Castlevaina error at level 5

[300happy]

Huh?

Hmm, all my tests have made the bull get up BEFORE getting the second part of the detonation. :huh:

Apparently, in all the roms I have tried(both E and U versions, including a redownloaded E version), I somehow set him off before he is supposed to fight me.

I do the following to get this:

1 - Deliver Nitro to upper wall.
2 - Deliver Nitro to lower wall.
3 - Deliver Magnadora to the upper blast to get to the observetory.
4 - Unseal the wall.
5 - Deliver the last Magnadorgathingy to the bottom floor, where the Nitro is already waiting to blow.

Right after I do step 2 the bull always seems to wake up once I cross about halfway across the room, heading out to do step 3. I've never once had the bull stay asleep in all my times of playing on the emulator. (I can't remember what the N64 did at this point, and my N64 mem pack is acting up so I can't test to see.) Of course, after he attacks, he is gone, which might explain the broken cutscene if he is supposed to get up after the blast.

Maybe I simply found a glitch with the original game, and need to do things in a different order to avoid the glitch. I've got to get back to college tommorow, so I'm out of playtime till my next "weekend"(which will be tuesday or wednesday I think). I'll do some more testing then and try to make a new game where I do it in a different order to see. What a puzzling mess this is, wish it would break somewhere simpler to test. Too many variables.

 

[smcd]

Do you have fraps or something? You could record a demo of your playing hehe

 

[RadeonUser]

This was played through several times by myself and Pixii. We found no problems.
I am attaching my mempak save as proof.

We have deduced that you are either:
1) Using a bad rom
2) Using cheats

3) You followed an extraordinary set of circumstances that we were unable to reproduce. This is highly unlikely since the game takes the same steps. You cannot fight the bull without blowing up the wall first. You cannot blow up the wall first without releasing the seal. So this one is thrown out.

 

[Smiff]

whether it's right or not i don't know, but oustanding dedication to the cause from RadeonUser and Gent i think you'll have to agree

 

[300happy]

That...is really weird. :huh:

When I tried your save, everything worked fine, but when I tried the same level myself(based off of the past playthroughs), the bull woke up before he was supposed to. I can't capture videos, but I do have a screenshot capture program so maybe if I can get a shot of the wall with Nitro sitting by it while fighting the bull it will prove my game broke, but it probably wouldn't help any with what I actually did unless I go trigger happy with the screenshots and make a gif or something.

At least I know it's not a problem with the emulator, since you've been able to play through the level just fine. Must be something I did both times while playing that broke the level somehow, but as you said that's highly unlikely, so...I'm back to square one again, with no idea what is broken over here. All I know is I've either managed to break both versions of the game through normal play twice in a row, or both download places I got my roms from carry the broken versions. Either that, or Dracula is playing some sort of weird phycological trick with my saves. lain:

EDIT: I just thought of something else. Has the game ever crashed out the emulator on you guys? Does it run stable on your systems?

I've gotten crashes randomly, anywhere from 5 minuites into the game to 1 hour 30 some odd minuites later. I've never gotten a crash when it saves(but this could be simply down to the fact that saving time is about 2% of the whole time it's running), but I'm wondering if having the emulator suddenly close itself due to random errors and then booting it up again would mess anything up. I've thought of this as normal since it's an emulator and is bound to overload or break sometime, but maybe it's not supposed to be crashing out on me during this game. Oddly enough, I can run Paper Mario and a few others just fine, but both Castlevania(any version will do, even J) and Mario Party randomly will spit out an error and close the emulator. By randomly, I truely mean randomly, it could be caused by anything from me jumping in Castlevania to walking up a slope or simply waiting on the die roll in Mario Party for more then 3 seconds. I've never figured out the cause of this crash, but if Castlevania or the emulator writes data or something while running(or doesn't flush data after crashing), it might explain how my bull trigger broke.

So, did the game run perfectly while you went through the levels from 1 to 5 in one sweep? If so, you all can probably pass this glitch off as something my computer setup/emulator setup caused while playing the game.(and yes, both versions and all test runs I did were filled with crashes, mostly during the first and second levels, level 5 crashes the least though.)

 

[Smiff]

did you set it to Protect Memory and turn Advanced Block Linking off?
Gent/Rad never said it crashed, no its not supposed to..

