Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin: Portrait of Ruin: Refined Edition

Portrait of Ruin: Refined Edition provided vast rebalance of Sub-Weapons/Spells, Weapon Critical Art/Command Moves, adjusts parameter stats and animations of Extra mode characters, aims for a more refined rendition of vanilla Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin as the hack name suggests.

Further change list in the readme.

If you encountered problems/errors upon patching, try using the online ROM patcher. If your ROM file is the US version that DSVania editor supported, it's OK.

Special thanks Masked Dedede for
- troubleshooting of hitbox properties and inspiration of Old Axe Armor custom crouch animations.
- Custom Charlotte air dive kick.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Refined edition
0. Summary

Portrait of Ruin: Refined Edition provided vast rebalance of Sub-Weapons/Spells, Weapon Critical Art/Command Moves,
adjusts parameter stats and animations of Extra mode characters, aims for a more refined rendition of vanilla Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin as the hack name suggests.

If you encountered problems/errors upon patching, try using the online ROM patcher.
If your ROM file is the US version that DSVania editor supported, it??s OK.

Below is a **long** change list.

Change list

1. Consumables:
* - Konami Man, Twin Bee, Vic Viper: Can be sold in the shop so that if you, for some reason, decided to drop the Hard mode clear stat upgrades, you can sell them to manually drop your character's status down.
- Magical Ticket: Made earlier to unlock at shop; Price dropped from 1000 to 800.

2. Weapons:
- Swapped attack powers in between Long Spear (dropped by Armored Knight/Spear Guard) and Trident (dropped by Imp) so that Long Spear would be slightly less Overpowered when you accidently get it from enemy drops.

3. Equipments:
- Biker's Jacket: Can also be equipped by Charlotte.
- Hiking Boots: Can also be equipped by Charlotte.
- Inuit Boots: Can also be equipped by Jonathan; Added Ice tolerance.
- Stella's Locket: Added Ice tolerance.
- Magus Ring: Raised parameter of all atrributes by 1.
- Platinum Chain: Added Dark tolerance.
- Sage Ring: Basic INT raises by 1.
- Thief Ring: Basic LCK raises by 3.
- Master Ring: Basic MND raises by 1.
- Hercules Ring: Basic CON raises by 1.

4. Sub-Weapons:
- Cross (Richter): Basic damage raises from 7 to 8.
* - Grand Cross (Richter): MP consumption dropped from 120 to 100.
* - Knife: MP consumption dropped from 20 to 12.
- Javelin: MP consumption dropped from 25 to 22, Basic damage raises from 6 to 7.
- Boomerang: MP consumption dropped from 28 to 26.
- Bwaka Knife: MP consumption dropped from 22 to 20.
- Shuriken: MP consumption raises from 20 to 22.
- Discus: MP consumption dropped from 32 to 26.
- Kunimitsu: MP consumption dropped from 24 to 22.
- Paper Airplane: MP consumption raises from 3 to 6.
- Cream Pie: MP consumption raises from 3 to 6.
- Cross Bow: MP consumption dropped from 24 to 22.
- Dart: MP consumption raises from 3 to 6.
- Grenade: MP consumption dropped from 28 to 20.
- Steel Ball: MP consumption dropped from 30 to 22.

5. Spells:
* - Sanctuary: Basic damage raises from 5 to 10; Slightly raises cast speed.
- Speed Up: Basic damage raises from 2 to 3.
- Eye for an Eye: Basic damage raises from 6 to 8.
- Heal: MP consumption dropped from 200 to 100; Raises cast speed.
- Dark Rift: Basic damage raises from 3 to 4.
* - Nightmare: Basic damage raises from 4 to 6.
- Summon Medusa: Basic damage raises from 3 to 5.
- Acidic Bubbles: Basic damage raises from 3 to 4.
- Hex: Basic damage raises from 3 to 4.
- Salamander: Basic damage raises from 5 to 6; Raises cast speed.
- Cocytus: MP consumption dropped from 120 to 100; Basic damage raises from 3 to 5; Raises cast speed.
- Thor's Bellow: MP consumption dropped from 120 to 100; Basic damage raises from 7 to 8; Raises cast speed.
- Summon Crow: Basic damage raises from 2 to 3.
- Summon Ghost: Basic damage raises from 2 to 3.
- Summon Frog: Basic damage raises from 3 to 4.

