GBA Castlevania HOD: Revenge of the Findesiecle Japan to USA Port

[Flaviogames]

this game is very interesting, but in my opinion there shouldn't be mario and megaman in this game

[sorrow]

Hello! How's the progress going now?

Hello!  I know, I know, it has been a while since my last post, but I did actually work on it a bit over the past couple of weeks.  I think I'm finally ready to get the update posted, and I'm going to update the original post with a spoiler tag with the list of updates.

this game is very interesting, but in my opinion there shouldn't be mario and megaman in this game

I absolutely agree with you Flavio.  Once I post my next update, the one after that will focus on replacing the Megaman and Mario characters. 👍

[Flaviogames]

sorrow: you don't even need to replace mario and megaman, exclude them and you'll have less work, congratulations, I'll want to play this game for sure

[sorrow]

sorrow: you don't even need to replace mario and megaman, exclude them and you'll have less work, congratulations, I'll want to play this game for sure

Haha, less work sure.  But that's also less fun!

[Aceearly1993]

I absolutely agree with you Flavio.  Once I post my next update, the one after that will focus on replacing the Megaman and Mario characters. 👍

Suggestions: If you do want to replace Megaman and Mario, it's better dealt as a separate patch to the update, you can deal with them later, make the contents you mentioned before updated to public first

[SuxMenner]

I absolutely agree with you Flavio.  Once I post my next update, the one after that will focus on replacing the Megaman and Mario characters. 👍

Are you thinking of Trevor and Christopher or maybe something less obvious? Maybe characters like Grant or Soleiyu could be some good oddballs.

[sorrow]

Suggestions: If you do want to replace Megaman and Mario, it's better dealt as a separate patch to the update, you can deal with them later, make the contents you mentioned before updated to public first

Aceearly, that's exactly what I plan on doing.  When I add the character replacements, they'll be as an optional update that would only make the change for the character.  That way, if people for whatever reason want to keep Megaman and Mario, they can. 

Are you thinking of Trevor and Christopher or maybe something less obvious? Maybe characters like Grant or Soleiyu could be some good oddballs.

Hello SuxMenner, the only thing that limits me are having some good sprite sheets for characters that fit the gba's Castlevania character sizes.

Right now my first planned character replacement is John Morris.

[Aceearly1993]

Aceearly, that's exactly what I plan on doing.  When I add the character replacements, they'll be as an optional update that would only make the change for the character.  That way, if people for whatever reason want to keep Megaman and Mario, they can. 

Good! So when will the base update upload and go to submit?

[Flaviogames]

sorrow: It would also be interesting for mario and megaman to be secret characters only released by an on-screen example code tituo having to do an R,R,L,R,L,Start command a mario sound when picking a mushroom grows can be heard to show that it worked, that would be better, don't you think?

[sorrow]

sorrow: It would also be interesting for mario and megaman to be secret characters only released by an on-screen example code tituo having to do an R,R,L,R,L,Start command a mario sound when picking a mushroom grows can be heard to show that it worked, that would be better, don't you think?

Honestly that seems unnecessarily more complicated of an unlock procedure than just the password system, lol.

Besides, it would require far more programming and coding knowledge than I have to implement something like that in this project.
August 07, 2021, 11:09:53 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
The v2.0 Update is live on the project page everyone!

I plan on updating the OP as well, and try my best to organize it better.

I'd like for it to be more of a consolidated section, showing new progress with future updates.
August 07, 2021, 11:11:39 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

Good! So when will the base update upload and go to submit?

It's up now, FYI.

[Aceearly1993]

It's up now, FYI.

Hello, I've seen it! Though the attack power issue of Boss Rush modes was still there. I remember giving you the process How I edited attack power of Boss Rush Bosses. Was there things you can't progress further when editing Classic Simon's start level?

[sorrow]

Hello, I've seen it! Though the attack power issue of Boss Rush modes was still there. I remember giving you the process How I edited attack power of Boss Rush Bosses. Was there things you can't progress further when editing Classic Simon's start level?

Hi Aceearly,  I never intended to alter anything for the boss rush mode, I'm not interested in it, so there won't be any updates related to boss rush from me.

I had assumed in your emails that it was something your were going to do for your personal use.

[Aceearly1993]

Hi Aceearly,  I never intended to alter anything for the boss rush mode, I'm not interested in it, so there won't be any updates related to boss rush from me.

I had assumed in your emails that it was something your were going to do for your personal use.

Well...OK then. I'll create an addendum patch for Bos Rush mode someday.
Another opinion, Classic Simon's slide is a bit too slow, maybe 2x of current distance is better?

[sorrow]

Well...OK then. I'll create an addendum patch for Bos Rush mode someday.
Another opinion, Classic Simon's slide is a bit too slow, maybe 2x of current distance is better?

That's intentional, since Classic Simon's slide doesn't attack, it's only meant to go underneath sections he needs to slide through.

I kept it as sort of a pathetic slide since Classic Simon is a slower paced character.