 

[PsyMan]

Maybe a friend of yours (or a brother/sister, etc.) played this stage, couldn't pass the bull so (s)he used a cheat to wake the bull up and when you started playing again you were not aware that someone already killed the bull. Of course when you activated the crystal the bull was already dead and you couldn't fight him so the game freezed.
Are you sure that no one else played the game except you?

If you want to continue playing without restarting the game you may want to enable a cutscene cheat (the one that shows the bull waking up) right after you activate the crystal.

 

[300happy]

"did you set it to Protect Memory and turn Advanced Block Linking off?
Gent/Rad never said it crashed, no its not supposed to.."

Yes, protect memory on and Advanced Block Linking off. Game ran much better after setting those(smooth, wee!), but still random crashes. :yucky: No idea why, but other games like Paper Mario and Mario Cart work fine on my PC(except of course for their flickering and speed problems, respectively)

"Maybe a friend of yours (or a brother/sister, etc.) played this stage, couldn't pass the bull so (s)he used a cheat to wake the bull up and when you started playing again you were not aware that someone already killed the bull. Of course when you activated the crystal the bull was already dead and you couldn't fight him so the game freezed.
Are you sure that no one else played the game except you?"

No one but me gets to touch my computer, much less my Gamecube adapter emulator setup. And all my brothers and sisters hate cheating so it couldn't be one of them anyway. We consider anything done after a cheat to never have been done by us, no matter how hard it was, so naturally we think cheats should just go hang themselves since it ruins what the designers had in mind when they made the game. As I said, I played both games straight through myself, so no one got a chance to touch it except for the occasional bathroom break, and then I would lock my room so they couldn't come in. So yea, pretty much no cheats or others messing with it, and if they did it wouldn't affect anything except maybe I would have died(they both are terrible at Castlevania, but refuse to cheat).

"If you want to continue playing without restarting the game you may want to enable a cutscene cheat (the one that shows the bull waking up) right after you activate the crystal."

Errm, would that mess anything else up besides this one cutscene? As I've said above, I really don't want to use any cheats or hacks to finish the game, but if it's the only way around the situation and won't break anything else in the game, I'll do it since I fought the bull already anyway(after the long Nitro part with NO SAVE even ). If it's not in the emulator cheat menu, could you post up how to go about doing this? I can't open Project64 to check right now since I've got things to do, but I'll be able to do it when I get the chance.

 

[Gent]

My Wife Pixi and Radeon went for broke on this and tried everyway possible to break this game and it all ended up the same way. Enable Crystal and fight the bull. See pics below. I am at the moment bugging three versions of the (E) (E) [!], (E) [b1] and (E) [t1] < the t stands for trainer aka cheats injected into a rom. ill let you know my findings. Also do me a favour 300happy i want you to rescan this (E) Rom with goodn64 and then view it in Tool64_v1.11 and then right click and choose properties for me. This is mine below the bull fight pic. If you can pleaee take a pic of yours and post it for me.

 

[300happy]

Info on the rom

Here is the info on the E version of the rom I have. Everything checked out ok in both tools, and the name shown in the shot is the one Goodn64 spit out after confirming the rom data.

I'll play through again when I get the chance, currently I'm busy with other more important things, like my schoolwork. I'll have the screenshot then. :bouncy:

 

[Gent]

Here is the info on the E version of the rom I have. Everything checked out ok in both tools, and the name shown in the shot is the one Goodn64 spit out after confirming the rom data.

I'll play through again when I get the chance, currently I'm busy with other more important things, like my schoolwork. I'll have the screenshot then. :bouncy:

May thanks 300happy much appreciated. ok so we are looking at the exact same rom. now we need to determine why and how you got this issue. it definitely hasn't happened for us. please if you could try again on the E but this time. back up anything you need to keep like Plugins, pj saves etc. then try uninstall 1.6 and reinstalling. then put things back like plugins etc and create a new game? see how we go there. Again thanks so much for your patience and assistance we all want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.

 

[300happy]

It seems to have fixed itself

Had some time after getting projects done early, so I did the test run today.

I uninstalled PJ64 after copying everything besides Project64.exe to a backup folder. After restarting, I reinstalled PJ64 1.6 again.

I copied the old preferences from the other install and my controller config(cause the Gamecube controller's a pain to set up thanks to N's idea of analog LR buttons that always read as full force up till you press them halfway). Everything else was left with default settings.

