More on Character Stacking (4-in-1)

[Emily Frost]

Help and insight appreciated.

For those that don't know- it is (seemingly) possible to have seperate moves for each of the different costumes of a character. 4 costumes could mean as many as 4 distinct moves/power sets.

This being the case, I was messing with Captain A to see what if any limitations would occur in trying to expand a single character into 4 seperate characters. I was trying to get:
1)Captain America (Steve Rogers)
2)Captain America (Isaih Bradley)
3)Captain America (Frank Castle)
4)US Agent
with all 4 playing differently from one another.

Obvious limitations so far are:
*All four costumes/characters would share a single voice file.
Note: It may be possible to layer the grunts and other sounds over the desired voice audio clip (into a single XBPCM sound file) and insert it into the sound file (not voice file). This would appropriately fix it so that all 4 "characters" have seperate voices in combat- I think, but would not account for the random sayings in the voice file such as leveling up, out of power, etc.
*All four costumes/characters would share a single announcer 'call out'
Note: a workaround to this may be to have no announcer call out- and instead look into each costumes phrase for being switched to and/or selected as the only audio menu response. I haven't explored options here yet- as I was more focused on the powers limitations.
*Powers & talents are limited to a combination of what is available in the shared 3 movesets for the overall character.
*Might, Flight, etc appear to be an overall thing- so as mentioned in another thread fliers would need to be stacked together.

What I've determined is possible:
*4 seperate distinct looks via skins
*4 Seperate distinct names (by using costume name as character name)
*I have not reached a power cap yet... I have costume 1:Steve Rogers with 30 powers. Note: all of them do not do anything yet- but all are available w/o any crashes or glitches. Also, it is possible to have a different amount of powers for each costume. (I took US Agent down to 5 just to see if him being at 5, costume 1 being at 30, and costume 2 & 3 being at default (8 or 9 I think) would cause problems. No problems.
*Each costume's powers can also be named independent of other costumes.
For example, Steve Rogers has "Avenging Shield", Frank Castle "Revenging Shield", Isiah Bradley "Freedom Flag", etc. Even though each does the same thing (for now) they can be named differently.
*All the same applies for passives. Each costume can have 3 distinct seperate passives (as they sometimes already do).

*Costume Selection
Now, because the only forseeable drawback to this is that each "character" would only have a single costume- most likely more costume options could become available via script. Or, in other words- the SHIELD hub would not be used to select costumes but rather characters- and once a character is selected talking to certain NPCs would run scripts to change (or select) costumes for the character.

I've just been poking around with this right now to determine what can and can't be done so I'll know how to proceed.

Assuming though, that things go well- I intend to replace all 27 stock characters with 4-in-1s giving a total of... 100+ "characters".

[Teancum]

I actually thought about doing this for the more 'sucky' characters like Blade and Spider-Woman.  Here's some quick observations:

*Leaving the XTREME sound entry out of a character's ZSS file, then mixing said XTREME yell (voice) with a particular power sound we can have different Xtreme callouts.
*If you'd like 100+ characters but each one to have more than one costume you can always create a 'costume swap' boost power that will change the character's model each time it's activated.  That's relatively easy to do with the powerstyle and a py script.  You shouldn't have any trouble with the costume changing back to default when activating another boost so long as the model swap is all handled in the py script.  You *might* also be able to script a GameVar in there too so that the game remembers which costume was set on save/load.  The only issue would be the HUD head, which would not change.

[Buddhabear100]

Would it be possible to use this to make one slot hold four distinct characters. Just have to deal with the audio or find some way around it, only problem would be you could only use one of those characters at a time.

[Teancum]

It's only possible on consoles because they use individual FBs (think of them as a zip of all the files needed).  Since they load these "zips" individually per skin, you can cheat and work around the game.

[Emily Frost]

Yeah, the HUD head will be limited to a single HUD head per "character". So while each of the 4-in-1 characters would have a distinct HUD head, each alternate costume they switch to would use it as well. Not so bad though.

You mean a boost power like She-Hulk's, but more permenant? I think that could work.

I'm gonna tinker around some more with Captain A and I'll upload the results. I'm thinking end of next week- maybe sooner.

He'll be using the default skins for now, but this is mostly a proof of concept- and a working template that the community can help streamline.

[Teancum]

*Powers & talents are limited to a combination of what is available in the shared 3 movesets for the overall character.

Actually, so long as the three animations sets are named the same, my experience is that you can use any combination of the three.  Meaning if you have a Nick Fury/Punisher combo, Punisher could have (for example) different menu animations, so long as it's named ##_nickfury.igb in the FB.

[Emily Frost]

That's good to know. Yeah, I was considering a 4-in-1 with
1)Nick Fury
2)Punisher
3)Valerie Cooper
4)Agent Zero (Maverick).

I was also thinking that a Sharon Carter skin might replace the Nick Fury npc when Fury is in the party.