

This patch is my biggest update yet, and is going to serve as a core to most of your game cube modding needs. For those who've previously installed my XML II Updated Pack, Version 2.0 is the completed form of it, and is the official name I decided to give it.

About Version 2.0
It contains a ton of file arrangements, and removal of stuff that aren't used in the actual game's release (ex: unused character files with no data, characters with the same ID as another, and unfinished maps). Further more, this updated patch is to help the GCN version keep itself a float in terms of opening the eligibility for making character mods a little easier, as well as adding in mod conversions from other ports (although, still being limited to certain modifications). The original file size of the assetsfb that was present in the final build of the game's release was somewhere around the file size of 377,665 KB. With my arrangements, it has now been greatly reduced to 252,255 KB..

Woohoo! 

How to install

* If you only wish to play the patch right away without modding it, for an easy quick installation, simply download the .zip file from the large image above, open your X-Men Legends II ISO with the program GC Rebuilder, and right-click -> import to replace the current assetsfb.wad and xmen_rel_fin.rel in the ISO with the ones you just downloaded, and that's it!

* For modding purposes on adding custom characters and such, visit my tutorial thread on how to install character mods (written by me for GCN purposes)

Important Stuff

Permanent.fb: - Located in packages\generated\maps\package\ of the assetsfb.wad's structure.
This file now holds all the texture effects for every hero and enemy in the game. No longer will you have to include any texture_effect.igb in a character's packaging file since texture effects will now be read through the Permanent.fb. It can also store additional models and have them become shared if your custom character can't hold too many in their packaging file. The permanent.fb also has it's limits which can cause Menu textures not to load properly should the limit ever be met. ONLY STORE ADDITIONAL MODELS IN THERE WHEN YOU REALLY NEED TO.
- The only shared models that are included in there so far, are grenades, missiles, and additional entities that my Sentinel Mod couldn't hold in his .fb file.

Character Files:
- Character Files now have their KB size greatly reduced:
- Updated costume textures. Majority of playable heroes and enemy bosses now use higher quality skins which already existed in their packaging files.
- Removed all .gerb, .freb, itab, and .spab files since they're not needed in the NA version of the game.
- Removed textures effects that were previously stored in a character's packaging file. They are now read through the Permanent.fb. (Does not include texture_icons1.igb on playable heroes.)
- All hero's movesets and powers are still kept in their vanilla state like in the original assets.

Gameplay Information and minor changes

Unlocking Deadpool
------------------------------
A script was added in Act 4 where Deadpool will automatically join your team as you're about to enter Apocalypse's Tower on your first playthrough. No longer will you have to beat the game to unlock him.

Shared Talents:
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Grab:
- Every hero now has this ability in their herostats. Heroes who couldn't grab in the original game's assets, can now grab like most of the bruisers do.

Block:
- Is now a hidden ability in the Shared Talents and the max Level has been decreased from Level 5 to Level 1. All heroes now have this ability at Level 1 in their herostat to use for defensive purposes, and can applied to the talent list when in combat maps.
- Operates similar to MUA's by no longer consuming EP when attacked, and provides 100% damage blocked when activated.

Hologram Hero: - New Talent added: 
A shared talent made by me. It is an aesthetics feature and makes characters appear faded with blue aura lighting below the hero. It will serve as a nice in-game element for character mods that cannot be given custom voices, and having them assume as if they were a reflection.

Striker: - New Talent added: 
A shared talent made by Cohollow. It will be applied on mods of his characters (who use the talent) that are converted from the PC over to the Gamecube (if anyone or myself does any.)

Heroes: - Bonus & Revival Costumes:
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Costumes from XML 1 that didn't make the cut are now included in the said character's costume list. Most of them use the PS2 Imports.

Cyclops:
Chaos Lord

Colossus:
Default - XML 1

Iceman:
Default - XML 1

Jean Grey:
Default - XML 1
Sun Goddess

Professor X:
Astral Gladiator

Storm:
Default - XML 1

Wolverine:
70's skin
Ultimate Predator

Danger Room NPCs:
-----------------------------------
- Blob, Emma Frost, and Mystique now appear as playables in the Danger Room, and have a few updated shared talents added to them. Simply start a new game, and they will be accessible the moment the Danger Room becomes available.
- Blob now uses his PS2 skin imported from X-Men Legends 1
- Havok now has Fightstyle_Hero applied to his NPCstat to overwrite the unused animation he performs in the Danger Room simulator.

