10 year anniversary, or smth.

Serri · Jun 26, 2023

So, how the fuck did I make it to 10 years? Lmao. I was certain a couple times I'd never come back, but I still had this 18 year old video game stuck on my mind. So, I thought of doing something special for my 10 year anniversary, and honestly, @SeasonsOfDestiny if you ever bump into this thread, I WANT you to steal this idea. But I'm going to play through my old mods and review them. Because nobody's a bigger critic to someone's works than the person who made said works. And I really think a thread like this from Seasons would be a really great read. I'm also going to throw in some development behind the scenes or talk about parts that probably weren't explained well.

Now, since we're doing this in chronological order, that means we gotta start off with my first mod I posted, Story Changed. Now here's a bit of a problem, I do not have the mod on me. However, I will talk about as much as I remember. Story Changed was actually not my first mod, believe it or not, it was originally a dialogue edit called Abridged Story. Not much was done with it, in fact, I can show a pic of some of the stuff that I also did for it in this thread I made, about cancelled projects as soon as they were started.

Goddamn it sorta jogged my memory of what was going to happen, so Quote had his scarf that you see in most artwork from Nicalis, Sue and Toroko were lovers, Balrog and Puu Black's sprites were swapped, and honestly I'm surprised nobody has ever actually done that, like, I've only seen people ever give Balrog his beta sprites, and that's it. And oh right, I forgot about Curly Pony, lmao. Don't mind that, I was a huge brony back in the day, I still say the fandom died as soon as Twilight grew her wings. ~~Thanks, M.A. Larson.~~ The sprites weren't mine, I stole them right out of Derpibooru, the facepics and the sprites were made by pix3m. There's the credit 10 years later for something that was never even released, lmao.

But now, actually time for Story Changed. Where do I even start? Yes, it was a CSBD, but it was actually sorta intentional. So my original plan for it was for it to go through 5 phases. First phase was just going to be regular cave story, until something goes wrong, like, Quote bumps into me (ew, my old, gross appearance), we both fight, and after defeating me, I tell him there's a whole lot more of the mod that was already added, and he's still going to have to go through them. Then phases 2-3 will be pretty much just custom stages, and TSC. Man, I feel if I were to remake the mod I'll do a much better job at it. And then for phases 4-5, it's going to be ASM hell, or smth. 18-19 year old me had no idea how hard ASM really was. At that point, I had already played some mods, like Sue Story, Jenn's Journey, and WTF Story. And I thought they were pretty good, and for some of them, I noticed there were stuff that you don't typically see in the original game, and I thought that'd be great for near the end of Story Changed. Well, if i ever did the second demo, that is. Which I never did, cuz idk. Poor Serri never realized until it was too late...

So in Story Changed, you go through the First Cave like normal, and you enter the Gunsmith's place, and instead of the Polar Star, you just get the Spur right away. A common trope with most people's first mods, ngl.

Lol, I'm joking, I would never, you would get the Machine Gun instead. ~~Also a common trope.~~

After you go in Mimiga Village, I can't remember where it is, but I remember putting in a death room similar to the one from WTF Story, but there was a platform on top you're standing on it, it is one block wide, and behind you is a doorway. And ofc if you fall into it, you'll die. But if you go through the door, you'll enter a special room (ooooooh special) and get a life capsule, before going back to Mimiga Village.

I think it's the same room that I decided to put in a fall challenge for the development of the second demo, but I realized it's a bit too... dickish. You avoid spikes to deal with more spikes. And all for what, a fucking Life Capsule? I think as well, where the Reservoir is, there was another doorway above the exit to Mimiga Village, and it will take you to an extra house. The Water Closet.

I'm sure the entrance looked like this...

You know what, I wonder if I posted a fixed version of the original Story Changed demo, because I am starting to remember a thing. So in one of the bookshelves, I remember on one of the bookshelves, if you interact with it, it mentions something about Terri (yes, she's existed since before I even joined the forums), and I remember changing it to something relating to Jesus. Idk why even have a library in the public restroom, anyway? Why even have a whiteboard and a fireplace in the public restroom? I'm sure there's somewhere in the US where there's a public restroom as luxurious as this, but, still.

I wish I saved some screenshots from the old battle with me, I based my appearance off a depiction of how I used to draw myself, I look nothing like it, but that's how I drew myself. In fact, the only remaining evidence that my old sprites of myself even existed was through The Final Level, which I can't wait to talk about when I get there.

Well, after defeating me, you go through this level that looks like it came from Super Mario Bros 3, but it also has Orbinauts from Sonic. Infringement Cave was made just because I wanted to put in a Nintendo reference. And a Sega reference, I guess. Sprites are from their original, respective games, except now that I think of it, I can't remember where the Beezo sprites came from...

And after getting past that, you go through this strange cave, but to your luck, there is civilization in this edited area of the game, called Butternut Town! Unfortunately, Butternut Town was going to be added in the second demo, so the demo just ends in the cave instead.

Aside from the challenge room, only other thing from the second demo I ever worked on was a start to Butternut Town. And let's just say a familiar looking character would be the first person to greet Quote.

So, yeah, Story Changed was my first mod here, and much to DoubleThink's dismay, because he's been collecting all mods for a massive archive he's working on, it is lost to time. I'm p sure i just forgot to back it up when I downgraded my laptop's os back then, which, I can't remember if that was in 2017 or 2018. I can probably name a few who have played it but I doubt they have it on them after all these years. So who even knows if the mod still exists out there?

And now, something that I'm dreading to play and review, CSTSF Mod.

So, ever thought of replacing game characters? Ever thought of plugging inside jokes in your mod/romhack? Well, this is very such a brand new and original idea, maybe someone should do that but with Cave Story! So, I tried looking rn where the original mention was, I'm sure there have been conceptions of the idea being made as a cs mod much longer ago, but sometime in 2014, @2DBro has thought of doing so, but the mod was never released. And I cannot find the source of that idea, so it's either deleted, or it was mentioned in the original CSTSF Skype group, a place that predated the discord group and in turn, the Cave Story Modding Server. So then I thought "hey, i could capitalize on the idea, and make it myself." And so I did, for two whole demos, and to make things even harder on myself, I not just changed the characters and dialogue, I also decided to change the stage appearances altogether. I must've really hated myself, lmao.

So, besides all the dated stuff, my poor choice in just giving any role of any character to any person in the community, I had thought of making it a tie-in to all Cave Story mods at the time, and while the idea of a mod multiverse has been touched upon numerous times, it never really came into fruition. The closest times have to be CSTSF Mod and The Final Level, which were my mods, and Insiemer's Odyssey, a mod that Cyber/ made for MaGCSL. As for all the dated jokes and references, what do you expect? Except it's even worse because there's also quite the number of references to the Skype group as well. So I'll try my best to explain a lot of stuff, but this is going to be painful and cringeworthy for me as well.

Btw, I wonder who has noticed the edits I made to the DoConfig when they first played the mod... I wish people could modify the other executables again...

