SIDEKICKer 3.0

SIDEKICKer 3.0 Changelog

Give every member of your party their own personality! Probably the most requested feature, Sidekicks now retain their own animations, voices, idle sequences, and celebrations, with smoother following, improved doors and transitions, safer switching, and expanded character compatibility!

Headline Features

• SIDEKICKS NOW RETAIN THEIR OWN STANDING, RUNNING, JUMPING, LANDING, EXTENDED IDLE, AND STAR-DANCE ANIMATIONS WHERE SUPPORTED BY THEIR CHARACTER PACK!
• SIDEKICKS NOW USE THEIR OWN VOICEBANKS, INCLUDING JUMP SOUNDS, IDLE VOICES, AND STAR CELEBRATIONS!
• TOGGLE SIDEKICK VOICES ON OR OFF THROUGH THE MOD MENU. YOUR PREFERENCE IS SAVED BETWEEN SESSIONS.
• Added smoother following and more natural turning without removing special handling for climbing, jumping, or piggybacking.
• Added fast accordion-style door entry and delayed reverse-accordion departure.
• Improved character switching so an unsafe follower position does not prevent selecting the next character in order.
• Retained Player SIDEKICKs, MarioFIGHTer audiences, Line and Delta formations, MINI-ME, and existing integrations from 2.0.

Character Animations And Identity
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• Added independent animation selection so sidekicks retain their own character's movement instead of inheriting their leader's animation set.
• Added individual standing and extended idle sequences, with separate idle progression and associated voice triggers for each sidekick.
• Added custom-animation discovery and caching, including a short movement probe during character indexing.
• Improved animation tracking so custom leaders are less likely to overwrite their sidekicks' retained animations.
• Added corrected base-animation handling for Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi, Toad, and custom characters using normal Mario animations.
• Fixed the “clamber up through the ground” bug when landing jumps and long jumps.
• Fixed characters incorrectly using their Character Select pose when beginning to idle.
• Fixed mangled animations, incorrect landing poses, frozen standing animations, and characters sliding around without animating.
• Corrected slow animation playback when following heavily modified characters, including MMX leaders.
• Made sidekick animation speed independent of the leader's custom animation speed.
• Corrected animation height handling to reduce characters sinking into or rising through the ground.
• Improved animation isolation for MMX, Amy, SMW Mario, Metal Sonic, Metal Knuckles, and Neo Metal Sonic.
• Reduced custom running, jumping, and idle animations bleeding into unrelated sidekicks.
• Added support for SMW Mario's single-frame poses.
• Restored Metal Sonic's unique standing animation.
• Prevented Metal Knuckles' leftover Amy animation references from overriding his intended standing pose.
• Corrected Metal Knuckles' hover-running behavior.
• Handled Metal Sonic/Knuckles' ground and hover running separately from Neo Metal Sonic's hover animation.
• Included supporting Metal running and standing animation data so these follower poses do not depend on another mod registering a shared animation first.

Voices And Group Emotes
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• Added character-specific voicebank playback with normal character sound fallbacks where appropriate.
• Preserved intentional silence when a custom voicebank does not provide a particular sound.
• Fixed sidekicks playing their jumping voice twice.
• Prevented repeated celebration sounds when transitioning between star-dance actions.
• Fixed voicebank indexing errors that could produce repeated Lua errors.
• Improved jump voice playback when following MMX and Metal Sonic/Knuckles leaders.
• Restored Metal Sonic and Metal Knuckles' jumping sound through a bundled supporting sound file.
• Added the persistent Sidekick Voices mod-menu option.
• Corrected the voice checkbox callback so muting and saving the setting use the actual checkbox state.
• Changed Kirby Deluxe sidekick punches to use his ground-pound attack voice instead of the star-spit sound.
• Restored group dancing with supported Amazing Emote Pack animations while the leader holds the emote button.
• Allowed held emotes to temporarily override each sidekick's unique animations so the entire party can dance together.
• Prevented lingering emote frames from bleeding into jumping, running, or idle animations after the emote ends.

Spinballs, Attacks And Piggy Stacks
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• Improved spinball handling for Metal Sonic, Metal Knuckles, and Sonic Rebooted, including mixed parties.
• Added recognition of palette-specific spinball models.
• Prevented temporary spinball models from being saved as a character's normal body model.
• Improved cleanup when rapidly switching so sidekicks are less likely to remain stuck in spinball form.
• Stopped piggybacked sidekicks from playing voice triggers or entering spinball presentation while being carried.
• Preserved mounted poses and suppressed cosmetic character updates that interfere with piggybacking.
• Delayed punch and kick hand/foot scaling to match the sidekick's delayed attack presentation instead of scaling simultaneously with the leader.
• Restored the leader's original body state after rendering sidekick attack effects.

