Random character mod

[Tobylicious]

So I've been playing Suikoden 2 quite a lot this year (for the first time) and it has really been a great experience.

After finishing the game I got this pretty crazy idea for a mod..would like to hear your opinion on it.

It goes something like this;
Game is 100% the same with one exception, characters are no longer presented in the same order on every playthrough. Instead they are "shuffled" using random numers.

This may sound impossible and probably is, but imagine how unique each game would be to play.

To clarify what I mean..story, texts etc would be 100% the same. You'd "just" switch the characters, meaning their attributes and possible rune slots (preferably along with their sprites + portraits for consistency). For example, you could meet Shu and Tsai in the forest instead of Kinnoson and Shiri. They would still be Shu and Tsai, just at a different locatiob. Imagine how hilarious dialogues would be and how interesting it'd be to explore basically an inifinite number of games within the game.

If a mod like this would be possible I'd personally have the main 3 characters "set in stone" to still get the same experience of the great main story, also since these characters seem to have more unique animations than the rest of the cast.

To those of you who have experience with game hacks, do you think something like this be even remotely possible to do?

Cheers.

[wataru14]

Not with plot characters. Recruiting Shu randomly in the forest would cut two chapters out of the game completely. And some recruitments would make no sense (I'm getting an image of Templeton scaring the hell out of Chaco or Mazus tagging along because he's a Gengen fanboy), but it would be pretty funny for people who know the characters well enough.

[Pyriel]

It's remotely possible, but the work involved would be monumental. Even discarding how it would break the story, characters not in your party that are required for the story often have their sprite sheets and portraits compressed into the area files. So when you walk into Ryube, the game doesn't realize it needs Eilie, Rina, and Bolgan, and dynamically cache that data from disc. It's just there waiting to be decompressed and used. There are alternatives to this, but you'd have to rewrite or re-purpose part of the script engine to make it load appropriate sheets, since custom animations may only be present in area files that require them.

That also leaves the question of how random is "random". For example, Miklotov is always present in the Matilda Gate area where you meet him late in the game, he just doesn't appear until the event flags indicate that he should. So replacing Miklotov with Chaco means that decision has to be made early on, and there has to be a mechanism for communicating that throughout the rest of the game, so that he's not randomly Chaco on Jowston hill, Long Chan Chan in Matilda, and Badeaux when he appears at the gate. That means altering the save file, storing an array of translations, and rewriting every script and area in the game to utilize them.

In the main, I'd say it's near enough impossible. I wouldn't recommend even attempting it without being prepared to give it up in frustration. This would be a massive undertaking, even if you had the original source code.

[Omnigamer]

"Randomizers" have shown up for a number of other games, but as far as I know none of them are as complex as would need to happen for Suikoden II. Examples include Super Metroid, Zelda: A Link to the Past, and various Pokemon games. They typically work by just replacing item or character descriptors throughout. They directly modify the base ROMs before runtime based on a set seed. There's a lot of difficulty in doing that for Sui2 because of the issues that Pyriel brought up, as well as just how much we don't know about the game files.

An alternative may be a compromise approach that doesn't mess with character appearances in the plot, but swaps their battle appearance and traits. I'm not sure how this would need to interact for changing equipment, runes, or otherwise, but it hopefully would cut down on the number of scripts that need to be modified.

[Sasarai10]

I don't know but it sounds pretty confusing to me. Things are gonna get mixed up and you will end up trying to find out who is who.

Making Shu playable for example isn't a bad idea, but mixing him up with Kinnison and Shiro? No way.

[Omnigamer]

I don't think anybody is suggesting to make non-playable characters playable. You'd simply have a pool of battle characters and a pool of non-battle characters, and only randomize within those.

[Tobylicious]

Some good points posted here.

I'd like to clarify some things about the idea;
I made a mistake in the OP, using Shu as an example (a non-playable character). What I meant was that the hack would randomize only the playable characters.

By "random" I meant basically that at the start of the game a dice is rolled in the background so to speak, which shuffles the characters once. No other checks or modifications throughout the game. So there would be consistency within the game with no jumps between characters if one would just enter/leave certain area. I guess an alternative to an in-game randomizer could be some kind of "simple" program which could load a rom file, run it through the shuffle script, then save it as the new and unique game. Then you could just let this program be run once before each playthrough.

The goal/purpose of the mod would be to dynamically offer endles ways to experience and play the game for those who have already finished it multiple times. In one way the storyline would be completely changed (or broken if you will), compared to how the game was designed. So it'd be more a "fun mode" and non-canon version of the game. However, keeping the main cast intact (and not replacing Riou with a squirrel for example) would still set up a boundry to respect the main plot and events. The idea is basically that perhaps it doesn't matter *that* much if it's Gengen or some other dude who escorts you at the beginning of the game. Gameplaywise it could make a big difference however!

So anyway, that was the general idea!

...

Character data being hard-coded into specific areas definitely sounds like a show-stopper; I had hoped this wasn't the case. If all portraits, names etc were dynamically loaded perhaps it would have been more feasible. Not that the devs would have had any reason to actually program the game in that way.

Omnigamer, perhaps something more similar to your idea is more feasible. To make it even more simple, what if it was possible to *only* swap stats, rune slots + weapon ranges? This is the core of what would make the mod interesting. Updating portraits and/or character sprites does not have any effect on the gameplay and is more of a luxery. To clarify, you'd still meet Gengen at the regular spot, but his attributes could be swapped with those of Camus. "Inner" data like this could perhaps be shuffled dynamically once without too much headache. It'd also have the positive benefit of keeping the story 100% the same. Moves with unique animations would not be shuffled between characters. Correct me if I'm wrong but this only applies to Unite Attacks. For example, Camus and Miklotov would still be able to do their Knight Attack like normal. Weapon names would also be intact for each character, even though their ranges might have changed. So there could technically exist middle or long range swords, or short bows. Character X who originally was a melee tank with little magic might in another playthrough be a long ranged and quick on his/her feet. Since attributes are swapped between the chars and not just generated out of nowhere, we'd in the end still get the same balanced game. But the order in which we unlock them and how we must choose to manage their weaknesses and strengths as they come will vary. The whole thing will arguably make most difference in early-mid game.