crystalis-randomizer

Crystalis Randomizer

Crystalis (or "God Slayer" in Japan) is a classic post-apocalyptic action RPG/adventure game for the NES released by SNK in 1990. It is widely praised as an underrated gem of a video game.

Randomizers are tools that take an existing ROM dump and rearrange bits of it to produce a fresh, new experience and challenge. Note, in particular, that these tools are unusable without bringing your own legally-obtained ROM dump of the original game.

Please visit our discord for more information and discussion.

Try it out at https://crystalisrandomizer.com

Features

Randomization

• Shuffle monster locations
• Shuffle all item locations, including Alarm Flute which is now a key item
• Shuffle shop items and prices, with normalization
• TODO - Randomize the location of some item-giving NPCs (particularly Akahana)

Monster Adjustments

• Monster stats grow over time to ensure that monsters in every location remain relevant throughout the game (this is important when players are traversing the game in an arbitrary order); each key item that is gained increases the difficulty level (which is currently visible in the status bar to the right of the player level)
• Monsters are no longer completely immune to anything: when the "ping" sound happens, the monster will take a minimum (nonzero) amount of damage

Sword Adjustments

• Sword damage is normalized: all swords have the same base damage, which increases by getting upgrades (ball and bracelet) rather than by switching to a better sword
• Stab damage is decreased slightly relative to charge shots (a fixed amount of damage is added for stabs, rather than doubling the sword's base level)
• TODO - Charge shot damage needs to be normalized across swords (sword of wind shots are still significantly weaker than other swords)

Item Adjustments

• Power Ring doubles the sword's base damage, rather than the player's level, making it slightly less game-breaking
• Deo's Pendant increases MP even when moving, making it more relevant in a game with constant movement
• Leather Boots are now Speed Boots: movement speed is noticeably faster, in addition to the normal effect of preventing terrain damage
• Rabbit Boots allow sword charging while moving

Armor Adjustments

• Armors are rebalanced to be less game-breaking if a powerful armor is found early in the game

Enhancements

• Orbs and bracelets are automatically equipped when switching swords, significantly reducing the need for menuing (note that this makes it impossible to intentionally select a lower level)
• Balls and bracelets are true upgrades, rather than individual items: the first found item will give the ball and the second will give the bracelet, regardless of which chest is opened first (the message will be inaccurate if items are acquired in reverse, and this is relevant for e.g. triggering Tornel to teach Teleport dependent on finding Tornado Bracelet, which is based on opening the particular chest, rather than what's in inventory)
• Some NPCs no longer despawn in response to story progression: * Zebu remains in his cave all game, ensuring access to Windmill Key * Asina remains in her room all game, ensuring access to Recover * Akahana remains in the waterfall cave all game, ensuring access to Shield Ring * The first Flute of Lime will be found in the room behind Rage if it was not given by the Queen (i.e. if the statues were glitched past)
• Warping/teleporting out of the tower is allowed; enemies do not give EXP in the tower, so if you enter under-leveled it is now possible to leave, grind, and return at a higher level (or with more items) to try again
• Barrier can only be learned by actually calming the sea: so-called "ghetto flight" will allow access to Swan, but will not provide the magic

Bug Fixes

• Fix the screen shaking issue that happens when the message box appears
• Fix the visible "seams" that show up on (vertically) large maps on certain emulators
• Allow blank spaces in the "Sword" and "Power" row of the inventory, which prevents swords acquired out-of-order from clobbering each other

Known Issues

• Projectiles are sometimes rendered incorrectly.
• Monster shuffling fails to populate levels as fully as it should be able to

The Team

• steve_hacks: programming, design
• Mattrick_: development, playtesting
• jroweboy: programming
• Dragondarch: playtesting
• crossproduct: playtesting, tracker graphics

