[PSX] Randomizer - Meteor On Final Fantasy IX (1.2)

[Tirlititi]

Hey !

The last tool of mine is a FF randomizer. It's a kind of tools that quickly refreshes the game by randomizing some of its content. That's a bit popular in the speedrunning scene where there are already runners taking a break on randomized versions of other Final Fantasies (I discovered it myself with FFX, as there's a tool for randomizing the sphere grids).

The spells are randomized among the spells used by the party in the vanilla game. For instance, Vivi can get Stock Break or Dagger can get Doomsday.
The weapons and armors also teach random abilities.

Another thing it can do is randomizing both the cards that the enemies drop and the cards used by the opponents during Treno's tournament.

Here is the download link :
Meteor On Final Fantasy IX

UPDATE NOTE: I included the Randomizer inside my other FF9 modding tool, though there are several differences.
I suggest to use that other tool, Hades Workshop, instead of this one when playing with the PC version of the game or a non-US PSX version. The only problem with Hades Workshop's Randomizer is that it's complicated to randomize properly the 4 discs of the PSX version with coherency (you'd need to save the modifications as .hws between each disc). Hades Workshop's version also adds an option to randomize the enemies' spells.
Documentation about the Randomizer integrated in Hades Workshop can be found here.

It only works with the american version of the game. Don't forget to apply the changes on all the 4 discs !

Code: [Select]

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// How to Use //
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1) Launch "MeteorOnFF9.exe",
2) On each of the panels, toggle the options to what you wish (options are detailed in the Readme file),
3) [Optional] Go to "File -> Choose random seed" and input a number ; if several people input the same number and have the same settings, they will have the same randomized game (for a race for instance),
4) On each of the panels, click on "Go" to trigger the randomization,
5) [Optional] You may click on the characters to see which abilities they obtained,
6) Go to "File -> Save" and select the game's ISO file(s) (you may select all the 4 discs at once by holding Ctrl),
7) Enjoy!

You may revert to un-randomized game by clicking on "File -> Reset to normal game" and then save.
Have fun 

[Sega Chief]

This sounds really cool. I always enjoyed a good randomiser, thanks very much for this.

[nfitc1]

Woah. Is that...safe? Could, say, Steiner equip the Gastro Fork or Eiko any of the lances?

[Tirlititi]

It doesn't change the characters' weapons. Quina can still only equip forks but those forks teach different abilities.

However, it is possible to make anyway equip any weapon with other tools (Hades Workshop or Memoria). I don't think there's any bug with it.

[I have no name]

With the Dropbox update, the download link for this is no longer considered valid and I couldn't find a mirror elsewhere- they all pointed back here.

edit: and of course after posting that I couldn't find another link, I found another link. The one given here is still dead though, and that was worth pointing out.

[Tirlititi]

I updated the link here. I guess you found a proper link on RomHacking.net.
Thanks for warning

[dclem]

i'm surprised it got over 2000 views in just the past hour.
never the matter.

its amazing btw.   

[Sagefigaro]

Hey Tirlititi, I was curious if you are still working on this Randomizer? I tried it out up to fossil roo, but it had a few issues.

• Almost every character had ability issues, such as Vivi starting with Cure, but it not appearing in the command list during battle. This also applied the other way, sometimes a character would have a list of skills in the menu, but a completely different set of skills available during combat.
• There were small graphical issues and one big issue as well that stopped me at Lana fight in fossil roo. I wish i took some screen shots now, but I already reverted the iso to try to see if I could play the game normally again (I could, but some stones I had equipped were not showing up in the list and as such, I couldn't unequip them.)
  The few issues were equipment having bugged looking icons in the menu (wrong color palette or wrong iconsheet it was pulling from....It would also change based on which area I was in at the time.) and some equipments having no name.
  The lana issue was trying to steal the Coral Blade. The game would hard lock the moment Zidane was going to have a successful steal of the blade. I confirmed this on a second attempt, having the gladius and ether(?) stolen first, failing a few attempts, and then it would freeze at the moment before a steal, telling me it must of successfully stolen the blade.
• Lastly, do you plan to add some more features to it? maybe finding a way to randomize characters? I know that breaks a lot of the scripts in the game, but I'm unsure if there's a way to just mass replace a character's references in the scripts with a new character. I assume animations and etc would have issues with this too.

[Tirlititi]

Hi Sagefigaro,
I've never experienced these bugs and never saw them when other people used that tool (there has been a few randomizer speedruns). There's a guy who experiences soft-locks during some black screen transitions between fields, but I've always assumed that it was a bug from the emulator because this tool really doesn't modify the fields at all.

By any chance, maybe you are not using the US version of the game? That's the best explanation I've got for your bugs. The tool only checks for the file size but maybe it could misread another version and confuse it with the US version if they have the same file size (which would explain those bugs). Or maybe you applied another hack before? Though I don't know any hack for the PSX version that would shift the datas like this...

I am not really planning to work on that tool anymore. At some point, I would like to include it inside my other tool, Hades Workshop, to make it compatible with the Steam version of the game other among things. I didn't understand your suggestion to "randomize characters"? You mean replace every characters and non-playable characters with another one on the fields? That would be insane ^^'
But no, it would be way too much work (as you say, there's the problem with animations that has no convenient solution) only for cosmetic changes (even if I don't underestimate their importance, it's not the kind of things you'd randomize IMO).

[Excalipoor]

Hi Tirlititi, sorry for the stupid question, but I have issues to get the 'Safe Ability' option to work, can you please give an example how i have to write it down in the file? Maybe it's just a problem with my english and i don't understand the notes on the file itself, but i tried a few things but nothing worked so far.

I really love the idea of switching abilities, but after my first playtrough i missed a few abilities on some of the characters, most likely this option will solve all my problems with that.

Hope you can help me with that.

[Tirlititi]

For what I remember, you need to use the exact names of abilities you want to lock and separate them by commas (maybe it is important to not add spaces).
Example:

Code: [Select]

Characters = What’s That!?, Water, Lucky Seven"Characters" will lock abilities on characters (with these, Water would still be a black magic spell on Vivi for instance).
"Equipments" will lock abilities on equipments (by default, Flee is locked which makes it available on the Dagger in any case).

[resinate]

yo been awhile i had an idea, any chance of randomizing chests and shop items?

[Tirlititi]

I won't update this tool. What I may do in the future is to include it inside Hades Workshop. It would then have more features indeed. That's not for now though.