Legend of the Mana Sword (GB Final Fantasy Adventure hack)

[xenophile]

Legend of the Mana Sword focuses on bringing a level of polish to the first game of the Mana series, to both make it a better experience for first time players, and more fun for returning players. If you played the original (whatever you call it) years ago, my hope is that you will quickly forget that you're playing a hack.


First new release of 2023!. In addition to the usual type of bug fixes and improvements, this release brings formatting changes to the status bar (thank you Dagmor), and some subtile but major map graphic improvements, especially in swampy areas!

The main areas I'm looking to change are:
1. Anything related to the Mana series established lore. The world building went a lot farther in Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana).
2. Bits that were "lost in translation", both names and plot, but also readability.
3. Bug fixes if the bug can negatively affect gameplay, like the (now fixed) infamous Heal bug.
4. Puzzles should be solvable without looking at a walkthrough.
5. Graphics upgrades including color enhancements, currently only targeting GBC's very limited built in palette.
6. Anything else that makes the game more fun!

Enjoy!

[Thirteen 1355]

Yeah I would go with Flare. That's the real name after all. I'd stick to FF spell names in general.

[xenophile]

Yeah I would go with Flare. That's the real name after all. I'd stick to FF spell names in general.

What even is real when you think about it?

If I'm not mistaken, Square mostly stopped borrowing Final Fantasy elements from Secret of Mana onwards, which to me leaves a lot of those elements feeling like dead ends here?

I'm still indecisive between Nuke and Flare. The biggest things Nuke has going for it are that it's not Final Fantasy, and it is evocative of evil. Except it is Final Fantasy, and it's to over used to remind people of the very real-world horrors the term represents. I guess I'm leaning towards Flare.

Also, I'm regretting adding a poll option for two different possible spell names, so I'm removing "Thund" from the running.

[Da_GPer]

May I suggest using my title screen hack that changes the title screen to say Adventures Of Mana? It will make the game look better.

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4595/

[xenophile]

May I suggest using my title screen hack that changes the title screen to say Adventures Of Mana? It will make the game look better.

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4595/

Thank you for the offer, but I actually did my own title screen based off of the original Japanese Seiken Densetsu title screen: https://www.romhacking.net/?page=hacks&action=images&id=6550&imageid=title

With so many different titles and so many title screens for this game already, the obvious solution was to add one more of each? That was logically the best use of my time, right?

What do you think of it? 

[Thirteen 1355]

Your own title screen looks great I think.

Regarding Flare, yes, you are trying to make this more Mana and less FF, but clearly this spell IS Flare from FF. Modern translations use Flare for it, so I wonder why someone would go with an outdated, inaccurate name. You can see the exact same in FFLegend.

[gnome_chomski]

I've played about an hour of this (up until Wendel), and it's been great so far. No bugs or text errors to report.

I second the existing title screen -- you did a great job in keeping faithful to the original's design. Squeenix had the chance to officially change this game's name to "Adventures of Mana" when they released the Collection of Mana, and they didn't. So, if anything, "Legend of the Mana Sword" is a more faithful translation at this point.

I don't feel particularly passionate about Flare v Nuke, but I'd agree that Flare has a slight edge due to it being the standard term across both the Final Fantasy and Mana games.

All in all, great job so far. There's a lot of potential here to make further improvement and quality-of-life tweaks, I'll be interested in seeing how this develops. Between this and OK Impala's Ember of Mana, it's an exciting time to be a Mana/SD fan.

[xenophile]

Your own title screen looks great I think.

Regarding Flare, yes, you are trying to make this more Mana and less FF, but clearly this spell IS Flare from FF. Modern translations use Flare for it, so I wonder why someone would go with an outdated, inaccurate name. You can see the exact same in FFLegend.

Thanks! About Flare, I'm convinced to change it (about to replace the poll now), but I'm a little curious how clearly it is Flare? Graphically, does it resemble Flare in Final Fantasy games? I ask a little bit because ultimately my hope is for it to be purple/black like Shade.

I've played about an hour of this (up until Wendel), and it's been great so far. No bugs or text errors to report.

I second the existing title screen -- you did a great job in keeping faithful to the original's design. Squeenix had the chance to officially change this game's name to "Adventures of Mana" when they released the Collection of Mana, and they didn't. So, if anything, "Legend of the Mana Sword" is a more faithful translation at this point.

