Something I don't really see people do much in game is have costumes match the situation or to enhance the playstyle or work with the story of your character. If you don't know what I'm talking about or don't really know how to do it, keep reading!

Powering Up

Take the two costumes for fire and ice from the previous page. Imagine that you're running around in your "conservative" costume, but when you hit your battle cry, you set your costume to change to mega mode.

My normal way of doing this is to attach it to my "Ready" bind (which is F7 by default). Because it's confusing to teammates when you use non-standard words, I have it say "Ready" in team chat, and something custom in local just for fun. Here's a sample bind:

/bind f7 local "It's time for a barbecue"$$cc 1$$team Ready!

The Local part says something character-specific in local chat (which shows up but doesn't make a beep like team chat does so it won't annoy your team. CC 1 changes your costume from 0 (the default) to your second costume slot. The last part (Team Ready!) says "Ready!" in team chat. So your "Ready" bind works like normal, but has some extra stuff attached.

When the battle is over, reset yourself to the "calm" state with another bind:

/bind f8 local "The flames have ebbed"$$cc 0"

On the left you see a Blaster with Fire Blast and Energy Manipulation. As a Blapper, he has a costume for "Rest mode", for "Melee Mode" (thus the heavy armor), and one for "Fire Blast Mode" (Red energy barely contained by the steel harness, oh yeah!).

The Morgan running around in her hooded disguise until it's time to do battle when she throws it off (too bad there's not an Emote for that).

Switching from Normal to Super

Here's a sample where a male character is first in his "Mild mannered alter-ego" costume. But when the battle begins, he switches to his other costume. Remember, the only things you can't change are height and body type (male, female, or huge). Go crazy

Here you have mister normal. What? The full moon is out!? Eek! What's that thing!?

Believe it or not, the two characters are identical other than costume. I used the leg length and physique sliders to make them appear as different as possible in size and mass. You may not be able to switch sex, or from normal to huge body types, but you can really get creative by altering head and body sliders to make your forms seem like totally different characters.

Full Theme Swapping

Making several costumes is fun, but for the maximum experience, change the "mood" by altering the text, colors, and emotes on your standard controls. Here's a little of what I mean. First, take this set of five costumes for Jordan.

To brag slightly, I really like my costume scheme. You have red, green, and blue (the primary colors of light) along with black and white. Each costume has a theme attached (which is where we get into the meat of this).

I apologize in advance for the pink aura. It's not my costume, it's an effect from a temporary power that I really wish would go away.

Classic Jordan

This was designed to be both feminine and not at the same time. Jordan in this mode is her normal self with roughly the same attitude and temperament you see in the Comics.

Casual Jordan

This is Jordan's second costume which has also been untouched since it was created. The main goal was to make it green, but it also became sort of an "opposite" costume in that the parts that are covered and not switch from her normal outfit.

Attitudanaly (not a real word), casual Jordan is a little more relaxed and playful.

Battle Jordan

When the "Good vs Evil" edition came out, it seems like everyone in the world was wearing these costume pieces, but what can I say, I really like them. I knew I was going to have a blue outfit (to complete the color theme) so the Justice Armor worked perfectly.

In the end, the outfit looks more like light armor, but definitely tougher than the standard outfits. In this mode, Jordan is a little more calculated and reserved, but also very focused and commanding. There are times when Jordan is team leader that this costume might pop out.

Dark Jordan

The story element behind this is that at certain times, the dark powers overwhelm her and she changes into a darker personality. Because of the darkness seeping from her, her clothes become ragged and torn and her hands and feet become covered in inky tar.

Personality-wise, she becomes moody, depressed and… well… dark.

Light Jordan

This is the second costume that I actually use an aura for, though the glow is much brighter than it should be… I'll have to fix that next time.

Anyway, this is her light aspect and you'll see that reflected in her speech and style. She floats like an angel while raining thunderous justice upon the enemy. She's calm, cool, and kind, but don't take that to mean that she's weak.

All With One Button

/bind 0 "cc 0$$local <color #8E1818><bgcolor #192331>Classic Jordan!$$bind_load_file c:\binds\red_jordan.txt"
/bind 1 "cc 1$$local <color #000000><bgcolor #919191>The Darkness! AAAH!$$bind_load_file c:\binds\dark_jordan.txt"

And here's how it works (I'll describe the first one):

• /bind 0

  Sets the 0 number key to perform the next commands. I.E., press 0 to do the next few things.

• local <color #8E1818><bgcolor #192331>Classic Jordan!

  Says "Classic Jordan!" locally using a red text color and an darkish blue for a background (same colors as her costume).

  The reason I use local instead of team is because it can be very annoying to have a lot of text in team chat because every time someone says something, there's a noise so you know. There's no point in drawing people's attention when you don't have anything important to say.

• bind_load_file c:\binds\red_jordan.txt

  This loads replacement binds for my common keys. For this to work, you have to have a "binds" folder on your C drive with the named file in it (in this case "red_jordan.txt" though you can call it anything you want as long as you change the bind accordingly).

And here's the file it loads. Copy it exactly into a text file and change the relevant text and colors to match for it to work for you.

Note that the file doesn't include any "/bind" commands because bind files don't need them.

• ENTER "afk Deeply Contemplating…$$startchat"

  This puts that bubble over my head while I'm typing. The key here is the text in it matches my theme.

• F5 "team <color #8E1818><bgcolor #192331>Welcome!$$em welcome"

  Not fancy. I just use this to say Welcome when someone new joins the team, but I want it to match so I have to put the color codes in front of it. You'll have to do this for any bind that you have text attached to if you want the theme to be consistent.

• F6 "local <color white><bgcolor #C4BC2A>GRATZ! $$ emote clap"

  A note on this one: I don't actually change the colors, but I included it to point out that you can have exceptions. This one is an exception because I wanted my gratz bind to be distinctive from normal text (in this case, Gold and White).

• F7 "local <color #8E1818><bgcolor #192331>I am prepared!$$em nod$$Team <color #192331><bgcolor #192331>READY!"

  Says something locally, says READY in the team channel, and does an emote of some kind.

  I like to pick custom emotes to make the theme more real and different. Finding a new emote for everything is really difficult though. For this I use a neat site called Mantid's Animated Emote Guide. They have animated examples of EVERY emote and it's usually updated very quickly after every new issue.

• F8 "team <color #8E1818><bgcolor #192331>Hmm. It's a $target"

  I use this one to alert my team to a problem enemy or just for fun. For example I click on a Void Slayer and hit the button to alert any Kheldians on the team. Both the color and text will change on this one to match the theme.

• F12 "team <color #8E1818><bgcolor #192331>$target! I'm opening a portal through the darkness!$$powexec_name recall friend"

  Since Jordan has Recall Friend, I use this bind to alert my target that I'm about to teleport them. This is also very helpful when there's another person on the team who teleports. This way they know who my target is so we don't TP the same person.

  TP collision is very common when more than one person on the team has Recall Friend. Putting a bind on yours is a very good idea not only because it's fun, but because then the other tp'er will get the hint and tp someone else.

And here's my dark Jordan bind file just so you can see the contrast:

Wrap Up