Hair And Secondary Animations
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• Improved Zero's ponytail presentation when he is a sidekick.
• Added integrated compatibility for character packs using the supported shared hair-physics interface, including Triple Baka/Miku.
• Separated sidekick hair-physics histories from the leader and from other sidekicks, including duplicates of the same character.
• Prevented repeated rendering from advancing a sidekick's hair physics multiple times during one game tick.
• Reset secondary-motion history after model changes, large position changes, or gaps in rendering.
• Restored shared character and physics state after rendering each sidekick.

Following Improvements
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• Smoothed normal grounded following with controlled acceleration and movement-based turning.
• Reduced abrupt catch-up movement and stationary jitter.
• Corrected sidekicks facing the wrong direction after stopping.
• Added gradual alignment with the leader's facing direction while standing still.
• Retained recovery for distant or separated sidekicks.
• Preserved special following behavior for poles, wall climbing, airborne movement, recovery, and mounted formations.

Doors, Warps And Level Transitions
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• Added temporary doorway assistance based on the doorway the leader actually crossed.
• Limited doorway assistance by floor height, distance, and duration so it does not become general wall clipping.
• Prevented later sidekicks from following delayed formation positions back behind a closing door.
• Added fast accordion-style door entry, with each sidekick beginning its approach three frames after the previous one.
• Replaced simultaneous door-entry warping with rapid sequential convergence.
• Added reverse-accordion departure as soon as the player regains control and starts moving.
• Used the normal ten-frame-per-slot departure delay before blending back into ordinary following.
• Cleared old following paths, formation anchors, and area-local object references when changing areas.
• Fixed stale object references causing sidekicks to become coins after transitions such as exiting CCM's slide area.
• Added checks that an object still belongs to the correct sidekick, owner, and slot before reusing it.
• Changed forced reset to use the player's current location instead of an outdated doorway position.
• Preserved recovery during drop-in arrivals, then allowed sidekicks to spread into formation after landing without requiring horizontal movement.
• Fixed jumping in place leaving the party piled on the player after a drop-in arrival.
• Hid cosmetic sidekicks during non-door arrival cutscenes so they do not cover the player's successful star-exit animation.
• Restored normal sidekick presentation when player control returns.

Switching And Roster Order
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• Restricted SIDEKICKer's character swaps to valid grounded states.
• Prevented repeated airborne switching from gaining altitude.
• Removed the automatic hop when performing an ordinary character switch.
• Reset temporary vertical and recovery state after switching.
• Improved forward and reverse roster rotation.
• Updated the switching cursor only after a successful selection.
• Made NUZ-managed switching check the expected next or previous character against the exported pool instead of trusting displayed slots that may not have refreshed yet.
• Prevented stale NUZ slots from silently selecting a different character.
• Increased the safe switching distance from 1,200 to 1,800 units.
• Added additional checks for the sidekick's height above its destination floor.
• Preserved the requested roster character when its sidekick is missing, too far away, or positioned unsafely.
• In those situations, the character change happens at the player's current grounded position instead of skipping that character or teleporting into danger.

Palettes And Appearance
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• Corrected Character Select preset-palette calls to use the expected player object.
• Applied an incoming character's registered preset after selecting that character.
• Cancelled outdated queued palette changes when character identity changes.
• Improved independent palette retention for duplicates of the same character.
• Preferred each character's captured palette state over temporary shared rendering colors.
• Reduced custom and alternate palettes painting over other sidekicks when cycling through default-palette characters.
• Improved palette retention through repeated character switches.

Compatibility And Reliability
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• Applied shared animation, voice, appearance, and following improvements to cosmetic sidekicks created through NUZLOCKer integration.
• Retained NUZLOCKer's separate native manual-switch implementation.
• Expanded character-specific presentation handling for MMX, Metal Sonic/Knuckles, Neo Metal Sonic, Sonic Rebooted, Amy, SMW Mario, Kirby Deluxe, Miku, and Zero.
• Retained existing PIGGYBACKer, MarioFIGHTer, POOPer, ColorSHIFTer, and ChainSMOKEer integration points.
• Preserved MarioFIGHTer's fight-pool switching restrictions.
• Guarded optional Character Select menu functions to prevent repeated missing-function errors and accumulating callback lag.
• Included SIDEKICKer's required supporting animation and sound resources in the standalone release.

