Rando in my mentions: Talking about Randomizers

[SpoonyBard]

I recently gave that Metroid Fusion rando a try, and while I liked it a lot it's still very obviously in beta. But I'm looking forward to seeing how it shapes up. I haven't touched Fusion in awhile, so going back to it in this more open state was interesting. The world design is still hampered by the vanilla games' linearity, particularly with the color-coded security locks and all the shortcuts between areas being locked behind the last upgrade you normally get. It leads to sometimes lopsided seeds depending on when you get the Screw Attack. Get it early and most of the entire world opens up regardless of your other power-ups or which doors you unlocked, get it near the end and your progression will still be different than a vanilla run but you'll still need to unlock the security doors in order thus there's a bit of sameness to it.

I also wanna try out Zero Mission rando, but my Fusion runs have reminded me that I'm still using Visual Boy Advance for my GBA emulation and boy howdy is the version I'm using still struggling in parts with those audio distortions. Is there a more commonly used GBA emulator these days than VBA? (Nevermind, apparently all I needed to do was uncheck Automatic under throttle and that fixed everything)

 

[YangusKhan]

I have been playing a ton of FF4 Free Enterpise over the holiday weekend. I beat 3 different seeds, ratcheting up the difficulty after each one, and I've mostly settled on a core set of flags I enjoy. I'm still unsure if I like turning on Ktrapped (key items can go in trapped chests), but otherwise I don't want to take anything I use off, and I'm curious about adding even more difficulty with No Safety Checks.

 

[RT-55J]

The world design is still hampered by the vanilla games' linearity, particularly with the color-coded security locks and all the shortcuts between areas being locked behind the last upgrade you normally get.

Don't quote me on this, but I think the author of the Fusion rando is planning on adding the security locks to the item pool. If that ends up being combined with some light area randomization, things could get very interesting. Still, I've played several more Fusion rando seeds over the past couple of weeks, and I think it's capable of generating some rather interesting seeds --- especially with damage runs enabled and with the difficulty turned up above zero (speed booster can be the first item in that case!).

I will say, however, that it's very ironic to me that the worst possible location a major item can be is usually at it's vanilla location, because that usually entails fighting a boss and getting softlocked if it doesn't have what you need. I had a seed the other day with the Gravity Suit at Nightmare, and in that case it was literally the last location in logic that I could check. Not only is that a softlock in his room if he doesn't have Gravity, even saving in his little area is also a softlock in that case (unless you have screw attack and are very comfortable with underwater wall jumping). Absolutely maddening.

---

Anyhow, I played a seed of Zero Mission rando today for the first time and it reconfirmed my suspicion that the reason I don't like the game is not because of my dumb contrarian streak, but rather because I just don't like how that game controls, especially without the power grip.

I got three-quarters of the way through my seed before giving up, but by goodness it was a doozy. According to the spoiler log, the power grip was in Ridley's area. Because of that, the backdoor to Ridley was not traversable (as far as I could tell), so I would have had to go there the normal way, which requires Wave Beam (as far as I could tell). Wave Beam happened to be pretty deep in Chozodia (near the map room). Also, lest I skip that very roundabout trip and just finish the game without Power Grip, the Plasma Beam was in Ridley's lair at that one speedbooster puzzle that requires wave beam.

I think that if I give ZM rando another try I think I'm going to disable power bombs from being accessible before Chozodia.

 

[SpoonyBard]

Don't quote me on this, but I think the author of the Fusion rando is planning on adding the security locks to the item pool. If that ends up being combined with some light area randomization, things could get very interesting.

Wow funny you mention that, I just completed another run and was about to go to the thread to suggest exactly this. Hopefully it's in the works, it would make things much more interesting. The security locks are still just 'blue key for blue door' type progression (literally) but if they're not always in the exact same place that would be a significant improvement. Then they could make the security rooms just another item check. Will need to be careful about softlocks though, since the only way out of those rooms tends to be via the door you should have just unlocked.

 

[SpoonyBard]

After trying a few seeds of Fusion rando I decided to finally give Zero Mission rando a shot, and hoo boy, interesting first seed.

Got Power Bombs right after Morph, and Speed Booster at the far end of Brinstar, and grabbed Ice Beam on my way back. After this I was stuck for a bit and wandered around Norfair, Crateria, and Kraid, and finally found Bombs back in Norfair in a heated room. After that I could activate those devices around the map which rocket you upward if you bomb them, and a bit farther into Kraid I found Space Jump.

I had to step into Chozodia for the Long Beam and the Varia Suit, which was, uh, fun. Even more fun? The Power Grip was about halfway through the Space Pirate Ship. Haha. Fun joak.

By this point not as much got in my way. Nearly every other item was in Ridley. Gravity Suit and all of the remaining beams. Only item that wasn't in Ridley was Screw Attack. And where was that? Right outside the normal Screw Attack room.

That's just cruel.

 

[RT-55J]

Stuff like that is exactly why you should pick the "100%" option for the game completion setting rather than the "beatable" option. The beatable setting does not care if there are items that are literally unobtainable by any means.