I don't feel particularly passionate about Flare v Nuke, but I'd agree that Flare has a slight edge due to it being the standard term across both the Final Fantasy and Mana games.

All in all, great job so far. There's a lot of potential here to make further improvement and quality-of-life tweaks, I'll be interested in seeing how this develops. Between this and OK Impala's Ember of Mana, it's an exciting time to be a Mana/SD fan.

Thank you! Let me know if you notice any issues, of course. I'm trying to figure out some more easy quality of life fixes to add in the near future.

I'm definitely excited about Ember of Mana too, and have sent Ok Impala! some (very minor so far) assembly changes that are being integrated into EoM. Vice versa, when I got stuck completely unable to design a graphic I liked for the Fang item, Ok Impala! came to my rescue.

[xenophile]

After a lot of changes and a lot of testing, the next release is getting close. Seems like the perfect time for me to think about making even more changes?

The change is pretty simple. When playing Final Fantasy Adventure (or Seiken Densetsu) on Game Boy Color or Game Boy Advance (and Super Game Boy for most people's palette configurations?) you get blue water and green foliage (mostly). This isn't because of any fancy colorization the game is doing, but just because that's the default palette of the Game Boy Color its self.

The actual change is to switch the color of the sky from the green hue to the blue hue. This would be a completely obvious change except the fact that for anyone on regular (non Color, non Super Game Boy, non Game Boy Advance) Game Boy would see the changed sky as now being a darker gray, and maybe a little more ominous. Here's before and after in black and white and in color:


Originals on the left, new versions on the right.

Poll is up, comments are open. How do y'all play your Game Boy games, and what do you want to see?

[badnest]

Meh, I play GB games on my GBC and I almost always choose the color palette using the button combination when the BIOS screen shows up. I almost always go for the greyscale option, or the "amberscale" one, the one where sprites and the bg are the same (shades of amber) colors. I think the colorized modes make the sprites stick out too much from the background and almost never use them, except for a few games that look really good on them.

If I were to play your hack, and I probably will when I get a GBC everdrive, I certainly wouldn't use that default palette anyway.

I'd say don't change it. Just my two cents.

[KingMike]

I don't know if I've actually played FFA on an actual Super Game Boy, but I would guess it would use the default 1-A (red/orange/navy) palette since it's not a first-party game (not unless the off-chance the EU version is counted by the BIOS as a first-party game, can't recall if they got that specific).

I noticed that the Switch collection offers that SGB palette as one of the FFA palette options (though sadly doesn't offer a palette editor. Too bad, M2, that was the sort of crazy extra-effort feature we'd expect out of you! But maybe they ran out of time or something. )

[xenophile]

Meh, I play GB games on my GBC and I almost always choose the color palette using the button combination when the BIOS screen shows up. I almost always go for the greyscale option, or the "amberscale" one, the one where sprites and the bg are the same (shades of amber) colors. I think the colorized modes make the sprites stick out too much from the background and almost never use them, except for a few games that look really good on them.

If I were to play your hack, and I probably will when I get a GBC everdrive, I certainly wouldn't use that default palette anyway.

I'd say don't change it. Just my two cents.

Playing on original hardware is awesome! I've tested on both original DMG Game Boy and GBA, though I'll admit I haven't transferred a build with this particular change to my EverDrive yet... uh, my EverDrive has "Made in Ukraine" stamped on so you might want to order sooner rather than later.

I might make an optional patch to remove color related changes. My thought is that those with the skill to use a flash cart probably already have an ips patcher downloaded, and the reverse may not be true of emu users.

I don't know if I've actually played FFA on an actual Super Game Boy, but I would guess it would use the default 1-A (red/orange/navy) palette since it's not a first-party game (not unless the off-chance the EU version is counted by the BIOS as a first-party game, can't recall if they got that specific).

I noticed that the Switch collection offers that SGB palette as one of the FFA palette options (though sadly doesn't offer a palette editor. Too bad, M2, that was the sort of crazy extra-effort feature we'd expect out of you! But maybe they ran out of time or something. )

To the best of my understanding, Super Game Boy didn't count it as a first-party game, but Game Boy Color did have a special palette for the EU version! I tried it out for a while but the palette they chose for backgrounds was all green, no blue. Early feedback was that the GBC default palette might be better, so I went looking for one that had the default background colors but the same sprite colors from the custom one and to my surprise... Pac-In-Time used exactly what I was looking for.

