abyssonym

BNW Randomizer

32 posts in this topic

We’ve talked about how fun it would be in discord but I never thought it would be a reality. Good show dude.

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I asked about this, but the devs said they wouldn't handle it.  Thankee for making this and sharing it with us!  Alleluia!

May we have a version (or at least a link to it) included in official releases now?

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18 hours ago, Domiran said:

Wait , wtf does this do? Randomize character stats?

It can randomize items (weapons, armor, relics, etc.), spells, espers (including who can equip them and what bonuses/spells/equip bonuses they may give), character data, among many other things.

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I'm doing Locke's first scenario, but he has throw instead of steal, therefore i can't steal the merchant clothes. Is there a way to complete it without steal?

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My guess is no, but I’m not the guy to ask.  Seems like a fatal flaw for the randomizer in this form (I.e, skills also random), unless a Jerry-rig is made to always give Locke steal, at least through the scenarios.  

if Celes doesn’t have ??? For the FC, that would also be game breaking. 

Howd you get past Vargas without blitz, just killed him normally?

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6 hours ago, SuperHario said:

My guess is no, but I’m not the guy to ask.  Seems like a fatal flaw for the randomizer in this form (I.e, skills also random), unless a Jerry-rig is made to always give Locke steal, at least through the scenarios.  

if Celes doesn’t have ??? For the FC, that would also be game breaking. 

Howd you get past Vargas without blitz, just killed him normally?

Ty for your response, actually i didn't randomize the skills, i just used the editor to change monsters steal drops and give Locke throw instead of steal, since for me it feels like a waste of skill slot. I asked here because it could happen often with this patch and maybe i could find a way around it, but it looks like i'll have to start all over again, i tried to change again the skills with the editor but it doesn't change anything on my save file.

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Just want to mention that one of the patches in the randomizer gets rid of the battle menu flickering when using RetroArch.  If you apply this randomizer on top of BNW 1.9.0 and don't randomize anything, you can play BNW with RetroArch.

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That's because retroarch defaults to very old snes9x emulator cores; there's a more recent snes9x libreto core available that doesn't have that problem.

Edited by Satarack

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I keep getting this error... I'm using a MAC:

Any advice?

Please input your desired flags (blank for all of them):

 

Using seed: 63..1528496015

 

 

Now beginning randomization.

The randomization is very thorough, so it may take some time.

Please be patient and wait for "randomization successful" to appear.

ERROR: 

Please try again with a different seed.

Press enter to delete Final_Fantasy_III_(U)_(V1.0)_[!].1528496015.smc and quit

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I don't have any experience with Apple, but I don't think the randomizer's executable can run natively on a mac; I think you'll have to run it inside a windows virtual machine.

That said, what steps did you take to get that error?  You said in the other thread that you were trying to run the python script.

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Can someone randomize me a beyond chaos file please? I'd like 2 files.  Going to be streaming them on twitch.

Pretty please! I promise I won't grind! 😁

Also: all flags

Edited by Fein-Life

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So, I finally got the chance to try this thing out.  Some general thoughts:

Randomizing characters/Esper allocations/Espers/Magicite: This works out extremely well, and it ends up being the core of what makes BNW Gaiden fun to play.  Although I doubt that many individual seeds offer the build variety that vanilla BNW does, I had a few builds to choose from even within the single seed that I played (even though the replay value is *supposed* to come from playing through different seeds >.>).  That said, some of the more restricted characters ended up being really fun to play as well.  One issue is that some of the game mechanics are more than likely to become unbalanced.  Sabin's Blitzes are supposed to be held back by a mediocre, unboostable Magic stat, and Throw is no longer attached to a piece of paper by necessity.  On the other side of the coin, Umaro is less likely to have access to his special Relics, and Sketch probably won't be able to benefit from having a brush equipped.  Regardless, I'm happy with how this has turned out.

Randomizing equipment: This worked out less well IMO.  The biggest issue I had with this flag is that changes to Evade and Magic Evade were all over the place.  Since the evasiveness of equipment doesn't really scale much over the course of vanilla BNW, this means that any helmet that gets an evasion boost can be combined with Relics and armour that got evasion boost as well.  My brother tells me that his seed isn't like this (and he would be as quick to jump on this as I would), but I suspect that it happens more often than not.  As defensive and evasive stats tend to be even more powerful when they are already high, this often pigeonholed me into slamming the most evasive armour on everybody and calling it a day.  By the Cave of the Sealed Gate, I already had a Terra with perfect evasion and 100+ Magic Evasion.  This fits in fine with the janky vanilla BC, but not as well with BNW.  That said, the monsters are generally tougher when they are randomized, and there is a better spread of adversarial evasion piercing moves than in vanilla BC (thanks to the prevalence of moves blocked by Stamina), so my main issue is the equipment vs. equipment balance and not the player vs. enemy balance.