Anyhow, I played a few more seeds of ZM rando with different settings, and my opinion is that it's just okay. It needs some work with the settings to be actually great.

I played a couple of seeds where PBs were not allowed to spawn before Chozodia. I like the flow of that setting a bit more, since you don't need to dip in and out of Chozodia to find progress (though that does not protect you from the embarrassment of forgetting a major item outside of Chozodia), though I missed the fun of having PBs early. Personally, I think I would like an option that allows PBs to spawn early, but have Chozodia locked off until Mother Brain is dead. (Actually, now that I think about it, I would rather have an option that just made MB the final boss.)

There is also an option to split the major and minor items into their own pools, but for some reason unlike the M/m options in other Metroid randomizers I've tried, Energy Tanks are not part of the major item pool --- this greatly trivializes this game mode. Rather than just feeling more manageable, it feels completely frictionless.

 

[YangusKhan]

I participated in the weekly Community Race of FF4 Free Enterprise last night! It was my first time officially racing and streaming for a race. I did kinda bad, but technically I wasn't last place because 2 people had to forfeit.

It was a pretty troll-ish seed. Lost at least 30 minutes because I didn't just take the Edward and let him die to be my Agility Anchor (Agility in FF4 is probably the most important mechanic you need to learn for racing). Wyvern was blocking Darkness crystal (required for go mode with the flags given) at the Asura slot and none of my chars had low enough Agility to anchor to get off a StarVeil reflect, so after crunching the numbers using an external calculator to determine it was literally impossible to beat Wyvern there, I left to go look for a Cursed Ring (reduces all stats by 15) and found one in Kaipo. After that it was fine. Also spent a bunch of time trying to kill MilonZ at Leviathan and that ultimately lead to a key item dead end. If a Cursed Ring wasn't in a shop anywhere then I would've had an unwinnable state (I wasn't gonna go treasure diving for one at that point).

It was pretty fun and I'm glad I stuck it out to the end rather than forfeit like I almost did once I realized the Asura and Leviathan slots were locking me out from progress. My time was 2:23:47 and 1st place was 1:15:01, so clearly there's a skill gap. I knew I messed up pretty bad but it was still fun to play it out.

 

[SpoonyBard]

Final Fantasy 6 Worlds Collide recently hit two years in development and has officially released v1.0! There have been a few new additions, most significantly an overhaul of objectives. Previously the final battles could only be gated by number of characters found, number of espers found, and number of dragons defeated, and it led to seeds feeling very samey in the back half. But now there are a whole lot of possible objectives to unlock the last battle, much more reminiscent of Free Enterprise, in fact. Finding specific characters, defeating specific bosses, defeating bosses at specific locations, clearing specific events, finding specific espers. There are even a few in there that the rando didn't previously track or offer rewards for at all, such as setting the Zozo clock or performing in the Opera. There are a few 'quest' objectives that seem to only have one shot (saving or letting Cid die, suplexing the Train) and if you have that set as a requirement for the final battle and blow your one chance then I'm not sure if the game will end on its own or if you'd have to know to reset.

One new addition I noticed that I really like is the Track menu which not only tracks objectives but also what potential checks are available to you based on the characters you have found and whether or not you have checked them, which is a fantastic in-game addition and kind of removes any need of an external tracker.

Anyway, if you didn't click with FF6WC before, give it a shot now. If you like FF4FE then it might appeal to you.

 

[YangusKhan]

I was looking over the new stuff and I'm not exactly an expert in Worlds Collide, so maybe this is a bad suggestion, but I was wondering why the new objective system doesn't have a reward for simply "Win the game?" One of the things that gets talked about pretty regularly in the Free Enterprise community is how Zeromus is a "solved" fight, so eventually players get kind of bored of completing seeds. I'm not sure if that still applies to Final Kefka since he seems a little more challenging than Zeromus, but again I haven't played WC that much.

But anyway, that update seems pretty cool and maybe I'll give it a try sometime soon.

 

[Bongo]

The BIG List of Video Game Randomizers

 

[Becksworth]

Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle Randomizer

Please tell me this randomizes the IP being utilized for the run.

 

[SpoonyBard]

A few weeks ago GDQ posted a run for Phantasy Star 4: Profound Disorder:

I had to look it up and give it a shot, recently completed a run and I think it really has promise. Still very much in its early stages, it could definitely stand to have some features but it's still in a very enjoyable state. It's one of those randomizers where you have to download a standalone program for the seed generation rather than using a web interface, so be mindful of any updates to come if you check it out.

 

[SpoonyBard]

Profound Disorder had an update recently which on top of a number of tweaks and improvements added Classes as a possible randomizer option. Previously the default was that you started with a random party that learned random skills (you could still force vanilla skills if you wanted) but now there's an additional toggle that randomly selects one of four classes for each character instead.

The character page under Game Information is still being updated with all the class info, but basically instead of being a random grab bag of skills that may not work together on a certain character now you can have a more structured but still randomized character party beyond the vanilla options. I recently ran a seed with 'Mystic' Rune and 'Reaper' Seth and they were both my physical power houses, meanwhile Alys was a 'Cleric' and served as a healer.