Now, this was a needed change to the beginning cutscene, from the first to the second demo, because I released Terri's Night Out (2014) back in December, and my original plan was to make that mod a prequel to CSTSF Mod. Now, because I'm playing the second demo, I feel I should at least mention the changes between the demos, so here's how the intro screen used to look from the original demo.

Okay, and we're already at the most controversial point about the mod. Let's talk about Zazuma. Because I remember all the comments about the sex jokes. Even in the second demo, with me toning him down by a lot, he still sounded overtly horny. Why is Zazuma horny? Thank @sexplosive for that. There was a fanfiction thread, and sexplosive decided to be a troll and make some of the most awful fanfics, one involving Quote, and one involving Sue. And the instigator was Kazuma, or Zazuma in the latter. This has got to be the worst idea I ever put in the mod, and I am sorry for that. Didn't help either when in the first demo, Zazuma sorta became a trigger warning for some individuals, and that was far beyond any intention I had. If you want to see how bad he was, out of morbid curiosity's sake, play the first demo.

Spirit Story reference! Even if it originated on Skype. This has got to be the longest running Skype joke in the community. Aar becoming the save point was referenced in both versions of Terri's Night Out, as well as his own mod and its versions: Video Game.

Btw if you wanna know how to pronounce his name, use it in this context:

Totally not used for suppositories. I hear they can be harmful to you, whether you intend to using it to improve your vitals, or to pleasure yourself.

I mean, what else would you even call this?

God, it's that old??? To the point where people still made illuminati jokes? For context, the character that's in the role of King is @Pummelator, and he had an obsession with illuminati memes back then.

Whyyyyy? I was too late...

So the curiosity killed the cat room, it was a troll death room in the first demo, and you can very easily die by three presses falling at you. It's very well possible to survive the room, just walk to the right, and you can get free exp while killing the pressses. The room ultimately had to be removed because it's an unfair death, and it has no relevance to the actual mod itself.

After interacting with the door, you get this special item called the coupon, which offers a special prize that you can get. I guess I had intended for there to be a means to reach me, or "Mochi", as what I used to be called back in the Skype group, but I have no clue how or where I was going to make it happen. So as of the second demo, it's only a dud and you can just skip that entirely.

Still a better excuse than Jack's. Also hi Terri.

Best in-joke. The fact that Story Changed was never getting an update... :')

I can't remember if this section was going to have a doorway to a room. Why does it lead to fucking nowhere?

Hey guys, what if we changed the amount of bits in Cave Story so it can not only be in 720p widescreen, but it can also be a 3d game, like Mario 64! Cave Story plays like a 16 bit game, but it's on a 32 bit executable, so let's make the game 64 bits to support better graphics!

I... think I was a bit too harsh on Bio back in 2014.

Okay, this was actually pretty funny.

So um, why Isabelle for Misery? Well funnily enough, I was going to have HaydenStudios be Misery, because he's always been a prominent member of the forums, but then I was suggested hey, two characters have a theme tied to each other (Jenka and the Doctor), why not make the role for Misery be given to Doors? And with Doors wanting me to use Isabelle to represent them, because damn, Strawberry Milk as representation? Not a good idea.

So I'm going to be honest here, I did not give a single shit about the graveyard, or the pignons in it. So I just made it a small room.

Now, I actually can't remember who I had planned to be Mr Little in the mod, but the sprites were unmodified so I feel like I forgot about him entirely.

And honestly, I'm going to leave this here, because I kinda have a headache, and even though it seems like I'm not covering much, the more interesting stuff happens in further in the mod, and I'm worried I'm gonna hit the text limit in this post, so expect several double posts from me, lol.

Part 2 of review coming soon!

Serri · Jun 28, 2023

And now back to your regularly scheduled program:

I'm pretty sure this joke here came from @Kayya. Or was it @TheJonyMyster? Who ever made the version where you play as their character instead of Quote. I just thought it was funny, and I still refer to Egg Corridor as that from time to time.

Hmm tho, I seem to be getting a visual bug, and I can't tell if it's because of how broken this mod was, but the message box and the =WARP= text are flashing, and I don't think I ever came across this issue before. I use w10 and my gpu is an rtx 3070, if either of that helps.

My apologies.

Also yes, there are 20 eggs instead of, I forgot how many there were in the original game.

Here's the boyyyyy.

I'm sure Bio will cringe at his first design of himself. It's not too bad, but also this was supposed to be Quote 10 years in the past, because of that old mod he made, Before Story. Except Quote was called Bionicobot for whatever reason? I've always liked the version of himself that he has now, tbh.

Hmmmm, where's the 8th egg? You mean to tell me 8 is a non-existent number? How dare.

Ahh, foolproofing the bottom of the map. So, this was done because it was very well possible to skip the second room entirely, even in the vanilla game. And really wanted that room to be a bit mandatory, because of the mob spam that can come chasing after you on the way back. And the stage was already hard enough to skim through on the way back.

Besides, why skip the most important weapon in the game?

Also yes, I think I removed all missile ammo chests from the game because, well, the rpg worked in WTF Story. I will say tho, it is actually possible to level it up, but I made the exp requirement so high, it's not worth grinding for it. I say while the next stage is a massive exp farm. Level 1 is already stupid strong, anyway.

This is the only acceptable sex joke. I mean, why else would Igor have red flower petals all over his bed? ...WAIT I TAKE THAT BACK, NOOOOOO.

What, Egg No. 1 isn't the place to go? Well, that means you only have to go to the next one!

Egg No. 0

And, I'm sure you know what takes place of the original Egg No. 0, if we go in reverse numerical order.

I have no idea why I censored the word "Asshole", I think there were worse swears in this mod that were uncensored.

Oh my god, I love this reference so much, I think this was based on something that happened back in the old Skype group. I forgot who did this, it wasn't Bio, but it was someone else, but. Someone accidentally installed a virus onto their computer, and they didn't use any antivirus or follow any steps to manually remove it. Their attempt at a solution was changing the file extension from .exe to .png. It very clearly didn't work, but the fact that they were so innocent to their attempt was so fucking hilarious. I think they did eventually get the problem fixed, but that really brought me back.

This jump used to be much harder in the first demo. It's very well possible to make it, but I was suggested to make it easier. I think in a patch for the first demo that got fixed, looking at it through Booster's Lab.

I forgot who You-know-who is referring to.

Can't we all just get along, and call it Jellyfish Fields? Lol jk Grasstown all the way!

Okay yeah, who WAS being referred to for Momorin?

...Oh riiiiiight how did I not see her when looking through the facepics. I was about to say. I think this character's also from Before Story, idk it's been like, 9 years since I played that mod.

Yeah no, I got lazy with that one. You try making a Cave Story, but the characters are people from a community, and try making some parts consistent with the original.

The choice is yours!

I'm sure it was, Terri.

This line was suggested to me when I was getting to this part.

Booooooo, Zacharie puns.

Okay, this shouldn't have been there. It's such a gotcha moment.

It's him, it's Sage Harpuia himself, Tommy! His username don't lie, even now he's still like, one of the coolest people in this community.

