Cobblemon: Synchro Machine [Morph Play as a Pokémon]

[1.8.2]

Added

• Leave your trainer behind (optional) — turn on Leave trainer behind in the config and synchronizing leaves a copy of your trainer standing where you were, so it reads as heading off as your Pokémon rather than wearing one. Syncing with a Pokémon that's out in the world moves you into its place and recalls it, and un-synchronizing walks you back to your body. The copy can't be hurt, pushed or interacted with, it's visible to everyone nearby, and it survives a relog. Off by default.
• Cry / roar key (default R) — call out as your Pokémon whenever you like. Everyone nearby hears the cry and sees the animation, and you hear it in first person too. Press it as often as you want; the server keeps a quarter-second gap between calls so it can't be used to flood a server.
• More emotions on the wheel — Smile, Blush, Determined, Disinterested and Neutral join the Emotions page for the Pokémon that have them. Species that spell the same expression differently (Shocked, Surprise) are now matched too, so Pikachu, Pichu, Politoed, Cacnea and others get theirs.
• Permission nodes for server admins — the /synchro commands now use permission nodes, so a permissions mod (LuckPerms and similar, on Fabric or NeoForge) can hand out access without making someone a full operator: cobblemon_synchro_machine.command covers the /synchro commands, and cobblemon_synchro_machine.command.config covers /synchro config (grant both to let a moderator change settings). With no permissions mod nothing changes: operator level 2, as before.
• Figura avatars as your morph's body, with your own rules — if you use Figura, your avatar can be what you look like while morphed; your hitbox, moves and stats are unchanged. The client-side Figura avatar option (config screen) picks how: rules (default) shows an avatar part for the morph and falls back to the Cobblemon model when the avatar has none, avatar keeps any avatar with a model over the morph, off ignores Figura. Which parts show or hide, and for which species, types, forms, movement states and shininess, is a list in config/synchro_figura_rules.json (reloaded when you save it): out of the box a morph_<species>_root or morph_root part is shown and root hidden. While your avatar is the morph, the player body, armor and held items are hidden too (a rule can turn that off with "hideVanilla": false). An avatar can ship its own rules from script with synchro.rules. Scripts get a synchro table (morphed, species, form, aspects, shiny, types, state, move, moveCategory, moveSerial), and clips named morph_<species>_<state> / morph_<state> (idle, walk, run, fly, swim, sleep) and morph_<move> / morph_<physical|special|status>attack play automatically, with names you can remap in the same file or with synchro.animations. Does nothing without Figura installed.
• Every on/off setting can now be changed with /synchro config — ten were previously editable only in the JSON file (with a restart): turn-based battles, move projectiles, type effectiveness, flight, ambient cries, Fight or Flight recognition, single-morph mode, type food preferences, biome buffs and same-species flock. They are also listed by /synchro config now.

Changed

• Requires Cobblemon 1.8.2 — this release is built and tested against Cobblemon 1.8.2 and needs it. On Cobblemon 1.8.0 or 1.8.1, stay on Synchro Machine 1.8.1.
• Compatible with Cobblemon 1.8.3 and 1.8.4 — checked against the 1.8.4 files: everything the mod relies on is still there, held items still fit every model Cobblemon changed (Fearow, the Froakie line, Swampert, Vikavolt, the new Squawkabilly), and Cobblemon's new move effects (Water Shuriken) work. Spearow and Fearow now fly with real animations instead of a code-driven wing flap; morphs use whichever the installed version provides. Fearow also gained a separate gliding pose, so the flight pose a morph picks now prefers one Cobblemon considers valid at that moment, which keeps flight from stuttering on species that have more than one flight pose (about 60 do).
• Works with the 17 Pokémon Cobblemon 1.8.2 adds (Snover and Abomasnow, Burmy, Wormadam and Mothim, the Tympole line, Helioptile and Heliolisk, the Grubbin line, Minior, Eternatus, Greavard and Houndstone). Their typing, flight, swimming and hitboxes come straight from Cobblemon's own data. Eternatus is labelled legendary, so it is left out of the starter list and is covered by the block-legendary-morphs option like the other legendaries.
• A note for existing worlds: the starter list is saved to config/cobblemon_synchro_machine_starters.json the first time it is built, so the new Pokémon won't appear as starters on an existing install. Delete that file (or add their ids) and it is rebuilt with them. Grubbin, Charjabug, Vikavolt, Greavard and Houndstone are marked "not implemented" by Cobblemon itself, so they are still skipped when the list is rebuilt.
• The Synchro Locators resource pack is gone — held items no longer depend on a bundled resource pack, so there is nothing to switch off any more; it simply disappears from Options → Resource Packs. If you disabled it to work around a model clash, you can leave it that way (it no longer exists) and nothing needs re-enabling.
• The config screen on multiplayer servers — a server's settings live in the server's own config file and are changed by operators with /synchro config; the screen on your own computer never reached them, so its toggles did nothing there. Connected to someone else's server it now shows only the client-side settings (camera, Figura — which your client does read) and explains that the rest is managed by the server. Single-player, LAN hosting and the title screen are unchanged.
• Darker text in the config screen — the settings list sits on a light background but its labels, section headers, notes and button text were near-white and hard to read. They are now dark, and the ON / OFF and value colours were darkened to match.
• Cobblemon removed the expression animations from Riolu and Lucario in 1.8.2, so their Emotions page only offers the cry now. Binacle and Barbaracle lost Angry and Sad. Nothing we can restore on our side.