The good news is that the amount of "random" for each flag can be customized separately, so I can drastically reduce it in this case.

Randomizing treasure/shops: I thought that the sense of progression was weakened slightly more than I want, so I will slightly turn down the "random" on the treasure flag for next time.  For the most part, it does what you expect it to.

Randomizing monsters: One thing to note is that monsters typically get tougher in BC randomizations, but the changes are mostly to stats.  I haven't played BNW recently enough to know exactly how much monsters have changed, so it's hard to do a good comparison (especially thanks to this being my first playthrough with n-ATB).  One thing that I can say is that many of the WoR bosses, which were already teetering on the edge of dragging on for too long, now take ages to kill.  Special mention goes to Guardian, who went from being a buffet where you can snack on previous bosses to a set of six three-course meals that you have to eat in sequence.

Bugs:

If Gau uses a special move with the Omega Weapon, the game can do this:

 

Normally the game just crashes, though.  This feels like a vanilla bug that only reared its head due to new circumstances (I'm too lazy to search for evidence), but it's amusing nonetheless.

More importantly, I didn't receive anything for killing all the dragons.  Or more likely, I just received the Ragnarok Magicite for a second time (I had already acquired it because the Esper positions are randomized).  It probably didn't change much, but it's still unfortunate.

Character builds:

I suppose this analysis will be more amusing than well-thought out, but whatever.  Statwise, I had a lot of Magic-oriented characters, so I tried to pick a physical setup when I had a meaningful choice.

Terra - Free Morpher: Terra took ages to get an Esper, but that's mainly because I forgot to get Zoneseek until the FC (I choose to blame the removal of the auction house, even though that's probably bogus).  She wasn't too much different until the Cave of the Sealed Gate, but then she became the first person to get her evasion stacked to the moon.  Once she learned some spells to replace beaning things with the Omega Weapon for OK damage, she became quite powerful and tanky.  She also happened to be the only recipient of Osmose, which meant that she didn't need to play around and conserve MP.  She got a few mediocre Vigor/HP boosts because that's all she could get for a while (I even spent my cheap respec before she got anything else), but the HP boosts did come in handy for surviving party-wide defense ignoring attacks when Morph was active.  I gave her a couple pure MP levels to have an MP buffer when I had to Osmose, and dumped the rest into Stamina.  Overall, her Magic wasn't too powerful in theory, but with evasions, Stamina, and Osmose, she could typically be run at full power output 24/7 with no consequence.

Locke - Black Mage: He had a whole one Esper the entire game, and it boosted Magic.  The three spells that it taught were Holy, Storm, and Break.  As it turns out, these three spells manage to cover many of the use cases of Black Magic, even with nothing else available.  His Magic stat was reasonably high as well, and his only meaningful defense was his Magic Defense.  Locke was also as slow as dirt (19 base speed), so he was the least effective Item tosser, and Steal was pretty mediocre.  He had a brush, so at least his utility wasn't absolutely nothing.

Cyan - Butt Monkey: Somehow, no matter what I do in this game, Cyan always falls flat on his face.  I like BNW Cyan, I swear! :P His base Vigor was 18, which means that he could only keep up with the average Stamina Cyan using physical attacks if I dumped all of his Esper levels into Vigor.  He could also invest into HP/Vigor, which I did sparingly so that he could actually do things.  Beyond that, he could also work up a respectable Magic stat, but the only spell he can use it with is Break.  His only saving grace was being another character with high evasions.  This meant that he had two main sets (possibly with an off-beat Vigor/HP set that spams Dragon).  He can boost Vigor all the way up to OK, then hit for a cool 2K from the front row with no consequence or resource consumption.  Or he can boost Magic, run himself out out of MP on Break, then spam Dragon until he happens to need HP from Empowerer anyways.  I chose the former, but only after a respec.  Either set also has him spamming status and Doom (he had plenty of all of that) to augment his poor damage.

