Fire Emblem Randomizer Tool - IDEAS TOPIC

[Klokinator]

LATEST VERSION HERE ----> http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=45705&page=5#entry2925350

Okay so Ephraim225 and I are working on a tool that randomizes your playthrough for you at the press of a button. It will be written in visual basic (Actually it's already in progress and looking good) and it will spit out a file for the Event Assembler to read and edit into your rom.


So this topic is saying "If you could randomize something in FE6-8, what would it be?"

Right now we have these on the todo:

-Random Classes
--Random Palettes for those classes that won't look like shit
-Random items for village/chest/shop events and etc.
--Tier list for these can be found here. http://puu.sh/6mlc8.txt (Feel free to contest the tiers, input is appreciated)
-Random new weapons appropriate to a characters class (Small chance of getting something extra if you toggle the appropriate option)
-Randomized bosses, potentially. This is hazy.
-Randomized enemies (????? Unlikely but distant possibility ??????)
-Random weapons? Doubtful.

The options will all have checkmarks and options to disable/enable each option as desired and some may have different options inside them. For example, you may choose to reduce Marcus and Isadora to a tier 1 class with a checkmark but also increase Nino and Farina to tier 2. You may choose to "soft randomize" items (75% chance for same tier, 25% chance for lowe tier) "hard randomize" items (50% for same tier, 50% for lower tier) or "chaotically randomize" items (anything goes for random items except the tier 0 stuff) and even then, you can choose to randomize the Tier 0 items as well.


Any other ideas?

Edited March 16, 2014 by Klok

[Tables]

Randomising stats seems like an obvious thing missing. This does need some care to be taken. Ideally Base Stat Total should stay roughly similar, even after factoring in new class bases. Growths similarly, with total growths staying (roughly) the same.

[Klokinator]

I'll see if I can't think of some good math for that. It does indeed sound fairly obvious but the problem becomes that instead of doing something like, say, taking Hector (Beefy tank growths by default) and making him a Myrmidon (How will these two things work together now?!) Hector won't actually be Hector anymore, he'll just be a generic randomly generated unit completely. You won't even be able to go off rough estimates of what his old stats were.

STILL, that's why checkboxes exist and you could just... not randomize stats/growths.

This reminds me, Maybe an option to fix luck growths and add a bonus to base luck.

[Ephraim225]

Klok has a thing for jumping the gun. >_<;

Anyways yes I'm making the tool even though it probably interests a whole four people. Currently it picks a random class for each character and then gives the character weapons the new class can actually use, with the new items being a rough equivalent to what they originally had if possible. If the character originally started unpromoted, s/he stays unpromoted. I'm also planning to have everyone's weapon ranks adjusted accordingly.

Matthew, Legault and Jaffar are unnaffected by this at the moment in favor of not having to pray you get a Thief soon enough to opens doors and such. (See: Chapter 11H. In fact that chapter probably makes Hector Mode undesirable anyways.) And since one Thief is enough the other characters can't randomly become Thieves. Athos, Ninian, Nils and Merlinus are also unaffected because it might break the scripted battles and such. Lords are affected, but remember, they can still promote, they just need a different item. (The main character only promotes through the cutscene shortly before getting Durandal/Armads)

Mostly I'm focusing on FE7 for now. I know FE8's going to make things way complicated, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Randomising stats seems like an obvious thing missing. This does need some care to be taken. Ideally Base Stat Total should stay roughly similar, even after factoring in new class bases. Growths similarly, with total growths staying (roughly) the same.

In my opinion that defeats the purpose of seeing how a character does as a different class with the same stats and growths which is what intrigues me in the first place. Also, the effort needed to pull that off scares me :(

[Tables]

I'm much more interested in having a randomized and interesting experience than just seeing how characters do when you change the class. But this is why you make things options I suppose.

