MA tutorial 302: Custom Critter Creation
By
Memphis_Bill,
Posted on: 2009-04-08 01:05 in Player Guides
Putting them in a mission
Preparation
Find and open tutorial 101. Change the story title to 302a- A Critter. Save as tutorial 302a.
Before we do anything, look down at the bottom of your mission editor screen. You should see a file size bar that's mostly empty - mine shows .58%. Remember, custom critters add to this file size quickly - but only once.
Select your only mission in this arc - misison 1, page 1 (story settings.) Make the following changes:
Enemy Group - pick Custom.
Custom Group - Tutorial 302
Save and test.
Simple, wasn't it? You should have had a mission full of flaming Two-Toe Rials.
We're not done yet. First, go back into the editor, and look at the file size - you should actually see some area on the left filled in. Mine, as I type this up, is now showing 6.20% filled - so over 5 1/2% of that was from one custom critter.
Pay attention to how many critters you add. We'll go over some of this in another tutorial.
In any case, as you noticed, it took the critter name and named every spawn that. If you want different names - edit them and give them another name. You may want to put them in another group, as well, that's mission specific.
But what about bosses? Do they take the same name?
If you remember our older tutorials, bosses have a Boss Name field. This will override the Two-Toe Rial of our custom critter. Let's add one. Go back and edit 302a.
Basic Mission Goals - Add a boss
Boss Name - Flaming Freddie
Boss Type Custom
Boss Enemy Group - Tutorial 302
Custom Character Name - Two-toe Rial
Optional - Boss Text - Boss Description - This isn't Two-Toe!
Navigation Text - Singular - Fight Freddie
Save and test. Check out Freddie and his bio! If you leave any field blank, it will copy it from the 'template' mob you used (so not naming him means you fight another Two-toe.) "Fight a boss" does not change his rank or powers, either. If you look at Freddie's information in the mission, it'll even say he's a Minion. "Boss" as a goal is simply that - a goal label. Don't get confused.
Looking at the bottom of the screen, you'll see the size has gone up again... but not as much. It didn't add another 5% (roughly) for another copy of Two-Toe. Mine went to 6.66%, from adding the next objective and the text.
More critters mean more room is taken up. Using them repeatedly does not.
The creation screens
OK. Go back to where we created old Two-Toe. Click on Create Character. We'll examine the screens one by one.
Custom Character Rank
Options: Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Elite Boss, Arch Villain, Person
This is one of two areas that affect what powers your character will have from the set. Minion has the fewest, Arch Villain the most (and most powerful.)
What is Person? If you select it, everything else greys out. This creates a non-combat NPC. No powers. It can be used for a contact or hostage, typically.
Fighting Preference
Options: Melee, Range
This SHOUOLD be obvious. Where are they going to want to fight? Consider your powersets, Do they have to be hand to hand (Superstrength, Dual Blades) or should they stay at a distance (Assault rifles, controls?)
Flight power
The only travel power your NPC has.
Options: None, Flight, Reflections Effects
None - they'll have to walk.
Flight - They fly.
Reflections Effects is still Fly, but with a nifty aura around them. They're somewhat translucent as well - go for this if you have a custom "ghost."
Choose primary/secondary power
I'm putting these together since the screen is the exact same, though some options may grey out (similar to your own character - no Dual Blades/Shield.) Yes, you can make a Super Strength/Thugs mastermind, for instance.
One thing to note here - you cannot make a character with zero attacks. You can do the opposite - want a Superstrength/Dark Melee character? You can do it. But you can't make an Invulnerable/Willpower character. They will have some sort of offensive capability.
One other thing to mention - Some powersets are problematic. The most visible ones are Kheldian and VEAT powersets. They are not in the editor at release. We don't know if they will be in at any point in the future. (Poison and Traps, due to AI issues, are also missing.)
Now, if you look along the top, you'll also see Standard, Hard, and Extreme. This interacts with the Character Rank on the last page to determine which powers of which set are available. It does not affect strength. A minion won't see any difference very often (though they will, on occasion) - they're the most limited in their powers. A Boss or higher can, on Extreme, have all powers listed available to them. You can make one Standard and the other Extreme, if you choose. (For instance, a Superstrength/Archery character, with Superstrength on Extreme will have the full SS powers for NPCs, while Archery, on Standard, will have only Snap Shot and Aimed Shot.)
So what gives what?
There's no hard and fast rule - for instance, "Minion/Standard only gives the first two." Some sets will have three or four, and not necessarily the first three or four powers. The best you can do is look through them all. The only surity is that a Boss or higher on Extreme will have full sets.
I may, should insanity stay with me after writing all these guides 
write up a matrix with what's where. No promises.
