Castlevania: Circle of the Moon Setup Guide

Required Software

• Archipelago.
• A Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance ROM of the US version specifically. The Archipelago community cannot provide this. The Castlevania Advance Collection ROM can be used, but it has no audio.
• BizHawk 2.7 or later.

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, 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: Harmony of Dissonance options page.
2. Follow the general Archipelago instructions for generating a game. This will generate an output file for you. Your patch file will have the .apcvcotm file extension.
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.
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 your memory just in case you have to close and reopen a window mid-game for some reason.

1. Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance 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: Harmony of Dissonance.
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.