Airship Despawn

[nintendesi]

I encountered a potential bug in the newest update of the randomizer (I hadn't checked earlier versions, so I'm not sure if this was an issue already present).

When you start the randomizer, the player has access to an airship. I used the airship to navigate the early game, and it worked well.

When it was time to retrieve the Egil's Torch with the Sunfire from Kashuan, I parked my airship one tile south of the moat around Kashuan. Then I entered the dungeon, got the torch, received the Sunfire, and left Kashuan. As I walked towards the airship, there was a short scene the game shows the player, where the Dreadnought chases another airship. When I regained control of my character, the airship I had parked outside of Kashuan despawned.

I tested this again and left my airship very far away from the screen where the cutscene takes place (parked it by Paloom). I took the ferry from Paloom to Poft, and then from Poft I paid for the ride in Cid's airship to Kashuan. After I got the Sunfire, I watched the Dreadnought chase the airship, and then I found the Chocobo and traveled back to Poft. After taking the ferry ride back to Paloom, I saw that the airship was still despawned at that point.

Is this intended? I think the game might be beatable afterwards, if I follow the progression of the story past the Cyclone, I should be able to get a new airship as long as Cid's airship spawns for the player. I just wanted to make sure that this is intended, because losing access to the airship for so long was something I would not have expected.

[nintendesi]

I forgot to mention another point of feedback. I really liked the feature to start characters with random spells. I did see, however, that sometimes a character would get two of the same spell. Would it be possible to make sure that the spells they start out with are not duplicates?

[PheonixMMKC777]

Hey thanks for the feedback! I haven't got the the chance to try out the Airship despawn bug myself. But I did correct the code for the Duplicate Starting Spells, and will build it to the EXE when I get home.

[nintendesi]

Update on the airship despawn bug:

I streamed a seed of the randomizer the other night, and we were able to complete the game! The airship given to the player at the start of the seed, however, does in fact despawn after collecting the Sunfire from Kashuan.

I verified what causes the airship despawn. When it was time to go to Kashuan to collect the Egil's Torch, I left the airship outside of Kashuan and entered the castle. After I collected the Egil's Torch, I teleported out of the dungeon, and then walked back to the airship (which was still available) and did shopping in other towns. Later, I went back into Kashuan, used the torch to collect the Sunfire, and when the character is standing on the bridge south of Kashuan, the Dreadnought cutscene occured. After that cutscene, the airship permanently despawned from the game.

At that point, I continued with the game progression (destroyed the Dreadnought, defeated the Lamia Queen imposter at Altair, etc.), and after the Cyclone, Cid's airship became available.

I would suggest making a note to players about the despawn. With knowledge of the despawn, good routing can speed up the randomizer immensely. For example, players can prioritize retrieving the Black Mask and submerging the Wyvern Egg at Deist before they collect the Sunfire and despawn the airship.

Other feedback:

I don't know if this would be possible to implement, but I know that the FF3 Randomizer has an option that enables saving in dungeons. In that randomizer, if the player resets after saving in a dungeon, it acts as a teleport spell, and the game spawns them outside of the dungeon where they had saved. I realize that in FF2 this kind of feature would need some nuance to implement, because certain dungeons do not allow warping or teleporting to prevent softlocks (e.g. Josef needs to die in the Snow Cave, so prohibiting teleportation and warps in the Snow Cave ensures the cutscene with his death). Even if it would only be possible to allow saving in dungeons that do allow the player to use the warp or teleport spells, it would be an immensely useful addition to the work you've made with this project. I don't know how feasible or easy this would be to implement, but I figured the suggestion might be of interest.

Thanks again for all of your work on this randomizer, I never thought it would be possible to play this game randomized, and I had so much fun playing the game. Looking forward to seeing more folks enjoy your work!

[PheonixMMKC777]

Thanks for the detailed look into this, Its been on my to-do list for a while on why it does that. I preferably would like to make it permanent, or have it unlock it normally,and just have the regular sailboat up until then

And thanks for playing/play testing, always love feedback and know that people actually play/stream ff2 lol