VERSION 2.0 CHANGES
The original randomizer was made by MarvinXLII, but has now been expanded upon by Valyssa. Minor changes were made but mostly options were added. Marvin has given me permission to update and release this updated version of the randomizer and was even kind enough to share the source code with me.
CHANGES COMPARED TO THE ORIGINAL
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The altered functionality of Avoid (working as a full-proof encounter toggle) was made optional and added variable PP cost.
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The altered functionality of Retreat (world map teleportation+works everywhere) was made optional and added variable PP cost.
MAJOR NEW FEATURES
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Enemy movesets can be randomized. Low level mobs tend to have more attack slots filled with basic attacks, while high level mobs are guaranteed to have more abilities to make them more threatening. Bosses have a smaller pool of random abilities to make them more dangerous and exclude moves that wouldn't work for most bosses, such as ally search. There is logic in place to limit damaging moves based on the enemy's Attack stat, to ensure their abilities aren't too strong or too weak.
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Your own psynergy learning curve can be rebalanced to ensure early access to abilities, and ensuring everything is learned by level 30 at most.
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Psynergy can be randomized too, such as making 1/5 abilities non-elemental or randomizing ability ranges by +- 1 step. Random psynergy can also be assigned to psynergy items, so for example Oil Drop could end up casting Eruption.
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Luck growth can be assigned to the playable characters so that it slightly grows by level as normal stats do.
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When shuffling djinn, there is now an option to sort fights by difficulty to ensure weaker djinn are fought earlier in the game and tougher djinn later. Note that the weakest Venus djinni is still much stronger than the weakest Mars Djinni, so be wary.
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Separate fields were implemented to scale coins/exp for bosses, rather than always being 1x like before.
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Cosmetic randomizations, such as character portraits, names and enemy colour palettes are available!
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Consumables can be shuffled around entirely, so your starting Herbs can be different items, and shop contents will be different too. This is a super basic form of drop/chest/hidden item randomization, but has some fun possibilities in its own right!
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Optional challenge modifiers were added, such as rebalancing prices of inns or consumables, and the option to disable selling of items. There are options to make summons cost more djinn, be weaker or even do Nothing except raise elemental power. There's also a single character challenge available, where Garet, Ivan and Mia have 0 max HP. Most of these challenges are part of the IronSUN ruleset! (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tlf_IM8l9saSeFlMpE4S76A6L9mpcASt2XBjZdG5qIA/)
RECOMMENDATIONS
If you want the optimal gameplay-focussed experience, you should first make a ROM with Marvin's standalone No Cutscene Patch and use that as the base for randomization, as the built-in dialogue suppression option doesn't work as well as the patch. If you want to run the randomizer from source I recommend using Python version 3.10.1. Running gui.py will start the application.
DISCLAIMER
Valyssa is an amateur programmer, so a lot of this code is not optimal. Features were tested pretty thoroughly though and they should all work as intended. Just don't judge the quality of the code too hard pls and run the software at your own risk. Also none of these new features write to the cheat logs, so if you want to investigate enemy movesets or stats, you're best off throwing the ROM into the Golden Sun TLA Editor and viewing them there.
FUTURE IDEAS
I do have more ideas for this project, but they would require a lot more work which I'm not sure I'll end up doing. Here's some:
- More/scaling Djinn fights, so there's a properly tuned fight for each element at each location
- Proper chest/hidden item randomization (with some logic)
- Skipping more cutscenes entirely by pre-emptively setting flags
- Better/cleaner implementation of some existing feature
- More cosmetic stuff like random class and item/gear names
KNOWN ISSUES
- Sometimes an item description describes an effect that's not fully present, such as "Resists all elements" but it only resists 2. This is due to how some effects are transferred to weapons instead
- Item use effects aren't described if there's an equip effect. This was done due to the description length limitation, but it would still be nice to fix eventually
- Shirts, boots and rings aren't currently added to the pool of gear customization
- Bilibin Barricade had been removed to make room for a Crossbone Isle map dot. Inherently this is inconvenient as it misses out on Jill's reward, but I'd at least like for it to be restored if the altered Retreat functionality isn't used.
