TPDP Randomizer

[PhantomPilot]

equalizing all the puppet costs is trivial enough, but picking puppets for specific areas basically would require a full-fledged editor.
that's what i meant by "moving into the realm of rom hacking". cramming something like that into a randomizer seems weird.
you could make a fixed on/off switch that would leave the first couple areas unrandomized (or populate them with predefined puppets), but that still seems awkward to me. i dunno.

[Spar]

Ah, I understand what you meant now. Would it be possible to randomize the appearance rates for puppets? Or the number of different species in each area? Like having one area with 10 types of puppets with roughly 10% chance for any of them, but the next area only has 3 and two of them are 5% chance to appear, while the third has a 90% chance. Or is that stuff all hard coded?

[lastingman]

Oh and another thing I wanted to mention. Is it possible to edit the max PP a puppet can use to increase stats?

[PhantomPilot]

sorry for the slow replies, just been occupied with other stuff lately.

Oh and another thing I wanted to mention. Is it possible to edit the max PP a puppet can use to increase stats?

this requires editing the save file. there is a hard-coded check to prevent you from increasing EVs above 64 each or 130 total via the in-game UI, but you can edit your save to increase EVs up to +255 each. this can also be done to trainer puppets (infact older versions of the randomizer did it by accident).
i'm not sure if there are any other hard-coded checks that prevent EV editing from actually being effectual in-game though, particularly for EVs over 64 (iirc it does check that sort of thing for netplay).
you can use dabomstews save editor if you just want to edit your own puppets EVs. the randomizer could be made to allow higher EVs for trainer puppets, but it can't raise the cap on player puppets.

Would it be possible to randomize the appearance rates for puppets? Or the number of different species in each area? Like having one area with 10 types of puppets with roughly 10% chance for any of them, but the next area only has 3 and two of them are 5% chance to appear, while the third has a 90% chance. Or is that stuff all hard coded?

all of that is possible, but i've not tested it much. as far as i can tell each puppet has a "weight" which determines its encounter rate relative to the other puppets. i would expect the percentage to be the weight divided by the sum of weights, and while that mostly seems to be the case so far, i can't guarantee there isn't any other weirdness.
i've made a beta build that adds randomization for both encounter rate (separate option) and number of puppets in an area (applied to the normal wild puppet randomization) and an option to either randomize puppet cost or set them all to 120 cost (in the form of a 3-state checkbox, click twice to set the latter option).
the wild puppet checkbox has also been turned into a 3-state, with the 3rd state being style only. additionally, the "catch locations" file will now display expected encounter rates.
the OP will not link to this since it's largely untested. you can get it here if you'd like to try it out.

note that a number of areas have multiple sub-areas that share the same name (e.g. youkai mountain). these are now numbered in brackets "Youkai Mountain [2]" to avoid confusion.

[Spar]

Awesome, I'll check it out when I have a day off to play around (no idea when that's going to be since 6 people quit in the last 3 days at work and the schedule now resembles a football playbook covered in X's and arrows).

[lastingman]

A little late, but thanks for the heads up. Probably will try that then. Saw that you have a beta, will try it out later.



Edit: There's something I noticed while playing the game. I used the randomized skill cards in the randomizer and played the game. Managed to get all skill cards and then the problem hit in. I believe the Sign skills are also randomized as well, but the only one sign skill restriction is still there, even if the skill is randomized. Just a guess but for some reason, when I taught a puppet a skill from the skill cards, some of the other skill cards disappeared from the selection, even if they were there before I taught them that skill. Once I overwrited that learned skill, they all came back at the selection, then disappeared again when I picked a skill from the previously deleted ones.

[PhantomPilot]

There's something I noticed while playing the game. I used the randomized skill cards in the randomizer and played the game. Managed to get all skill cards and then the problem hit in. I believe the Sign skills are also randomized as well, but the only one sign skill restriction is still there, even if the skill is randomized. Just a guess but for some reason, when I taught a puppet a skill from the skill cards, some of the other skill cards disappeared from the selection, even if they were there before I taught them that skill. Once I overwrited that learned skill, they all came back at the selection, then disappeared again when I picked a skill from the previously deleted ones.

sign skills are hard-coded by item ID in the game code, there's no way around that besides just not randomizing the sign skill cards.
skill cards are considered items by the game, they have a field which determines what skill it teaches.
since sign skills are determined by the item that teaches it, when you change the skill a sign skill card teaches, that skill becomes a sign skill.
the internals of this game are really wonky.

i'll add that to the known issues list in the OP for now, next version will probably just leave sign skills unrandomized

[lastingman]

There's something I noticed while playing the game. I used the randomized skill cards in the randomizer and played the game. Managed to get all skill cards and then the problem hit in. I believe the Sign skills are also randomized as well, but the only one sign skill restriction is still there, even if the skill is randomized. Just a guess but for some reason, when I taught a puppet a skill from the skill cards, some of the other skill cards disappeared from the selection, even if they were there before I taught them that skill. Once I overwrited that learned skill, they all came back at the selection, then disappeared again when I picked a skill from the previously deleted ones.

sign skills are hard-coded by item ID in the game code, there's no way around that besides just not randomizing the sign skill cards.
skill cards are considered items by the game, they have a field which determines what skill it teaches.
since sign skills are determined by the item that teaches it, when you change the skill a sign skill card teaches, that skill becomes a sign skill.
the internals of this game are really wonky.

i'll add that to the known issues list in the OP for now, next version will probably just leave sign skills unrandomized

It's not that big of a deal, it just means that I still have to be picky about what to teach them. It basically becomes a luck thing as well, since those sign skill may have the good moves in one randomized gameplay, then they end up being bad skills in the next, nothing really game breaking though. Just wanted to point out some things I found while doing this. And maybe add an option to leave the sign skills untouched rather than adding it directly. There may be some people who like to have this luck thing going on.

