(Custom characters guide version 1.00)
CREATING A CHARACTER
Besides some imagination to conceive your character's moves and how they'll work, you'll have to have a good understanding of how the game works overall to adapt the character and make them as close as possible to how you imagined them, so here are some useful tips you can use so as to not start from scratch:
Images
This is the hardest part when designing a new character.
Not only the pictures you choose have to be staring straight at you (or close enough), but there's a wide range of poses that have to be present, like the character attacking, kicking, blocking, getting hurt on several parts of their body, etc.
Ideally, you'll have 32 pictures of your character at both close and extended range, but as in the Marvel Battlebooks' case, you can have just 24 pics (close range ones), and duplicate a few to reach the quota of 32.
*Poses that all chars absolutely must have (because some restrictions tell you to "go to page 53" and the like, so they have a fixed position):
-Page 1: Jumping Away
-Page 7: Dazed
-Page 13: Leg Wound
-Page 19: Off Balance
-Page 21: Turned Around
-Page 23: Behind You
-Page 27: Disarming (taunt, etc for unarmed chars)
-Page 31: Arm Wound
-Page 35: Extended Range Body Wound
-Page 41: Knocked Down
-Page 45: Parrying
-Page 53: Body Wound
-Page 57: Extended Range Ready
*Standard, recommended poses for all chars:
-Page 3: Horizontal Attack
-Page 9: Forward Attack
-Page 15: Vertical Attack
-Page 25: Kicking
-Page 29: Ducking
-Page 33: Dodging
-Page 37: Jumping Up
-Page 39: Charging
-Page 43: Retrieving Weapon (power up, etc for unarmed chars)
-Page 51: Extended Range Attack
-Page 55: Extended Range Back or Shield Break
-Page 61: Extended Range Dodging
Sheet
This is the Character Sheet for your character, detailing every possible maneuver and its damage. This part is closely related to the character images you have: if you've done it right, the images will depict the character doing these moves.
Taking as a base Alleyne's character sheet (because she has all 32 possible moves), here's a brief explanation of the moves each character can have (due to balancing issues, it's normal that characters don't have all of these, and may be missing moves for some categories):
*Close Range:
-Vertical Attack (36, 24): a descending (or rising) move, powerful but slow. Move 36 can break shields, or even some fragile weapons.
-Horizontal Attack (28, 10, 2): an attack from side to side, has to be dodged by jumping back. Move 28 is strong, Move 2 hits low.
-Forward Attack (32, 14): a thrusting move, has to be dodged by sidestepping. Move 14 hits low.
-Fake Horizontal Attack (42, 12): feints that hit at a different height than what they seem. Move 42 starts low and hits high, the other way around for move 12. If they're the same kind of technique (as in, hitting with the same weapon) as the horizontal attack, they're usually weaker.
-Wild Cards (38, 22): originally feints to mix-up horizontal and forward attacks, they're used now for moves that don't really fit the other types, like projectiles. Move 22 usually is a maneuver with longer reach than move 38, and might be weaker.
-Protected Moves (44, 48, 6): maneuvers that respectively strike like the 3 first types (vertical, horizontal, forward), but are safer to perform. Usually weaker than their non-safe counterparts, may be stronger if they're a different kind of technique.
-Blocks (26, 4): safe maneuvers that can push the opponent off balance. Weak against vertical attacks.
-Kick (34): risky maneuver that can knock an opponent down.
-Wild Attack (40): risky maneuver that might be used even after taking damage.
-Dislodge Weapon (30): move that will knock away the opponent's weapon if it hits.
-Retrieve Weapon / Power Up (46): risky move that will make your pick your weapon, or enhance your character's attack.
-Jump (18, 8, 20, 16): maneuvers to dodge horizontal low, forward, horizontal high and vertical respectively.
*Extended Range:
-Charge (50): risky, powerful move to get to close range.
-Horizontal, Forward Attack (64, 54): like their close-range counterparts.
-Wild Cards (58, 60): initially a "low" version of the previous horizontal and forward attacks, used for any kind of maneuver now, including rare maneuvers available only from extended range
-Block and Close (56): a maneuver to safely enter close range. Officially, armed characters can only do it with a weapon, but I had to change that when I noticed two unarmed characters in extended range would enter a stalemate.
-Dodge and Jump Back (52, 62): like their close-range counterparts
Matrixes
The core of the battle system, the element that determines the "speed" of the character and how "safe" each maneuver is.
These were initially compiled by watching performers reenact each maneuver, so if you don't have that kind of time, I'd recommend picking the matrix of an already established character with the combination of strength and speed you think matches your characters, and modify it accordingly to suit your needs (or maybe, combining two of them).
Restrictions
If the character sheet establishes each one of the character's moves and their strength, and the matrix determines their speed, the restrictions set its "efectiveness" in battle, from special effects to choices after succeeding with it.
There's a great variety of restrictions used in various way through all the books, but for balance purposes, try to follow most of these guidelines:
-Jumping should get you a bonus for the next turn
-Getting damaged usually restricts your moves to only Brown, or Green and Yellow. Critical damage should forbid either special moves, or specific colors related to the wound (Blue forbidden after leg wound, Orange after head wound)
-Unless the character has some kind of regeneration, they should only be able to regain health when jumping back at extended range (not all characters have this)
-Side attacks shouldn't let you do forward attacks next turn, and the other way around.
-Only specific, safe situations should let you do any of your attacks ("no restrictions") next turn, like parrying, staying behind the opponent, dodging or jumping back/away.
ADDING A CHARACTER
There are "readmes" in the data folder to help anyone understand the necessary files to add any specific character into the game, but I'll do a quick recap here:
Images
This should be pretty simple, character_01 and character_02 are the cover and 2p cover pages, the rest are the attacks, starting from character_06.
Sheet
Most of the information in the “sheet files” comes straight from the “sheet card”, except for the last number(s), that may determine which weapon each attack needs, and if the attack consumes any amount of “energy” (be it ammo, super gauge or mind points).
These last ones aren’t really optimized and I may change the way they’re written in the future, so for now, just take a look at the characters already added to try and figure out how they work.
Matrix
The “matrix file” is just a list of the numbers in each even page, plus the list of pages where the character is damaged, nothing special here.
Restrictions
The “restrictions file” is the most complicated file by far, since it takes some time to list the exact restrictions the character needs. There’s a list of over 100 restrictions available, and there may be more to come (theoretically, any restriction that affected only the present battle could be added).
AI
This is a file that defines the AI for the “Balanced” difficulty.
It consists of two parts (high BP and low BP) per each “weapon state”: for example, a character with 2 weapons will have the states of “no weapons”, “1st weapon and no 2nd weapon”, “2nd weapon and no 1st weapon”, and “both weapons”.
This file might also be optimized in the future, like the sheet one.
