Setting up MIMICs

Basic MIMIC

Say you're writing an XMen mod and want two builtin characters with templates rogue and mimic to use the MIMIC attribute. Open up ffxS.py and change the line:
builtinMimics=['',]
to
builtinMimics=['rogue','mimic',]
This is necessary so that FFX can record who your character should change back into when they REVERT.

Special "Rogue-style" MIMIC

You want a MIMIC in your mod who can gain the powers of others without changing his or her appearance? Devil Doll in the Strangers does. This special method will work only for the first character in the builtinMimics list - others will MIMIC as per normal.
Its slightly clumsier than the standard MIMIC to use, but here's how to set up a mod for this.

This power works using a bizarre phenomena I discovered. Open up a mission in FFEdit, and find a character in the mission map, notice how the grayed out NIF: box says 'Template object'? This means that when the game creates that object they'll use the NIF file associated with the character's template in the templates tab. Now find a generic object, say a streetlight (uyou may have to check the Layout box and sort by template). The NIF file will now contain a path to a definite file, e.g. library\area_specific\city\street_objects\street_light_single\street_light\street_light_single.nif
So what we need to do is create a positional marker with a hard-coded NIF file like this in every level, preferably in a unobtrusive part of the map. When we spawn the mimic there, they'll use the NIF file in question, but have the template (ie powers and abilities) of their target.

These are the steps for doing so (and you have to do this for every map): Now any character spawned on this specially named marker will use the minuteman mesh, which isn't exactly what we want.