Nestroid Randomizer

[snarfblam]

Finally finished my randomizer for nestroid. Randomizes item placement and elevator connections. Hope to update it down the road with more goodies.



Download link will work for as long as Dropbox permits, however it will also be available at RHDN.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12027218/Temp/Nestrando.zip

[squishy_ichigo]

Been waiting to play around with this since I first heard you mention you were working on it on irc. I love randomizers, so cool. Nice work snarf!

edit: suggestions I mentioned on irc, but felt I should put here so others can discuss:
random palettes, random sprites, random sounds???

[Odb718]

I think the sprites would be a lot harder to do.

What does Fix RNG do?

[Flower]

I guess it's not possible to use it for a edited ROM, I'd like to use faster door transitions and corrected enemy behavior for my Hack, but i get a popup incorrect input rom, results not guaranteed. What's about that?

EDIT: I tested concerned enemies' behaviour and i found nothing changed. Also the doors' transitions remained the same.
My conclusion is to work with my old unedited ROM (unedited in terms of NEStrando) and wait until things clarify.

[Flower]

I think the sprites would be a lot harder to do.

What does Fix RNG do?

If i understood right, it corrects certain enemies, such as Norfair's Volcano Eruptions and those things flying high out of lava (don't know the correct termini).

[Grimlock]

What does Fix RNG do?

RNG = Random number generator.  It will affect thinks like the hoppers jump, Ridleys projectile bounce, and various other entities causing them to vary in height.


A few random ideas:

Random enemy placement (full or controlled variations.  Full = anything goes, controlled = to avoid crawlers spawning in air (spinning) and limit fake Kraid and fake Ridley spawns.

EDIT:  To clarify on this I meant keeping the spawn locations and just shuffling which enemy type is loaded there.  Complete random placement probably wouldn't work too well.

Random damage values (Samus and or enemies)

Random enemy drop values (vary the  value of health and missile drops in areas)
     example:  instead of a health pick up valuing 5 is could be anything


Squishys palette idea would be interesting, you could separate it into two options:
Randomize enemy palettes (swap around existing palettes from areas or make new odd ones)
Randomize area palettes (swap around existing palettes from areas or make new odd ones)

Other option ideas:

Allowing the option to start with (or include with morph ball) the spring ball ability and/or allow the ability to start with wall jump.  Both of those would be pretty neat additions.

[squishy_ichigo]

[spoiler=My First Nestroid Randomized Run]
by squishy_ichigo

seed: 3F10291E
flags: IMERF

So, it starts off really nice, an etank instead of morphball. Neat. After a bit of exploring, I find a missile on the way to what is normally Norfair. Norfair elevator takes me to Kraid. Find Ice Beam. This is going pretty swell so far! Leave Kraid, and go explore Brinstar some more with that missile I found. Find Varia where long beam is, then go explore where bomb is at. Find hijump instead of the etank, and bombs is screw attack? MAN THIS RUN IS GREAT SO FAR! But where to next? I take the tourian elevator down into Norfair, and grab several more missiles and a few etanks. I get stuck in the topmost area of the norfair shaft because I dont have bombs, but dieing sends me back to the elevator. Hmmmmm.... where else can I look? I go back to Kraid, and explore everywhere. I eventually find bombs. Gahhh, still no morph. I find a nestroid map to look at because I dont remember where all the items in nestroid are, and this is getting silly. I go back up to Brinstar, and climb the far right shaft (the wavers didnt load the last time, or I would have explored that when I was there the first time) and its another etank! I have five at this point. Geez, I've gotten everything I can think of! Ok, thats it. I can't find it! This is crazy. I load up the rom in editroid, and after several minutes of searching I finally find an item I didnt realize existed, and I go to get it! I get all the way there, and I finally found it! At long last I can finally proceed and keep playing! Horray! I... wait... somethings wrong.... why can't I get it....

https://snag.gy/a1c5wG.jpg
[/spoiler]

[Lunaria]

Random music, featuring tracks from other metroid games demixed to the 2A03. 'w'

[snarfblam]

Well, squish, um... thanks for being a tester! That was the result of a typo.  :blush:

Went through the whole thing, made a couple other tweaks.

Nestroid Randomizer 1.1

[DSF]

Not sure if this will get read or not, but I had an awkward issue with the randomizer. I tried to get a couple people to race it the other night and neither of them could get the seeds to work, yet they worked perfectly for me. Then I tried using what they were using , which were a Powerpak and a different emulator. Turns out that only an Everdrive and FCEUX can play the seeds, but everything else I tried fails.

I also came across another weird problem while testing the other seeds. If I made a completely blank seed (no randomizing at all), it STILL didn't work on Powerpak or any other emulator besides FCEUX, but worked on Everdrive just fine.

On top of all of this, I got the same problem Flower did with the incorrect input rom, results not guaranteed message after each seed, and I used all of the different Metroid roms I could find - US, EU, PRG0, and a few romhacks even, and all of them gave the same message.

With that being said, what is the ROM info on the one you used to create the randomizer and use for testing, and could you please put it in the download description for people that want to download it in the future, that way they won't have to go through trying to find the "correct" rom?

Please and thank you :)

[jewelediris]

I've been unable to get this to work.  I also keep getting the Incorrect ROM message, when I try to play the game I can't get past the title screen, it keeps resetting. Could it be my emulator?

[cafink]

I know this is a couple years old, but I'm trying this randomizer for the first time and getting the incorrect ROM message.

I have what I *think* is a good rom (it has "[!]" in the filename, at least).  Its MD5 hash is d77c8053168da14b360bf5caeccc5964.  I found another ROM with a different MD5 (d7da4a907be0012abca6625471ef2c9c, though on inspection with a hex editor, they seem to differ only in the header), but it gives me the same message.  I patched the ROM anyway and saw the same behavior jewelediris described:  the game resets back to the title screen when I start a new game (specifically, as soon as the player is given control after the introductory fanfare).

I'm playing on a real NES via Powerpack with Powermappers.  The vanilla Metroid ROM I'm using plays fine on this setup.

Any ideas?  Is there a different version of the ROM I need to use?