Don't sleep on this one if you're in the mood for an RPG rando.

 

[RT-55J]

Earlier this month the Super Metroid Map Randomizer was released. Unlike earlier attempts at this kind of randomization, this produces a world with coherent, euclidean area. It is very neat, has very granular difficulty options, though a bit light on the other options right now.

Having played 3 seeds (bailed on one due to misconfigured difficulty, finished one, and halfway through another), I have to say it's pretty good. If I have one complaint at the moment, it's that the seeds tend to be too large since they use every room in the original game. From my experience, if feels like seeds in this take 2.5 hours to finish, and I'd rather play something half as long with my free time.

Regardless, this thing has been getting daily updates, so it's possible by the time you get around to trying this they will have fixed my issues with this.

 

[SpoonyBard]

That's interesting, creating a rando that rearranges the rooms in such a way that it STILL forms a coherent map is a hell of a feat.

After rolling a seed and trying it out, I think it still needs a bit more time in oven, but what's there is promising and I could easily see myself running this a bunch in the near future.

 

[SilentSnake]

I saw someone play a FFV rando called Career Day. Seems neat. https://www.bigbridge.studio/careerday/

 

[Mr Bean]

Does anyone else like watching rando races? The Speedgaming YouTube channel posts a bunch of these, usually about 4-6 months after they happen live on twitch. I’m a big fan of the Metroid and LttP races, but that’s because I know those games well enough to be familiar with the tricks and logic.

Here’s one of my favorites - the first game of the Super Metroid league finals from 2 years ago.

 

[RT-55J]

Man, that specific race was incredible. I remember watching it live, and out of every match that season that was the one where the chat was the most electric. Just an absolutely stellar performance from both runners.

I haven't been watching rando races as much this past year, but still that race is an all-timer.

 

[SpoonyBard]

The FF6 randomizer Worlds Collide has been updated recently with a new site! Confusingly, the old site is still up. Not entirely sure why they're using a new site entirely here, s'weird.

But the new version, on top of having a new interface, has a bunch of new fixes and QoL changes and even a new check (the Moogles defending Terra with Locke event, gated behind Mog weirdly enough but Mog only had one check before now so it works).

Favorite QoL change: Rages display their info in the menu screen.

EDIT: According to their discord they no longer have access to the old site, so it will just stay up? At least until it's no longer paid up and is shut down? Not sure what exactly happened there but that's their explanation.

 

[Bongo]

Now, as I understand it, most randomizers (of vintage console games, anyway) are implemented in the form of a program that generates a patch, which must be then applied to the rom. However, I was wondering: are there any self-hosting randomizers? That is, a romhack which modifies the game so that it randomizes itself, so that you could, for example, load it up on a flash cart (or burn a CD, or whatever) and generate a seed without having to reload the cartridge?

 

[Mogri]

Pokemon Radical Red has a built-in randomizer (enabled optionally at the start of a game). I'm sure there are other examples as well.

 

[RT-55J]

The SM hack Super Duper Metroid has a built-in randomizer (and mirror mode!).

The randomizer has no logic (other than giving you the morph ball as a starting item), but the hack's design is such that unbeatable seeds are reportedly fairly uncommon (not that anyone has bothered systematically testing all 65536 seeds lol).

 

[Bongo]

Thanks. If you know of any other specific examples, I would also like to know of them, please.

 

[Torzelbaum]

It looks like there's one for Fire Emblem 8 (The Sacred Stones) but that's all I can tell you about it.

 

[SpoonyBard]

Gameplay randos are old news, now dialogue randos are all the rage.

 

[Baudshaw]

Now, as I understand it, most randomizers (of vintage console games, anyway) are implemented in the form of a program that generates a patch, which must be then applied to the rom. However, I was wondering: are there any self-hosting randomizers? That is, a romhack which modifies the game so that it randomizes itself, so that you could, for example, load it up on a flash cart (or burn a CD, or whatever) and generate a seed without having to reload the cartridge?

Yes, there are "self-randomizing" patches of FE8, the username is the 'seed'. There's also an FE7 one being developed, I can send it to you

 

[Bongo]

Why not just post them?

 

[Baudshaw]

Sure:

[FE8] Self-Randomizing Rom v1.5

Link to UPS patch (FE8U) What’s Self-Randomizing? This is a rom that randomizes itself - meaning that no two playthroughs will be alike! Features Randomization options Tactician name as seed value Random classes for players and enemies Random Growths (& Bases) Random Personal...

feuniverse.us

(Still not completely polished) https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/krqhiuaajmgyscmcvocd3/fe7srr.ups?rlkey=cqnvzkse2sdhoazbe711nb7s5&dl=0

 

[JBear]

Doukutsu Randamu by TrashboxBobylev

Cave Story mod that turns the game into roguelite

trashboxbobylev.itch.io

 

[Bongo]

I was informed of Archipelago, a system for linking together arbitrary multi-game randomizers for a multiplayer context. No idea how it works in practice.