Today we unveil the latest version of Legacy Tournament Edition. Packed with new features, quality of life improvements, and menu polish, this is the best version of TE yet. You can view the change log here.
Of all the features included, one of the most highly anticipated inclusions stands out: 15 costumes for every character and costume configurations that allow up to 50 each. We are beyond excited to share this with everyone, as the customization potential for this technical achievement is massive.
Of all the features included, one of the most highly anticipated inclusions stands out: 15 costumes for every character and costume configurations that allow up to 50 each. We are beyond excited to share this with everyone, as the customization potential for this technical achievement is massive.
Costume Organization Philosophy
Legacy TE 2.5 supports up to 50 costumes and an unlimited number of team sets per character. With all of the new costumes, file structures, and expanded costume limits, the costumes in Legacy TE 2.5 were carefully organized in an attempt to best accommodate customizability. The primary philosophy was to spread the costumes apart to allow people to easily add new costumes to existing sets without needing to reorganize existing costumes. The default costume set occupies the first 20 IDs. The second costume set starts at 20, with a third set, if present, starting at 30. This allows for well organized fighter folders and best accommodates external effects while keeping customizability in mind.
There are a few exceptions to the 00, 20, 30 rule stated above. Mr. Game & Watch’s costumes are controlled by color animations within his single fighter file. This is unchanged from all previous Brawl and Project M builds. Pikachu and Jigglypuff have unique models for each of their 15 costumes and thus were labeled 00-14 for simplicity sake. Samus and Zero Suit Samus have six alternate costumes each instead of the typical two or three. Samus does have external effects, so a compromise between ease of use and evenly spreading the effects was made. The standard costumes occupy the first 20 IDs, as normal. The rest of the costumes are each given five slots, each costume group begin with 0 or 5 just like all the other characters. That leaves five slots left over at the end, which use the effects of the last costume, the PED Suit. Zero Suit Samus’ costumes need to match Samus’, and therefore their files are set up identically. Wario’s first two costume sets are unchanged from Brawl, and keeping them on the disc to save file space was prioritized over aligning them with the philosophy of the other characters. Here is a Google Sheet with all of the costumes and their IDs.
There are a few exceptions to the 00, 20, 30 rule stated above. Mr. Game & Watch’s costumes are controlled by color animations within his single fighter file. This is unchanged from all previous Brawl and Project M builds. Pikachu and Jigglypuff have unique models for each of their 15 costumes and thus were labeled 00-14 for simplicity sake. Samus and Zero Suit Samus have six alternate costumes each instead of the typical two or three. Samus does have external effects, so a compromise between ease of use and evenly spreading the effects was made. The standard costumes occupy the first 20 IDs, as normal. The rest of the costumes are each given five slots, each costume group begin with 0 or 5 just like all the other characters. That leaves five slots left over at the end, which use the effects of the last costume, the PED Suit. Zero Suit Samus’ costumes need to match Samus’, and therefore their files are set up identically. Wario’s first two costume sets are unchanged from Brawl, and keeping them on the disc to save file space was prioritized over aligning them with the philosophy of the other characters. Here is a Google Sheet with all of the costumes and their IDs.
Costume Limitations
For all the new possibilities provided in Legacy TE 2.5, there are limitations. For teams, the limitation is that each team set must be a complete set with a red, green, and blue costume. No team set can be missing any of the three. Beyond that, all team sets are limited by the limitations of all costumes.
There are certain external costume slot dependent effects controlled by the moveset (aka, the PSA). Some examples are whether Mario throws fireballs or pills, which sword Ganondorf uses, and the sparkle effect in the entrance for shiny Pokemon. Many of the fighter’s PSAs have been edited to provide larger ranges of costume slots for effects, even if Legacy TE doesn't use all the slots. For example, Mario will use pills instead of fireballs for any costume from 20-29 even though only 20-25 are used by Legacy TE. This leaves four slots open where Mario will use pills without needing PSA edits, making it easy to add new Doctor Mario costumes. While this will not inhibit adding new costumes, these effects may thematically clash with the costumes being added. For more information please see the LegacyTE_PSA_edits text file in the fighter folder.
There are certain external costume slot dependent effects controlled by the moveset (aka, the PSA). Some examples are whether Mario throws fireballs or pills, which sword Ganondorf uses, and the sparkle effect in the entrance for shiny Pokemon. Many of the fighter’s PSAs have been edited to provide larger ranges of costume slots for effects, even if Legacy TE doesn't use all the slots. For example, Mario will use pills instead of fireballs for any costume from 20-29 even though only 20-25 are used by Legacy TE. This leaves four slots open where Mario will use pills without needing PSA edits, making it easy to add new Doctor Mario costumes. While this will not inhibit adding new costumes, these effects may thematically clash with the costumes being added. For more information please see the LegacyTE_PSA_edits text file in the fighter folder.
There are two other types of slot specific concerns. The first involves bonesets. Kart ROB has more bones than the other ROB models to animate his puffs of smoke. For ROB, slots 20-29 must use the kart boneset or the game will crash. All other slots can use either the regular boneset or the kart boneset. Biker Wario has more bones than overalls Wario for his jacket animations. For Wario, only slots 6-11 can use the overalls boneset. All other slots must use the biker boneset. To add more overalls recolors, please import the textures of the desired costumes into an overalls costume from Biker Skeleton Only Wario by MarioDox. Please see the text documents in each character’s respective fighter folder for more information.