[CT075]

i'm assuming you're just going to have a predetermined list of what values to change in the event data to randomize classes

i have a half-finished python script that randomizes weapon stats and growths but idek where ea would even come in

[zahlman]

idek where ea would even come in

I think that part is mainly about shop and chest contents.

[Klokinator]

The EA is to randomize classes, shops, chest, and pretty much everything in general. The characters won't even have their new class without the appropriate CUE module being edited so putting in an event that alters the vanilla maps to reflect the new character class should be what we're aiming for. I'm actually not sure if EA can edit the section for character stats and weapon levels but... I assume it can. Really we only need the new class for the cuntionality, and a pallette swap along with some WLVL changes and it'd be pretty much ironed out.

[CT075]

ea can handle all of those things pretty easily if you're savvy but you wouldn't actually need the EA to alter the data in the CUE (and i would argue that introducing an unnecessary dependency is bad design)

if you know where the data is anyway (and you do- just stick a marker on a disassembled file and re-assemble to get the exact offset of the data) you may as well just edit the data directly

[Klokinator]

That sounds reasonable too. Dunno if VB can do that though (That stuff's up to Ephraim.)

As for randomized palettes and also for my own personal project, I've started something of my own.

A listing of all palettes in FE7 that will tell me/Ephraim/everyone else what classes will look terrible/bad/good/awesome/amazing with what palettes. Enjoy Eliwood's palettes that are confirmed good. Has anyone else ever done this before?

Edited January 16, 2014 by Klok

[Ephraim225]

If anyone's wondering why I'm using VB to output an EA file instead of editing ROMs directly, well, call be bad at VB but I never figured out how to do that :\ This is the next best thing, though.

[Chocolate Kitty]

That sounds reasonable too. Dunno if VB can do that though (That stuff's up to Ephraim.)

As for randomized palettes and also for my own personal project, I've started something of my own.

A listing of all palettes in FE7 that will tell me/Ephraim/everyone else what classes will look terrible/bad/good/awesome/amazing with what palettes. Enjoy Eliwood's palettes that are confirmed good. Has anyone else ever done this before?

you're quite late to the party tbh

each line shows what palettes work with each other 100%

Edited January 16, 2014 by Skitty of Time

[Klokinator]

Is that... it? That's not even exhaustive. That's like 30 words :/

I'll just keep doing my thing and if nobody else has done anything else it'll be the most exhaustive palette test done so far.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Klok

[CT075]

If anyone's wondering why I'm using VB to output an EA file instead of editing ROMs directly, well, call be bad at VB but I never figured out how to do that

i don't actually know how to do it with VB (as in visual basic sucks) but i'm sure there's a way to do basic hex I/O >_>

[Book of Ereshkigal]

Is that... it? That's not even exhaustive. That's like 30 words :/

That because you only really need to test what classes work with each other, not the individual palettes. Palettes are like, organized...? Can't think of a good way to describe it.

Edited January 17, 2014 by L95

[Klokinator]

True but that tiny list is by no means conclusive or exhaustive. Just because a class "works" with another class' palette doesn't mean it looks good. As an example...

(First row w/colors is Eliwood class, second is Lyn class)

Looking at these palettes that I tested on the EliLord class, you can see that even among the same class the results will differ. Bartre and Brendan are Warriors and their palette is total garbage with the Eliwood class. Dorcas is bad but his Yellow wasn't exactly garbage (It worked sort of but there were stray pixels that mucked it up) while Geitz was passable. Only the hair/back of cape looked really bad. And on the Lyn row, Geitz, Jasmine, and Oleg were semi-passable (Bad but not complete garbaged pixels) but Paul wasn't even passable.

The two lord classes (Only two classes I've fully completed so far) actually have the most class diversity as far as compatibility with palettes while other classes will have way more garbage results. My intention though is to find each individual palette result with each class and see how many of them are good based on a 0-4 ranking. This is to ensure exhaustiveness, and also to compile a full list of screenshots using those classes so that beginning hackers will be able to reference them as needed.