Changelog

2.0.0

• Revamped the flagset system:
  • Many more options are now standard, significantly reducing the length of typical flag strings.
  • Removed some customization for categories of items to shuffle together: full shuffle is now standard, with "easy mode" flags Et to keep vanilla mimic locations and Eu to not shuffle consumables in with unique items.
  • Support for flag modifiers (e.g. !).
  • Merged the F and G groups together. By default, all glitches are fixed (when possible). The Gx flags reenable the glitch but also add them to the logic. The G!x flags enable them outside of logic.
  • Grouped a handful of options to make the game more like vanilla into a new V group.
  • Support for optional flags that don't affect the checksum (e.g. As to turn off the background music). Note that some A flags are only optional without the ! modifier.
  • Add "mystery flags" (? modifier) that are randomly either on or off, but the player does not know which.
• Adds a new "GBC Cave" inspired by the cave on the east edge of Wind Valley in the GBC version. This cave has two checks and and two additional exits, one of which is blocked by a (by default) rock wall.
  • This introduces a 13th mimic into the game.
  • Setting Vm or V!m will disable adding this map, in favor of either adding no additional routes out of Leaf, or restoring the older version of just a direct passage to Lime Tree Valley.
• Various logic changes:
  • Entering Evil Spirit Island requires you to be riding the dolphin (flight will trigger a message and reject entry, unless trigger skip is used).
  • Added a new guard NPC in the Portoa throne room. When Portoa Queen leaves the throne room permanently (to go to Asina's back room), the guard will have her item, instead of Asina.
  • Statue of Gold is now added to the shuffle as a potential item that can be found from any check. Combining Glowing Lamp and Broken Statue now provides a random item.
  • Deo now always requires Telepathy (in addition to Change).
• Fixes to dolphin logic.
  • In particular, the Rd flag selects between vanilla dolphin interactions (where healing the dolphin and having the Shell Flute is required to spawn the boat owner, and talking to Kensu in the beach house is required to make the Shell Flute work) or "standard" dolphin interactions (where only the Shell Flute is required to ride the dolphin, but trading in the Fog Lamp is required to spawn Kensu in the beach house, who holds an item.
  • Riding the dolphin is now required to get into Evil Spirit Island. If you're flying, you'll get a message that you can't get into the cave.
  • Riding the dolphin is also required to find the underwater item in the channel behind Portoa.
• Tinking no longer damages enemies at all.
  • Ns enables "tink mode", but will also potentially add tinking to logic.
• New randomization options:
  • Wh shuffles house entrances in towns.
  • Wa shuffles connections between the various areas in the game. This also adds two chests to Mezame Shrine, in order to guarantee there are sufficient "sphere zero" checks. In this mode, Zebu's student again no longer gives any item (though he's still required to talk to to spawn sleeping in the cave), and the initial $100 cash is in the inventory from the start.
  • Wg shuffles the order of the floors in Goa fortress.
• New glitch options:
  • Gr allows skipping Rage via a damage boost to go directly to the answering machine. Whether the skip is disabled can be determined by the shape of the land (there's no space to damage-boost into when it's off).
  • Gg allows flight to be used to sneak past shooting statues.
• Adds Rb "no bow mode", which provides a direct portal from Mezame to Draygon 2, who no longer needs the Bow of Truth to fight.
  • Note that this is independent from Rs (story mode), which would still require swords and bosses for Draygon to spawn.
• Improved map randomization some (but it's still incomplete).
  • Added a handful of "missing" screens for several tilesets (swamp and river cave).
• Tracker no longer available (use EmoTracker instead).
• Add presets for the 2022 tournament rounds.
• Revamp the HUD:
  • These changes can be optionally disabled with Vh, or force-disabled with V!h.
  • Some text is compressed into smaller icons.
  • EXP no longer shows a target. Instead, experience counts down and the next level happens when you reach zero.
  • Two levels can be gained at the same time now, if scaling is high enough.
  • Enemy HP and name are displayed at the bottom of the HUD.
• Simple sprite swapping to allow playing as Mesia or other custom sprites.
• Stat tracking.
  • Results are displayed at end of the credits.
  • Pressing Start during the credits will skip the movie and jump straight to the stats.
  • Various known issues: the checks count is inaccurate, and stats can be corrupted when restarting or using save/load (rather than checkpoint).
• Sword is now colored based on the element, making it easy to follow on stream.
• Wall elements can now optionally provide audible cues (optional Qw flag).
• Flyers now spawn in a different random off-screen location every time.
• Warp points are activated immediately upon loading an area, rather than stepping on a specific trigger tile.
• Increase pity MP to 2 (to ensure flight is always possible).
• Add some unidentified and misspelled names.
  • Many of these "community jokes" can be disabled with the Ec flag.
• Mt Sabre North blocking triggers now indicate what they want.
• Minor bug fixes:
  • Fixed some graphical glitches.
  • Fixed glitchy vampire dialog caused by Kensu beach house changes.
  • Fixed an issue with Angry Sea Wild Warp logic.
  • Fixed issues from entrance order being switched (mixing up wild warp, among other things).
  • Fixed some issues around using the tower escalators to skip floors.
  • Fixed bug allowing player to get free sword charge glitch from quick swap.
  • Fixed an issue where seeds that rerolled in the middle could have some communication from earlier attempts, making (for example) Akahana require being Changed into a woman, rather than Aryllis.
  • Fixed monster placement to not be inside walls.
  • Improve handling of overdumped input roms.
  • White robots will no longer spawn directly underneath the player.
  • Tomatoes and other non-flyers now respect the terrain.
  • Fixed internal flag allocation bug to not reuse flags on multiple maps.
  • Don't place enemies on the same screen as a seamless exit.
  • Fixed the waterfall cave hint to traverse chests in correct order.
  • Fixed Crystalis sword power to not decrease after opening the menu.
  • Fixed vanilla bug where a second round of blizzard shots despawn if fired too soon after an earlier round.
  • Fixed vanilla bug where you need an extra MP to use sword magic.
  • Fixed Sabera 2 to not delay before starting the fight.
  • Shooting statue skip (via flight) can no longer require going south through statues, since that direction is not RTA viable.
• Internal cleanups:
  • Rearrange passes into a strict order of (1) read bytes from ROM into an internal data structure, (2) shuffle the internal data structure, (3) write bytes from the internal representation back to the ROM image.
  • Implemented a relocating/patching macro assembler/linker to better utilize free space in the ROM.
  • Significantly more changes are now done programmatically, rather than through assembly.
  • Remove a handful of redundant flags and triggers.
  • Improve test infrastructure.
  • Factored out metalocation, metascreen, metatileset (etc) types for dealing with map edits more easily.
  • Moved a number of screens' data into the expanded PRG ROM.