Mechanics & Features

HP Restore/Party Revive

Neat little side feature that's included in all five Act's base camp. It allows the player to revive fallen active party members, like in MUA. There is no charge of tech bits needed to pay and it can be accessed through the game's shopkeeper at any time. Beast will take charge in Act 1 until he is captured, and his position will be handed over to Forge for the rest of the game. (The image above is an older preview. The feature has been updated in the v2.0)

Special Dive kick

The Special Dive kick from X-Men Legends 1 returns as a shared FightMove. Not exactly how it was in XML 1, but it is still a fun feature to have and is useful for its purpose. Only Heroes that have the fightstyle_finesse1 applied in their herostat and can't fly, can perform this ability. Ex: Toad and Nightcrawler.

PC Exclusive Heroes:

This patch also gives you access to the bonus heroes, Pyro and Sabretooth, who were both exclusive only to the PC. The two function exactly the same as their PC ports, being clones of Sunfire and Wolverine respectively.

Pyro Information:
Being an unused and unfinished character at first, Pyro now joins the team as an official hero! He lacks a roster name call and sounds for his talents. Other than that, he is fully compatible, has full a voice set in the over world, and doesn't crash the game in anyway.

Pyro Data:
- Uses PS2 Skins imported from X-Men Legends 1 PS2
- No longer has Sunfire's menu animation but his own unique one which is taken directly from his PC file.
- Gains bonus with Brotherhood of Evil and Forces of Nature * teams.
- Now has a Character Select Portrait
- Talent names are changed from Sunfire's to his version of his talents.

Bonus Skins included:
- Dark Pyro
- Fire Demon

How to Unlock:
A special conversation (no voices) that's exclusive to only Brotherhood Heroes can be accessed, allowing them to talk Pyro into joining the team as a permanent party member. Fitting due to his role in Act 1 as he's rescued in Genosha, becomes temporarily party member, leaves the group because he doesn't want to fight Abyss, and later appears as an NPC to talk to.

Sabretooth Information:
Sabretooth in this update is considered a glitch character. The purpose on adding him was to match the PC version's default character roster as well as increasing a selection of characters. Certain methods had to be performed in order for me get his character slot into the game. Sabretooth replaces Storm in the tutorial and vise-versa. Not to worry, Storm will still be available in the Change Team menu. Like Pyro, he lacks a roster name call (tested) and sounds for his talents. Other than that, he is fully compatible, has full a voice set in the over world, and doesn't crash the game in anyway.

How to access Sabretooth's character slot
A new feature was added to Beast and Forge's menu which will allow you to access Sabretooth at anytime. Due to his slot not appearing in the team menu, this is the only way to access him. He will always be selected on the fourth Active Hero slot, and can optionally be arranged when removing active party members.
Now you can gain control as this Wolverine clone in your GCN game!

Sabretooth Data:
- Besides Age of Apocalypse, he now gains bonus with Brotherhood of Evil, Bruiser Brigade, and Dark Past teams.
- Now has effects for his talents which was copy and pasted from Wolverine's and renamed into his.
- Sabretooth's files have been renamed from "Sabretooth_Hero" to "Sabre" to be able to safely replace him over Storm in the tutorial map.

Bonus Skin included:
- His original default skinset. - Files provided to me by Jayglass.
- Default XML 1

Minor Issues:
- When loading the map with Sabretooth into the team, it also resets previous maps that were entered by reviving all defeated enemies regardless of how long ago. Nothing bad about gaining more EXP for the party.
- If Sabretooth appears as a higher or lower level than the rest of the team, which only occurs when starting a new save file, the only way to fix this issue is to reboot the game before starting a new file to refresh is level effect. There's possibly no other way to fix this but to do the following as said. This is an issue with the 20th Hero slot and not Sabretooth's character.