6. Dual Crushes:
- Volcano: MP consumption dropped from 150 to 120.
* - Grand Cruz: MP consumption dropped from 180 to 160; Basic damage raises from 16 to 18.
- Divine Storm: MP consumption dropped from 150 to 120;Basic damage raises from 7 to 8.
- Dark Gate: MP consumption dropped from 130 to 100.

7. Weapon Critical attacks and Command Combos:
- Lunge: MP consumption dropped from 50 to 30.
- Fast Lunge: MP consumption dropped from 40 to 30.
- Backstab: MP consumption dropped from 60 to 40.
- Axe Warp Up: MP consumption dropped from 100 to 80.
- Three Attacks: MP consumption dropped from 60 to 40.
- Fire Breath: MP consumption dropped from 60 to 40.
- Ice Breath: MP consumption dropped from 60 to 40.
- Nebula Critical: MP consumption dropped from 50 to 40.
- Richter Tackle/Guardian Knuckle: MP consumption dropped from 30 to 25.
* - Richter Combo/Deadly Axe: MP consumption dropped from 80 to 60.
- Spinning Art: MP consumption dropped from 30 to 26.
- Running Axe: MP consumption dropped from 30 to 20.

8. Jonathan Player:
* - Adjusted hurtbox during diagonal air dive kick motion.

9. Charlotte Player:
* - Imported custom Air Dive Kick motion. (Created by Masked Dedede)

10. Richter Player:
* - Finalized unused diagonal air dive kick and imported air dive kick straight down sprite from Harmony of Despair.
- Slightly adjusted animation speed of running motion.
- Reworked backdash motion.
- Reworked Hard landing motion.
* - Vast rework on hurtbox.
- Slightly adjusted animation frames of Double Jump motion.
- Reworked combo attack to have longer animation frames.
- Reworked dying animation.
* - Basic STR raises from 6 to 8.
- Basic CON raises from 8 to 10.
- Basic MND raises from 6 to 10.
* - Richter is now immune to Curse and Petrification.
* - In SP version, Richter has his own version of Flame Whip Critical attack unlocked (costs 40 MP instead of the 30 MP version used by Jonathan's Vampire Killer).

11. Maria Player:
* - Added high jumps in order to prevent Maria from being unable to progress if player is in the bugged "Maria solo" mode.
- Added Custom sprites for air dive kick motion.
- Maria is now immune to Curse and Petrification.
- Slightly reduced slide force.
- In SP version, Maria's air dive kick now deals Strike/Blunt damage instead of Slash damage.

12. Old Axe Armor Player:
* - Reworked crouching slash motion and hurtboxes.
- Adjusted hurtboxes during jump motion.
- Imported slide motion created by Masked Dedede, which has startup invincibility frames that can save players who're not good at command moves.
* - Reworked hard landing motion.
- Reworked Deadly Axe to have longer animation frames, making it closer to Richter's counterpart.
* - Old Axe Armor is now immune to negative status in order to make his Hard level 1 cap campaign more fair.
- Basic CON raises from 30 to 32.
- Basic MND raises from 20 to 22.

13. Stella Player:
- Basic STR raises from 6 to 7.
- Basic CON raises from 5 to 10.
- Basic INT raises from 4 to 6.
- Basic MND raises from 4 to 6.

14. Lorreta Player:
- Basic STR raises from 5 to 6.
- Basic CON raises from 1 to 3.
- Basic INT raises from 8 to 10.
- Basic MND raises from 8 to 10.

15. Map pickup changes:
* - Adjusted pickup ID of one MP Max Up pickup located at Castle Entrance as an attempt to prevent the pickup ID of this item being shared with other MP Max Up located at Forest of Doom.
* - Switched places between one cape pickup and one MP Max Up pickup hidden in the wall so that it can be picked in extra modes.