I also love how, even though I wrote his lines in the mod, it still sounds in-character to him in Rave Story 2. Just replace "scrubs" with "nerds" and there you go.

Okay, this running gag in the second demo, this was my idea. I think I actually got the "or not" bit from an episode of James & Mike Mondays, I used to watch a lot of AVGN at the time. I cannot be bothered with actually finding which video it was, it was early 2015 when I worked on that. But, I have used "Trust me... or not" in future mods. It's kinda silly, tbh.

Did I not count the Super Joy III episode? Or the ASL challenge video? Criticisms toward me aside, I was really hoping Tommy did make more Untitled Gamer episodes, the series was a shitload of fuck (haha, get it?) and the movie that came out years later was fun to watch. For a ripoff of a ripoff of AVGN, it was very entertaining to watch.

But yeah, the stage design, I got really inspired by Japanese Cave Story 2, it was a mod with an absurd amount of difficulty in the bosses. And the stage that used these graphics had a very infamous puzzle section, the TSC for it was done insanely well, and it was very clearly foolproofed, but it sure did frustrate some people. Also, hi Maplestory background! The background in question was from the ground graphics in Sleepywood.

This was not an in-joke from the forums or the skype group. You may as well land on the spikes to fall asleep.

I fucking swear to god.

This review is going to be the death of me, and I still got several more mods of mine to review... I'll continue later!

Shortly after getting the Fireball...

Man, you get so much exp shortly after leaving Tpcool's house, it's insane!

I'm even getting some good progress on the RPG, too!

For those who wonder what the fuck this is all about, and I'm sure a few of them pop up later in the mod too, I just thought it'd be a funny idea to have some character show up multiple times throughout the game to mess with the person playing. The clones are harmless and they don't really add much. Just, damn, looking back at it, it can really be interpreted that I really wasn't in a good mental state while making the second demo. You can say that's correct.

You know the sad part is, I haven't drank soda for nearly 7 years now, and I still have yet to try an Ale-8. Idk if I'll ever break from my no-soda streak any time soon either, lmao.

The exhaust pipe is a weird choice in design I made. So it's meant to be a way to connect the Sand Zone to Grasstown, I'm pretty sure I had some sort of plans for it to really make this worth doing, but hell if I remember any of that.

Damn, that's actually a good representation of it in pixel art. I surprise myself sometimes.

Me too, damn I could go for some, actually.

Okay so, this is actually a pretty fun addition to the stage, I kinda wish the original game made you earn some life capsules, especially in the case for CS3D, where you can find a whole lot of freebies scattered everywhere. Plus you don't die if you fall into the spikes, sorta like in the revamp of Jenn's Journey.

Oh hi the- ...oh.

Ha, ha ha, can you imagine guys? A key that looks like a dick? Why aren't you laughing?

Plot twist, it's actually a Yamaha.

Oh shit, uh...

Noooo, did I not fix that? I really could've sworn I fixed that dialogue...

@Fluffball I am SO sorry! So uh, very embarrassing story, I didn't mean to make that a reference to something that happened just a couple days before I released the second demo, I had zero idea that Fluffball's computer got wiped and their Geobox engine project was a casualty in the process. I had to be informed of that shortly after and while that was clearly not my intention, it rubbed them off the wrong way, so I went ahead to fix the dialogue in regard to it. However, I was very sure I made a patch so no reference to that could be made, and I really thought I had uploaded it. So that's a huge L on my part.

I really couldn't catch a break with that scene either, during development, it was originally going to be @Lucario5543 to take the role of Malco, but one day, they sent suicide threats, and left the skype group, and out of respect I decided to give that role to someone else altogether. While it turned out that they're still alive and doing well since then, I respect their privacy and didn't reach out to them. So to Lucare, I am also very sorry.

And now for the long grind, and no really, it's even longer than in the original, because of how many more enemies there are throughout the level. At least I can get some free EXP out of it...

You're welcome.

And now I got the best weapon in the mod. The shotgun. While the assembly for it makes it replace the machine gun, I've always wanted to just have it replace the Bubbler in the mod. Honestly, I wish I knew more ASM at the time, cuz now I can just make the shotgun replace the Bubbler entirely, and keep the machine gun in the game as well, over reasons that will be explained when we get to the Sand Zone.

Now what does the shot gun do? You can use its recoil to make you jump higher, and even just zoom through stages. If only I could say something about that being handy in Grasstown, cuz the first half it really isn't. Lmao

So, what is the point of the Ihcom Complex? Why have a building full of apartments that have no accessible maps? Well let me tell you, there were originally going to be more maps. However, for whatever reason, and at the time I only used Cave Editor to work on the mod, while Booster's Lab already existed at the time, I cannot add more maps. Even with Booster's Lab when I heard you can add the 16 bit limit (65,536 maps in a game). I have no idea what caused this, when I tried messing with the mod several years later, I definitely can add more maps, I think my old laptop had something to do with it. Sue's Workshop was never used, so the mapdata portion of the game's assembly was never fucked with. Just something weird that unfortunately happened to me. And even then, if I was able to make more maps, you'd just be getting more forum/skype references.

Fun fact, this was based on my actual keychain, and until only a couple months ago, I still used that keychain proudly. It finally broke... :')

And even if they were compatible with the RPG, I'd be considered way too powerful.

POV: You thought you knew they remembered you

Also, I love the accidental double meaning in it. So, originally, I wrote it because B@lrog is based on Balrog, who shares names with a character from Street Fighter (you even take his fight money in the first battle). However it became a double reference when it turned out Gardevoir was going to be playable in Pokken Tournament. And I love how people thought it was a reference to the latter.

Yes, I made B@lfrog say "croak" in binary. I'm not ashamed of it.

I love how you can solely three-shot him with RPG missiles, depending on if you get lucky with the drops from the mooks he summons.

Welp, three parts in and we're still in Grasstown. If this keeps up I think CSTSF Mod may be a five or six parter, depends on how much I cram in there.

Hopefully I don't have to make another post for this, we're almost in the home stretch, too!

FUCK that's right, I have low health rn...

After a trip back to the nearest health restore, my RPG is getting close to Lv 2! I wonder how much more powerful that weapon will get, it's been a while since I last played this mod, let alone worked on.

Now that I got some sort of experience with programming (my best friend is a programmer for a profession), "Delete Source Code" is entirely incorrect. What I probably could've gone with now, if I were to make this mod, is "Deletion Executable". Or probably even "Deletion Batch File". You don't even need to learn how to program in order to delete something. Fuck it, it should just be a literal <DNP command.

*sighs* Geobox was way ahead of its time, if only it was made at a similar time to CSE2 or D-RS, or even be a feature to either of the versions. The shaders looked great and it was already very much playable.

And now finally, after skipping an embarrassing amount of Zazuma's dialogue, don't worry, he's still Zazuma, we finally get the man of the hour.