[Spar]

To be honest I sort of like the sign skill cards getting locked out after using one and wish there were some way to similarly limit the remaining skill cards, like only being allowed to use one skill card from an assortment of 15 or so cards. But I somehow doubt that causing skill cards to randomly lock out other skill cards is an easily managed feat.

[lastingman]

To be honest I sort of like the sign skill cards getting locked out after using one and wish there were some way to similarly limit the remaining skill cards, like only being allowed to use one skill card from an assortment of 15 or so cards. But I somehow doubt that causing skill cards to randomly lock out other skill cards is an easily managed feat.

It does add to that challenge factor in the game, like forcing you to choose what skill to teach that puppet carefully, but like I said before, there are some people that don't like that challenge at all. So it's probably better to make it a toggleable option rather than an outright change to the randomizer. It could also be a luck thing as well. Just pray that the sign skills have bad skills and you're good.

[Spar]

I feel that if someone doesn't like a challenge than messing around with a randomizer is probably not a very good way to kill time. After all the primary purpose of a randomizer is to extend the replayability of a game with finite length by adding more challenges.

[PhantomPilot]

late as always, but 1.0.12 proper is here.

there are now only 2 options for randomizing wild puppets:
full: everything is randomized, including number of puppets and encounter rates.
partial: only existing puppets are randomized, encounter rates are not affected.
this is to simplify the randomization logic, the spaghetti was getting out of hand and most other option combinations didn't make much sense anyway.

And maybe add an option to leave the sign skills untouched rather than adding it directly. There may be some people who like to have this luck thing going on.

Done.
Clicking the skillcard option twice will disable randomization of sign skills. note that this will not fix a game that has already been randomized.

To be honest I sort of like the sign skill cards getting locked out after using one and wish there were some way to similarly limit the remaining skill cards, like only being allowed to use one skill card from an assortment of 15 or so cards. But I somehow doubt that causing skill cards to randomly lock out other skill cards is an easily managed feat.

Unfortunately the sign skill behavior seems to be hard-coded. as far as i know there isn't even a way to identify sign skills from the game data alone. the randomizer uses a pre-built table to look them up.
however, it may be possible to just delete some skill cards from the game (i.e. so that there are only sign skill cards left, they can be randomized to whatever and will lock eachother out).
but i have no idea what unintended side-effects that could have, so i haven't tried it

[captiankatsura]

I wanna start by saying I appreciate all the work you've put into this. One of my biggest problems with the base game is how there are Puppets not available until literally the end, so the Randomizer is great. But I've noticed some issues when randomizing type effectiveness. In my current seed, Electric resists Electric, Poison resists Electric, Poison/Water is weak to Electric, Electric/Water is weak to Electric, and Electric is neutral against Water. The Puppets in question don't have any abilities that would mess with their effectiveness. And I've noticed inconsistencies like this on other seeds as well.
I'd also like to request a function to print out the changed type effectiveness so I don't have to spend hours experimenting to fill out the type chart.

[PhantomPilot]

In my current seed, Electric resists Electric, Poison resists Electric, Poison/Water is weak to Electric, Electric/Water is weak to Electric, and Electric is neutral against Water. The Puppets in question don't have any abilities that would mess with their effectiveness. And I've noticed inconsistencies like this on other seeds as well.

I may not be able to fix that. I can't actually control the effectiveness against type combos, the game figures that out on its own based on the constituent elements.
I've taken a shot in the dark at fixing it though. There's an additional "NULL" element that presumably does nothing but the randomizer was randomizing it anyway. Hopefully removing that behavior solves the problem.
In any case, i can't seem to reproduce this on the current build of the randomizer. You can get it here: https://github.com/php42/tpdp-randomizer/releases/tag/v1.1.0-beta3
I haven't tested exhaustively, but the seeds i tried seem to work as expected.

If you happen to have the "share code" ("randomization code" if you're using the beta) for a seed that has this problem, that would be helpful (I'll also need to know the game version and randomizer version)

I'd also like to request a function to print out the changed type effectiveness so I don't have to spend hours experimenting to fill out the type chart.

Done. See the link above.

[captiankatsura]

I did not generate a share code at the time of randomization, but this is the code I got from recreating the settings I was using: G0C:cO0ot:7BX8D:1a:7q:0:5:P
The specific puppets I found the inconsistencies with were: I was using an Iku (found on Route 3), and I tested effectiveness against Chiyuri (Human Village), Eirin (Route 3), Iku (Route 3), and Cirno (Myouren Temple). I was running Randomizer version 1.0.12, and I was playing Shard of Dreams version 1.103 with the completed English Patch.
I don't have any other specific seeds on hand where I've encountered the issues with type effectiveness, but I definitely remember seeing some inconsistencies the last time I randomized it. I'm pretty sure it was the same randomizer version, but I think it was on the base game.
Thanks for looking into it, and for adding in the option to export the type chart! I will try out this new version over the weekend and let you know if I encounter any problems again.