Hacking Email from Rom Man regarding Castlevania PoR

[T-hug]

I finished the game last night and still not had a freeze. Also I won a copy on ebay the other for £23.99. Gonna sell it now its still sealed.

 

[Szyslak]

Just wanted to post my .02 on this since I've done a good bit of testing with PoR on my SC Lite microSD (Firmware 1.7) and I'm still frustrated. I'm at about 700% in the game and working on mastering most sub-items, so I've gotten it to be quite playable but still a little annoying. Feel free to ignore me, I just wanted to add some info for posterity.

I was initially playing the game with a cluttered SanDisk 1G microSD card, and the game would freeze repeatedly. Mostly in the menus, but also when talking to Wind or trying to stone warp. I have 2 microSD cards, a SanDisk 1G and a SanDisk 512. I tested the cards and unfortunately both have the same access time and read/write specs, so I can't do any worthwhile comparison there. I've formatted both cards and tried them with the following patching settings. PoR was the only thing on the card when testing, and I've tried each mode on both cards for at least a couple hours:

Patcher 2.57 - Restart: Y / Trim: Y / Faster Game Play: Y / Enable "Patch Cartridge Access" Compatibility: High, DMA: Y
- Much less freezing in the menus, but more freezing during actual gameplay. Freezes would occur during boss battles, room transitions, or jumping and attacking

Patcher 2.56 - Restart: Y / Trim: Y / Faster Game Play: Y / Enable "Patch Cartridge Access" Compatibility: Low
- Minimal freezing. Most freezes occur when trying to stone warp or access "Guides" on the menu

Patcher 2.56 - Restart: Y / Trim: Y / Faster Game Play: Y / Enable "Patch Cartridge Access" Compatibility: High
- Best results so far, but still occasional freezing. Most common freeze points are when trying to stone warp or talk to Wind. Luckily it's pretty easy to always save before doing these two things.

So for those saying there are no freezes on SC Lite - there are (and I'm not the only one).
For those saying the fix is a simple patching change - it's not. If the fix were that simple, no one would be complaining.

I haven't tried forcing the card to format at 64k cluster size. I didn't think you needed to do that on SuperCard Lite, but I will try it tonight to see if there is any difference.

I also hope to try the AData 1G card soon, which has faster access times than the SanDisk. Maybe that will fix the problem for good.