The final slot dependent concern is etc files, which have two different types of functions depending on the character. Etc files store a character’s articles, or projectiles. Link, Sonic, and ROB are the characters in Legacy TE that make use of slot dependent etc files. Link loads different weapons depending on if it’s the Twilight Princess model or the Ocarina of Time model. Link’s etc files function in groups of 10, so every 10 costumes will use the same set of weapons. These can be changed just by renaming the etc file. Sonic and ROB were specifically modified to load GFX banks from costume specific etc files. Sonic loads different shoe blur effects, and ROB loads different arm rotor blur effects from these files. In order to edit these files for Sonic and R.O.B., both the name of the etc file and the name of the effects arc within the etc file (ef_characterXID) need to match the costume ID.
The final slot dependent concern is etc files, which have two different types of functions depending on the character. Etc files store a character’s articles, or projectiles. Link, Sonic, and ROB are the characters in Legacy TE that make use of slot dependent etc files. Link loads different weapons depending on if it’s the Twilight Princess model or the Ocarina of Time model. Link’s etc files function in groups of 10, so every 10 costumes will use the same set of weapons. These can be changed just by renaming the etc file. Sonic and ROB were specifically modified to load GFX banks from costume specific etc files. Sonic loads different shoe blur effects, and ROB loads different arm rotor blur effects from these files. In order to edit these files for Sonic and R.O.B., both the name of the etc file and the name of the effects arc within the etc file (ef_characterXID) need to match the costume ID.
File Size Limits
Other limitations are file size limits. The sc_selcharacter file can not exceed 3.78 MB, with Legacy TE 2.5’s being 2.95 MB. Info.pac also can not exceed 550 KB, with Legacy TE 2.5’s being 498 KB. In addition, each misc data file within selcharacter has its own file size limit, about the size of 12 not color smashed CSPs. For Legacy TE 2.5 Jigglypuff, Ness, Pikachu, and Snake are currently at their CSP misc data limits. Getting around these limits requires clever use of color smash, as can be seen with Pikachu’s color smash groups being default and party hat, detective and red hat, and headband and goggles.
Color Smash
Color smash is a tool that essentially turns the grouped textures into a single paint by numbers image that then has multiple color palettes applied to it. It takes the textures, saves them based on where the shape of the colors are, and assigns a slot in a palette for each shape. The reason we used it is because of its reduced file sizes. In order to allow every character to have 15 costumes, we had no choice but to use color smash to get around the file size limits of and in selcharacter and info.pac. Color smash saves file space since the texture data is only stored once per set, with different palettes being loaded instead of entirely different images. Each palette is a mere 64 bytes, which is a dramatic decrease from the 10,304 bytes per CSP and even from the 576 bytes per stock icon. Within BrawlCrate, color smash groups are denoted by the green tex0 icon. Any arrow icons above a full size icon is a color smashed texture (child texture) of the next texture to have a full size icon box below it (parent texture).
So how do you know when to and when not to color smash? While we encourage you to mess around with it and see what works and what doesn’t work for what you are trying to do, here are some tips to get you started.
If you have the same model with the same pattern, just in different colors, use color smash. Examples are Scarlett Marth and Waluigi Mario as shown in the Legacy TE 2.5 costume replacement tutorial video.
Do not color smash if it’s the same model with different patterns. An example is Snake’s default costume. They’re all the same model, but since the patterns are completely different, color smashing wouldn’t work well. Legacy TE did have to break this rule on a few occasions, such as with the Pikachu examples from earlier, but this was only done when no other options got around the file size limits.
If you have the same model with the same pattern, just in different colors, use color smash. Examples are Scarlett Marth and Waluigi Mario as shown in the Legacy TE 2.5 costume replacement tutorial video.
Do not color smash if it’s the same model with different patterns. An example is Snake’s default costume. They’re all the same model, but since the patterns are completely different, color smashing wouldn’t work well. Legacy TE did have to break this rule on a few occasions, such as with the Pikachu examples from earlier, but this was only done when no other options got around the file size limits.
If you are adding a large group of recolors with the same pattern for the same model, and if file size limits permit it, break them up into smaller color smash groups instead of having them all in one large group. For example, standard Kirby is broken up into four color smash groups of three textures each. This helps to keep the image quality as high as possible, even if it does increase file size.
If you need to interrupt a group of color smashed textures, whether by deleting or replacing a texture, you need to be aware of the shares data parameter for the texture being modified. If it is a parent texture, this value will be false. Before modifying any parent texture, you need to change this parameter to false for the texture immediately above the texture to be modified. If it is a child texture this value will be true. It needs to be set to false and moved outside of the color smash group before modifying. This ensures no corruption happens to the other textures within the color smash group.
If you need to interrupt a group of color smashed textures, whether by deleting or replacing a texture, you need to be aware of the shares data parameter for the texture being modified. If it is a parent texture, this value will be false. Before modifying any parent texture, you need to change this parameter to false for the texture immediately above the texture to be modified. If it is a child texture this value will be true. It needs to be set to false and moved outside of the color smash group before modifying. This ensures no corruption happens to the other textures within the color smash group.
CSProject Note
One final note is that, thanks to color smash, the number of colors used for stock icons is doubled from 16 to 32. The Cosmetic Standardization Project has also received an update that changed its stock processor from outputting stocks with 16 colors to outputting them with 256 colors. In order to take advantage of the 32 colors in game, make sure the stocks being imported were made with the new stock processor and not the old one.
That should be everything you need to know about adding costumes and cosmetics to Legacy TE 2.5. If there are any questions or problems, don’t hesitate to reach out in our discord server. That being said, we highly encourage you to experiment with the new tools and to explore how they function. We hope you enjoy Legacy TE 2.5!
