Covering respinners, as opposed to repatchers, for the Reddit community.
Respinners are internal, as opposed to external, randomizers for video games.
This is in a world where the vast majority of randomizers are repatchers and not respinners, which can make it very difficult to find respinners to play.
Coverage to include showcases direct from the respinner scene.
I’ve been up to a few things the past week or so. First, here’s the fruit of my labor. I added background music to town 1, town 2, Ki’s Palace, and the first cave. Every piece of music in this clip is music I arranged and added into the game. I also improved a few of the tracks, like increasing the bass for The Forbidden Realm.
Chai Kingdom will not be the world 1 music, but you get the idea. I was mostly showing off how town music will work, as well as the music I’ve already made. I also made some improvements to the engine. Adding town music is very easy with Saga2Edit. I just need to replace the door scripts with other scripts that call the door script before changing the music. Although in some of the Saga 2 hacks, this will require expanding the amount of scripts available
Understanding How Instruments Work
To improve the engine, it is first necessary to understand how “instruments” work on the Gameboy. In short, there are no instruments. You modify the sound wave with different settings, then choose the notes you want to play. Here is a quick summary of how it works
Duty cycle
Alters the sound wave to shift the tone. I think of it as the “material” of the instrument. Brass, strings, or hollow/wood
Volume envelope
Shifts the volume of the note. Think of this as how a note is played. A quick strike, a long note that swells in volume, a flat note that is just held at a static volume, etc
vibrato
Adds flavor to the sound wave. Like reverb or a bloom effect
Wave Table
Used for channel 3, it allows more complex sounds. I’m still understanding exactly how the engine handles these, although I managed to add some crazy sounding ones
For example, in my engine, the following “instruments” use these settings. I gave them plan English names to make setting instruments more intuitive.
Instrument
Vibrato
Volume Envelope
Duty Cycle
Xylophone
Flat – Does Nothing
Strike
Hollow ($80)
Violin
Quiver
Swell
Strings ($40 or $c0)
French Horn
Sway
Breath
Brass ($00)
I also made an instrument tester, although I’ve updated a lot of these since recording the video (piano listed in it is more of a chime. piano should use the string duty cycle). I added melodies from my current music so I could hear them with notes that fit the instrument
With new and better organized settings, I was also able to get some music sounding much better that I had almost given up on. I still have a few tweaks I want to make, but I was able to grab the Mystic Quest Battle theme, which I REALLY want to have in the game
Next Steps
Currently, I’m trying to finalize all the instrument settings. They are mostly done, with the exception of “breath” which has audio pops in it for some reason. I’m also currently researching how to add more wave tables.
I also need to start testing more music in game. Sound effects mute audio in channels 1, 4, or both. I have most of my music optimized in the first video, but in the cave the menu interferes with the violin at the start of Fate in Haze. I just need to move it to channel 2.
Future Vision For the Engine
My real end goal is to create an engine that is easy to use for other rom hackers to use for gameboy music that comes with well over 100 tracks they can use. To make it as simple as I would like, I’m taking inspiration from Mystic Editor, which uses mml for the music.
My end result will look similar. The difference is I’ll have volume control like they have with octave, the ability to name instruments instead of just using the in game settings, and some other tweaks. I’ll have to decide how I want to label note lengths like dotted notes. I was thinking D for dotted and T for triplet at the end, but that might change. You’ll still have the ability to manually change instrument settings like vibrato and volume envelope if needed
For clymax’s projects, click here. You can also follow him on YouTube or Twitter.
The Fated mod of Romancing SaGa on SFC has been unveiled courtesy of clymax. The mod is for use with the DDSTranslation English fan translation v2.0 (which is based on the Trans-Dimension fan translation).
The mod is unofficial and unaffiliated with Square Enix.
Like all of clymax’s rando mods, it’s a respinner as opposed to a repatcher, so just simply reset the game to play a new randomization.
