This project is now released and can be found here:http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5848/Hello everyone. I've mostly been messing around with Music Hacking for Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance for a while now, but I know that one of it's most popular hacks is Castlevania HOD: Revenge of the Findesiecle.
*Full credit for this AMAZING hack goes to PUNKEMNX & TonyJih*The Revenge of the Findesiecle hack is only compatible with the Japanese Castlevania: Byakuya no Concerto. I unfortunately only know English, but have always wanted to be able to play this hack on the USA version so that I could understand it.
Alas, I am also very much a newb in the realm of rom hacking. HOWEVER, messing around with Music Hacking has helped me learn about pointers and so I couple of weeks ago I wondered if maybe, rather than try to translate the hack, would it be possible to transfer the relavanet new data over to the USA Version and change some pointers around?
*PREFACE - I did all of the below ONLY with a HEX Editor, I have absolutely ZERO knowledge of Assembly or .asm programming or how to use no$gba to debug, but would very much love to eventually learn all of the above as I continue in my Computer Science program.*So, using comparisons and HxD, I started to transfer data over a little bit at a time, and do some loading to see if the game still worked. After a few changes, the game started to break, and I got discouraged, but still pressed forward.
Suffice to say, after A LOT of comparison, and changing pointers, I have been very CLOSE to successful!
But there are some caveats. In the transfer, I have been able to get ALL of the added characters to load, but there are just a few things preventing it from being a full on USA version of the hack.
Examples of early issues that have since been fixed:*Transferring data originally led to the Nintendo Screen and USA Title Screen having a broken version of the Japanese screen, but this was corrected by utilizing the USA data for that section instead.
Initially Broken:
Fixed:
*Pausing the game was broken after loading extra characters. Pressing Start would just simply reset the game:

*The Julius extra character was not able to hit anything with his whip.

This was fixed when I realized that some of the data that I believed to be "Pointers" were actually not pointers, and thus changed back to how the data was in the Japanese Version.
These are the current known issues I am having:*
The Title Screen Logo obviously has a different image than the Japanese Version, and so the palette changes to the log were applied differently, and thus the Logo looks off: This has now been fixed.Japan Version

USA Version

This should be an easy palette fix.Done!USA Version FIXED

*In the Japanese Revenge of the Findesiecle, when pressing start during gameplay for all of the extra characters (EXCEPT Julius), the game simply pauses (similar to Boss Rush Mode). In my testing of the USA port, pressing start will actually bring up the normal Juste gameplay Menu.This has now been fixed.Broken Pause Screen:

Pause Screen Fixed:

*And lastly, sort of a two-fer:
1. When playing as the Julius extra character, pressing start during gameplay brings up a menu, but it is again, the Juste gameplay menu, rather than the custom Julius gameplay menu created by PUNKEMNX & TonyJih. This has now been fixed.Japan Version

USA Version Broken

USA Version Now Fixed
2. For Julius mode only, the Entrance song in the Japanese Version, plays a custom track for Julius in that area, but in the USA Version, it plays the stock Juste Theme. (I assume fixing 1. would fix 2.) This has now been fixed, and it was indeed a result of getting the Menu Stuff fixed.*Speaking of Menu things, when fixing the Julius menu, originally, our hero's name was Julius BelmoT?!
Julius Belmot


Fixed, now he is Julius Belmont once again

Wishful Thinking (Not as big a deal): *Update the current use of ROCKMAN Name Entry to load Megaman to be MEGAMAN instead.This has now been fixed thanks to the insight of both raygun and verme.ROCKMAN

MEGAMAN

This is where I am at, currently, and hopefully, with some insight, and possibly the help of the community, I can get this port finished for fans of this game.
Following the potential success of a USA port, I don't see anything that would prevent applying the same methods to the European Version, so that those fans can participate on the fun as well.
Post Release Fixes (Will submit update soon):Item Room Collection Descriptions:

SoundMode Music Name Fixes:

