TPDP Randomizer

[Spar]

So I've been playing around with this and I've noticed something that initially didn't bother me, but started to get tiresome by the time I got past the SDM: Trainer puppets and Sign skills. Specifically most trainer puppets have at least two Sign skills, some have three or even a full load of four Sign skills. I don't mind getting caught off guard by an unexpected skill only available via skill cards, but when a trainer puppet can have multiple Sign skills, while we are limited to one per puppet it rubs me the wrong way. For example I don't expect to be fighting level 29 Power Rumia (what's with the level 29 Style Change too?) with the skill list: Water Sign, Illusion Sign, Wind Sign and Tumble Plant. Is there a way to take the Sign skills out of rotation for random trainer puppets?

[PhantomPilot]

fixed.

trainer puppets can now have only one sign skill
i've also drastically reduced the chance of getting skill card moves in general (15% chance)
most puppets have more skill cards they can learn than level up moves, but they were all tossed into the same pool for randomization purposes so the chance of getting skill card moves was insanely high
this didn't really bother me but i can see why it would bother sane people

i'm not really sure where to strike the balance there, but at least 15% should prevent them from being loaded up with skill cards all the time

i've also enforced level requirements on levelup moves so trainer puppets should no longer get moves they are too low level for

level 29 style change shouldn't be a thing? at least not for trainer puppets
the randomizer explicitly sets trainer puppets to normal if they're under level 30, so i have no idea what could cause that
only thing i can think of is that there's some extra exp calculation nonsense with trainer puppets i'm not aware of, wouldn't put it past this game
if anyone has any insight, let me know

i've increased the minimum level for style change to 32 so hopefully that won't happen anymore

appreciate the feedback though, i've become desensitized to the madness after all the testing early on

[Spar]

I don't mind most skill card moves, as most of the moves are linked to their types, it's really just the Signs, since every puppet can learn them, thus cover some of their weaknesses.

As for the level 29 style changes, I'm not really sure either. I've only encountered a couple. Almost all of the level 29 puppets have been Normal, but I've encountered a Wakasagihime, a Rumia, and a Kyouko that are all style changed level 29s... Maybe it has to do with exp adjustments for puppets of lower cost? I don't know how the game calculates that stuff, though. Either that or the imported save file (I played normal until I beat Marisa, then randomized, because I don't like fighting a full party before I can catch a puppet.) screwed something up.

[PhantomPilot]

yeah i over corrected a bit
my concern was for early game where you don't have access to decent skills of your own and trainers are just hitting you with 100 power skill cards which can make early game a struggle when all you have is yin/yang energy vs full trainer parties.
but that doesn't last very long and trying to make it conform 100% to the normal rules doesn't seem to work too well, so i'm just going to revert everything except the sign skill restriction

i was unable to reproduce the level 29 bug and the level calculations seem to be spot on, so it's probably some kind of weird edge case
i've set the style change level back to 30, a couple stray style changed level 29s isn't game breaking or anything

[Spar]

Like I said I've only gotten a couple level 29s (after playing through 10 or so times) and I didn't really care either way about them, I was just curious if you knew what was up with me coming upon them. I don't know, and you don't know, so I'll shrug and keep playing, for all I know it's something on my end. I'll track my settings and if I find another I'll let you know.

Early game's not that bad even with high power moves being thrown around, because it's high power moves from extremely low power puppets, so the additional damage isn't too noticeable. It's not until style changes show up that lots of high power moves become problematic and I haven't done anything past 256% level increase to see what early game is like with style change puppets everywhere... Though I'm now tempted to try a 777% run.

[lastingman]

Haven't gotten far into the game yet, but I noticed the trainer puppets that are invisible (when I add puppets to the trainers) are mainly from the scripted boss trainer battles. It also seems that the only ones not invisible are the same amount of puppets they were normally supposed to have (Ex: Marisa is supposed to only have one puppet, so the rest are either invisible or takes a different sprite image. Same with the PLF group in the village who are only supposed to use 2 puppets except the boss). Will go along further in game to confirm.

BTW, I'm using the translated game, just in case that is the cause of the error. The first one, not YnK.


Update 1: Already delivered the package. It seems that the invisible puppets are 75% likely to happen to scripted boss battles. Battled regular trainers and the regular Touhou character trainers not part of the story. All had full teams that are not invisible. Will go to SDM to confirm if it's true.