Compatibility Notes
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• Character packs and optional companion mods must still be installed separately.
• Custom animation, model, shell, and hair-physics support depends on the interfaces provided by the installed character pack.
• Custom attacks generally retain existing following and mirroring behavior rather than becoming independent sidekick movesets.
• Independent sidekick health, damage, enemy combat, and solid player collision are not included in 3.0 and remain a possible focus for 4.0.

SIDEKICKer 2.0 Changelog

Headline Features


Added Player SIDEKICKs. Nearby players can request to occupy an available sidekick slot and automatically follow the leader's formation.

• REQUEST TO BE ANOTHER PLAYER'S SIDEKICK BY HOLDING L + R + DPAD RIGHT WHILE NEAR ANOTHER PLAYER (the DPAD can be changed via mod menu)
• Added configurable Player SIDEKICK request controls, manual acceptance, and automatic acceptance.
• Added persistent Player SIDEKICK availability and auto-accept settings, both enabled by default for new installations.
• Added MarioFIGHTer audiences for both 2D and 3D battles. Sidekicks line the arena, face the action, and use cheering or idle animations instead of copying combat poses.

Player SIDEKICK Improvements

• Added formation-aware movement targets rather than steering directly toward the leader.
• Added delayed jumping, attack input, flying and swimming behavior, wall-climb formation handling, faster catch-up movement, and fall-damage protection.
• Preserved local camera controls for both classic Lakitu camera and modern free-camera play.
• Added reliable level, area, pipe, and interior-door following.
• Added destination arrival holds so followers wait for their leader to move before leaving a warp or walking back into a door.
• Added door-action cleanup to prevent followers from becoming trapped on interior doors.
• Added leader/player role swapping for occupied Player SIDEKICK slots.
• Fixed request range and made request direction configurable between D-Pad Right, Left, Up, and Down.

Sidekick Fixes And Polish

• Improved deterministic sidekick swap rotation, including large NUZLOCKer parties.
• Hardened character and custom-palette capture so sidekicks retain their own appearance through repeated swaps.
• Restored held-object protection so grabbed objects and enemies are not visually duplicated across sidekicks.
• Fixed long-session animation freezes and sidekicks becoming stuck in a single frame.
• Fixed temporary wrong-character flashes after changing characters.
• Improved vertical formations during Metal Knuckles-style wall climbs.
• Updated self-piggy-stack placement for PIGGYBACKer's newer riding pose and offsets.
• Improved handling around doors, warps, tight entrances, and post-transition movement.
• Prevented Player SIDEKICK swaps from bypassing MarioFIGHTer's NUZ fight pool-swap restriction.

Compatibility

• Added automatic MarioFIGHTer 2D and 3D sidekick audience support.
• Expanded NUZLOCKer support for parties of up to ten pool characters and Player SIDEKICK-aware swapping.
• Added MarioFIGHTer authority checks so SIDEKICKer follows its Allow Fighter Pool swapping in fights option.
• Retained built-in support for PIGGYBACKer stacks, POOPer mirroring, ColorSHIFTer palettes, character-select models, and alternate model states.

New Features

• Added Bowser-throw assistance: sidekicks bunch closely behind the player while grabbing, swinging, and releasing Bowser, making them appear to help with the throw.
• Added a dedicated bowser_assist.lua handler to avoid further bloating the fragile main.lua.

PIGGYBACKer Compatibility

• Reworked sidekick-on-sidekick riding anchors to use PIGGYBACKer’s current riding-pose offsets.
• Removed SIDEKICKer’s obsolete hardcoded Kirby and Pikachu corrections.
• Added support for PIGGYBACKer’s new get_sidekick_stack_anchor API.
• Retained a fallback calculation for older PIGGYBACKer versions.
• Moved responsibility for seated sidekick stack height into PIGGYBACKer, keeping character-specific offsets centralized.
• Updated self-piggystacks and multiplayer sidekick mounts to use the same anchor system.

The newest PIGGYBACKer is recommended for corrected stack offsets. SIDEKICKer still runs with older versions, but their positioning may be less accurate.

[REDACTED]er Compatibility

• Added _palette.lua as a dedicated compatibility handler.
• Sidekick can now derive colors from each sidekick’s locked character palette rather than the currently controlled character.
• Added support for er’s character-specific palette types.
• Added palette restoration after rendering to prevent sidekick colors from bleeding into players or other sidekicks.
• Added a small smoke puff when a sidekick is spawned.
• Preserved independent sidekick randomization, disabled record tracking, and existing special- support.