Fixed

• Rare candy and other levels are no longer lost when you use a Pokémon as a morph — the morph is a snapshot of the Pokémon taken when you synchronize, so levels you gave the real Pokémon afterwards (rare candy, battles) were not in it. The next time the morph gained any XP, the stale lower number was copied back onto the real Pokémon, taking the levels away, and with Sync moves/evolution on it overwrote the moveset too. The real Pokémon's experience is now only ever raised, never lowered, and your morph catches up to its levels within a second and tells you ("Your levels carried over"). A level set directly on the morph with /synchro edit or /synchro slot edit (for example level=60) now also reaches the matching party Pokémon, where before only XP gained by playing did. Levels already lost this way cannot be recovered. The moveset still mirrors onto the party Pokémon while syncMorphWithParty is on (default); turn it off if your world moves and battle moves should differ.
• Held items no longer replace other mods' Pokémon models (fixes broken models and the Mega Pidgeot crash) — to show the item you are holding, Cobblemon needs a spot on the model to draw it, and many models have none. Synchro used to supply that spot by shipping about 620 copies of Pokémon models at top priority. Those copies overrode whatever model you really had installed: Complete Cobblemon Collection, a different Mega Showdown version, or a newer Cobblemon. The overridden models lost parts their own animations expect, which showed up as glitched or frozen Pokémon (Spheal, Shinx, Greninja, Dialga, Palkia, the Tapus and many more) and, for Mega Pidgeot, a crash. Synchro now adds the held-item spot to the model that is actually loaded, and only when it lacks one, so nothing is replaced, nothing goes stale after a Cobblemon update, and the mod is far smaller. Known models keep exactly the spot they had before (checked against all 618 of them); a model Synchro has never seen gets a sensible spot chosen from its own parts.
• Transform no longer overwrites your real Pokémon — about half a minute after transforming, an automatic update (the friendship tick, and several others: PP regeneration, XP, healing, move swaps, …) saved the transformed Pokémon over the one you started as, so the transform was made permanent and the original was lost (including Ditto's Transform move). Those updates now keep an active transform intact, and detransforming still restores your real Pokémon. A Pokémon already overwritten by this cannot be recovered.
• Regional evolutions respect their biome again — Cobblemon 1.8.2 changed how a "not in this biome" evolution rule is written (Pikachu, Cubone, Exeggcute, Koffing, Quilava, Mime Jr., Dewott, Petilil, Rufflet, Bergmite, Spewpa and Dartrix use it). Morphs ignored that rule, so they could be offered the standard evolution in a biome where the regional form belongs, such as Raichu in the Alola biome. They now follow it.
• Teaching moves matches Cobblemon's TM rules — Cobblemon makes about 40% of its TMs available to everyone from the start, and has an option to unlock every TM in the move dex. The move picker only counted TMs you had unlocked, so a lot of those moves were hidden and refused. It now offers the same TMs Cobblemon's own TM machine does, and follows the unlock-everything option.
• Capturing, forfeiting or stopping a battle no longer leaves your morph hidden — turn-based battles only cleaned up when they ended in a win, a loss or a flee. A capture, a forfeit or a stopped battle could leave your morph invisible. All the ways a battle can end are handled now.
• Item evolutions follow Cobblemon 1.8.2 — an item that can trigger more than one evolution (a Thunder Stone on Pikachu in a biome where both Raichu forms are available) no longer silently picks the first. If several are possible you're told to open the Synchro menu and choose. A failing first option also no longer hides a later one that would work.
• Battle Ready works on far more Pokémon — it used to need a pose named exactly "battle-standing", which only about 350 species use. It now finds the battle pose however a species names it.
• Species with unlisted attack animations now use them — a handful of Pokémon (Jellicent, Teddiursa, Delphox, Pidgeot and Charizard in the air) have attack animations in their files that their own setup never lists, so moves never played them. They do now.
• Evolve menu can't be blanked by a bad addon rule — one broken evolution requirement from an addon is now skipped instead of emptying the whole menu.
• Quieter logs — the animation diagnostics shipped in 1.8.1 now log at debug level instead of info.

