Castlevania for X68000 [15KHz Hack]

[rezb1t]

V1.6 is now out! This version was completely redone from scratch and fixes multiple minor graphical issues.

Changes from v1.0 to v1.6:
- Rewritten using disassembly generated from DIS.X, this was a huge improvement. v1.0 was made entirely using a hex editor. I use HAS060.X to assemble the disassembly and hlk301.x to link it. Thanks to neko68k for the posts on this forum about these tools.
- Flickering black line under HUD is now fixed and stable, though there is a glitchy transparent line right below the HUD on Level 2 if running at 10mhz. I checked the original unmodified version of the game and the same line glitches were there as well at 10mhz.
- A few typos were found in the original hex edited version which were fixed
- Fixed issue loading from floppy disk
- Compressed executables with LZX.X. This should result in faster load times on Floppy

This hack works running off a SxSI hard drive image or floppy. I fixed a bug in this version that impacted running the game off floppy, now it should work perfectly.

I've been testing this with my Sony PVM-1953MD and Sharp X68000 XVI Compact. I haven't been able to test any other X68000 models, but every X68000 model should run this hack without issues. Let me know if you have any questions or find any issues.

[X-Col]

Wonderful stuff, looks much better in 15khz :-)

However, I'm not so good at the game. Could you make a patch for DRA_EASY.X

[rezb1t]

Sure! Here's a patch for DRA.X, same base file as in the first post, but this patch makes it into dra_easy.x plus my 15khz changes.

EDIT: now the easy mode version is included in the zip attached to the first post

[X-Col]

Marvellous! Just wrote it to disk and playing now.

I can only beat the game on easy mode. Must be my old age, reactions ain't what they used to be :-)

Game now looks great and plays great, thanks for this fantastic patch!!

[incrediblehark]

Really nice work, thanks for sharing this!

[kamiboy]

Oh you wonderful man. I have been wanting this for ages. I never could understand why the developers didn't run in 15khz from the get go.

[Mubo]

Hello, this patch fascinates me and you are swapping files on floppy? I am new to all this X68K stuff and will be adding a sxsi hancho thinger to my Ace however I have been writing floppies with my windows 95 machine with a teac drive. Quite a few work fine but Dracula only plays the music with a black screen for hours and booting off of disk B gives me option to install or make user disk but it won't do that either and both my drives work really well on original and 2 disk copies I've made but some just don't. All that to this question Is Dracula copy protected in some way or are my attempts just failing.
I have another set of 68K floppy drives from an Ace HD and another teac 55FGR I literally received yesterday. I also have a greaseweazle v4 and a kryoflux, neither of which I have attempted to use yet. I've been lurking and reading among many of you. So I ask now for opinions please Thanks

[rezb1t]

Hello, this patch fascinates me and you are swapping files on floppy? I am new to all this X68K stuff and will be adding a sxsi hancho thinger to my Ace however I have been writing floppies with my windows 95 machine with a teac drive. Quite a few work fine but Dracula only plays the music with a black screen for hours and booting off of disk B gives me option to install or make user disk but it won't do that either and both my drives work really well on original and 2 disk copies I've made but some just don't. All that to this question Is Dracula copy protected in some way or are my attempts just failing.
I have another set of 68K floppy drives from an Ace HD and another teac 55FGR I literally received yesterday. I also have a greaseweazle v4 and a kryoflux, neither of which I have attempted to use yet. I've been lurking and reading among many of you. So I ask now for opinions please Thanks

Hmm hard to say what the issue is, I don't think Akumajou Dracula has any copy protection but I could be wrong. I just use Disk Explorer to replace DRA.X on Floppy Disk A with the patched version and it loads with no issues after that.