ChainSMOKEer Compatibility

• Added APIs for ChainSMOKEer to retrieve sidekick objects and character identities.
• Sidekick appearance capture now records the selected smokeable when compatibility is enabled.
• Character swapping transfers the correct smokeable between the player and sidekick.
• Added ChainSMOKEer compatibility documentation to the README.

This remains optional and only activates when ChainSMOKEer provides its corresponding compatibility functions.

Multiplayer Fixes

• Fixed a Character Select API requirement that could silently prevent joined players from swapping with sidekicks.
• Joined players may now swap using either force_set_character or Character Select’s newer character_set_current_number API.
• Host behavior remains unchanged.

Internal Changes

• Added src/bowser_assist.lua.
• Added src/pooper_palette.lua.
• Expanded the public _G.SIDEKICKer compatibility API.
• Kept drivers.lua, nuzcompat.lua, and runtime.lua unchanged from 1.1.
• Updated the README compatibility list.

Your favorite sidekick mod is back! Plenty of additions, changes and bugfixes:

SIDEKICKer 1.1 Features

• Added full NUZLOCKer compatibility, supporting up to 10 pool Nuz sidekicks at once!
• NUZLOCKer pools can automatically appear as sidekicks in pool order.
• Pool sidekicks update when characters are added through 1-Ups.
• Characters beyond the ten visible pool slots remain accessible through character rotation.
• Added compatibility controls to NUZLOCKer and prevented its swapping controls from conflicting with SIDEKICKer.
• Added door-transition “snaking,” temporarily drawing sidekicks into a line before spreading back into formation.
• Added vertical formation handling for poles, trees, and recognized climbing actions.
• Added /sidekicker-help.
• Added L + R forced sidekick reset after 1.5 seconds.
• Added safer character swapping that blocks swaps to dangerously distant or lost sidekicks.

Compatibility Features

• PIGGYBACKer: Sidekicks can self-stack, ride other players’ sidekicks, form multiplayer towers, use character-specific offsets, and send overflow sidekicks along on foot.
• NUZLOCKer: Pool-driven sidekick parties, automatic appearance caching, 1-Up additions, and pools larger than ten.
• POOPer: Sidekicks poop with independently randomized sizes and colors, including applicable special variants, without affecting records.
• ColorSHIFTer: Match Palette can reproduce animated shifting gradients.
• MarioFIGHTer: Sidekick swapping avoids disruptive swap hops during 2D battles.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed sidekicks changing character when their owner changes character.
• Fixed natural, preset, same-character, and custom palettes spreading between sidekicks.
• Fixed custom palettes temporarily repainting the next selected character.
• Fixed ColorSHIFTer gradients becoming stuck during character changes.
• Fixed grabbed objects, enemies, Bowser, and other held items appearing in every sidekick’s hands.
• Fixed the real held object being thrown from a sidekick’s position.
• Fixed sidekick animations eventually freezing into a single frame.
• Fixed sidekicks briefly displaying the wrong character after swapping.
• Fixed sidekick swap cycles skipping particular characters.
• Fixed rapid swapping allowing repeated altitude gain.
• Fixed numerous sidekick reset Lua errors involving invalid object fields.
• Fixed unreliable manual resets, including NUZLOCKer-managed sidekicks.
• Reduced sidekicks becoming permanently lost in pits or outside level boundaries.
• Reduced late sidekicks zipping ahead of the player or endlessly resetting.
• Improved formation recovery when the player stops moving.
• Improved path timing for sidekicks farther back in the formation.
• Fixed door transitions softlocking when MMX sidekicks were active.
• Reduced sidekicks spawning inside walls after door transitions.
• Fixed pause behavior corrupting movement history and formation targets.
• Fixed the fifth Delta sidekick using the wrong movement delay or failing to jump.
• Fixed piggyback sidekicks bunching on their owner instead of mounting corresponding sidekicks.
• Fixed overflow piggyback sidekicks scuttling in sitting poses.
• Fixed numerous riding offsets for Kirby, Toad, Bowser Jr., Pikachu, MMX characters, and other short models.
• Fixed sidekick attacks unintentionally hurting distant players.
• Fixed sidekick removal explosions causing damage.
• Improved multiplayer visibility and synchronization.
  
  (note: please update all -er series mods for full compatibility features)