I'm not sure how much effort to put into Super Game Boy. Game Boy Color seems a better target to me (though I'd like to support original DMG Game Boy as well). There's a (not on RH.net) patch to add a SGB border this game, but while it works on real hardware no emulator I've found displays it correctly, so so far I haven't prioritized compatibility.

[AdamDravian]

This project looks great, as I've always wanted to play the original Seiken Densetsu, and I always prefer to play translations that bring games closer to the intent of the original developers. But when I went to the hack's page, I saw you've forced a gender change on the main character, which flies in the face of my desire to play as close as I can to the developer's original intent.

Any chance you'd consider making that an optional patch?
(and for the record, I'm a left-leaning progressive--this has nothing to do with my politics; I'd gladly play as a lady hero had that been the original intent).

[xenophile]

This project looks great, as I've always wanted to play the original Seiken Densetsu, and I always prefer to play translations that bring games closer to the intent of the original developers. But when I went to the hack's page, I saw you've forced a gender change on the main character, which flies in the face of my desire to play as close as I can to the developer's original intent.

Any chance you'd consider making that an optional patch?
(and for the record, I'm a left-leaning progressive--this has nothing to do with my politics; I'd gladly play as a lady hero had that been the original intent).

It'll be in there for the next version. It's the main thing that has delayed this next version, both because of hacking time and testing (and bug fixing) time.

A fair amount of ink has already been spilled about this via PMs and such, but for the (first) remake, Sword of Mana, they allowed the player a gender choice.

Trying to tease out "the developer's original intent" is an interesting exercise in its self:

1. Medusa's outfit. I can't help but think the intent here (and several other places) was to preemptively self-censure to avoid having to make changes for NOA again.

2. Graphics censorship: Spoiler alert, it's religious imagery. I think the original Japanese developers either didn't know or didn't care about the religions involved, but NOA did. That said, I see copying from at least two other religions that NOA probably couldn't have cared less about. Square actually updated this for the most recent Japanese release, which might mean that Square's view on their game has changed in the last 30 years.

3. Gameplay: The Moogle item was completely useless. When I fixed that, I found that the Heal spell was also programmed to remove Moogle status. Changing Heal to cure Moogle has been a pretty serious nerf for a fair amount of (previously pretty pretty scary) enemies. I don't know if I'm fixing a bug or if they made a last second messy change for balance reasons.

4. Another gameplay change: Nectar (ahem, censorship alert: it's booze) was buggy. For casual players it would often not work, and for experienced players it was exploitable. I have no idea whether they realized this when balancing it.

5. There continues to be a lot of evidence that Japanese developers watched too many B movies. Must be hard chewing all that scenery with those fangs.

6. Similarly, I'm unsure exactly how gross the original plays having to spelunk through a giant's digestive track.

7. Color is a weird one. Was the Game Boy Color palette chosen by Square, or did some intern at Nintendo get the job of choosing palettes for the long list of games Miyamoto didn't personally care about?

[xenophile]

Second release is out now!

The biggest (and most eagerly awaited) feature added in the second release is the ability to play as the original character ("Duke") in addition to the previous supported character ("Amanda").


Aside from that there are dozens of smaller changes to smooth some of the rough edges, including dialog, graphics, and puzzle scripting. Most of these changes should be less noticeable than what they replace, and that's good! It's really hard to get excited about a screenshot of nothing unexpected happening, but sometimes in game, that's the best thing possible.

[xenophile]

New release is out!



This is a fairly small polish release:

• I had missed one reference to the "Nuke" spell.
• Two NPCs had inconsistent palettes at different points of the game when played on GBC or GBA.
• Three bosses' victory scripts could be triggered multiple times (a bug in the original).
• All references to "Tree of Mana" changed to "Mana Tree".
• Other very small text and graphics tweaks.
• Pre-fight cutscene with Shadow Knight has been re-written/re-localized and "enhanced". The original version Shadow Knight was hidden by the dialog window. In the new version, Shadow Knight stands over the dialog window. This is definitely unique but I think it works for a Big Baddie like Shadow Knight.