How to Unlock:
Although he can only be usable as a glitch character, a script was added so he automatically unlocks when starting a new game, allowing him to be used in Sparring and Skirmish in Danger Room modes.





Creator Notes:
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- Sabretooth takes the 20th hero slot by default in the Update. If you ever feel like switching him out with another hero, there is a guide I left in the download which allows you to change which characters to spawn in the tutorial map or who you want taking the 20th hero slot.
- Future mods that I plan to do WILL REQUIRE this update to be downloaded in order for my modded characters to have all their assets.

Credits:
Lags - Mod pack assembler and removal of unnecessary files.
Jayglass - Providing the files for Sabretooth, as well as selection portraits for him and Pyro. (Icons for both Pyro and Sabretooth were added by me)
Cohollow - Creator of the Striker Talent, which I included for future purposes.
BaconWizard17 - Including proper talent icons for the Hologram Hero and Striker passives.

If there are any issues you encountered or any missing files, please report to me and I will fix the issue as soon as I can.

[BaconWizard17]

Great work on this!

[Kaiko]

This is awesome can't wait to try it out!

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Found a small error I made, when I was copying Pyro's data folder from the PC, I forgot to replace his entity.xmlb so his powerstyle wasn't locating his projectiles. It should be fixed now so please re-download the pack for the fix on his issue.

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Earlier, the Hologram Hero and Striker abilities did not have icons for their shared talents. This minor update gives them proper ones for their passives. For those who already have the mod pack downloaded, below is link that includes the files to replace over the old ones with in their assets. For those who are downloading a clean mod pack for the first time, the assets in the original post already have the files updated so there's no need to download it from below.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/bcdiwyrrvfpjctp/assets_update.zip/file

Credits:

BaconWizard17 - Adding my Hologram Hero's icon into the game's files at my request, as well as optimizing the Striker's Icon from the PC for Gamecube's usage.

Notes:
Another file by the name of weapon_models.fb. is also included in the download.  It serves as a storage for a handful of boltons and weapons throughout X-Men Legends I, II, and Marvel's Ultimate Alliance (PS2 version) that I was able to find and assemble together.  It holds no purpose for the game, and is just a file that resides in the assetsfb for you to extract in case you're looking for any models you'd like to use in your console mods.

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Minor Update

- Pyro and Sabretooth finally have proper power icons for their gamecube ports!
- Sabretooth's Radiated Talons skill has been corrected to Bleeding Talents. Not shown in the preview image above but it is fixed in the game.
- NPCstat has been fixed. Mystique, Emma Frost, and Blob were previously not appearing as danger room playables, and there was an empty character space that loads Mystique's NPC in sparring mode. The issue has been fixed and the following 3 NPCs are now accessible in danger room sparring mode.

For those who already have the mod downloaded, the download link below contains the necessary files to replace over old ones in the assets. The assetsfb.wad in the original post also has been updated with the new files added to those who are downloading the pack for the first time.

Download

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Minor Update

Just a short update here, with removing some files from the permanent.fb to preserve some space for it. Below is a list of .igb files that removed:

common.igb
fightstyle_finesse1.igb
fightstyle_hero.igb
fightstyle_psionic.igb
fightstyle_wrestling.igb

Why did I get rid of them?
I've noticed these exact same files also exist in the permanent_fightstyles.fb, and the game treats it like another permanent.fb in reading shared files. Since the permanent_fightstyle also holds the files in the list above, as well as the .engb files that's linked to respectful fightstyle.igb's for our heroes to fight properly, the ones in the permanent.fb were basically mere duplicate files. Removing them also lowered the file size for it by a good amount, hoping it can store more content in it such as texture effects and additional models.

For those who already have this game patch downloaded, the download link below contains the necessary update to replace over the old one in the assets. After extracting it from the .zip file, just simply drag and drop the permanent.fb into the correct location inside the assetsfb.wad and you're good to go! The assetsfb.wad in the original download also has been updated with the updated file added for those who are downloading the pack for the first time.

Download

Other Updates

In case you haven't kept yourself up to date.

Minor Update 2

[Marvomata]

Does this mod work on original GameCube hardware? Thanks