AI-Assisted Romhacking Project Seeks to Provide Answers
For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube or Twitter.
Says project creator monkilabs:
What if Samus Aran explored Dracula’s castle?
Metroidvania: Symphony of the Night is a fan mod for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1) that replaces the hero with Samus from Super Metroid, Speed Booster, Shinespark, Morph Ball, Grapple Beam, Screw Attack, beam combos, Super Metroid–style equipment screen and map, all inside the original castle (and the inverted one).
Coming soon on PS1.
The project creator continues:
AI Disclaimer
I don’t want to mislead anyone about how this project is made. I use AI to speed up the coding, which lets me move fast as a solo developer. I review, test and ship all the generated code myself. I teach Python and C and do research at a university for a living, so while I’m not an expert in this kind of project, I’m learning a lot by working within the limits of the PS1 hardware.
Apart from the code, NO generative AI tools are used for the game’s music, sound, sprites or art. Most of it is tweaked from the original source material, and the completely new parts were drawn or recorded by me (I’m not a 16-bit artist, so I’m doing the best I can).
This project wouldn’t be possible without the amazing work of the sotn-decomp team (github.com/Xeeynamo/sotn-decomp). Thank you so much for sharing it.
This is a non-commercial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Konami or Nintendo. Castlevania is a trademark of Konami; Metroid is a trademark of Nintendo. The mod will be released only as a patch, you will need your own legally obtained copy of the game.
So, what do you think? Comment below, or come check us out on Discord.
A week ago I completed my one of many Four Job Fiestas with the FFVCentral Four Job Fiesta romhack instead of going by traditional self-regulating playthroughs on vanilla Final Fantasy V. My way of playing and doing this challenge has been changed drastically, and I now see this hack to be the most superior way to participate in the challenge, especially for beginners who don’t want to work their way around the very vague and complicated rules that the main Four Job Fiesta website has.
“What does this romhack offer that a competitor doesn’t?”
Image Source: Ivor_Biggun
A fantastic and very reasonable question that I can imagine many people would be asking when the standard Four Job Fiesta website seems perfect. This romhack offers you far more convenience with no strings attached. You roll your jobs on the website like you would on any other website but those jobs, including the type of run you’re doing, modifiers selected, and such is all applied for you when you load up your Rom onto the Web Emulator. All the rules are in place, requiring no further input from you as a player and makes getting into this challenge as a beginner much easier.
Another bonus is that unlike FourJobFiesta.com that has annual events, our Four Job Fiesta event is year round meaning you have all the time in the world to participate.
“But that sounds like something most people can do by themselves, why change from the status quo for this new way?”
Image source: Ivor_Biggun
Another great question, this romhack unlike the other alternatives, makes a bigger impact on ensuring competition is fair. While other sites expect you to police your run by yourself which many bad actors won’t do, the romhack makes sure using jobs not selected for you is nigh impossible. You are restricted exclusively to the jobs rolled, no other jobs you unlock with every new crystal will appear in the Job list meaning you are stuck with the ones the site rolls for you. This helps alleviate a lot of the confusion that new players might have while keeping the annual event fun and fair for everybody.
“I’m still not sold, I’d like to watch someone play through this hack before I do it myself.”
I’ve recorded a complete playthrough of the hack from start to end under the ruleset I chose, this was all played on the Web Emulator provided right here at FFVCentral. Completing this hack awards you with a badge (mentioned earlier) both on the site and on our Official Discord (read the below section on “Tiered Badges” for more information), which you should absolutely join if you haven’t already!
Backstory
If you’d like more backstory on this romhack including the creator of it, Clymax, a compiled blog with video showcases can be found over here. If you’re also curious on the comparisons between our way of doing Four Job Fiestas versus the ways that other sites do it, a blog has also been made that you can read up here that goes into further detail and shows graph comparisons including what we offer, when our events run, and more.
Automatic Leaderboards
Another thing unique to our romhack and site is that Four Job Fiestas have an automatic leaderboard, beating the Four Job Fiesta via our Web Emulator tracks your time and automatically puts you on our leaderboard to compete your time with others and puts more emphasis on our desire for strong and healthy competition. It’s just another one of many things we offer that other sites simply don’t. It also helps us further keep the playing field fair, as tracking times helps us distinguish what is and isn’t possible and if cheats and external tools have been used to give someone an unfair advantage.
Badges & Tiered Badges
Your participation isn’t just left unrewarded, those who prove themselves to be the mightiest warriors of light are awarded a badge for their completion. You are also awarded a Tiered Badge in our Discord server which is based upon how many events you complete. Dedicated players have their dedication rewarded, and incentivises players to engage in the challenge.
Closing Thoughts
An actual alternative and competitor is far and few when it comes to doing Four Job Fiestas and that has been needing to change, we hope that more players, veterans and newcomers alike, will engage in and participate in Four Job Fiestas with us at FFVCentral and enjoy the romhack provided which aims to make doing this challenge accessible for everybody. We ensure honest competition as well as badge rewards for those who successfully complete the challenge amongst other things that other sites won’t provide for you. If you’d like more information, you can find the blog devoted to this romhack here or you’re free to ask any questions in the official FFVCentral Discord.
For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube or Twitter.
Future Teams
We are continually on the lookout for contributors to form new teams to take on translation or modding projects for Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, SaGa, and other games. See the linked post for some examples.