I still have a long todo list (and I fear I always will) but at this point most of the items with high reward vs effort ratios are complete.
March 29, 2022, 04:42:24 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Yesterday I got a request for an enhancement from @Ok Impala! for Ember of Mana. You see, the dialog window can display at either the top or bottom of the screen, depending on where the player sprite is. If it displays at the bottom instead of the top it covers 1/3 less of the play area due to the HUD, which makes for a better experience. The top part of the screen is also where most of the interesting content goes anyway. With this in mind, it would make sense to bias the game to display it at bottom whenever possible, but they didn't. It preferentially displays at top.

Looking at the code I think I know why they did this: They are calculating the player's position in tile coordinates (eight pixels) with truncation. That almost always makes sense, but there is (or may be) a case where the player "bumps" into a conversation while moving between two points on the normal tile grid. The upshot is they always flip the window to the top eight pixels before they really need to.

By changing the math to use pixel precision instead of tile precision I was able to guard against this potential bug while biasing it to the bottom.


The left image is the old behavior, the middle image is the new behavior, and the right image could be either (it's actually one of the screenshots I'm using on the hack page).

This minor change is going to save me from completely redoing at least one cutscene I was unhappy with, and improves a lot of other scenes as well. It turns out the game likes to position interactions roughly in the middle--which makes some sense--so those eight pixels matter a lot more than you might think.

I also went one step further with this: if the player sprite is facing south (like when you are talking to someone at the bottom of the screen) it will change the bias back to the top so it doesn't hide the NPC you're talking with.

Overall, a small change for a pretty large quality-of-life improvement.

I was intending to work on some larger changes that I expect to take quite a while to come to fruition. I didn't expect to be thinking about releasing again this soon (unless bugs were found). Should I do a new release just for this?

[dagmor]

Hey xenophile, thanks for picking up FFA hacking! I thought about modding FFA over the weekend (last I had checked, the mod scene was scarce). I'm glad you've made such great progress. I'll be downloading the mod and trying it out soon. Couple questions:

1) Did you find out if the Mute spell has any effect whatsoever?
2) Did you fix the Iron Helmet armor switcheroo bug that raises defense more than it should?
3) This game has a tendency to wrong warp through normal play. Have you come across that or any fixes?

Cheers, mate! I may just join you on your quest to make this awesome game even better. 

P.S. to answer your last question, new release if you don't think you'll fix more bugs in the next month. It's another great small improvement that would typically be unnoticeable, but benefits the broader experience.

[dagmor]

Ok, I completed a run with the female lead. Very cool, nicely done!

Here's some feedback:

• I noticed you changed Julius's early line from "A girl has the key to it" to "There is one with the key to it". I think this sounds awkward, and the mana tree daughter is still a girl. I'd recommend reverting that change.
• The "iron helm" bug still exists. In Topple buy an iron helm. Go to the equip menu and move the helm one slot to the right (don't equip it). Save the game. Reset the game. Now equip the iron helm and it'll give you way more defense than it's supposed to.
• This isn't a bug per say, but it's always irked me that I've had to throw away weapons or unique armor. Best option is to increase the equipment list size. You could also make the Battle Axe and Chain flail sellable after receiving better versions, but that seems more difficult.
• I can stick NPCs that move into walls by using my chocobo, walking into their space, then dismounting. It'll push the NPC away, even into walls. I don't think this breaks anything, so low priority.
  
• There are times when the floor switches don't work properly. Like the room in the attached picture (the first time I tried it the switches didn't work).
  
• The Red Dragon does not flash when damaged even though the Dragon and Zombie Dragon do.
• Did you put this high five monster in the end credits?
  
• Projectiles go the wrong way when hit while casting/throwing. This may be intentional balancing, but sometimes it looks weird.
• There is the potential to wrong warp (just watch the speed runs). When I first played this 25 years ago, I went from Wendel to the final dungeon on accident, and thought it was intentional. I wondered why the game got so hard so fast!

[xenophile]

Hey xenophile, thanks for picking up FFA hacking! I thought about modding FFA over the weekend (last I had checked, the mod scene was scarce). I'm glad you've made such great progress. I'll be downloading the mod and trying it out soon. Couple questions:

1) Did you find out if the Mute spell has any effect whatsoever?
2) Did you fix the Iron Helmet armor switcheroo bug that raises defense more than it should?
3) This game has a tendency to wrong warp through normal play. Have you come across that or any fixes?