Shadow - Slightly Different Terra: His Magic was quite high and he got a Rogue Cloak quite early, so a Magic set was all too tempting.  He traded in his trademark speed for solid Magic Defense, and Bahamut's Auto-Safe (and Smoke Bombs) made up for the lack of physical defense.  As a catch, the only magical scroll I could buy in the WoR was the Fire Scroll, so he didn't have the same variety of offense as usual.  He got some good spells (Flare/Meteor) for when I really wanted to put the hurt on something (or if I found something immune to Fire), but he didn't have the MP to utilize them without MP support.  His Cure 2 was also as good as a Cure 3 from somebody else (he ended up with triple digit Magic), and he retained HasteX, so he wasn't lacking utility either.  A Vigor/Speed set could have been solid as well, probably, but four of his six Espers were misplaced Stamina boosts. :(

Edgar - King of all Trades: Forget that "master of none" trash because he's basically just good at everything.  By the Cave of the Sealed Gate, he had 100+ Magic, a Rogue Cloak, and 50+ in all of his other stats.  Compliment that with solid evasions and getting most of his Tools pretty early (for free).  It was a pretty common sight for him to wipe randoms before anybody else moved.  Even though I never put effort into his physical attacks, he would hit with 1K counterattacks from the back row, while setting slow with the Kagenui.  He could boost Vigor, Stamina (why?) or Magic, and I think his Vigor build could have been solid too.  He also had nice healing and grey Magic.

Sabin - Magic Sabin?: He has solid Vigor, but I received Fixed Dice for him early on, so I didn't invest into my Vigor/Speed Esper.  I'm sure that he could have been a physical powerhouse from the back with Darts + Fixed Dice (he had the Daryl's Soul, too), or made use of Bum Rush from the front.  But Meteor, Quake (paired with convenient Float), and powerful magical Blitzes made quick work of the midgame.  His Stamina option showed up rather late, but it could have been workable too, if I respeced him.  Also, who needs Mantra when you have Cure 3?  Finally, his HP was trash early on, making him somewhat of a glass cannon.  I had to reset until Vargas' Gale Cut hit for low damage.

Celes - Not Even Different, Really: She still has well rounded stats, and the option to boost most of them.  Sure, she has Meteor instead of Holy, and the Apocalypse instead of the Illumina, but she's still Celes.  I chose a Vigour/HP Celes to fill the gaps that the rest of the team left.

Strago - Completely Different, Really: Instead of being slow and weak with high Magic, he is now really fast, has no Magic boosting option, and prefers Dragooning with a spear to casting Black Omen.  His only Espers boosted Stamina and Speed, which I gave him an even mix of.  His biggest advantage is running utility, as he is able to restore his own MP, douse randoms with statuses before they can act, and cast Holy Wind while holding a Gungnir.  He was also one of my only characters to have both high Defense and Magic Defense, in case enemies were using attacks that can't miss.

Relm - Ultimate White Mage: She would be highly "meh" if she wasn't able to equip the Economizer.  Yup, the joke items can be found and equipped in this game.  I'm not sure if the Economizer can ever be equipped by more than a couple people in a seed (I suspect and hope otherwise, but may be wrong), but it has a profound impact for those that can.  All she could do was cast Cure 3 and Life 2 (and Dispel, I guess), but she could do that forever.  I mean, she did have Cure and Life, but there's no reason to use the inferior spells (outside of contrived situations) when there's no MP to conserve.  She could also rod Dragoon with the Dragon Helm, but she could only boost Magic, so this option got worse as time went on.  On the plus side, it gave Unicorn's +5 Vigour boost some use.  Did I mention that she makes vanilla BNW Shadow look like brick wall?

Setzer - Bought the DLC: He's a lot like the regular Setzer, but we bought the "Vigour build with Apocalypse" DLC for him.  However, he can still be Magic Setzer (with good healing and Poison Magic), "The Bank", or Stamina Setzer.  So like all DLC, I completely ignored it, opting for a normal Stamina build instead.  The main loss was to his trademark bulk; he is even less tanky than Relm.  That was part of the incentive for me not wanting to have him in the front row 24/7, though he could hack it with Image support.  GP Rain did great damage anyways.

