• Hey everyone happy Christmas Eve we're aware of what's happened with the source code so to keep this simple absolutely don't post it on the site or use it to make mods with (it's not particularly preferable toward this end anyway) and tread lightly in general until we see how this settles, thanks to all and have a great holiday season -DT
Noxid

Noxid

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In my body, in my head From The Purple Zone
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  • trickybilly
    I know, I saw that way on your Wordpress address, and since the whole post was written in a joking style I used that. In that post I was implying that you are one of the few here who have a considerable willpower to finish such a project lol Which you could take as a praise <img src='http://www.cavestory.org/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile2.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />
    Noxid
    Noxid
    Alright, I thought it might be something like that but I wanted to check ;]
    Sue Sockymodo
    I'm not sure what is happening
    Lace
    Wrote a haskell program which can tell whether a string is in english or spanish in 59 lines. Woooooooo.
    Noxid
    Noxid
    if (string.strpos('è') != -1)
    return true;
    DoubleThink
    What part of the video did you get that image from? I can't find a spot that doesn't have text over it.
    Noxid
    Noxid
    I used my superb image editing skills to paint over the text >.>
    HaydenStudios
    Hey there Noxid. I have a question about Cave Story modding. Why do you believe it is worth porting your mod into a different engine? How does this play out with opening it in an editor? Is your engine or any other engines compatible with CE, Sues, or in the future, BL? I would assume so. Is your engine or any other Sue's CE or BL-compatible engine more efficient than, allow room for more hacks than, or in any other way superior to the regular Cave Story engine? Or can this just be a self-gratifying act allowing you to legitimately say that your mod is not a mod anymore, but rather a fan-game? If somebody were making a totally out of this world insane mod with a ton of awesome hacks, would you recommend using a different engine for extra hacking to make it easier even if said modder was really good at assembly? Roughly (or precisely, if you are able to answer) how many free lines of code does a Cave Story assembly hacker have at his disposal when opening up the vanilla game, and not optimizing or replacing any existing code? If the answer is an unsatisfactorily low amount for one who wants to do a crap load of awesome stuff, would using a different engine be a viable solution?
    Noxid
    Noxid
    that is more than a question
    I'll answer it at work tomorrow because I have nothing better to do then
    Noxid
    Noxid
    On why I switched: Primarily, it was a way for me to grow my skills as a developer and a programmer. Ever since I began my primary intention in modding was to use it as sort of a vehicle to learning new skills and testing the waters to see if I would be able to develop games on my own. While I probably would have been able to do my whole mod in the CS Engine (and to be honest, without some of the silly things I did it probably would be a lot further along as a mod) there's only so much you can learn that way and I felt it was time for me to grow.
    As well, I wanted something that could not only be used for a CS game but other, future games. Code is mutable and updatable; binaries are not really. Also it doesn't belong to me.

    On the mechanics of it: Obviously cave story editors are very specifically designed to work with *only* cave story, esp. due to certain parts of the data that lie at specific locations within the executable that are not expected to change ever, or if so only by the editor's own doing. So basically I pretty much *had* to make some kind of editor for myself, and I also took it as an opportunity to expand a bit on the file formats to accommodate some upgrades I had wanted to make but couldn't because I wasn't prepared to perform extensive hacks on both the editor *and* the executable (to be honest hacking the editor would have been far from feasible).

    With regards to efficiency, it isn't really an issue because when you have the code obviously you can recompile the entire module whenever you want. With that said, having used Pixel's logic as a baseline I have been trying to make some subtle modifications as I go to increase the efficency of my code relative to his. In some areas it's better, in some it's worse. It's not so important. It's really just superior because having access to source code allows you to freely modify any part without that whole "juggling bytes" ordeal. Also I can add crazy new things that would probably be infeasible to implement with assembly alone.

    With regards to others following suit: I think that if you are serious about it and are willing to take it to that degree where you have so many off-the-wall hacks and new content that one can hardly tell it was cave story to begin with, you're better learning a programming language and doing what I did, or possibly better adapting some available open-source 2d platformer engines because tbh I am probably doing way more work than is necessary. But, it's for the learning.

    And on the final point, you can't really compare bytes to lines of code because there are just so many different factors to weigh. But, I can tell you that in the code segment at the back there's 0x700 bytes (more than it sounds) and it may be possible to utilize the old map data if you save the game with CE, which is 0x4A30 bytes (this is suspected to have caused stability issues in the past though). Still in my opinion there's more than enough room in the executable to do whatever you need if you just pick something you won't need and replace it (I mean really, does EVERY MOD EVER need to have undead core?)

    aaand I hope this doesn't go over 5k characters
    HaydenStudios
    HaydenStudios
    Thanks!
    Sue Sockymodo
    Why so French? Also tiddly winks
    Sue Sockymodo
    Hina
    What time is at your home right now?
    Noxid
    Noxid
    6
    why do you need to keep asking me that
    Hina
    Hina
    Sorry man
    it's 11 pm at my house
    I forgot your time zone
    LieithLeif
    umm, I'm not asking to become one, sense I just joined, and probably never will be one, but how does someone become an admin exactly?
    Noxid
    Noxid
    By making your own forum, or being best friends with someone who made their own forum..?

    It's not usually an electoral process.
    LieithLeif
    LieithLeif
    oh, that makes sense.
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