Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow Setup Guide

Required Software

• Archipelago.
• One of the following ways to run the game:
  • A Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow ROM of the US version specifically, played in BizHawk 2.7 or later. The Archipelago community cannot provide the ROM.
  • The Castlevania Advance Collection on Steam (Windows only). No separate ROM is needed: the collection's own copy of the game is used. See Playing in the Castlevania Advance Collection.

Configuring BizHawk

Once you have installed BizHawk, open EmuHawk.exe and change the following settings:

• If you're using BizHawk 2.7 or 2.8, go to Config > Customize. On the Advanced tab, switch the Lua Core from NLua+KopiLua to Lua+LuaInterface, then restart EmuHawk. (If you're using BizHawk 2.9 or later, you can skip this step.)
• Under Config > Customize, check the "Run in background" option to prevent disconnecting from the client while you're tabbed out of EmuHawk.
• Open a .gba file in EmuHawk and go to Config > Controllers… to configure your inputs. If you can't click Controllers…, load any .gba ROM first.
• Consider clearing keybinds in Config > Hotkeys… if you don't intend to use them. Select the keybind and press Esc to clear it.

Generating and Patching a Game

1. Create your settings file (YAML). You can make one on the Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow options page. Set Target Platform to gba if you will play in BizHawk, or advance_collection if you will play in the Steam collection. The generated seed is the same either way; the choice only decides where the base ROM comes from when the patch is applied, and lets a client warn you if you connect the other one.
2. Follow the general Archipelago instructions for generating a game. This will generate an output file for you. Your patch file will have the .apcvaos file extension. The host does not need a ROM or the collection.
3. Open ArchipelagoLauncher.exe.
4. Select "Open Patch" on the left side and select your patch file.
5. If this is your first time patching, you will be prompted to locate your vanilla ROM. You may select the US ROM or the Advance Collection's game.exe; if you pick the exe, the base ROM is extracted from the collection for you. (An advance_collection seed skips this prompt and takes the ROM from the installed collection.)
6. A patched .gba file will be created in the same place as the patch file.
7. On your first time opening a patch with BizHawk Client, you will also be asked to locate EmuHawk.exe in your BizHawk install.

If you're playing a single-player seed, and you don't care about hints, you can stop here, close the client, and load the patched ROM in any emulator of your choice. However, for multiworlds and other Archipelago features, continue below using BizHawk as your emulator.

Connecting to a Server

By default, opening a patch file will do steps 1-5 below for you automatically. Even so, keep them in mind in case you have to close and reopen a window mid-game.

1. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow uses Archipelago's BizHawk Client. If the client isn't still open from when you patched your game, you can re-open it from the launcher.
2. Ensure EmuHawk is running the patched ROM.
3. In EmuHawk, go to Tools > Lua Console. This window must stay open while playing.
4. In the Lua Console window, go to Script > Open Script….
5. Navigate to your Archipelago install folder and open data/lua/connector_bizhawk_generic.lua.
6. The emulator may freeze every few seconds until it manages to connect to the client. This is expected. The BizHawk Client window should indicate that it connected and recognized Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow.
7. To connect the client to the server, enter your room's address and port (e.g. archipelago.gg:38281) into the top text field of the client and click Connect.

You should now be able to receive and send items. You'll need to do these steps every time you want to reconnect. It is perfectly safe to make progress offline; everything will re-sync when you reconnect.

Starting a file

Start a new game on the patched ROM as Soma. Your slot's identity is baked into the ROM, so the client authenticates automatically once the connector script is attached — you do not enter a slot name into the emulator.

Every patched ROM is marked as "cleared data", which makes cutscenes skippable with Start.

If you enabled the Hard Mode option, you do not need to select Hard Mode in the menu; the client forces the difficulty while a game is loaded, so the Hard Mode-only pickups spawn on a normal file.

Playing in the Castlevania Advance Collection

The Steam collection runs the game in its own emulator with no connector, so Archipelago works with it differently from BizHawk: the seed is installed into the collection, and a dedicated client attaches to the running game.

Only the single build of the collection that Steam has ever shipped is supported. The installer and the client check the game's files and refuse anything else.

Installing a seed

1. Generate with Target Platform set to advance_collection. The seed ships as a .apcvaos patch; nobody needs a ROM to generate.
2. Close the collection if it is running.
3. Open ArchipelagoLauncher.exe and click CVAoS Collection ROM Installer. Select your .apcvaos file (a patched .gba also works).
4. The installer looks for the collection at the default Steam location (C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Castlevania Advance Collection\game.exe). If yours is installed elsewhere, set collection_exe under cvaos_options in your host.yaml to the full path of that game.exe before running the installer.
5. The installer extracts the collection's own Aria of Sorrow ROM, applies the patch to it, and swaps the result into the collection's data files (windata/alldata.bin and windata/alldata.psb.m).

The installer modifies files inside your Steam install. Before its first change it saves pristine copies as alldata.bin.apbackup and alldata.psb.m.apbackup next to the originals, and it never overwrites those, so you can always go back to stock. Installing a new seed replaces only the game data; the backups stay.

Going back to the original game

Steam's Verify integrity of game files restores the stock data at any time. The installer's restore option (--restore) does the same from the backups. If you verify the files in Steam and then want to play a seed again, simply run the installer again.

Connecting the Collection Client

1. Launch the collection, choose Aria of Sorrow, and start a new game as Soma.
2. In the Archipelago Launcher, click CVAoS Collection Client.
3. Enter your room's address and port into the client and click Connect. The client attaches to the running game on its own once Aria of Sorrow is loaded (any screen will do), reads your slot's identity from the installed ROM, and authenticates. Checks and item delivery happen only during normal in-room gameplay, exactly as in BizHawk.

The client re-attaches by itself if you close and reopen the collection or switch games inside it. Everything else (item delivery, DeathLink, Hard Mode forcing, cleared-data marking) works exactly as it does in BizHawk.

Troubleshooting

The client says the ROM is unpatched. You loaded the vanilla ROM instead of the .gba produced in step 6 of patching.

The client says the ROM was patched by an incompatible version. The seed was generated with a different version of the world than the client you are running. Both players and the host need matching versions; re-generate or update.

Nothing happens when I pick items up. Check that the Lua Console is still open and the connector script is still running. The client only reads and writes memory during normal in-room gameplay — not while paused, in a menu, in a shop, or during a room transition.

I keep getting Skull Keys. That is expected: a pickup holding another player's item physically hands Soma a Skull Key as a placeholder. The check is sent regardless. The client trims your Skull Key count every tick so the consumable cap can't block further pickups.

The Collection Client says no Aria of Sorrow ROM was found. Select Aria of Sorrow inside the collection first; the game only loads a ROM once a title is chosen.

The Collection Client says the collection's ROM is unpatched. The collection is running its stock game data. Close it and run the installer.

The Collection Client says the game is not in normal gameplay yet. Its fallback way of locating game memory needs you to be in a room. Leave menus, the map, and pause screens; it keeps trying on its own.

The installer says the collection is running. Close the collection fully (check for game.exe in Task Manager) and try again.

The installer says the ROM was patched from a cart dump. For the collection, the patch must be applied to the collection's own ROM. Let the installer apply the .apcvaos itself, or pick game.exe when prompted for the base ROM.

Playing a gba seed in the collection, or the other way round. Either works; the client only warns that you connected the other one. A ROM patched against a cart dump must not be installed into the collection, though, and the installer refuses it.