[LowDefAl]

Hello, this patch fascinates me and you are swapping files on floppy? I am new to all this X68K stuff and will be adding a sxsi hancho thinger to my Ace however I have been writing floppies with my windows 95 machine with a teac drive. Quite a few work fine but Dracula only plays the music with a black screen for hours and booting off of disk B gives me option to install or make user disk but it won't do that either and both my drives work really well on original and 2 disk copies I've made but some just don't. All that to this question Is Dracula copy protected in some way or are my attempts just failing.
I have another set of 68K floppy drives from an Ace HD and another teac 55FGR I literally received yesterday. I also have a greaseweazle v4 and a kryoflux, neither of which I have attempted to use yet. I've been lurking and reading among many of you. So I ask now for opinions please Thanks

When Dracula boots on floppy it plays that tune while loading. The loading process copies the *entire* game to ram and then automatically ejects the floppy disk and displays the classic early 90s Konami logo and plays the jingle (Puyo Puyo is similar for a third party example). It should probably take less than 2 minutes. If the data does not load, the music will never stop playing. I suspect your disks are not being written correctly or are bad files.

If the game is loading correctly you will hear the data being read from the disks from the sound of the drives.

Set up the greaseweazle and try to use that to write the images before you do anything else. 
 

[Mubo]

Thank you both for your response. I will try the greaseweazle or a different 5.25 drive on PC. I see that after the music starts neither drive is doing anything they both just sit green and go no further after initial startup. Literally just plays the music until I reset or turn it off. I have that hxc max coming also but I understand that it can't be disk 0 or 1 without hardware to mitigate or strip other functions.Old hardware addictions are going to be my end

[rezb1t]

It's been a while, but I've released v1.5! This version was redone completely from scratch, and I fixed a few minor graphical bugs. See the first post for the download!

I recently received an FDX68 and can confirm that I can't boot the hack off of floppy, it just sits showing no disk activity. I'm investigating and hoping to find a fix. For now, I recommend playing off of a hard disk image.

[rezb1t]

Sorry for the double post but I fixed the bug that caused Castlevania to loop forever while loading from Floppy Disk, now both Floppy and hard drive use should work perfectly in v1.6!

[X-Col]

Sorry for the double post but I fixed the bug that caused Castlevania to loop forever while loading from Floppy Disk, now both Floppy and hard drive use should work perfectly in v1.6!

Hi rezb1t, I tried this version on my ACE and it works perfectly at both 10mhz and 14mhz, however, it crashes on my Compact XVI at 10mhz, 16mhz and 24mhz. The version on the latest HD image from incrediblehark works fine on my Compact. However, I have to run it at 16mhz or below or the music is messed up.

Update: It works fine if I delete the RA960 directory from drive C:
Thanks for this great update rezb1t

[incrediblehark]

Sorry for the double post but I fixed the bug that caused Castlevania to loop forever while loading from Floppy Disk, now both Floppy and hard drive use should work perfectly in v1.6!

Hi rezb1t, I tried this version on my ACE and it works perfectly at both 10mhz and 14mhz, however, it crashes on my Compact XVI at 10mhz, 16mhz and 24mhz. The version on the latest HD image from incrediblehark works fine on my Compact. However, I have to run it at 16mhz or below or the music is messed up.

Update: It works fine if I delete the RA960 directory from drive C:
Thanks for this great update rezb1t

I think the RA960 folder was corrupted in v2.20, I have it fixed for next version. Sorry for the issue!

[rezb1t]

Hi rezb1t, I tried this version on my ACE and it works perfectly at both 10mhz and 14mhz, however, it crashes on my Compact XVI at 10mhz, 16mhz and 24mhz. The version on the latest HD image from incrediblehark works fine on my Compact. However, I have to run it at 16mhz or below or the music is messed up.

Update: It works fine if I delete the RA960 directory from drive C:
Thanks for this great update rezb1t

Glad it's working now! Is the music still messed up at higher clock speeds? I usually play at 24mhz and haven't noticed issues, but it's possible I missed something. Also if it is still messed up, is it both FM and MIDI that is messed up or just one?

I recently received an Etarikashikoshi and I noticed MIDI music for Castlevania doesn't play quite right at 24mhz. I also have an aje_fr MIDI + RAM board and that one plays perfectly at 24mhz, so I didn't investigate further.

[X-Col]

@rezb1t

I usually play the game with midi music, sometimes CM64, sometimes SC55, I like them both. The music has stuck notes/wrong notes etc at 24mhz. The internal sound seems ok.

I have a Sacom SX-68M-II installed in my Compact.