Cheers, mate! I may just join you on your quest to make this awesome game even better. 

P.S. to answer your last question, new release if you don't think you'll fix more bugs in the next month. It's another great small improvement that would typically be unnoticeable, but benefits the broader experience.

Glad to hear from you (twice since I checked)! I should do another release. There are a few small things I would like to get in first.

1) I have not done much investigation on the Mute spell, but I did learn some about it when investigating the resistance/vulnerability system, which I think of as kind of an elemental system. There are eight elements including things you may expect (Fire, Lit, Nuke) and some you may not (Mute, Mattock). At some point I want to actually write a manual for this documenting which weapons are which elements and what enemies are vulnerable to. Which is to say, all I really know right now is certain enemies can be immune to Mute.

I never use it, but now I'm curious whether I am missing out.

2) I usually try not to remove bugs that can be exploited. Where's the motivation to spend a lot of effort to prevent something that no one would do by accident?

3) Fixing the wrong warp bug is on my radar, but it isn't terribly high on my list. A lot of the actual game engine is still a black box to me but there are a few things in that area that I would love to do (or have someone else do) so I will likely look at it eventually.

Ok, I completed a run with the female lead. Very cool, nicely done!

Here's some feedback:

• I noticed you changed Julius's early line from "A girl has the key to it" to "There is one with the key to it". I think this sounds awkward, and the mana tree daughter is still a girl. I'd recommend reverting that change.
• The "iron helm" bug still exists. In Topple buy an iron helm. Go to the equip menu and move the helm one slot to the right (don't equip it). Save the game. Reset the game. Now equip the iron helm and it'll give you way more defense than it's supposed to.
• This isn't a bug per say, but it's always irked me that I've had to throw away weapons or unique armor. Best option is to increase the equipment list size. You could also make the Battle Axe and Chain flail sellable after receiving better versions, but that seems more difficult.
• I can stick NPCs that move into walls by using my chocobo, walking into their space, then dismounting. It'll push the NPC away, even into walls. I don't think this breaks anything, so low priority.
  
• There are times when the floor switches don't work properly. Like the room in the attached picture (the first time I tried it the switches didn't work).
  
• The Red Dragon does not flash when damaged even though the Dragon and Zombie Dragon do.
• Did you put this high five monster in the end credits?
  
• Projectiles go the wrong way when hit while casting/throwing. This may be intentional balancing, but sometimes it looks weird.
• There is the potential to wrong warp (just watch the speed runs). When I first played this 25 years ago, I went from Wendel to the final dungeon on accident, and thought it was intentional. I wondered why the game got so hard so fast!

Awesome!

1. Yeah, I've never been 100% happy with that line and it's in the first few minutes of gameplay. At one point I had an option to replace her with a Moogle so excising her gender was useful.

2. Yup. It's a bug, but is it a problem?

3. You're right that sounds difficult. Thinking about this, one thing that would be pretty easy to do is to change the Were/Zeus Axe "Found" scripts to either drop Battle Axe or ask the player whether to drop it. I should be able to hook into the script that calls the Flame Flail vendor as well. Another option would be to add duplicate items that are sellable and use the scripts to silently swap them.

4. I have not tried to reproduce yet. Did this exist in the original? (Save games should be cross compatible, by the way.)

5. Some switches have gotten tuneups in LotMS and some haven't been touched. I am not 100% sure anything can be done about that one, but I'll look at it. I think it is one of the more problematic rooms.

6. Yeah... there are several changes I made to improve colors on CGB/GBA or emulators set up with a real boot rom. I have talked about that a bit in this thread. I had the opportunity to make the Red Dragon actually show as red but the tradeoff is that it will no longer flash when damaged. I decided to go for it. I am not planning to do that for any of the other bosses (okay, I'm 100% lying, but do Davias' circle of spinning fireballs really need to flash when he's hit?). The ultimate goal is to do real color support and get rid of this hack.

Normally I am very conservative about making changes that will affect graphics in black and white--my next release will change three pixels in one boss and two in another boss and I'm nervous about it--but I see the Red Dragon change as a step towards full colorization. Plus, I figured since you fight essentially the same boss twice it would be an interesting twist.