[1.8.1]

Added

• Emotions in the emote wheel — the wheel has a new Emotions page (scroll, press Tab, or click the tab in the top-left to switch). It uses the expression and cry animations Cobblemon 1.8 added: Happy, Sad, Angry, Unamused, Shocked, Surprised, Hurt, Cry and Battle Cry. Expressions stay on your morph's face for a few seconds, and cries play once with the Pokémon's cry (Alpha morphs get the deeper Alpha cry). The page only lists the emotions your current Pokémon actually has, and other players see them too.
• The emote wheel now stays on screen with many entries: on smaller screens or high GUI scales the tiles and labels shrink to fit instead of running off the edge.

Fixed

• Battle Ready holds instead of snapping back — Cobblemon only lets a Pokémon stand in its battle pose while it is actually in a battle, so the emote was rejected and reset the moment it drew. Morphs now present that stance to Cobblemon correctly and hold it until you pick another emote.
• Moves use Cobblemon's own move animations — moves now play the generic per-move animations Cobblemon ships (Tackle's lunge, Quick Attack's dash, Body Slam, Close Combat, Seismic Toss and others). These animate the whole model, so they work on every Pokémon, including the many that have no attack animation of their own. Moves also try the full list of animation names Cobblemon itself would, instead of just the move name and its damage category, so species-specific attack animations are found more often.
• Moves play their real attack animation from the battle stance — using a move drops the morph into its species' battle pose for the length of the animation, the way an attack looks in a real battle, then returns to normal. Species without a battle pose for their current stance (mid-flight, for instance) are left as they were.
• Spearow (and every species whose flight is code-driven) now flap their wings — morphs never told Cobblemon which pose they were in, so Cobblemon replaced the flight pose with the standing one as it drew each frame. Species with a flight animation (Charizard) happened to survive that; species that flap from code rather than an animation (Spearow, and most bird-like Pokémon) dropped back to standing with their wings folded, bobbing head and tail. Morphs now report their pose properly, so Cobblemon runs the species' own flight animation — code-driven or not — along with everything else that pose defines.
• Fly and Bounce look like taking off — no Pokémon in Cobblemon has its own animation for these moves, so flying species like Spearow just bobbed their head. Pokémon with a flight pose now spread their wings and hover through the charge turn. Species that have a general attack animation still use it.
• Hover (and similar wheel poses) now stay on while standing still — poses animated without a keyframe clip, such as Spearow's wing-flapping Hover, used to drop straight back to the idle pose unless you were actually in the air.
• Crash on the title screen with loading-screen mods — the Synchro config button on the main menu drew its item icon before the game had finished loading item models. With mods that show the menu during loading (such as Remove Reloading Screen), that crashed the game on startup. The icon now waits until it can be drawn; the button works either way.
• The mod no longer loads on Cobblemon 1.7.x — 1.8.0 was built for Cobblemon 1.8 but still declared it would run on 1.7, so it launched on 1.7.3 installs and then failed unpredictably in play. It now requires Cobblemon 1.8.0, and the launcher tells you so up front. Players on Cobblemon 1.7.x should stay on Synchro Machine 1.7.2.