The 'Shroom:Issue 117/Palette Swap

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Director's Notes
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Happy holidays, everyone! Welcome to the Holiday issue of Palette Swap! I hope that you have a relaxing end of the year, whatever holiday you may celebrate!

First things first, I am sad to announce that our resident box-art critic, is stepping down from What's on the Box. I'm sad to see him go, but he did hint at maybe returning in the future, so I wish him the best in his endeavors!

This does mean that What's on the Box is now open for new applicants, so check out his section this month! If it's something you think you might want to do, please consider applying for it!

With that all out of the way, please enjoy this month's issue! ~FunkyK38

Section of the Month
Well, well, taking the number one spot two months in a row is for his section on a fan-made Pokemon Mystery Dungeon box! Congrats again, TPG!

Thank you everyone who voted, please keep voting! It really means a lot to all of us!

What's on the Box?
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Hiya everyone; today we'll be looking at yet another box by YoshiStar. This time, we're wrapping our fingers around Kirby's Epic Yarn, released for the Nintendo Wii a while back.

So, content. On the front we have Kirby falling down the page, following a zip line which is unzipping the game. He also is using pink string to hook onto the logo, which shows how the new yarn system allows Kirby to interact and control the world around him, like a kid in a playground. Now the fact that he isn't using any obvious special ability or giving the classic suck tells me that the gimmick of this game is how unique it is compared to other Kirbies in the franchise. Right from the get go we know that this isn't a regular Kirby- this is yarn Kirby, and that's completely different.

(By the way, according to YoshiStar the zip took more than an hour to make, so props to them.)

The back end is notable because of the screenshots used. By just observing them, we can find out that:
 * Kirby can use physical attacks without the copy ability
 * Kirby can turn into a car and possibly other vehicles too
 * The string Kirby holds on to is an important factor in gameplay
 * Kirby can pick up and throw objects like bombs.
 * The other enemies are also affected by the yarn aesthetic

All of this is shown in three little images tucked away in a corner, but it still lets us know what variation of things await in the game. And if you don't overanalyse screenshots like I do, some handy text tells you. Neat!

Now, presentation. I'd like to direct your attention to the box's background. A nice orange to blue gradient, right? Looks kinda exotic, riiigghhtt? Kinda like how the game could be considered exotic compared to the original formula, *breathes in* RIIIGGGG-

Ahem. What I meant is that this whole game screams 'different' to me and I really think the box was designed to reflect that. For example, the border of the casing is not white, or even a solid color; it's a wooden texture! The entire box is made using handcrafted materials (not in real life, you know what I mean) and the stitch marks and clever fabric textures really drive the aesthetic home.

In conclusion, YoshiStar has captured the artstyle of the game perfectly, as well as being eye-catching and well crafted. It has also gotten its main gimmick across- it's different, and so because of all of its merits I'm giving this one a 10/10. You've done well, YoshiStar.

Well, that's a wrap! As 2016 ends so does my commitment to write this section. You heard me; this is the last 'What's on the Box' section that I'm writing. Whimpering? Don't be sad, because I'll be back in this team soon enough so you can enjoy some more content from yours truly. But for now, bye-bye!

Game Mods
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Merry Christmas from your lovable female user with a male character's username! Here's hoping 2017 will be a better year than this one.

Sorry, I'm not going to discuss how to mod Christmas carols into your game as well as adding Christmas-themed stages for your jolly jamborees. You can always convert those music to .brstm format via BrawlBox and listen on those things with an endless loop if you're sane enough to listen to the same Christmas carols you've been listening on the radio for weeks now.

Anyway, I'll come back to Super Smash Bros. Brawl modding this month, this time talking about yet another Baby Mario and Baby Luigi hack that I've made, this time, it's the Baby Mario Bros. over the Ice Climbers. It's a very often idea that I see for both bros. to get paired up, to the point where I occasionally see people wanting the Baby Mario Bros. over the Ice Climbers even, because they're both hammer-wielding children who operate as a duo, especially the bros.'s role in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. So why not make a hack around that concept? The sole reason I make those character hacks is...well that they're my favorite characters and there's usually always an empty gap that I fill in because they don't really have much fans. So this helps me create some motivation to learn how the game works and therefore, work on mods for that specific game. Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been the very first game I modded, so my earlier hacks...aren't the best.



I'm lucky that those are Mario Kart Wii models, so they've very low-poly and very easy to rig, especially for a beginner. You don't have to worry about blending weights together to get an optimal elbow/knee bending, and the model itself is very simple to select to rig to specific parts. Regarding Ice Climber hacks, they can be tough as they require two consecutive riggings of two models (most Ice Climber models use duplicate models, this model is one of the few that doesn't), but the good thing is is that they share the same bone names and the same animations. My subsequent attempts has been improved, but nothing too impressive as I was still pretty much a noob at rigging.