[Chocolate Kitty]

uh

okay

because clearly "good" and "bad" aren't subjective

all you really need to do is actually look at how the palettes are organized to see what palettes will fit.

although the general/zerker/warrior was kind of dumb luck I will admit that

[Klokinator]

uh

okay

because clearly "good" and "bad" aren't subjective

Well this may be true but...

This is rated a 0/4 (Red rating marked BAD because it's garbage)

This is rated a 1/4 (Red rating but positive comment because only the face is ugly)

This is rated a 2/4 (Light Blue Because the cape is bad and the colors mesh in the armor)

This is rated a 2/4 (Light blue because the colors violently clash and look bad on each other, but otherwise no pixel mess)

This is rated a 3/4 (Light green rating, because if the cape didn't look slightly awkward this'd be a 4/4)

This is rated a 4/4 (Dark green rating, because the colors flow well and the palette looks pleasing to the eye.)

For every rating above light blue, I rate it based on color clashing and color flow as well as how dynamic and interesting it looks. I think the ratings should be fair and it should be apparent that I'm putting a lot of thought into it (Otherwise I could be halfway done if I weren't taking this so slowly :P)

[Chocolate Kitty]

you're also mixing only the existing palettes, while mine is more or less for people who want generic palettes for multiple classes(and thus are making their own palettes).

so essentially we're arguing two different things I now realize

[Klokinator]

Oh so you mean according to your chart, if I made a palette for one class, like say, a brigand, then that palette would only work 100% with the classes Fighter, Pirate(Fixed Version), and Berserker(Fixed Version)? And then maybe it'd work with a few others?

I think I get what you're saying now. Yeah totally different things.

[Jubby]

^ yes that's the idea for Eric's list. It's to be able to conserve char ID's if you want to do different generic palettes and stuff. Hence if I want a different palette for like Etruria or something I can use the same char ID (with the same palette, thus saving me a palette ID thing too) for Fighter, Pirate, and Berserker.

[Vorena]

Okay so Ephraim225 and I are working on a tool that randomizes your playthrough for you at the press of a button. It will be written in visual basic (Actually it's already in progress and looking good) and it will spit out a file for the Event Assembler to read and edit into your rom.

So this topic is saying "If you could randomize something in FE6-8, what would it be?"

Right now we have these on the todo:

-Random Classes

--Random Palettes for those classes that won't look like shit

-Random items for village/chest/shop events and etc.

--Tier list for these can be found here. http://puu.sh/6mlc8.txt (Feel free to contest the tiers, input is appreciated)

-Random new weapons appropriate to a characters class (Small chance of getting something extra if you toggle the appropriate option)

-Randomized bosses, potentially. This is hazy.

-Randomized enemies (????? Unlikely but distant possibility ??????)

-Random weapons? Doubtful.

The options will all have checkmarks and options to disable/enable each option as desired and some may have different options inside them. For example, you may choose to reduce Marcus and Isadora to a tier 1 class with a checkmark but also increase Nino and Farina to tier 2. You may choose to "soft randomize" items (75% chance for same tier, 25% chance for lowe tier) "hard randomize" items (50% for same tier, 50% for lower tier) or "chaotically randomize" items (anything goes for random items except the tier 0 stuff) and even then, you can choose to randomize the Tier 0 items as well.

Any other ideas?

Randomize names. Random terrain costs and stats.

[Klokinator]

New update, 4 classes done now. Eliwood Lord and Knight Lord, Lyn Lord, and Hector Lord, but not in that exact order.

257 images, so little time. http://puu.sh/6olqf.zip

Some of the highlights include:

Enjoy!

[Book of Ereshkigal]

That Eliwood reminds me how much I don't like the red in Erks battle sprite, lol

[Kobazco]

This needs to happen! It looks like it would be so fun to do a random reclass run like klok did for FE8.

I would love to help this get done faster. When I have time after studying I could try putting peoples palettes on different classes. Think I'm gonna start with solider

Edited January 19, 2014 by Kobazco