[PhantomPilot]

yeah this is a known problem with the base game. i should probably update the OP.
it doesn't happen in YnK, so i'm pretty confident it's not a bug on my end.
i suspect that boss battles are hard-coded to expect a certain number of puppets, and only load sprites for that many puppets (this could explain incorrect sprites as well as it may be reusing pointers/ids/etc from previous battles).
the puppets for bosses are loaded from the same files as the puppets for rando trainers, which work fine.
YnK uses the same file format and it's fine, so why it fails in the way it does is a mystery to me.
if it was scripted to only use 2 puppets, why does it load all 6? if it knows there are 6 puppets in the party, why does it load only 2 sprites?
who knows.

[lastingman]

Yeah, it's a mystery to me as well. I noticed in the first post that you only tried it until prologue, so I thought it was just a tutorial glitch. The actual characters themselves that are normal trainers have full parties with all their puppets properly sprited, only the boss battles so far have that glitch. But all-in-all, not that game breaking. The glitched puppets still behave normally (ie. Strengths and Weaknesses are the same, attacks are plausible [unless using the attack/SC randomizer]), so no biggie.

BTW, a suggestion. Maybe add an option to the randomized stats that actually gives out a proper distribution to the stats based on their original stats or maybe increase the stats off all puppets by percentage. In one of my randomized games (backed up original game), almost all of the Focus Attack puppets have a higher Spread attack that their Focus attack stat and vice-versa. And some of the puppets are "LITERAL" glass cannons, especially the farther you go (a LV 50 puppet has around 20-30-ish defense whether Focus or Spread). I even got a Sukuna with an abnormally high Focus Attack and Defense when I style changed her. Add her signature skill to that and I just broke the game. In another, almost all puppets I caught were slower than a turtle.

If that's impossible, then it's fine. Once I'm done with the base game, I'll try Ynk next (though I can't read Japanese).

Took a long time since I'm grinding and school.

[PhantomPilot]

super late, but:

BTW, a suggestion. Maybe add an option to the randomized stats that actually gives out a proper distribution to the stats based on their original stats or maybe increase the stats off all puppets by percentage.

i've added an adjustable "proportional stats" option which allows stats to be randomized to within +/- the specified percentage of the original stat. that should allow puppets to retain some semblance of their original stat distribution.

also, more stuff that should have been implemented ages ago:

• option to make trainer puppets conform to skill level requirements (does not affect skillcard moves)
• option to adjust chance for trainer puppets to have skillcard moves (per move slot; leave blank for shuffle)
• option to adjust chance for trainer puppets to have a held item

[Spar]

Out of curiosity is it possible to give wild puppets held items?

[lastingman]

super late, but:

BTW, a suggestion. Maybe add an option to the randomized stats that actually gives out a proper distribution to the stats based on their original stats or maybe increase the stats off all puppets by percentage.

i've added an adjustable "proportional stats" option which allows stats to be randomized to within +/- the specified percentage of the original stat. that should allow puppets to retain some semblance of their original stat distribution.

also, more stuff that should have been implemented ages ago:

• option to make trainer puppets conform to skill level requirements (does not affect skillcard moves)
• option to adjust chance for trainer puppets to have skillcard moves (per move slot; leave blank for shuffle)
• option to adjust chance for trainer puppets to have a held item

Thanks man for the update. At least I can randomize properly now. At this point, I just need to wait for the story translation (if it will actually continue) of YnK to continue so I can play smoothly for that one. Now the problem is that another 2hu game came out with new characters, so I don't know how the original creators will implement that.

[PhantomPilot]

Out of curiosity is it possible to give wild puppets held items?

nope. the actual generation of wild puppets is done according to some hard-coded logic. all that is accessible through data files is the type and average level of puppets in an area.

Now the problem is that another 2hu game came out with new characters, so I don't know how the original creators will implement that.

somehow i doubt they'll patch in new characters. lolk characters didn't get added to the base game, though that may have just been because they were planning the expansion. maybe they'll patch cirno's alt-color costume to tan cirno

[Spar]

Hmm... Is it possible to "unrandomize"? Like specifying which puppets appear on Route 1 or in the Human Village?

[PhantomPilot]

sure, you can assign arbitrary values to anything that the randomizer has access to.
but that's moving into the realm of rom hacking/modding. if that's what you're hinting at, then yes it's possible.
if you actually mean 'unrandomizing' as in reversing the randomization, you still need a copy of the original or at least a record of the changes. that's why it's easier to just keep a backup.

[Spar]

I meant more like having the first two areas have specific puppets, while the rest of the areas are still random.

Also, since changing stats is available, is it possible to have it change puppet cost, so that all puppets level up more or less equally? The 80 and 90 cost puppets level up too fast for having similar stats to 120 cost puppets after stat changes.