Castlevania E has been able to run for 5 hours now, with no crash, including a pause for dinner and bathroom breaks. On top of that, the boss now worked perfectly like it was supposed to, and in general it's been running exactly like my old N64, only with much less saving errors due to my hard drive being much more reliable then my dust filled broken mem pack of doom. :bouncy:

I don't know what went wrong, but a refresh of the emulator install itself seems to have fixed it. :huh:

I think maybe it's because my other save is from the old version of project 64(1.5, then opened in 1.5 SP1, then finally copied to 1.6). I'm wondering if the old 1.5 had a save error or something that carried over to the rest, but it's just a mem pack file right?

Anyway, I still have a folder with all the old PJ64 files in it(the broken version). Everything but the Project64.exe is backed up into there from the broken version, so if you need to look at a file I can pull it up. Just tell me the file name, I'm no wiz with what files do what in PJ64.

Still wish I knew for sure what went wrong, but at least it's working now, so all's well that ends well I guess. :huh:

 

[ttconker]

Sorry for reviving the thread, I want to share my experience with this freeze I've came across recently.

First of all, I used cheats, but I feel the cause was something related to emulation, not cheats.

In my case, the bull woke up before Reinhardt/Carrie used the magic crystal. As I didn't remember the right moment the bull was supposed to fight Reinhardt/Carrie, then I played normally until the moment he was programmed to fight me, which is after Reinhardt/Carrie use the magic crystal. As it was already defeated, the game froze in a black screen.

Too sad, I saved near the crystal and I couldn't get out the room because it starts a black screen instead a cinematic of the bull because it was already defeated. I needed to kill my character and start the stage over. How? I activated the L levitate cheat and fell on the ground until it was no life, and in the game over screen I restarted the stage.

When my game froze, the path I did was kinda messed, I didn't remember this stage. I put Nitro and Mandragora before breaking the seal, and the bull wake up after.

I kept using cheats, but this time I made a logical path, which is breaking the upper wall, break the seal, and then break the lower wall. Still, the bull wake up before I entering in the cave to use the magic crystal. But I saved before exploding the wall, and in another attempt, the bull didn't wake up, then I could use the magic crystal and fight him afterwards.

Long story in short, whenever you put Nitro and Mandragora in the blast wall, the bull may wake up, so you have to save your game before doing that. This may be related to cheat, but I used cheat and was able to get past this part. So, I suppose it is something to do with emulation, which has more chances to happen if you're using cheats.

I resume below the path I did to avoid the bull waking up before you use the magic crystal (it's just a order suggestion, I assume you already know everything yo have to do):

1. Put the nitro in the cracked wall of the top floor
2. Take the mandragora to the cracked wall of the top floor
3. Break the cracked wall of the top
4. Solve the puzzle in the observatory

Now you have to put nitro and mandragora in the cracked wall near the bull, it doens't matter which you put first and second, BUT REMEMBER TO SAVE BEFORE ENTERING IN THE BULL ROOM BECAUSE IF THE BULL WAKES UP, THEN YOU QUIT AND TRY AGAIN.

5. Put nitro and mandragora in the cracked wall near the bull
6. Use the magic crystal
7. Get out and fight the bull.

 

[alucart1797]

I've run into the same problem: Black screen after activating the magic crystal and reentering the arena. After looking on here I found out it was because the bull wakes up before exploding the wall. I was using RetroArch with Mupen64plus core when the bug occurred.

Fortunately I saved before I activated the crystal so I could restart the level. I restarted, saved and created a save state before the going into the bull room to test different emulator options, mainly to increase accuracy, and the bull still woke up early. I changed to ParaLLEl and the bull still woke up. The ROM I'm using (U Rev. 2) is from a well-curated and fairly reputable source so I thought it was unlikely it's bad, but now I'm unsure.

Anyway, after a while testing I realized that the bull immediately gets up if you jump in that room. It seemed random at first and I kept expecting it to get up when I got too close or when my game starting lagging bad but nope, only if I jump. I didn't test any different paths like trying to blow up the wall before breaking the seal, so maybe that could still break it.

Oh I saw someone mention they didn't think the contract should be in the crystal room. It was there in my game so I looked up a walkthrough and confirmed it is supposed to be there.

TL;DR if the bull wakes up early, easiest solution is to not jump in the arena.

 

[Gent]

Wow guys, this brings back memories!