Ofc he's going to take the role of Professor Booster. He literally made the program that is named after him. Honestly, I feel like Noxid could've been handled better, mainly because I still had every character just portray the character they're supposed to be, except for Terri I guess, she had quite a bit to say that had nothing to do with Jack's original dialogue. I think I had plans for him to not die in the third demo, oh god, the third part of CSTSF Mod, that's going to be a mouthful to type out.

Nice.

The only tie to TNO 2014, everybody. I mean, nobody else seems to question it, just why Terri of all people?

(canned laughter) Skype, everybody! And you wonder why there haven't been a single Discord joke at all after the move!

And now we get the first hints that something may not be right in this mod. This is literally just me rehashing one of my ideas for Story Changed. I just wish the story picked up more after this part in the demo. I was already crashing and burning when I got to this part, the fact that I brute forced the second demo was but a miracle.

Now I wonder if any of the forum staff has ever done something like this. It's okay to be honest here.

Oh god, what's going on now?

I just wanna know the initial reactions to this part, like, this is a CSBD, but now something feels very off.

Welcome to the FamiZone, everybody! Where the whole stage just looks like a game on the C64, the enemies are from Yume Nikki, and there is absolutely no reason for this place to even be called FamiZone! I mean, unless you count Yume Nikki as one, cuz of the FC World. I think I originally wanted this place to just be called the FC World, but it just didn't fit, and the sprites of the entities in the FC World kinda don't fit with the enemies in Cave Story, so I went with the normal entity sprites instead. I had intended to use Ryu's Determination from Ninja Gaiden for the theme of the stage, but I was just so fed up with working on the mod, I made it future me's problem for the third demo. Unfortunately, we are in the wrong timeline. ~~Hey @Mint, didn't you make an org of that song a long time ago? Show that to past me, lmao.~~

And now we got @Reddeh Le Steddeh, who I think was the first to want the role for Curly. I had no idea what I was gonna do with them after FamiZone, because the Labyrinth is already where the routes for the three endings start diverging from the first three stages. And I mean, ofc, it's either Redd dies or they live. Yeah no, this "first come, first serve" for characters thing was stupid.

Um, this was Redd's idea. Have allusions to marijuana tied to them.

OH RIGHT, FUCK. NO. I forgot I have the Redd battle remove the RPG. You wanna know why? The Curly boss does not deflect missiles from the Super Missile Launcher. So for the first demo, I really wanted to just have the regular missile launcher become the RPG, but even with adjusting the multipliers, I couldn't get it to work like with the Super one, so I decided to go with that, since that's what the RPG used in WTF Story. I knew when I first tested the battle, that Redd could be clapped easily, so I thought of making the shield work with the super missiles instead. Except here's the problem, I couldn't read ASM at all, and even with referring to Noxid's function list, I couldn't find the function that enables the shield when missiles are in use. My only workaround was removing the RPG from battle and giving it back afterwards. Except it's complete bullshit because I grinded the RPG in Grasstown for nothing! :mad:

No more Flaccid Star, that joke was dead a long time ago. It's Bubbler, I mean, Modified Machine Gun time!

My exp... noooooo ;~;

I used to hate using the Bubbler whenever I play Cave Story. I still do, tbh. But I still collect it anyways.

Btw, yes, I know about the Eevee bug. The only work around for it is to save with Aar and reset your game. And then you can interact with the Eevee and properly pick it up. I'm more than certain I fucked some flags up.

You know, 2014 was a weird time. I'd really rather just put in Curly's panties and go "whose panties are these and why does Redd have them?". Doesn't help either that even though weed's p much more legal now (at least in half the US), weed memes are still unfunny. At least MLG memes died out.

And now a room that I don't think anyone has ever commented on when the second demo was released. That's why, I made a hidden skins room. You can go and change your skin to other characters and it was a feature that I know wouldn't really kick off until the third demo, but I still hoped someone decided to play as the mspaint story character.

Byoutiful, but I'm not gonna play as that because Polris is cool.

There were plans to change to two more skins in the third demo, you'd be able to play as the unused soldier mimiga character, or as WoodenRat (I don't think the sprites are in the mod, but I had a WoodenRat mychar made for this mod at some point).

Hello there.

I do admit, some parts in FamiZone do look okay, I just wish more detail could've been added.

This is the reason why I never really used the Skeleton enemy in the stage, because I wanted to make Uboa a boss somehow. Also, hi, first and only unique boss in the mod, unless you count the Ravil in Grasstown, which I mean, he was never a mandatory boss anyway, I just kinda hate that i had to omit the health bar because for some entities, if you give them a health bar and they have less than 1000 HP, their healthbar would look already depleted as soon as you start the battle. Thankfully this wasn't the case with the Skeleton.

Oh, this was an interesting idea I had, just have the Omega Boss and the storehouse much closer to each other. Sure, it makes the map look more linear, but it can be a pain if you have to find the other Eevees.

Never.

Okay, this was actually a neat idea, fuse all the Neophyte members into one boss. Unfortunately, that does mean a couple certain people who don't use Quote for their pfp pic anymore get bunched into it. Also can we talk about the different types of Quote there are? You got the walking quote sprites from I think @Fluff8836, the angry Quote sprites from Ballos Story, MetalSonic71's female Quote sprites, in some sprites of the boss, you can find Easy and Hard mode Quote, as well as Quote, but in Curly's palette.

...oh.

And now we have Shmitz, or at least I think that's Shmitz. I found it in the sprites for his version of Jenka's Nightmare, and assumed that's their version of Debug Cat. Never played Jenka's Nightmare tho. Speaking of, yes, this is the theme between the people who took the role of Jenka, Misery, and the Doctor. They're all replaced with the three people who worked on Jenka's Nightmare. So if Shmitz is Jenka, and Isabelle, or Doors, is Misery, then that would only mean the Doctor is...

...going to be revealed in the next part! I'm tired and I need to go to bed, lmao.

Part 5 final part, maybe? I still got like, 5 more mods to talk about! ;w;

Serri · Jul 6, 2023

Now let's try to get over the last of CSTSF Mod. Also, hi image limit! I have to put this on a separate post entirely!

One Eevee down, let's get the rest of them!

"My cousin's eevee" btw, that should be a reference to the person that was going to be Ballos. I'll explain everything that was going to be in the mod at the very end, but for now, more eevees.

And here it is, the one thing that connects FamiZone to Grasstown. Yeah no, this would've been put to use somehow.

"Needs more dong enragement" - Seasons, 2014

Yeah no, I'm so glad I made the Eevee hunt much easier. I hated the puppy fetchquest so much, and with the switch version of cave story 3 years later, and that it added puppy stacking, it really saved everyone a headache. I also probably could've gotten away with what @SuperJaws100 did with their Cave Story Transcription Project and just make the Eevees all hide in one room, but that'd be too cheap, lmao.

And there we go, we got ZarroTsu as The Doctor. Now you know why I had a theme with the Doctor, Jenka, and Misery. They're all the people who worked on Jenka's Nightmare (or rather, they made their own versions). I'm just going to say this now, I never played Jenka's Nightmare, I still don't think I ever will. I've always found a lot of sequel mods to be very same-ish (Jenka's Nightmare, A Lost Land, Rising Earth, Beneath the Surface, Rise of Ballos), especially when people base them on the third ending. I would love a sequel mod that takes place after the second ending, the more favorable ending in my opinion.