There's not much to explain in the costuming or bio screens that's all that different from creating a character. I will point out one or two things, though.
Create your costume
There's a nice option here, potentially, if you didn't save your current costume (or happen to be on a character you want to duplicate.) If you click on "Load," you'll see an option at the bottom of the costume list called "Load Self." If you're the same body type as the character you're making, it will attempt to copy your costume. It may not always work - you may have older, "invalid" (such as the old malaise pants, or a part that's been moved or isn't available or unlocked in the MA yet) options.
For instance, in the character I was using to write all these (Feliney Assault,) I attempted to load her into the costume creator and got "Failed to load: Could not find a match for parts. Costume creator may not have access to costume parts."
The issue? Well, by the name, she's a cat. She has the old detail of cat ears, from before they moved it to the "Ears" category - so it doesn't exist for the costume creator.
The fix? Select "Attempt costume fix," then click "Load Self" again. The ears disappeared. Click on "Load" and you can go back to the costume creator and tweak it so it's just right. Give it a try - it may not always work, but it's been pretty reliable for me.
Register Custom Character
There are only two things I want to point out here.
Enemy Group - if you fill anything in here, it will create the character as part of a new enemy group. If you want to add them to an existing group, click on the dropdown list where it says "New" and select the group to add it to.
Edit Save Path - Now this is interesting.
By default, it saves your critters to wherever City of Heroes is installed, in a Custom_Critter folder. But suppose you want to save them elsewhere?
Well, you can't do that. Sorry to get your hopes up, there - but it's the first thing some will think of with it. It will, however, provide the path to your Custom_Critter folder.
This button really needs renaming. All this will let you do is change the .critter file name. So yes, you can have a critter with a different name in the "Register" screen and critter file. So you could save old Two-toe as SuStFireMinion - you are limited to 20 characters (seriously - call it 12345678901234567890 and you won't be able to type more.)
So why have it? If you try to save a character, and forget you have another with the same name, the system will prompt you ("Would you like to overwrite?") If you do NOT want to overwrite the character, you can use this button to create a different file name.
All in all, a simple system to create characters, using all the things you've done before.
Edit:
Strongly recommended reading, that goes into great detail on areas I haven't touched:
Dispari's guide to custom units.
Mission Architect Tutorial
300 series - Custom Critters and Grups
302 - Custom Critters
Preparation
Take a male character to the tailor with a basic costume (no vet pieces, unlocked pieces, etc.) While at the tailor, hit "Save" in the upper right. Name the costume "Tutor1." (There's a reason for male that has nothing to do with actually creating a character. Just humor me.)
Find the original tutorial we did (tutorial 1, from the basic guide.) Save and rename it 301-Critters. We'll use this to test.
Custom Critters
What are custom critters? These are NPCs you can use in your missions that you create yourself. They can be enemies, allies, hostages, even your contact. They have a wide variety of powers available to them - not all, however (no VEAT or Kheldian powersets.) And you can adjust both their rank (minion to AV) and difficulty, the combination of the two adjusting their difficulty.
Custom Critters are another way to tell your story. And, honestly... they're just fun.
Creating a custom critter - walkthrough
We're going to create a custom critter just to walk through the process. He won't be anything fancy. We'll go back afterward to look at how some of the options affect them.
Go to the story browser. Click on My Creations, My Character. Click on Create Character.
You will be presented with a screen with multiple choices. Select Minion, Melee and None. We'll go over the choices later.
Select Next to go to Choose Custom Character Primary Power.
You'll see two things here: a list of Archetypes, and three buttons, Standard, Hard, and Extreme. Yes, you can mix powersets that you can't for your own character. Just follow along for now.
Select Tanker, Super Strength. Select "Standard." Select Next.
Select Tanker, Firey Aura. Select "Standard." Select Next.
The next screen is just like the costume creator - selecting gender and body type. We'll leave him at Male - Athletic. Hit Next.
And here we have the costume creator. I think we all know it well.If you saved a costume from before, click on "Load" and select the costume Tutor1. (If any errors come up, click on "Attempt to fix.") If you didn't, well, pick a color you like. Hit Next.
And here we have the Register Custom Character screen. Very much like your own bio screen, but with some extra fields.
For Name, put in Two-Toe Rial
Enemy group gives you two choices. On the left, click on "Enter group here" and put in Tutorial 302.
In Custom Character Description, give him a bio:
Due to a tragic accident in the lumber yard, Jon got the nickname "Two toe." He's kept it as a badge of pride, even into his hero career.
Click Save and Continue.
This will bring us out into the story browser again. Congrats, you've just made a custom character - and (not to get ahead of ourselves) if you click on "My Groups," you'll see Tutorial302 as a custom group. Good job.