For patching instructions, project status, or other assistance, please check us out on Discord. A teaser trailer is below.
A release build is being considered, but no plans have been set yet.
Development Build: Features
The dev build is on the rotation of mods that can be obtained through our Whirlwind Fiesta annual summer event. For players who do not wish to join the event, do not wish to use Discord, or wish to support the hack author, early access is also available via Game Jolt.
Item chests now give you randomized items. Seeding not yet supported.
Gold chests and jewel chests are unaffacted.
Save ram expanded to 16KB to make room for new features.
Added support for saving hack state.
Added support for loading hack state. Multi-session game timers are thus now supported.
Virtually all maps and locations unlocked to start.
No more enemy encounters unless you hold down the R button.
A side effect of this feature is that NPC interactions now may require holding down the R button to occur.
Walk through enemies even if they block your path.
The portal from Isthmus Cavern to Quietus is now open from the start.
You can now keep looting random items from the same chest, up to a limit.
This applies to item chests, gold chests, and jewel chests.
Stat gains are now boosted to 30x. Only affects the eight base stats.
Your number of battles that is used as one of the ways to level up weapon proficienices is now boosted to 100x.
Gold gains from battle boosted to 30x.
Weapon leveling boosted to around 4x.
Walking speed increased.
You can now hold down the B button to run.
Locations of recruitable characters are scrambled once at game start.
Excess battle gold is auto-converted into jewels.
Excess chest gold is auto-converted into jewels.
A demo clip of relooting the same chest is below.
The Destiny DLC is also available and adds the following features.
Support added for manual seeding. Your protagonist’s name is your seed for the run.
The seed determines your chest drops and the scrambled locations of recruitable characters.
Switch between seeded and seedless rando anytime.
Seedless rando is also known as luck-based or skill-based rando.
Support added for auto seeding.
To use, name your character “auto” (without the quotes).
This should give you different randomizations each time.
Saruin’s auto-healing before dark has been practically nullified.
Fated Any% Gray in 5:08:34
A mod showcase stream by the mod author is below with a playlist also available here.
So, what do you think? How do you think Romancing SaGa on SFC holds up today? Comment below, or come check us out on Discord.
I figured I would give an update on the current music I’m trying to get across the finish line, as well as what I would like to put in the game vs just in the jukebox or future projects
Jukebox vs In Game Music
I’ve thought a bit about what I would want actually in the game vs what I would want just to be able to put on the jukebox while goofing around in town. I think I’ve come up with a few rules that will help
Anything from the Saga series or Final Fantasy Adventure is good to be used in game
Nothing too iconic. No Mario, Zelda, or tunes like One Winged Angel
Try to focus on more obscure music if it is music not from the Saga series
Of course, none of this is set in stone. If a song is the perfect fit, I’m going to use it
Some Planned In Game Music
This track from the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Gameboy Color game isn’t too well known and would work well for Guardian Town
Arcana has some music I would like. I need to clean up the battle theme
Anything from the Romancing Saga series will fit well in the game. I plan to get at least a few more from the snes games
Final Fantasy Legend 3 music is of course great and fits the game well
FF Adventure has one of the best soundtracks on the gameboy, and it fits the game as well
As for the jukebox, everything else. But I’m also going to specifically try for some fun music. Mega Man will come in very handy if I need some more to add
Some Jukebox Tracks
There will be some iconic tracks like Saria’s Song
Mega Man music is fun and easy to convert over. I can get these ones sounding pretty close to the NES
Other fun music as well, such as NES World Cup
Besides those, I have some other random tracks I’m trying to get
Other Random Tracks
My WIP version
Original
I also plan to get as many tracks from the Ultima NES games, particularly Ultima: Exodus. That game’s soundtrack is nostalgic to me in a way no other game is, so I plan to try to get every single track from it into the engine.
Ultima WIP
I also want to get some tracks from these games. Some for in game, some for the jukebox