Oh... OH... Oh my god I completely forgot this was a thing. The Doctor and his minions were the good guys all along, question mark? If ONLY I made the third demo so that can be explored more!

I love this transition so much, too. I had the blocks he was summoning to use the red bats from the Muscle Doctor fight instead of the flower cubs.

And like, while fighting Demon Quote, the background changes to this, because ofc Demon Quote is a corrupted version of Angel Quote, so ofc more of FamiZone had to be corrupted as a consequence.

And we reached the end of the mod, thank fuck! That door leads to the mychar room but with all skins unlocked, as a sneak peak of what would've become of the third demo.

So, that was CSTSF Mod, I hate that things actually started to become decent during FamiZone of all places. I was really hoping that I could work on the Labyrinth after its release, but I was just fed up with working on this mod, and it was mid-2015, and a lot of stuff has already aged like milk, especially when I wasn't in the skype group anymore and it was during that awkward phase before everyone moved to Discord in 2016, too.

So, now you would be asking, what were your plans for the mod if you were to continue working on it and finish it? So not gonna lie, I don't remember too much, but I'll try to recollect as much as I can. So for the third demo, it was all going to take place in the Labyrinth, as well as the Living Waterway, because I knew that whole section is just back to back to back, and I can have the demo end when I get back to Mimiga Village where everything is quiet. But also, the Labyrinth was going to be where the story would drastically change to something else entirely. I know for certain I was going to give the place a different theme to it, just like the FamiZone, and in the Labyrinth, you were going to come across Debug Cat from Rave Story, and, this was before Rave 2 was even considered, let alone being made, but I wanted it to be the same Debug Cat from that mod, and he invites Polaris over to wherever I think it was going to be Chaba's shop.

In it there's a whole council of cats, I wanted to include the "I am God" cat from WTF Story, the debug cat stand-in from Ama, and surprisingly, Shmitz was also going to be there, and they all explain that they're trying to stop ZarroTsu from accidentally destroying the world with the Redd bits. While his, as well as Isabelle's and B@lrog's, intentions were good, there's absolutely no way for the world to be fixed with solely those, unless the stories about consuming enough of them, or even a mass concentration in one (i.e. the red crystal), will allow someone to become a god and rewrite the universe. But with how malevolent the side effects are, the universe would end up becoming rewritten into something much worse. But that's the only remedy Zarro could ever really think of.

While exploring through the Labyrinth, Polaris meets Redd and he warns her about a machine that lurks on the way to the way out, which was going to be Monster X. I have no idea if I had any plans for Monster X or not. He's just sorta there, and even if I were to change him to someone else entirely, I just don't know how to make that boss work out. I don't know what plans I had for Professor Booster's death, because well, i wanted Noxid to be alive in both the second and third endings. Labyrinth Fight, I had no plans, the Core, literally all I had planned for the Core is to have him say "hue" every time he shoots his energy balls. Which was very obviously a reference to a user called TheCore, who was banned for saying the forums needed more rabbit porn ~~huehuehuehue~~

Idk how I was going to handle the air tank situation, I had no plans for the Living Waterway, or the the empty Mimiga Village. With how destroyed Egg Salad already looked the first time, I was planning to replace it with an original stage entirely, and change the Sisters boss to Excerpt and Beta Quote, I forgot why it was going to be those two. I remember their facepics were going to be based on you guessed it, yet another skype joke.

No plans for the Outer Wall, I did think about what to even have Zazuma do, because as it was already previously mentioned, he was based on an ironic fanfic about the first ending. But it was never going to go that route, because that's way too obvious of a callback. The plantation, I had no plans, or with Last Cave and Balcony. I'm more than certain Isabelle wasn't going to be in the Undead Core battle, I can't remember if Bio was going to be in it. As for the Sacred Grounds, the final boss was going to be CarrotLord, and as it will turn out, he's the one who sent everybody to Cave Story and altered it so he can say he made his Mint Story project a reality (there's no such thing as Mint Story, I just wanted to reference his Minty Freshness thread, because as we all know Mint is the best programming language out there and you can make Cave Story, but better with it). After his first phase, he fuses with his evil sidekick, which was going to be Oreo, a character of Kayya and TheJonyMyster, and they become the embodiment of Mint Story.

And therefore, after you finally defeat them, everything's back to normal, right? Haha, WRONG! Because I wanted to add in an escape sequence, because that was such a hugely missed opportunity, and you have to escape the island as it continues crashing to its demise. That's right, the island does not get saved, it still falls, and you have to get out of there. But halfway through the escape, you get stopped and you have to fight the TRUE final boss! ...It's Terri. Terri was going to be the true final boss. And she was going to be an absolute bottom, i mean, pushover. And then the ending, which I had no idea how it was going to go. Nonetheless, this mod sucked ass. And Grasstown in this mod, is somehow worse than Sand Zone in the original game. It didn't help either that I had plans to tie it to Terri 2014, Rave Story, and a side mod that I was thinking of making, but I had zero plans for what it was going to even be about.

And speaking of Terri 2014, I hope you can bear with more skype jokes, because holy shit that mod's in the same quality as CSTSF Mod. In fact, it's a fucking prequel to that mod! Thankfully it's much shorter, but I feel like I'm going to cringe even more, ahahahahaha ;w;

Btw don't ask about all the facepics in the mod, I can't remember what plans I had for some of them.

Welp, since we're going in chronological order, the only other mod from 2014 that I still have to play is Terri's Night Out. No, not the good one from 2016, I'm talking about the bad one from Modcon 2014. Why was it so bad? They extended the due date. After I released it. On the due date. And not gonna lie, this mod is actually worse than CSTSF Mod. I was at an extreme low at the time, my mind wasn't very well there, and it's the reason why I decided to remake it in the first place. And even if I were sane at the time, just what the hell could i even have her do in a development time of two weeks? I'm surprised that Alosona 4 got ranked lower in it. I can say a couple more things about the mod, but I feel it'd be better if I played the mod and explained some stuff, as well as myself, in the meantime.

Why an NSFW warning? Well, I'd show you, but, nah. Just, trust me, I'm censoring a lot of stuff here.

God, remember Year of Luigi? And the fact that it got extended to the end of 2014? That sorta became a meme.

And immediately we get greeted by this image. Just, look. Inou Battle was a fucking disappointment. Like, from what I could gather, the light novel and the manga gets interesting after the 12th episode, and it wasn't as blatant of a harem as the anime made it out to be. And the sadder part, the anime was done by Studio Trigger. And we had to know it was from Trigger because there were SO many Kill La Kill references, there were even references from Inferno Cop, Gurren Lagann, Panty and Stocking, and Evangelion. It's a mid harem anime overall and- wait, aren't we playing a Cave Story mod rn?

IT BEGIIIIIIIIIIIIINS. Trust me, this will be seen again in future mods.

