Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow "Extra Items" A Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow ROM Hack by Josephine Lithius (Jo Li) -- [1. (INDE) INDEX] 1. (INDE) Index ------------------------------- How this document be sorted. 2. (INDU) Introduction & Questions ------------ Confused? This should help! 3. (COTE) Archive Contents -------------------- What comes in the ZIP file. 4. (HOTO) How to Use -------------------------- How DOES one work this thing? 5. (NOBU) Known Bugs -------------------------- You BET there are bugs. 6. (SPTH) Special Thanks ---------------------- You people are the BEST <3 7. (COFO) Contact Information ----------------- Do what you must, if you must~ 8. (CORI) Legal Stuff ------------------------- Boring, but necessary. -- [2. (INDU) INTRODUCTION & QUESTIONS] - "What is 'Extra Items'?" This ROM hack is exactly what it sounds like; this hack adds "extra" items into the main game -- specifically the Julius Mode-specific items 'n "Souls". I also did a tiny bit of tinkering with some relevant stuff. For, ya know, the sake of completion. (You can see what, exactly, in the spoileriffic change log.) - "That's kind of a boring name for this hack." Well, it's kind of a "boring" hack, so I think it fits~ - "What do you mean 'Julius Mode-exclusive'? There are no items in that mode." Funny thing about the extra modes in Castlevania DS games… A lot of the unique attacks and abilities for the extra characters are actually coded in as equippable things. In this case, Julius has an actual Vampire Killer weapon equipped while Alucard has his Alucard Sword. All THREE characters' abilities are also coded as "Souls", which means Soma can use it all if they get added to his inventory. More information about this can be found here: https://tcrf.net/Castlevania:_Dawn_of_Sorrow - "ROM hacks like 'Definitive Edition+' already do most of what you've done with this ROM hack. Why did you make / release this?" Oh, I'm aware of all the superb hacks out there -- particularly the ones which give Soma the Alucard Sword or Vampire Killer. I suppose I just wanted to make Alucard more like his SotN incarnation, myself, without making too many other massive changes to the game. It's not flashy, it's not complex, and it doesn't really fix any bugs. It's just a plain, simple hack with small-but-significant changes. And that's all I wanted. - "Why did you call Julius' cross boomerang a 'Crucifix'?" Around the time that this game was made, Konami kind of went back-and-forth between calling it a "Cross" or a "Crucifix". I went with the latter to differentiate it from the "Grand Cross" sub-weapon a bit more. - "Why are these sub-weapon 'Souls' scattered around the castle? Did Soma dominate his friends' souls or something?" Dracula's magic works in mysterious ways… Remember: just because Dracula is inherently "dark" and "evil" doesn't mean that his FOLLOWERS are. Aliorumnas, for example, is a demon witch who uses both Curse and Holy. It's not TOO far-fetched that the power of Dracula might spawn souls with similar abilities to the "heroes" of the time. - "Is that really your best excuse for adding those things to Soma Mode?" Yes. d: - "Will you be making versions of this for the Japanese and European releases?" If there's a high enough demand. This honestly wasn't too complicated, thanks to LagoLunatic basically decompiling the games for everyone~! - "Will you consider making separate patches for the various changes?" Again, if there's high enough demand. Honestly, all the changes made shouldn't interfere with one another, or even standard gameplay, enough to warrant it? But, we'll see! - "Why are all your ROM hacks labelled 'JDC'?" Those are my real life initials. And… it's kind of a holdover from my days of composing MIDI music, where I'd prefix everything with "JDC_". - "Where's the Vampire Killer? I can't find it." Well, you know the old saying... "Never bring a gun to a whip fight." ("NO ONE says that, you weirdo.") - "WHERE THE [oops] IS THE ALUCARD SWORD, I CAN'T FIND IT!!" Why so SHORT about a SWORD~? There's no need to be such a MENACE~ - "Okay, but seriously, where are the Vampire Killer and Alucard Sword? Preferably without the wordplay riddles, please?" Check the Changelog. No riddles. It's right there. But if you wanna try and figure it out, don't check the changelog~ -- [3. (COTE) ARCHIVE CONTENTS] - [Patch] (folder) - JDC_CVDoS ExItem-vxxx.bps The most current version of the patch in "beat" format. - JDC_CVDoS ExItem Changelog.txt Welcome back to the stage of history… - JDC_CVDoS ExItem Readme.txt ^ You are here. (: REGARDING THE CHANGE LOG: THE CHANGE LOG CONTAINS SPOILERS AND MAKE NO ATTEMPTS TO HIDE THEM! Most changes probably won't be real game-breakers, so you can probably ignore the text file if you want to play the game and try to figure out what's brand new content and what's just rehashed stuff. -- [4. (HOTO) HOW TO USE] Things You'll Need - The BPS file that SHOULD have come with this TXT file - A Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (USA) ROM Size: 67,108,864 bytes -- CRC32: 135737F6 (I will NOT provide this! Sorry~) - A program to apply BPS files to ROMs - A Nintendo DS emulator or flash cart to play the game Suggested Programs - PATCHING: Floating IPS (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1040/) or beat (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/893/) Floating IPS is easy to use and very reliable. Since there's no real "versions" of a ROM, like headered and unheadered, beat would probably work just fine, too. I just prefer FLIPS. - EMULATION: melonDS (https://melonds.kuribo64.net/) Since I don't have a state-of-the-art, $1,000.00 computer, I tend to favor lightweight stuff. melonDS, if set up right, runs ALL games I've played at 60 FPS consistently with very few glitches. Not too shabby! How to Apply the patches to the ROM, The Simple Way - Toss your UNMODIFIED ROM and the BSP patch from this archive into into the same directory as your patching utility of choice. - Open your patching utility. Direct it to the ROM and patch. - Do the command that makes the ROM patched. (Varies by-program.) - If everything went well, your Dawn of Sorrow ROM should be patched. NO CHANGE IN SIZE SHOULD OCCUR. If it does, something may have gone wrong. - Enjoy! IF ROM DOES NOT RUN, you more than likely tried to apply the wrong patch to the wrong ROM or wrong type of ROM. -- [5. (NOBU) KNOWN BUGS] _ALL VERSIONS_ - Soma looks odd -- sometimes VERY -- when using the "Julius Mode" stuff. The player was never intended to use any of this stuff as Soma, so it's understandable that the animations don't really line up. Even so, NOTHING BAD SHOULD HAPPEN. Everything WORKS fine in both game modes, and the game can play through like normal. It just LOOKS a little funny with Soma. - When playing Julius Mode, the Soul-Keepers that contain Julius Mode souls STILL APPEAR WITHIN THE MAPS even if all three characters are collected. No sure why. However, they're just empty decorations in Julius Mode. Harmless, but kind of annoying… - This ROM hack is probably NOT COMPATABLE with other ROM hacks. I don't know -- I didn't try. -- [6. (SPTH) SPECIAL THANKS] - ROMhacking.net For an having an awesome community and a treasure trove of hacking materials, resources, help, and pretty much anything you could want! - LagoLunatic (https://github.com/LagoLunatic/) This fella is a MAD GENIUS when it comes to not only Castlevania GBA / DS games, but also a certain few others, such as Zelda: Wind Waker. If not for all the hard work Lago did, this would not have been nearly as easy! - The Kuribo64 community (https://kuribo64.net/) As stated in the site description, they are "a little community centered over ROM hacking". They're also responsible for the great Nintendo DS emulator, melonDS, AND a couple of spiffy Super NES emulators FOR the DS family of handhelds! Pretty nice stuff! - JupiterClimb (https://www.twitch.tv/jupiterclimb) Professional (?) speedrunner of all things "IGAvania" and all-around super- duper guy. His interest in Castlevania DS games and the like got me back into playing these, as well as introduced me to LagoLunatic's randomizer and editor. Jupiter's also inspired me to do different challenge runs, but that's neither here nor there. He's just a great guy! Check him out! - Oersted (https://www.youtube.com/c/Oersted-LAL) Strangely enough, it was actually this person who indirectly inspired me to continue working on this project. Their "ten-minute hacks" for JupiterClimb, while simple, are a lot of fun. They also alerted me to a(nother) small oversight Konami made with the Alucard Sword -- albeit, by accident. Either way, they're pretty chill and awesome. -- [7. (COFO) CONTACT INFORMATION] So, yeah. If you need to contact me for any reason, you can find me on the ROMhacking.net forums (http://www.romhacking.net/forum/) as "Josephine Lithius". You can also find me at the following places: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoLiKMC - Tumblr: https://jolikmc.tumblr.com/ - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/JosephCollins -- [8. (CORI) LEGAL STUFF] "Castlevania", "Dawn of Sorrow", Alucard, Julius Belmont, Yoko Belnades, the Vampire Killer, and related ideas and concepts created by MANY people and © Konami Holdings Corporation This ROM hack was created by Josephine Lithius and is distributed as a "Public Domain" work which MAY BE SHARED AND DISTRIBUTED FREELY so long as the contents -- including copyrights and contact information -- are NOT MODIFIED. Pretty please? This ROM hack was originally released EXCLUSIVELY to ROMhacking.net. If you found it anywhere else, THAT'S PERFECTLY FINE! I don't mind! Just know that the version at ROMhacking.net is ALWAYS going to be the most up-to-date! Use of this ROM hack IS ALLOWED under a public-domain-equivalent license, so go nuts. If you RELEASE you ROM hack with this modification, though, it would be a REALLY nice gesture if credited me for the original changes. You don't HAVE to, but it'd be peachy-keen~