Then came around recently, where a Marioboards thread about the mod, Super Smash Bros. Infinite, has given me inspiration to try again recently. I've learned much more about animations and bones, to the point where I'm confident enough to pull this off without the Ice Climbers looking distorted, thanks to having some modeling/animation experience in ' and '. Hence...this beautiful result:



What makes this hack different from all my other Baby Mario Bros. over Ice Climber hacks as well as the others in BrawlVault? The key to this lies in the animation file, called "FitCharacterMotionEtc.pac", so in this case, it's called "FitPopoMotionEtc.pac" It stores all animations that the Ice Climbers perform, with it being called "Popo" because he's the leader of the duo. What I had done is edit their bone placements in my 3D modeling program, 3DS Max 2010. However, this is not the only step required to make them look like this. In T-Pose, it looks fine and dandy, but animations read bone positions in their original locations, so your character will appear as if bone edits aren't made at all.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, here's a victim of what happens if you DON'T edit animations when you edit bones:



Remember Pikadorf? He's pretty infamous among the Smash modding community for being absolutely freaky as heck. The sole reason is that even though he looks fine when he's getting grabbed or when he's T-Posed, the animations call for the bones to be in Ganondorf's positioning. Pikachu does not fit Ganondorf's build at all, and thus, his model is overly distorted and stretched. You can also check out various videos on model swapping, they operate on pretty much the same function. While usually very hilarious due to their bizarre nature, it's not an intended effect for people more serious about making hacks, and thus, animation edits are required if you want quality model import hacks on modding sites for characters who do not fit quite nicely other character's bones.



The best function that BrawlBox (the latest version mind you, earlier versions have bugs in their edit function) has is an "Edit All" function whenever editing MotionEtc files. This allows you to edit all instances of a bone without manually changing every single key frame in every single animation. Doing so saves literally hours and hours of work, and it's very appreciated to get characters fit bones. This method is also used for resizing characters too, using the YRotN bone as it's a root bone that's rarely used to create single-slot size modes for the character. There may be glitches while using the Edit All function, however, so it's wise to test the animations out either in-game or via BrawlBox to see if everything is rotated properly. Another thing to keep in mind that the more bone edits you make, the more bones you have to change through "Edit All", so it's still particularly tiresome especially dealing with individual fingers. The good thing is that rotations are always kept intact during the process, the only thing that is worrisome is just the placements of the bones.

Animation edits are the whole meat of this hack. Everything else is fairly easy enough. You can make these characters give eye facial expressions simply by renaming your preferred material file to be the same name as the original material file. Final Smash eyes work with polygons having set visibility bones. The Final Smash eyes bones are usually called "EyeYellowM", and that can also be set in BrawlBox so you characters eye can glow when they break open a Smash Ball.

The biggest downside to any animation editing aside from the aforementioned one-slot size modding? It will affect all Ice Climber slots. If you want to use this, regular Ice Climbers will be seriously affected, they'll appear as if they had Baby Mario and Baby Luigi proportions and it wouldn't look pretty either. You can use my Baby Mario and Baby Luigi model import without the edited FitPopoMotionEtc.pac and they wouldn't look like a Pikadorf, but....just look at those fingers.



That's why I decided to pretty much go all out on this. I've made an entire batch of recolors to replace every Ice Climber slot, also replacing their voice effects with SuperSawndz.exe (which I'll discuss probably for another day) as that also affects all slots as well. This is the downside to Super Smash Bros. Brawl modding in comparison to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U modding, you can make far more things one-slotted in that game so you can use both your hacks and original characters simulatenously if they wish to use them. I will say that if you want both Ice Climbers and Baby Bros. you basically have to stick with Baby Mario and Baby Luigi sounding like Ice Climbers with the same proportions as them.

Anyway, this is not released yet. I still have to make more tweaks to the vanilla animation file (the Project M version should be ready) as well as give the characters metal textures, also need to make more small voice tweaks. I am planning on releasing it, though, so if you want it, keep a head up.

That's pretty much I all have to say for this. Sorry for not delivering a Christmas gift yet, but the hack simply isn't ready yet. Hope you got other Christmas gifts, and I'll wish you happy New Year! Go 2017!