7. That is unexpected. I managed to reproduce it. I'm glad it was amusing at least!

8. I am pretty sure this is original. Hopefully I didn't cause this because it sounds difficult to fix.

9. Yeah. It has never happened to me. I have a vague idea of how to reproduce it using the bushes in the swamp.

Thank you for the feedback!

[dagmor]

Glad to hear from you (twice since I checked)! I should do another release. There are a few small things I would like to get in first.

Looking forward to it!

1) I have not done much investigation on the Mute spell, but I did learn some about it when investigating the resistance/vulnerability system, which I think of as kind of an elemental system. There are eight elements including things you may expect (Fire, Lit, Nuke) and some you may not (Mute, Mattock). At some point I want to actually write a manual for this documenting which weapons are which elements and what enemies are vulnerable to. Which is to say, all I really know right now is certain enemies can be immune to Mute.

That's interesting. I'd be interested to know if any enemy is vulnerable to mute, and if so try it on them. The most obvious enemy (the wizards) are not vulnerable. It makes sense that they would be...

2) I usually try not to remove bugs that can be exploited. Where's the motivation to spend a lot of effort to prevent something that no one would do by accident?

Yeah, I think it depends on intention for the hack. That could be an addition I make later in a separate patch.

1. Yeah, I've never been 100% happy with that line and it's in the first few minutes of gameplay. At one point I had an option to replace her with a Moogle so excising her gender was useful.

That's an interesting idea. It's kinda annoying how the girl acts so helpless, it feeds a bad stereotype. A moogle would help, but you'd need to add a mother moogle as well. What's the Mana saga lore around this? Is it always a female human who sacrifices her life for the continuation of the Mana trees? If so, probably best to leave it...

3. You're right that sounds difficult. Thinking about this, one thing that would be pretty easy to do is to change the Were/Zeus Axe "Found" scripts to either drop Battle Axe or ask the player whether to drop it. I should be able to hook into the script that calls the Flame Flail vendor as well. Another option would be to add duplicate items that are sellable and use the scripts to silently swap them.

Would that be easier than increasing the equip menu size?

4. I have not tried to reproduce yet. Did this exist in the original? (Save games should be cross compatible, by the way.)

I expect it was in the original as well. Thus far I think this has no negative effects. You'd just need to leave and come back to fix it.

5. Some switches have gotten tuneups in LotMS and some haven't been touched. I am not 100% sure anything can be done about that one, but I'll look at it. I think it is one of the more problematic rooms.

It'd be good to know how it can fail, even if it's not fixable.

6. Yeah... there are several changes I made to improve colors on CGB/GBA or emulators set up with a real boot rom. I have talked about that a bit in this thread. I had the opportunity to make the Red Dragon actually show as red but the tradeoff is that it will no longer flash when damaged. I decided to go for it. I am not planning to do that for any of the other bosses (okay, I'm 100% lying, but do Davias' circle of spinning fireballs really need to flash when he's hit?). The ultimate goal is to do real color support and get rid of this hack.

Normally I am very conservative about making changes that will affect graphics in black and white--my next release will change three pixels in one boss and two in another boss and I'm nervous about it--but I see the Red Dragon change as a step towards full colorization. Plus, I figured since you fight essentially the same boss twice it would be an interesting twist.

Davias's fireballs do not need to flash. I do think it's important for the red dragon to flash though. That's the mechanism for all the bosses (except Shadow Knight) to know they're being damaged. Can you change the name of "Red Dragon" to "Blue Dragon" or something else instead?

7. That is unexpected. I managed to reproduce it. I'm glad it was amusing at least!

Very amusing. Good job Amanda, you did it - high five!

8. I am pretty sure this is original. Hopefully I didn't cause this because it sounds difficult to fix.

Yep, it is. And I don't think it's worth fixing.

9. Yeah. It has never happened to me. I have a vague idea of how to reproduce it using the bushes in the swamp.

I'll give you a consistent mechanism to reproduce.
1. Stand here (facing down is important)
2. Swing the sickle
3. Walk left

Thank you for the feedback!

My pleasure. I'd be happy to continue helping/testing too!

I'd like to eventually build on your patch with a Speedrun patch that:
1) Fixes the iron helm bug
2) Uses a fixed seed for enemy locations when you enter a screen (to avoid back-forth shenanigans). Think of the fixed positions like a speed wall in climbing sports.

Maybe more...