16. Graphic changes, Text changes, optimizations and bugfixes:
- Fixed "RICHITER" and "CHAROTTE" typos in certain screens.
- Fixed Death battle Softlocks at Tower of Death by applying corresponding patch provided by DSVania Editor utility.
- An attempt to fix a crash located at waterwheel room in Tower of Death when using Ice Needles by applying corresponding patch provided by DSVania Editor utility.
In fact it doesn't completely rule out the crashes unlike its description said (it's guaranteed to crash the game if Jonathan is throwing a Bible alongside fully casted Ice Needles), but indeed reduced the risk of crashing at the room in question.
- *Applied "Inter-area warp" patch provided by DSVania Editor utility.
- *Reduced Hard mode enemy damage scaling to be similar to the thing in Order of Ecclessia.
- In SP edition, description of extra mode skills and true form of Vampire Killer has been redone.

* (really important to me)


To-do list:
- So that Hard mode enemy damage increasing/scaling for Hard Level 1 cap is done, if there's a way I must also rework hard mode enemy damage increasing/scaling ratio/formula/whatever in Hard Level 25 and Hard Level 50 cap modes. if anyone can find a solution to tweak this please contact me.
- I want Old Axe Armor player's shield to ONLY have BLOCK detection that blocks enemy projectiles and WITHOUT dealing damage to opponents (like most of the shields in SotN and unlike the Elite Axe Armor in Rondo of Ruin), but after a lot of trial and error it doesn't work, if anyone can find a solution over this please contact me.
- There's a bug in vanilla that dialogues will not work properly after triggering a bugged state involving the partner's mugshot stuck in the HUD when the partner is dismissed, I really can't do anything about it, sorry.
- It's capable to utilize a Weapon Critical art slot unused in vanilla to make Richter perform a Flame Whip critical attack with more MP costs than Jonathan's version, but I'm still worrying if this would make Richter too overpowered in early game. So I have to drop this plan in favor for the SP version of the patch.
- I feel not motivated enough regarding a full Text overhaul. Too subtle and less benifit from it.
- I cannot completely rule out the vanilla glitch involving Full Ice Needle in waterwheel room after applied the related patch, I informed this to Lago, yet Lago said "Just tried it, and nope, the patch definitely fixes the crash. You must have not applied the patch but thought that you did." and closed the issue discussion. I'm kinda lost.
so the maintenance will be in a halt for a while until somebody else completely rule out this bug successfully in my mod. Any help will be appreciated.
If anyone succeed, please, PLEASE contact me.

Side Note:
- The "fix_bosses_not_playing_music" patch seems good, but it somehow screwed up at Nation of Fools when Legion is not beaten yet, the boss music will play at its battle arena even if the boss is not activated yet.
- Rework on Richter hurtbox and rebalance of Richter player affected Whip's Memory boss and Richter's Doppelganger, so I only tweaked them in a baseline level and as less related to motions used in boss versions as possible.
- Hard mode enemy damage scaling for Level 25/50 cap modes is kinda tricky; all Hard modes share the same basic scaling value (100) with Level 25/50 cap modes decrease from it (-25 and -50). Not a very easy target to tweak around them so this is currently the best I can do...
- The current version of DSVania editor (as of 1.12.0) somehow breaks Japanese Rev A ROM so if you want to edit attributes of accessories the result will lead to wrong pages. As a result the support of Japanese Rev A version is abandoned...
- Stella/Lorreta's touch screen attacks in Sisters mode seems to be related more to INT than to STR.
- The "inter-area warp" patch has a minor quirk; sometimes the Doppelganger boss won't refresh until player re-entered Nest of Evil using the intended way. Not really a serious issue, just documented here for archiving reason.

Conclusion and thoughts:
This hack is planned sometimes after the 2.0 update of Dawn of Sorrow: Definitive Edition+.
The purpose of doing this hack is: I'm a huge fan of DoS: DE+ and I want to create something similar to the Portrait of Ruin counter part of DoS: DE+ since it seems no one else had mentioned about (or planned on) similar projects before.
I can beat vanilla Richter and Old Axe Armor hard mode level 1 cap campaigns so I know exactly where the balance issues are located, but my execution may differ from the rebalance opinion of others; Plus the adjust of hard mode enemy damage increasing values/formula/whatever for Hard Level 25/50 cap modes is also not intact yet, until I found a way to rework it in the future.
So in a long timeline of this hack's maintenance until Feb.2023 I won't call it a v1.0 release.
If any of my newly created animation sprites looks weird, feel free to blame me; I'm no pro pixel artist, if there're replacements to the custom animation frames that feels universally better, send it to me.
I do not edit any sprite or story-related event actions for Charlotte and any event flags, nor did I edit anything else on the map beyond the two MP Max Ups I mentioned, but if there're bugs feel free to pin-point out.
This hack is owtherwise very similar to vanilla/unedited game, so no preview videos, sorry.

