Cave Story GBC in the works!

You thought it couldn't be done...
This absolute madman is currently working on Cave story for gameboy color.

Please send love his way! This opens doors to the DS/GBA port being completed.

 

This is really cool, it seems like there is a lot of work to be done though, however, I hope this gets finished as it looks like it would be really fun to play! I'd be interested in looking at what they're using or how they are porting it to the GBC personally.

 

Holy hell, I'm seriously interested in this!

I wish good luck to 2000brix, because I'm looking forward to seeing more progress on this.

 

This looks intruiging, i get that this is rough because its an early build, but that cover of gestation hurts my ears...

 

This looks intruiging, i get that this is rough because its an early build, but that cover of gestation hurts my ears...

I found one further ahead in the game and sound department. It seems that there's at least three coders making a GBC port...
I hope they work as a group instead of all starting from scratch
(If anyone has a reddit account please contact https://www.reddit.com/user/MaidenAbyss/ about this)

 

Yeah, this port has some potential. The developer is in the CSMC server, actually. Quote_02 (Raichu) is their username.

I know Skittles also has a regular GB port in development as well, but I'm not sure if that's been shelved or not. They make some very cute art, tho.

 

Very interesting. I don't know what all the hardware limitations are for the GBC, but I'm sure this is an impressive feat. Naturally, I look forward to some more of those details getting a bit more polish. I guess some aspects of this might have to stay rough around the edges due to hardware limitations, though.

I looked at the comment section of that video and saw that he's using the GameBoy Developers Kit (GBDK), which basically appears to be an SDK for making custom games for the GameBoy. From what I can tell, it looks like a very tedious process, and he's probably had to re-write the whole game from scratch, so that's definitely gotta be a lot of work. Kudos to 2020brix/Quote_02/Raichu for the effort.

 

somehow the more developed on has worse music ow my ears

 

I hope 2000brix will finish even if it isn't a completely faithful port.
(Also whoever is harassing Maiden, suck on a lemon)

I think cave story gba/ds will most definitely work if new tracks and stages are created. Maybe, it can be an alternate universe storyline to explain the changes.

 

God this sounds interesting, I can't wait to see what comes of it!
I wonder if it'll become something akin to Mega Man Xtreme / Xtreme 2 (ports of X1 and X2)

 

i didnt know i wanted this but now i need it

 

Cool Cool Cool, can't wait to see more!

 

This is really interesting, I'm anxious to see more of this

 

What?? Someone made a thread for my GB port??

You should've expected it, because there are a ton of people who are really looking forward to this.

 

Firstly, the Game Boy uses 8x8 tiles, but it can only have 192 of them loaded per map. Cave Story tiles are 16x16, meaning 1 Cave Story tile is 4 8x8 tiles. It is impossible to have Cave Story maps on Game Boy without reducing the tile count, or heck, descale all the 16x16 tiles to 8x8.

Secondly, music.
Organya uses 8 channels for melody and another 8 for percussion, but I think channel 1 and I go unused in every song.
The Game Boy only has 4 channels, 1 and 2 are for melody, 3 is a custom waveform channel, and 4 is for percussion. Clearly, there is a big difference between the number of channels on Org and Game Boy, making it hard to directly convert Org -> GB.

And thirdly, GB Studio has a frame limit of 25 frames. This makes it difficult to have bosses and other large objects in a huge map, because 16x16 sprites have to be tiled to achieve this effect of a larger boss, and that takes up many frames.

Isn't the point of making a GB demake working with the limitations in order to make it work? And it's been proven multiple times that Cave Story music can be done with only 4 channels, even less!

Here's hoping Skittles is still working on their demake...

 

It's understandable that this would be discontinued, projects like this generally don't have much reward other than just to show that it can be done. This was a cool little project to see a demo for though, and projects like this often serve as good springboards into bigger and better things, so best of luck to you on what you do next.

 

Yeah, this port has some potential. The developer is in the CSMC server, actually. Quote_02 (Raichu) is their username.

I know Skittles also has a regular GB port in development as well, but I'm not sure if that's been shelved or not. They make some very cute art, tho.

omg thankyou :3 made an account just now cause i saw this thread can confirm i have canceled my version of the demake, as well as LUNA. the project i am working on now is called "Repugnant Bounty". I will post a discord link to the server. If you join, there is a downloadable ROM file for my version (as far as it was developed, at least) in the #welcome channel for those interested.

Join the Repugnant Bounty Discord Server!

Check out the Repugnant Bounty community on Discord - hang out with 204 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

discord.gg

long live the mimiga

 

Firstly, the Game Boy uses 8x8 tiles, but it can only have 192 of them loaded per map. Cave Story tiles are 16x16, meaning 1 Cave Story tile is 4 8x8 tiles. It is impossible to have Cave Story maps on Game Boy without reducing the tile count, or heck, descale all the 16x16 tiles to 8x8.

I feel the need to note that between two vram banks on the gbc you have 512 8x8 tiles to play with (if you intend to dump non-colour compatibility and go full gbc), and if you draw text (I recomment implementing vwf) instead of mapping it then you will only need 36 tiles for a message box text buffer instead of wasting a quarter of your available tiles on an fwf font. CS on the gbc would most likely be possible if you are smart about it, but you would need more flexibility than what GB Studio would offer you to make it. Though I might recommend downsizing the tiles in cs from 16x16 to 8x8 anyway so that you are less likely to run into sprite limitations (max sprites per scanline), and so that the player can see more on the screen.

 

That's probably a more long term project. I'm currently working on games for more hi-end platforms, but I might come back to CSGBC later...

POG!

 

Isn't the point of making a GB demake working with the limitations in order to make it work? And it's been proven multiple times that Cave Story music can be done with only 4 channels, even less!

Here's hoping Skittles is still working on their demake...

skittles has rebooted development with lots more experience in gb studio and is confident they can get the job done for realzies this time