Version 1.10 released! "Super Hard" mode is go.

While a lot of the attention for game randomizers lately has been for the purpose of speedrunners having a new challenge they can compete against each other in for a couple hours, randomizers' roots are more closely shared with "Hard Mode" style ROM hacks.  Since its release, The Lunarian Shuffle has made a lot of quality of life changes that favor a quick and reliable completion of the game, with good play allowing you to complete the game faster, rather than good play being required to complete the game at all.

Version 1.10 introduces "Super Hard" mode, which makes the game far more difficult in many different ways.  This is not for the faint of heart, and I do not suggest trying to complete a Super Hard seed in a single sitting.  The details of Super Hard mode are as follows:

• The game will give you equipment regardless of whether your party has members who can use it.
• Every chest and plot award for items has a 1 as its "minimum goodness."  Items you find will still be appropriate to the current section of the game, but even the most out-of-the-way chests could contain a Cure2 or some simple ammo.
• The "cures just one status effect" items are back in the game, wasting a lot of your item drops.
• Half of all learned spells have their spell learning levels rolled between +0 and +39 levels instead of the usual Hard Mode +0 to +6.
• Tellah fails to learn 1/3 of the spells he is supposed to learn at the top of Mt. Ordeals.
• Tellah's replacement joins the party at level 10 instead of level 20.
• Whereas in Hard Mode, shops will sell between 1 and their original maximum number of types of items, in Super Hard Mode, the most items a shop can roll are between 1 and 4.
• Gold chests contain less GP.
• The "Maximum Experience Sharing" option is disabled.

In total, these changes make the game take me between 2 and 2.5 times longer than it usually does to complete.  I suspect there will be some seeds that are absolutely brutal.  In particular, players had been noting that TLS solo character challenges weren't actually that hard because relevant equipment was so readily available when no equipment for other characters were being produced; no such luck in Super Hard mode.


Another feature addition is that more items have descriptions in the Item menu.  The code to make this work is borrowed from B0ardface, who is responsible for the recent Free Enterprise project, though the actual descriptions are my own.

Also, as a quality of life improvement, the program will now remember what base ROM you used last time you loaded one successfully, and will automatically load it when you start the program again.  This makes generating new seeds that much less of a hassle, especially if you keep your source and destination ROMs in different locations.

As always, get the new version from the Google Drive folder here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9k5jnZ_x-ijRG5BTE1objljbzQ?resourcekey=0-0RFE3TC3A3VnxLH4vaqIdA&usp=sharing

Version 1.09 released!

Version 1.09 is complete!  Now your Porom can wield the Excalibur staff to her heart's content.
Download it here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9k5jnZ_x-ijRG5BTE1objljbzQ?resourcekey=0-0RFE3TC3A3VnxLH4vaqIdA&usp=sharing

Check the previous post for more details on the new features.  Have fun!

- Crow!

Version 1.09 features

The Lunarian Shuffle version 1.09 is coming soon!  There isn't as large a set of changes here as version 1.08, but that says much more about v1.08 than it does about this update here.

The biggest change is that the Legend weapon, formerly always a sword for Paladin Cecil, is now exclusive equipment for whoever it is awarded to.  So, if the main character becomes Porom when she receives KluYa's blessing, the weapon will become the Legend Staff, with the same stats and properties as the Legend Sword, but only Porom (and not Rosa or Cecil) can equip it.  This change propagates to the Excalbur, should you obtain it.  Also, the randomizer logic now demands that one, and only one, Rat Tail will get placed somewhere in the world, rather than just usually happening to produce one.

In other news, sleeping in the Inn will now be less time consuming if you are using the shortened cutscenes option.  The poor receptionist desk guy will see you collapse as soon as you pay your money, rather than traveling to the beds.

There are a number of other bug fixes, too - for example, it turns out that v1.08 really doesn't like it if you try to make multiple seeds that use the Randomized Names option with the same instance of the program, and no longer will a seed with Golbez not in your party necessarily have Golbez as the villain.

Version 1.08 is live! Also, we have a Discord server!

The Lunarian Shuffle is now officially at version 1.08.  The inclusion of Golbez, the matching of musical themes to the characters' new positions, random character renaming, and many more features give this release the longest changelog of any release yet.  As always, grab the new version here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9k5jnZ_x-ijRG5BTE1objljbzQ?resourcekey=0-0RFE3TC3A3VnxLH4vaqIdA&usp=sharing

For a complete list of what has changed, look in the "Documentation" folder, which is a thing that exists now.

In other news, we now have a Discord server to act as our official chat room and meeting place.  Expect either tournaments or a league for regularly scheduled races to come in the near future.  Until then, come in, ask any questions you may have, or share your fun and funny moments with The Lunarian Shuffle!
https://discord.gg/V2pUVGH

Version 1.08 Open beta

The Lunarian Shuffle Version 1.08 is, maybe, complete!  In addition to the changes advertised before (including playable Golbez!), it also has an option to change characters' musical cues to match the characters they have been replaced by.

A lot of the changes made have a rather high chance of breaking things.  I believe I've caught the big ones, but it's hard to be sure.  I need players to test The Lunarian Shuffle both with and without the new options active, and most importantly, to let me know what things are broken or just don't seem right.

The beta can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=16clDUj-qYlOaEbMCWEMoZIks0CIg_78k

Currrent intended Lunarian Shuffle v1.08 feature list

Here are the things I'm currently planning to add to The Lunarian Shuffle's next major release:

• Golbez as a playable character
• Dark Knight / Black Mage hybrid; low damage, high durability.
• The villain will be randomly replaced with one of the player characters.
• Need to figure out how to handle black magic; I'm out of spell learning list slots.
• Bugfix to the Dark Wave attack so it works properly at higher levels.
• At present, the random portion of its damage is limited to a 1-byte variable, shorting the player up to 60% of the intended damage.
• The Paladin Cecil replacement joins at level 5, not 1, if Normal mode is active.
• Duplicate characters beyond the first will be renamed.
• Not sure whether to use combined names (like FuRoSa) or references to other similar characters (like Celes).
• Inclusion of the Assassin Dagger as an obtainable weapon.
• This weapon gives physical stats at the expense of magic, and can inflict instant death.
• It is in the game code, but is not normally obtainable, just like the Hand Axe.

I'm also looking at the summoned monster sidequests as perhaps needing tuned up, but I'm not sure what can be both clearly communicated to the player and thematically appropriate.

Version 1.07 complete!

My test run yesterday found only one glitch, which was easy to fix.  With that bug squished, version 1.07 is live!  As always for a major release, check occasionally for minor updates should I discover something is broken.

In addition to the big changes mentioned in my previous post, this version also slightly widens the level range for random spell learning levels from +/-5 to +/-6, and there is a publicly posted version of the character tracker that allows duplicate characters.

My decision regarding Tellah's early game black magic randomization was to randomly select one of the three level 2 elemental spells to include in the list.  This keeps the odds of having one low rather than nearly guaranteed.  Hard Mode removes this possibility.

Get all these new features at the usual location:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9k5jnZ_x-ijRG5BTE1objljbzQ?resourcekey=0-0RFE3TC3A3VnxLH4vaqIdA&usp=sharing

Enjoy!