Mog - Training Wheels: A lot like normal BNW Mog, except that his Esper selection has been reduced so that an inexperienced player can't mess it up and make an over-hybridised mess.  His Espers focus on Stamina, Magic, and MP.  I gave him a splash of Stamina to reduce the Stumbling, and then focused on the Magic/MP Esper.  There was no straight Magic option, but I wouldn't have needed it anyways.  Mog really wants those MP boosts so that he doesn't need to refill with Love Sonata as often.  His magic selection contained Flare, Cure 3, Rerise, and SlowX, so he had some of the highlights from each type of magic.

Gau - Game Destroyer: He had a Vigour option, but it turns out that Magic Gau is Really Freakin' Scary (TM).  Gau can equip weapons now, but the enemy special attacks were all randomized, so it's hard to quickly determine which physical Rages are worthwhile.  I'd wager that 3x and 4x damage Rage specials are pretty rare, and the status Rages usually don't do damage.  In the end, I gave him a split between Magic and Speed.  I still wanted a little bit of extra speed to take advantage of his versatility.  He also had Ultima, which I could drop to nuke a random if I felt like it.  Unfortunately, this was often Awesome but Impractical, and it was more worthwhile to use him for OOC healing.

Gogo - Still Gogo: He's still Gogo.  His weapon selection was poor though (he might as well have swapped with Gau), so Rage wasn't as viable as usual.

Umaro - Still Umaro: He's still Umaro.  He traded away his special Relics for an Excalibur, which gave a whole new meaning to hitting like a truck.  Still didn't use him though.

EDIT: Dang it, I can't figure out how to fix the spoiler box.  I wish there was a way to edit the source version of the post.  Or maybe I just can't find it?

Edited by Lockirby2

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So I had to contribute here - I was so very, very happy to see a randomizer happen for BNW, and I'm loving it. 

But I did want to mention a few funny things that I discovered as a result. Not sure how many of these have been published before but to my knowledge they aren't in the Readme or the Unlockme. ;)

- The Dirty Undies relic is equippable only by Celes, Terra and Relm. Stay classy, Abyss. 

- I was delighted to find out that the Economizer still exists in the system when I got it from a chest... except it can only be equipped by Umaro. Well played.

- The Codpiece Banon comes equipped with, sadly, cannot be equipped on anyone else. 

- There's something in my inventory called an Unlixir and for the life of me I have no clue what it does.

 

I'm sure I'll toss more things in here when I happen to notice them. Gotta say, the whole thing is adding measurably to my appreciation for the attention to detail in the original mod!

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The Dirty Undies is all me. Can't blame Abyss for that one >.>

Similarly, Banon's Codpiece is... not really a good relic. It prevents sap, which I do elsewhere in the game with Auto-Regen because sap immunity also equals regen immunity (this is why Slow immunity doesn't even exist in the code). I'm assuming that if Abyss isn't touching the users of dummy equipment, then he's not touching the effects, either :P

The Economizer is the only item on this list that actually is attainable in BNW proper. It was @Emmy's idea.

The Unlixir is an Elixir that kills you. OR, at least it's supposed to. It doesn't actually work, which is partly why it's dummied. There's a fun story there >.>

See... The Bouncy Ball code is a fucking mess and it points somewhere completely un-intuitive for the animation. I'd previously cleared this out, believing it to be unused, and then noticed that when Magic Pots try to use bouncy balls, they had no animation. Believing this to be the fault of enemies trying to use an item not meant for them, the Unlixir was my experiment to try and re-create their general behavior without altering their AI.

 

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I love everything about this answer. I'm partway through a playthrough of BTW proper - I'll have to see if I can track down that Economizer for shiggles. 

Anyway keep up the stellar work. If it's possible in future iterations, I'd love to know if there's a way to "shuffle" as opposed to "randomize" certain elements - e.g. for espers, shuffle which espers teach which spells but ensure they all still end up used, etc. Didn't you do something like that for the original Beyond Chaos randomizer? Or am I remembering that incorrectly?

 

EDIT: Just discovered that you can bet the Economizer in the Coliseum to win an extra Magic Cube by beating a Troll. Exquisite.

EDIT EDIT: And now I seem to have gotten to an unwinnable Magimaster fight. :( Hitting his elemental weakness deals a grandiose 2 damage to him. Perhaps I can find a way to cheat/hack my way around it... (EDIT x3: ...which I got around by porting the save state into BTW proper for the fight. Another new thing I've now learned I can do. Yay!)

Edited by BitiumRibbon

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