Installing The Randomizer On Your PC

This page will be all about installation and preparation for development for the Symphony of the Night Randomizer. You might ask yourself, "Why would I want to download the Randomizer if it's available  on the internet for free?" Fantastic question! In most cases, you don't!

There are, however, certain instances where we want to download and install the Randomizer on our own computer, for instance:

• You might not always have access to the internet or you'll install it on a laptop for entertainment on the go.

• You plan on trying to develop new features or preset for the Randomizer.

• You wish to utilize options that the web version of the Randomizer simply cannot allow like vanilla music in a Lycanthrope seed or using item stat randomization in a Nimble seed.

If any of these situations applies to you, then this page should be for you. 

We recommend that you follow this process from beginning to end before generating seeds to ensure that there are no issues. Diagnosing issues with the Randomizer is easy, diagnosing issues with PC installations of the same are not.

In order to properly work with the randomizer offline, we'll first need to establish how you can download and interact with it. In order to do that, let's get some things installed first that will be required.

• Node.js https://nodejs.org/en/download 

  • Download and run the installation for your system.

  • When asked, use the "Recommended for Most Users" setting

  • You don't need the "Native Madule Applications". This is all extra stuff that you don't need for the randomizer.

• If you plan on developing your own presets and aren't planning on only running the randomizer from your desktop, you will likely want Visual Studio Code https://code.visualstudio.com/ 

  • This application will make it easier to read and edit code utilizing the below:

    • Color-Coordinated commands, bracketing, and notes.

    • Error detection

    • Highlighting a word will highlight all instances of that word

    • Replace function includes line breaks

    • Can be used to create and edit many file types and folders

• Git https://git-scm.com/downloads 

  • Helps users share programs (Like the Randomizer) in a fast and efficient way. 

• GitHub Desktop https://desktop.github.com/ 

  • This application requires you to sign up for a GitHub account 

  • This makes locating and navigating the randomizer folder system easier

  • If you plan on developing for the Randomizer, you can utilize GitHub desktop to try to upload your changes to the main site

  • During the installation:

    • When you're asked about integrations, if you installed Visual Studio Code, make sure that your external editor selected is Visual Studio Code

    • Your editor should be GitBash but Powershell also works. We recommend Git Bash as does the Randomizer's developer, so in this guide we're using that.

1. Head to the main site: https://SOTN.io 

Now that we've downloaded everything, the files are there, but we need to actually install the Randomizer. That way we can run CLI, or Command Line Interface and generate more interesting seeds.

Running the Randomizer on your computer without all the technical knowledge of using command lines is easy.

If you're looking for a little more customization or for development, then you might be ready to start generating seeds with the CLI, or Command Line Interface. In Git Bash, you can enter "node randomize --help" and there will be a wide array of options available to you. However, we are going to start off with some simple examples to get you started.

This will create a tournament mode (-t) casual preset (-p casual) seed with the seed "ExampleSeed1" (-s ExampleSeed1) in the "seeds" folder we created during setup (-o ./seeds/ExampleSeed1.ppf)

Keep in mind that the name of the PPF in the output argument (-o) does not need to match the actual seed, it just helps with keeping track of things.

This will create a tournament mode (-t) safe preset (-p safe) complexity 7 (-c 7) seed with the seed of "ExampleSeed2" (-s ExampleSeed2) in the "seeds" folder (-o ./seeds/ExampleSeed2.ppf)

Now let's move on to something a little more complicated:

This will create a non-tournament mode (Notice the lack of -t) Adventure preset (-p adventure) with options (--opt) to remove item stat randomization (~s) and to remove music randomization (~m) with the seed "ExampleSeed3" (-s ExampleSeed3) in the "seeds" folder (-o ./seeds/ExampleSeed3.ppf)

Note that in the options, to remove an already enabled option of an existing preset, you need to use the tilde (~) before that feature's call letter. Since Adventure normally has item stat randomization and music randomization, we needed to turn those off to have vanilla item stats and vanilla music.