[Solid One]

Wow, really cool to see upgrades on this hack. A couple of weeks ago I have just beaten the hack with Julius before that update. Gotta check it again sometime, to see the magic spells in place, together with the new Simon skills that allow him to proceed further in the castle.

BTW, what do you guys think about changing the title screen from "Harmony of Dissonance" to "Revenge of the Findesiecle"? A couple of years ago, I helped with a PT-BR translation of this game and edited all graphics, including the title screen. Changing that is not that hard, and I think I can help you guys on this, if necessary.

[sorrow]

Wow, really cool to see upgrades on this hack. A couple of weeks ago I have just beaten the hack with Julius before that update. Gotta check it again sometime, to see the magic spells in place, together with the new Simon skills that allow him to proceed further in the castle.

BTW, what do you guys think about changing the title screen from "Harmony of Dissonance" to "Revenge of the Findesiecle"? A couple of years ago, I helped with a PT-BR translation of this game and edited all graphics, including the title screen. Changing that is not that hard, and I think I can help you guys on this, if necessary.

That was something I had thought of as well, but wasn't able to do on my end, but it sounds like a fantastic idea!

If you can help with creating the graphics for the logo that would be great.

Did you do the PT-BR translation graphics using DSVEdit?  So you know already the GFX for the logo are a jumbled mess?

[Solid One]

That was something I had thought of as well, but wasn't able to do on my end, but it sounds like a fantastic idea!

If you can help with creating the graphics for the logo that would be great.

Did you do the PT-BR translation graphics using DSVEdit?  So you know already the GFX for the logo are a jumbled mess?

Well, the translation is kinda old, from 2008, more than 10 years ago. Back then, we still didn't have DSVEdit to help us, so almost everything was modified from scratch, except for the texts that were modified thanks to a D/I that a friend of mine created in Python back then.

Graphics-wise, I was able to edit all of them manually. Using Tile Molester, basically, all of them are in 4bpp linear reversed-order, and some are compressed and others aren't. The compression is LZSS and I was able to modify them through tools such as unLZ-GBA, GBADecomp and GBAmdc, but any LZSS decompressor work as far as I remember.

But you're right: as for the graphics, everything is indeed a jumbled mess because all tiles of graphics had their order inverted. So if you have a graphic of 64x16 pixels divided into two rows of four tiles, totalizing 8 tiles, usually the order of the tiles are like this:

Code Select Expand


1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8


On CHOD it's the reverse, something like this:

Code Select Expand


8 7 6 5
4 3 2 1


The way I used to edit those graphics is simply "playing a jigsaw puzzle":

1. Create a new temporary binary file from TM with the same graphic format as the original ROM (4bpp linear reversed-order);
2. Select, copy and paste the graphics' tiles from the original ROM to the temp bin file;
3. Reposition each tile to resemble its correct order, as seen in-game;
4. Edit the graphic as you wish, preferably by exporting its palette from VisualBoyAdvance and importing it to TM, to make things easier;
5. Redo the reversed steps above to put the modified tiles back to the original ROM in their original positions (just like a jigsaw puzzle).

Indeed it's very tiresome work. Back then, I spent a couple of weeks editing all graphics from this game. But at the end of the day, it works, just needs a great deal of work.

[sorrow]

Wow, you did it before DSVEDIT, amazing, haha.

So what do you think you would do for the Findesiecle logo?

Replace Harmony of Dissonance with Revenge of the Findesiecle?

Or maybe have Revenge of the Findesiecle be underneath Harmony of Dissonance?

[Flaviogames]

will it have the PT BR language? I'm happy if it's possible

[Solid One]

Wow, you did it before DSVEDIT, amazing, haha.

So what do you think you would do for the Findesiecle logo?

Replace Harmony of Dissonance with Revenge of the Findesiecle?

Or maybe have Revenge of the Findesiecle be underneath Harmony of Dissonance?

Initially, I think replacing them would be more doable than adding text below it. Not sure if there are enough tiles in the US log for adding a new subtitle below "Harmony of Dissonance".

Another possibility would be using the Jap logo as a basis, which has two subtitles (one above and the other below), and changing the bottom one to "Revenge of the Findesiecle" and the top one to something like "Harmony of Dissonance" or "Harmony of Dissonance Hack". I think there are enough tiles in the jap version for that change, although we'd still need to investigate further and confirm if it's possible. And there's also the work for reverting the title to the jap version in the US version before that.

Anyway, let me grab the game again and make some tests. I'll let you know in this post when I have some progress to show.

will it have the PT BR language? I'm happy if it's possible

Considering that Revenge of the Findesiecle is a hack that probably doesn't change the texts (or at least not too much), I think there might be a chance that it could work combined with the PT-BR translation. But I haven't tested it yet, so I'm not sure about that. The translation changed a lot of graphics and texts and made use of a lot of empty space at the end of the ROM, chances are something would break if or when one patch replaces data from the other one in the ROM.

Anyway, out of curiosity, try testing it to see what happens. Try both applying hack + translation, and translation + hack (the order of the patches matters).