And already we come across a Skype joke, there'll be no more skype jokes in future mods. I can't promise that, because I have a forgetful memory, but I'm more than certain they're free of those. But um, if you know, you know. I blame @JonSpider for that, and I mean, the art in the image that is cropped out is actually really good. I'm not showing it here, fuck that.

And we have a Bravest Warriors reference, which mod has aged better here, CSTSF Mod or Terri 2014? We're only in the first room here and I already have to explain a crapton of stuff.

Yeah, I had no idea on how the enemies were going to look, so I used sprites from WTF Story just because. So hey, if you wanna kill Interrobang with a gas powered stick, then here you go.

Gee thanks, Alia, I mean, Te- wait a minute. Am I now only resembling that Terri resembles Alia? Holy shi-

And now, this bit. What's wrong with just a life capsule? You can't say there's anything wrong with t-

So, there is a meaning behind this, and honestly, you really wouldn't think a human/elf/whatever can do the same thing. But um, it has been fully described, and now the illusion of how life capsules are even consumed is ruined for everyone. The sad part? This would've actually been okay, it's what happens later one that makes the whole thing even more uncomfortable.

OMG @Mint I stole it from you!

Yeah, idk why I had the blade/stick shoot rainbow cats, but it looks kinda nice.

And now we have the most broken mechanic in the game. So, it is very well possible to have an item save the game for you, and in most cases, it should work just fine. But it can very much softlock yourself if you save at the worst possible time.

Insta-save is a sponsored product by none other than the Air Master himself.

Honestly, this is actually pretty true. This fact still holds up pretty well 9 years later. Like, especially if you live in a big city like me, you'd rather go to the downtown of one of the side cities than in the main city.

So fun fact, this was supposed to reference a facebook group I was in. Yes, Facebook. But nobody there knew what Cave Story even was, so I was like "fuck it, let's actually make it Satsuki from Kill La Kill".

Oh hey, who is this fat piece of shit? He'll never have any bitches.

POV: You're near a college campus.

*audience laughing*

Riveting conversation.

So, Rave Story 2. Yes, I know, it came out a couple years later. But, this was like, nearly 2 months since the first one came out. Felicity had no intentions of making a sequel, but everyone just fucking, anticipated one to actually be a thing. It went to the point where like, five mods were called "Rave Story 2", all as a complete joke. But here, all you get is an Error 404 screen. Because Rave 2 didn't exist yet.

And now something useless, and I wonder if anyone has ever found it, but you can interact with the chairs in the theater. And you can find the map.

Okay, this I'm sure nobody has found this when they played the mod. You'd have to reset the game tho. It's an infinite loop.

Uhhhhhh, I'm not going to talk about this scene. But tl;dr I combined my skype friends with my band friends in college. It didn't make sense, I hated this scene so much.

Now I gotta go to the Train Station. What happened? Nothing. Totally not a relationship setup that will never work. Nothing important. Also hey, have the worst weapon in the game!

...Why are the cops watching football? They got a job to do!

Terri has never been male. Don't worry. I hate how this predicted the restroom situation tho, like, just let people use the toilet. You'd have to be pretty disgusting if you don't want your restroom to suddenly smell like another person's defecation. It's not like it already smells like that.

And, goodbye Life Pot.

This part. Now, I may not be the reason why nsfw mods got banned, because this mod isn't supposed to be nsfw, but it has very mature themes anyway. I feel the NSFW Story mods from Bionicobot and from ShinigamiMachine are the nails that sealed the coffin. But this mod sure was the fucking hammer.

And now to get Curly's gift at Terri's house, this I'm sure people got. The Rainbow Spur.

...Wow, I'm already somehow almost done with this mod? Wth?????

No really, I'm skipping the long train level because fuck that. Like really, what now?

...OH.

What??? This is a tie to CSTSF Mod??? Well shoot, now I gotta play that mod and see how that goes.

Yeah no, thank fuck that's over. I can care less about this mod. I still think it should've gotten last place. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm rushing this run, but, the voice chat I was in was more entertaining than this. Lmao.

Nothing noteworthy about that mod.

2015, I never really made anything, I did want to continue CSTSF Mod, but I gave up on that project, and then there's Terri's Night Out 2, which ends up being one of the next mods that I'm gonna have to play through as well, but for now, something I never made, but I was involved with for the "update".

I hope you don't mind me putting this title screen up. Yeah, I'm gonna go play Video Game Deluxe. So, the original Video Game, that came out in 2015, and I had zero involvement with it, @Aar wanted to make something short and fun to play, nobody expected it to blow up as it did. He originally wanted to put the Shotgun challenge in the original mod as an update, but that got lost during development (I think?), in 2016, he wanted to make a Video Game 2 for the second Modcon we've ever had, but he stopped working on it because while mods were being submitted, @Mint released Metronari, and the gameplay for the mod pretty much held the same premise as Video Game 2. So where do I go in this? In 2017, Aar decided to revamp the mod with Clownacy's Mod Loader, and add in new characters, new weapons, and have it all in glorious double resolution! And I helped as a QA tester, but then one day, after it was released, I picked up Famitracker and used the songs from this mod as practice, and Aar ended up using the covers for the mod in an update. So yeah, let's play this mod, I don't have too much to explain about, but I'll try.

Which btw, I forgot how nice some of the graphics looked, it's been a while since I played some of the 2x res mods. So, you wanna know why nobody makes mods in double resolution? Because too many people would just cheat and use graphics directly from Cave Story+. And that's an actual issue because Nicalis used to keep an eye on these forums for a while, and it was frustrating especially for people who used the original 2x res hack for the freeware game, and some of them worked hard to use their own graphics, or even using scale2x for the original graphics so they don't look too similar to Nicalis' graphics. So when Mod Loader came out, there was a bit of a discussion about allowing 2x res mods again. Luckily the stuff in this mod is mostly from King Story, WTF Story, or The Show, with custom graphics included, of course. So Tyrone, please don't sue us.

So, funny story, it's actually possible to kill that press without using the fireball and survive. And while that's an oversight in Aar's part, he decided to keep that in the mod.

Also this is such a useless feature, for what reason would anyone decide to go back to the previous segment after finding pretty much everything there?

I wonder if anyone thought this was a bat, cuz damn, that's such a fakeout.

Oh right, this.

And now for the extension of the mod, the shotgun challenge. I'm so glad Aar decided to bring this back from the plans for the update for the original.

Also I'm so glad I was the person to discover jumping through that small hole on the right is possible, that really made speedrunning this stage much more fun.

God, for a shitposty mod, Aar really didn't need to add that kind of attention to detail there.

And now we have the player select, which is very much just people from Mitochondria (a discord server Aar used to have). And you can play up to 10 characters in the mod.

Kashungo Frog (totally not because of how much of a meme Aar made that mod after that one episode of Modding Shitstorm)

Quote (you may as well after playing as Curly)

Cas (now funny thing, while the original sprites were done by @Claoose, this isn't him. This used to be a mutual friend's character, who also funnily enough had a character whose design was based on Claus from Mother 3. Not sure why Aar didn't just call the person Midnos, but I digress.)