ABOUT
This is a randomizer for Golden Sun. It randomizes key items, djinn, summons, classes, PC stats, and equipment characteristics. It also features use of Retreat in the overworld to facilitate backtracking, and dialogue suppression to speed up cutscenes.
CHANGES TO THE BASE GAME:
Several changes are made regardless of any options chosen:
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Additional default psynergy: Garet knows Growth and Avoid; Ivan knows Whirlwind; and Mia knows Ply.
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Avoid costs 0 PP, toggles on/off, and works anywhere at any PC level.
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Retreat costs 0 PP, works everywhere (except Colosso and the Tolbi boat), and works like Teleport in the Overworld.
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The Bilibin Barricade is removed to make a dot on the World Map for Crossbone Isle. After your first visit, you can easily return with Retreat.
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Various modifications are made to Lalivero, primarily so that after completing Venus Lighthouse, an item (Black Orb by default) will be collected from Iodem and you can still leave Lalivero.
ITEMS:
The item randomizer shuffles key items: Catch Beads, Empty Bottle, Dragon's Eye, Orb of Force, Douse Drop, Frost Jewel, Lifting Gem, Boat Ticket, Anchor Charm, Mystic Draught, Cloak Ball, Halt Gem, Cell Key, Red Key, Carry Stone, and the Black Orb. Instead of the Killer Ape dropping Douse Drop, one of the following bosses will drop one item: Kraken, Toadonpa, Storm Lizard, or Deadbeard. The game is beatable once you have completed Venus Lighthouse and have the Black Orb.
DJINN:
Djinn and their stat bonuses can be shuffled.
SUMMONS:
Summon costs can be shuffled by element (e.g. Boreas could cost 4 Mars djinn), and attack power can be randomly rescaled by up to 20%.
CLASSES:
The class randomizer shuffles psynergy either by swapping skillsets between classlines or by completely randomizing them. Levels when psynergy are learned can also be randomized (either shuffled or rescaled by up to 20%). Stat boosts can also be shuffled between classlines.
N.B.: Shuffling psynergy levels is not everyone's cup of tea. You can acquire powerful psynergy really early, making bosses a bit too easy and random battles too tedious with high PP costs.
EQUIPMENT:
Equipment is randomized by who can equip what along with price, attack, and defense. Other options to shuffle unleashes, effects, uses, and curses are included. Text descriptions are updated, giving priority to unleashes, then effects, then uses. Detailed description in game will always include effects. Check the cheat log for uses.
PLAYABLE CHARACTERS:
PC elements and their stats can be shuffled, and their starting levels can be modifed as needed.
DIALOGUE:
There is an option to suppress most dialogue during cutscenes. This mainly lessens button mashing, but also allows you to speed through cutscenes in turbo mode.
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS:
These can be turned on and off with Avoid, i.e. when off, cast Avoid again to turn them back on. To reduce grinding, money and experience earned from battles can be rescaled from 0 to 99 times. This only applies to random battles, not mandatory boss battles, in Lunpa, on the Tolbi Boat, the Storm and Tornado Lizards of Suhulla Desert, and in Crossbone Isle. A few of the enemies in Crossbone Isle are found elsewhere, and the scalings still won't apply to them (at least for now). These enemies are well spread out, so it's not as problematic as you might think.
MUSIC:
Music can be shuffled. Right now it only works for towns, caves, overworld, etc. not in random battles.
PROLOGUE/DJINN TUTORIAL:
These can both be skipped. If selected, you start at the farewell cutscene in Vale. The first djinn (Flint by default) will join your party as soon as you walk by it.
RUNNING FROM SOURCE:
Running the randomizer requires Python 3.6+. Once installed, run
py -3.6 -m pip install hjson (Windows)
python3 -m pip install hjson (Mac/Linux)
Settings can be selected by modifying "template.json" and running
py -3.6 randomizer.py template.json (Windows)
python3 randomizer.py template.json (Mac/Linux)
You can also run the graphical user interface with
py -3.6 gui.py (Windows)
python3 gui.py (Mac/Linux)
If desired, you can generate your own exe of the gui:
py -3.6 -m pip install pywin32-ctypes==0.2.0 (Windows)
py -3.6 -m pip install pyinstaller
py -3.6 -m PyInstaller randomizer.spec
The exe will be in the dist directory.