That's all. I won't create more PoR hacks beyond this as I already had enough trouble trying to figure out how to disable negative effects for Old Axe Armor Player and rework of hard mode enemy damage scaling.
A similar rendition for Order of Ecclessia is also planned sometimes earlier in 2022, but after I completed the rebalance for Albus, I figured out that there's just so many things goes wrong in that game so I decided to not release it since it's not worth my time.


Credits:
- Fat T-800 Albert:
- Although I'm not 100% agree with the redesigned maps in the "Rondo of Ruin" hack, it gives me inspirations and motivations strong enough to rework animations of Richter Player on my own.
- Masked Dedede:
- Troubleshooting of stuff related to animation orders, inspiration of custom crouching slash animations.
- Charlotte's custom air dive kick motion.
- LagoLunatic:
- Senior of Castlevania Romhacking and author of the great DSVania Editor.
- The Cuttion Room Floor:
- For referencing the new custom description of Vampire Killer's true form.
- ??ħ?ǥɥ饭??? Harmony of Despair ?????ƥ???Ҋ?? (http://defghi1977.html.xdomain.jp/tech/chditems/CaslevaniaHDItems.htm):
- For referencing the descriptions of CVHD Maria sub weapon description (even though you can't really see them in gameplay lol).
- CV Romhacking communities and Romhacking.net:
- For letting me know lots of fantastic CV hack works existed.


Revision History:
v0.9.0.1:
- Make the "fix waterwheel crash" patch more properly inserted, slightly adjust changes, edited and added some info to the readme.
- Patch for Japanese Rev A ROM is now obsolete, but I left it there only for referencing purpose if somebody decided to take a shot on the Japanese Rev A ROM for some reason, because there's no Japanese Rev A rom counterpart to the "fix waterwheel crash" included in the DSVania utility yet.

v0.9.0.2:
- More small maintenance and more info in readme.

v0.9.1.0:
- *Reduced Hard mode enemy damage scaling.
- Reworked Richter hurtbox.
- Small maintenance.
- *Patch for Japanese Rev A ROM discontinued. The patches the DSVania editor utility provided for the English counterpart are too important for this hack while Japanese Rev A version lacks these patches.

v0.9.1.1:
- Reworked Jonathan divekick hurtbox.
- Small maintenance.

v0.9.1.2:
- An attempt to rework Fake Trevor jumping whip attack animation, but it breaks his damage pose in the air so it's failed.

v0.9.1.3:
- Small maintenance.
- Reverted Fake Trevor animation changes (breaks Fake Trevor's damaging pose in the air, so this change is reverted unless a more convenient way to change this specific frame is intact, like the state animation editor for player).
- Raises player parameter for Sisters mode.

v0.9.1.4:
- Small maintenance.
- Raises damage of some Dual Crush skills that were too pitiful in the vanilla.

v0.9.1.5:
- Reworked Old Axe Armor's hitbox during Running Axe motion so that it can hit medium-height enemies like skeletons.
- Maintenance on Old Axe Armor animation frames.

v0.9.1.6:
- (Minor cosmetic change) In enemy list, Mud Man now uses the same palette as in its action graphics for consistency.

v0.9.2.0:
- An optional SP edition of the patch included. In SP version Richter gains the Flame Whip Critical Art but costs slightly more MP than Jonathan's version.

v0.9.2.1:
- Adjusted Richter's air dive kick straight down sprite so that it more resembles source.

v1.0.0.0:
- Initial release.

v1.0.0.1:
- Fixed some inconsistency parts regarding the new Old Axe Armor sprites.
- Maybe the very very VERY last maintenance for a while until somebody else fully removed water wheel crash in my mod, or did something like a PoR Definitive Edition that included/inspired by some of my changes.

Database match: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin (USA)
Database: No-Intro: DS (all) (v. 20210227-111036)
File/ROM SHA-1: 382602E3615B2282EEAD584014125E71B5B0F033
File/ROM CRC32: 96DF4C4D