Jenn (from Jenn's Journey, because every mod still included Jenn back in the day)

The Aarmastah himself (only happens if you say "no" to his save point)

Terri/Dark Terri (I pushed so hard for Dark Terri to be playable in VGDX, for the idea of alt skins of certain characters. I'm really not sure why in Video Game+, Aar has Quote and WTF Quote as separate characters entirely, it's kinda dumb when interacting with the same statue for alts was very much an idea that was already executed here)

Mega Man (so the sprites were originally made by @metalsonic71, which were then used for a mod by Tpcool, CSxMM, and then when Aar put him in Video Game, he made him a reference to Mega Man Sprite Comic, which was made by SplendidLand.)

Curly Brace (who you start off with)

Action Game Master (from Action 52, more specifically from Cheetahmen. Really weird how he gets pulled into a video game and is never mentioned again, like, you don't even get to play as him, you just end up playing as one of the Cheetahmen instead.)

So, for an update, I really wanted to push Aar to make a YCH (your character here) slot so anyone can use their own MyChar for the mod, even for Video Game+ before I ended up not getting involved with the development. Like, it's such a crime that the idea was never implemented, like, who doesn't know how to open Paint and put their own MyChar in? I've seen the people replacing some characters with their own, so clearly that was a very much needed feature.

But yeah, let's try speedrunning the two challenges and see the times I get, I hope I still got some skill in it, it's actually been like, years since I last did this mod.

It took me like, 20 tries to get that shortcut, lmao. I am so rusty.

Welp, with that out of the way, hopefully I can get back to playing the mods I actually did make. If you want to listen to the music covers I made for the mod in question, I'll definitely record them and post them on youtube, if anybody's interested. I was hoping they'd still be on his channel, but understandably, that is no longer the case.

Serri · Jul 15, 2023

Image cap strikes again!

So, next mod, so for a good while, I wanted to make a sequel to the original Terri's Night Out, and it was just called Terri's Night Out 2, and I had some ideas going on for it, I remember in a test build, I wanted to have the Curly entity follow Terri, but it felt so much like a pain to have to make special tunnels for that entity to pass through, it did lead me to a possible mod idea that I don't really think anyone has done, but I never really executed the idea at all. I remember in another early build as well, Terri would have the Rave Story moment and wake up in a corrupted version of First Cave, that didn't go anywhere, I think that was originally going to serve as the introduction for Dark Terri, a character I had teased a bit at the time. I have none of the builds on me, because I think at that time, I still had windows 10 on my laptop I was still using at the time (it was 2016), and I'd like to say it was during the summer, I can't remember if Modcon 2016 was happening at the time, I wanted to use Sony Vegas, but my poor APU couldn't handle the fact that rendering a video would crash my laptop display, all because it was running on windows 10, I had to downgrade it to windows 7, and some of my oldest stuff, including are now pretty much gone. But um, that all happened after Terri's Night Out came, so. Yeah, I'm gonna talk about the 2016 remake for Terri's Night Out.

So right off the bat, I wonder if anyone's ever missed this detail... Don't mind this detail, it'll be explained later on.

So, the title screen, I think a couple people have caught this, but the colors for "Terri's Night Out" change within every demo. And I'm playing off the latest version, so it probably doesn't look too obvious if anyone's only played this mod once.

Here's how it looked in the first demo:

And as a bonus, here's the planned versions for the third and a future demo (I couldn't decide if this mod would be split into 5 or 6 parts, it wasn't going to be very long, but it still felt short when I was writing the story for the mod):

Another detail in the title screen is that ripoff triforce symbol slowly fading in over time, in the first demo, there's like nothing, if you were to look at the second demo tho, it is there, but you'd have to fill it in with another color in Paint. So, for the title colors, they basically mean to represent characters in the mod, the first demo's colors were for Terri, second demo's were for Rikku, a character we'll see later on in the mod, and for the third demo, if you've already played the second demo, the title colors were going to be for Dark Terri. For the last one, that's actually for the final boss, who won't ever be touched upon until the very end.

So yeah, I've already pretty much did the first section of the mod technically, with the 2014 demo, but I feel it's worth noting some parts, so enjoy the iconic line as it starts.

And haha, "the forums are dying", if only 2016 me would've known, even though that has been said for like, 10 years now.

...OH. I completely forgot to mention, so in Terri 2014, if you interact with the fireplace, you would have her say "420blazeit". But that was removed entirely from this mod. I don't remember why I never used it, besides the obvious "weed is overrated" argument. But I mean, I'm pretty sure I used that quote in another mod.

Holy Darkness, a move that I had associated with Terri for a long time, but never did put it in the mods she was a part of. So, what is Holy Darkness? And why is it there? So, I'm pretty sure it's just a ripoff of "Dark and Dark" from Inou Battle (kinda funny that this went full circle), and in like 2013-2014, I used to draw a whole lot of concept art for a story comic that featured Terri in it, and she had this move that was taught to her by this dark god, who funnily enough, was planned to make an appearance in this mod. Holy Darkness does get better along the way, when Terri takes hold of controlling her magic, of course. Rest in peace, Gas powered stick, you died as quickly as the webseries you were referenced off of.

Hey who the fuck is tha-

"Today, we're dancing for no reason.~ Someday, we'll disappear for no reason." - NPC, Pokemon B2W2. Three years tho, that isn't foreshadowing in the slightest. But um, Terri's Night Out 2 was going to take place after the events of Terri 2014, before I decided to rewrite that entirely here.

Okay fine, I won't go.

So I wonder if anyone's missed the instruction here, because like, from what I've seen when people played the two demos, I never heard any mention of the entrance to Omen Mountain.

So this was going to be planned for when Terri learns the Double Jump, cuz I did think ahead to include in parts that won't be touched upon in the current demos (Ossa Lake, Omen Mountain, Cygnus Tower, etc), but show that paths will diverge in future builds. I really wish more mods had a bit of something like that when released in demos. Now clearly, the modding scene has changed significantly and nobody makes longer mods, let alone release public demos for said longer mods, so none of this was relevant now, all while at the same time, this was definitely a more original mod, just with Cave Story characters here and there, so I was free to do whatever the fuck I want with it.

No more life capsules...

Also I don't think this tileset was ever going to be used again, I have no idea why I made this, lmao

Ah, so Downtown Cygnus, this was definitely an upgrade over the original Downtown in Terri 2014, solely because this felt more like a city. Also yes, I'm using Casino Night Zone for the theme because the night is young, and, yeah.

Also yeah, for the background,

Still the same policemen as ever, tho.

Man, now I just wanna go to the nearby corner store and pick up a drink.

Or not, I guess. I think this was going to end up becoming a shop feature, but the <BUY command didn't exist at the time, and while <VAR existed, I never learned how to use it, so I didn't include that hack for the reason.

Well that's fucking rude, isn't it?