Ongoing Fan Projects
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Community Art
Drawn by:

Mimi on the Runway

Take Cover!
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HI, everyone! I'm your jolly Statistics Manager, Tucayo, here with the December edition of Take Cover! Ah, December, a prime month for covers and also the perfect time to look back on the year we leave behind. Why is it a prime month for covers, you may ask? Because December obviously means holiday music, and artists just can't escape from covering a holiday song or two. Or making album after album of holiday music. This is a special double-length (double-and-a-third for the mathematically correct) and I will cover (pun not intended) some of my year's favorite covers and also some holiday tunes to get you in the mood for opening presents. Let's get rockin' (around the Christmas tree).

The year kicked off with sad news for the music industry and music fans worldwide, as the legendary passed away on January 10th, only a couple of days after releasing his. Bowie's career spanned over 50 years; 50 years in which he became one of the world's best-selling artists and a symbol of innovation and reinvention. Naturally, the passing of an artist of this magnitude led to uncountable tributes, from to  and even. But one tribute I particularly liked was the one performed at the, in which David was awarded the BRITs Icon Award, presented by his good friend. You can actually see the presentation and the acceptance speech by in the video to your right, as that's the only quality video of the performance. The performance itself starts at the 8:57 mark with Bowie's touring band, of which some members had been with Bowie since the early 70's, playing an astounding medley of his hits. It starts off with David's vocals and the intro for, and then it goes into , then , , , , , and , before moving on to a full cover of with. As you can see, massive hit after massive hit.

Whether you liked it or not, and whether you thing it was for good or for worse, there's no denying had a massive impact in the American music industry and in reality TV. This year, after 15 seasons and declining ratings, the show came to an end. I had stopped watching Idol entirely at some point during season 12, but I love endings and there's no way I would have missed a finale that promised to bring back many former contestants and a lot of covers. The specific cover I will be showing you is how they started the show, a cover of 's 1979 song, One Voice, performed by the top 10 contestants from the final season along with an ensemble of some of the show's most prominent alumni. This song was in the season 2 finale by, the two finalists from said season, and the rest of the season's contestants. Both are different covers in their style, but to me the season 15 finale version beats even.


 * Depending on your device you may need to watch this video on .

Each year, the Super Bowl is one of the most viewed events; even people who don't necessarily like football tend to tune in for the halftime show. This year the main act was none other than ; I like football and I love Coldplay so I was excited about this Super Bowl. And precisely for that reason I was annoyed that supporting acts and  took up about a third of the time allotted for the performance, and I was especially annoyed Beyoncé performed a new, unknown song, but that's a rant for another occasion. Anyway, the moment relevant to our section came in the ending; as some of you may know, this was, so the final part of the performance paid homage to past halftime acts. As a montage was being shown with bits of past performances, Coldplay performed a medley of, , , 's , 's , 's , and Bruno Mars' ; this led to the three acts performing Coldplay's as  with the words "Believe in Love" was assembled in the stadium.

Moving on to the holiday music! The holiday equivalent of is, both of which were actually released a few months apart. We'll obviously focus on the latter, which was in 1984 by supergroup, which included , , , , ,  and. Naturally, other versions of the song have been recorded in, 2004, and (which has politically correct lyrics, hurrah!). You've probably already heard the original and the 2014 version, since it's rather recent and it features a lot of popular artists (if you haven't, give it a listen), and the 1989 version is honestly bad and it's not considered a "real" Band Aid, so the one featured to your right is the 2004 version, which is the lesser-known of them all. You can't even find the video on YouTube, the player to your right is audio-only, you can see the video. On vocals you can hear, Bono, , , , and more, so as you can see it's a great representation of the 2000's British pop/rock scene. I was actually thinking they had forgotten, but then I looked at the producers and there was. But that's not it, you also have, , , , Phil Collins and more on the instruments. Possibly my favorite supergroup ever. And talking about ensembles of music superstars, you should listen to 's if you haven't already.

Moving on to a classic sung by two legends, one of which was covered in the first song of this section; it's and David Bowie with their mashup of a holiday classic and a new song written for the occasion,  and Peace on Earth. It's admittedly a very well-known cover, but hey, there's nothing wrong with featuring a classic every now and then. The duet was recorded as part of TV special in 1977, which also featured a  with all guests except Bowie, followed by a touching speech by Crosby in which he wishes for a day when there will be peace on earth and good will towards all men. 39 years later and we are still waiting for that day to come...

And so we've come come to the end of another year. 2016 draws to a close and what a challenging year it was; loss, tragedy, war, hatred, violence, division... But as Google's Year in Search video put it,, we just need to search on. From the bottom of my heart I wish you and your loved ones happy holidays and all the best for 2017. See you then.