Okay so, this is probably the biggest criticism to the mod, and honestly, if I worked on it now, I'd definitely remove the forced save. To be fair, I probably planned to make it optional entirely for the third demo, because I knew third demo, things were going to split anyway, and I had a basic idea on what to do if I don't interact with the save master in the first place. Who's the save master?

Oh you're fucking kidding me.

Oh right, this was why this was a forced save. I can't remember what the idea was for when I don't interact with Aar. I know he probably won't even show up if you either don't save, or if you save at a normal save point (oh crap, I would've had to plan those as well).

I will say, conversations definitely feel a whole lot more organic compared to my previous mods.

Rude.

I like this payoff, just have him be unable to give anything the first time you save. So, this is pretty weird tho, the save is forced, yet he acts like you could've saved in the future at any point. Damn this gets more complex than I thought.

This was planned to be for a future demo, if you tried cheating, you'd get an anti-cheating message and then the mod will crash.

~~So um, I am a bit worried about reaching the image limit, so I'm gonna have to cut this short pretty quickly.~~ Turns out I'm right, but I'm gonna cut this off anyway cuz i had a lot to talk about anyway, and I'm definitely gonna have a whole lot more to talk about. This mod, I was a whole lot more invested in, compared to the previous mods here, so I'm sorry if these parts cut off so abruptly.

So fun fact, the textbox and label sprites in Terri 2016 are from this NES game called "Nakayoshi to Issho", and the only reason why I even used graphics from this game because I sorta wanted to find any NES games that had Sailor Moon on it, and this was the only licensed game that fit the description, I even did a playthrough of it on my old Youtube channel. It's not worth playing, for a jrpg game, the most you can get of any item is 10, and the only way you can fight is by playing slots. I mean, that's very much how Setzer plays in Final Fantasy 6, but in Nakayoshi it's done worse, and a good portion of the attacks don't really have much of a difference between them anyway, cuz of how easy this game really is.

Time to not fuck shit up.

So, I never did mention this, but yes, I had nothing creative in mind for the city signs in the skyline in the back. So you have Bepis, which I can't remember why even went with that, you have Maid, which I'm pretty sure was influenced by me playing a pirated copy of Custom Maid 3D 2. There's a WcDonald's billboard, so legally, I cannot be sued. There's a Kill La Kill reference, which originally, the sign for that building says "CTD" instead. Now, I had to change the name of that building, because funnily enough, in Modcon 2016, @Thomas Xin released a mod and it was called "Critter Tower Defense", or CTD for short. In here, CTD was actually a reference to a very, very old project with Terri that I worked on from 2012-2013, I never published anything from that, because I was so stubborn, making all these hand drawn images and promising to only upload those if I ever get my hands on a scanner. Who would've thought I'd just need a tablet like the one I have now? It probably could've been funny if I replaced the symbol in the CTD sign with a critter, but at the time, I really held a disdain for Thomas' certain works, it was already annoying to deal with an overpowered variety of critters in Rise of Ballos, it was even more annoying when Rainbow Critter became a meme at that time. And then you have a generic Bank, because why wouldn't the tallest building in the city be owned by a bank? Unintentionally, I did give the bank the VLC Media Player logo, I just wanted to make up something that your typical bank would use for a logo.

And now, this, I replaced the bar with a nightclub. "Spankbrook" came from a stripper name generator, I forgot what name I used for that to be generated. So um, at the time I played Huniepop a lot during my free time, and I kinda got the inspiration to add one to the mod. The filename for the nightclub map is called "Lusties", and I'm just going to straight up admit, I never been in a nightclub before, Rave Story got it wrong, Terri's Night Out got it wrong, I doubt anyone who's ever been to a nightclub before would probably go "I can probably make something like in Cave Story right now".

So, the nightclub theme, which is actually used for the title screen in The Final Level, if anyone has ever caught on to that, it's just some generic beat I made, I really wanted to add some sort of melody to it, but since you have a bunch of DJs playing this sort of generic shit that still gets people dancing to it, so I don't feel too bad about it. If I made this mod tho, I'd probably give it to someone and ask them to give it some sort of melody to it, REALLY give it that feel that the DJ did come up with it on GarageBand earlier in the day.

MONSUTA, MONSUTA, MO, MO, MO, MO, MONSUTA

I probably could've come up with an original character for that now too, I think Suu was originally a placeholder character, but I kept her in later in the mod, especially when there's a certain type of mob that's common.

You know, considering the character in question is Suu from Monster Musume, yeah, isn't it kinda weird that there's a movement to show human/demi-human relations can be integrated into society just fine, but they still treat slimes like the wild creatures they are? ~~The point is, I love big fat, anime tiddies, that's the actual message of the anime.~~

@Raymundo I reject your ship! Quote x Misery is way better!

So, original world, original characters, why the fuck are Quote, Misery, and Curly there? Like, looking back at it now, yeah, that is a bit weird. I may actually still have been projecting my friends (online and irl) onto them, but I can't say for sure based on whom. I never did work out what original characters could replace them back when I originally wanted to make this mod into an actual game, called Legend of Terri.

Yeah no, the dialogue is definitely more online friends than irl friends. Honestly aged a bit too well, with some friends I had earlier this year...

I hate that this line is so iconic now. Like calm the fuck down, Misery.

...Oh.

Okay, so, this area. Who remember seeing a different character in this space? That's right, so I wanted this to be a bit of an easter egg in the second demo, but originally, I had another character here, and I'm excited to talk more about this when I play The Final Level, but it was the player character for that mod, and I realized "oh shit, now i gotta make the events of that mod canon", so I have a police officer take her place, searching for her after she was last seen in the nightclub.

For reference, here's the area in the first demo, it shows a different person, but the sprites are tied to the same entity, so.

Terri: gets warned about there being a serial killer on the loose
Also Terri:

I mean, she does think about that...

Okay, the hair dye sidequest. I actually did want to wrap that up in the third demo, but I was thinking of seeing what would happen if Terri were to use it instead. And like, kinda weird that there will be a three year timeskip, and the cashier will still be waiting for their goddamned hair dye, it'll already be brown if i got back to it!

Holy shit it's Yuno Gasai! Nah, that's just Cosplay Girl. So, my biggest regret with her, she was set up to be the main villain in the first half of this mod, and yet she gets cast aside by Dark Terri. I did decide, while I was planning stuff for Legend of Terri, that Cosplay Girl would be the main villain instead. And don't get me wrong, Dark Terri was planned from the getgo, but I hate that there's a setup, and I absolutely missed the opportunity there.

Jesus christ, I really didn't need to set up the lamp posts like that, bright being foreground, and dark being background. That's such a non-crucial detail and I still went with it. Also yes, I played Yume Nikki, how did you know?

And we're now at Cygnus Park, a place that's very much just Grasstown, but with "different" graphics, oooooh. The music used for this stage is Another Winter from Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game, that was a suggestion from @Kenzo_ITN, rest in peace, Ken. I really didn't want to go with the train station/train idea from Terri 2014, so I thought "a park is probably better". Honestly, this stage is not as exciting for a first stage, cuz there's a fucking puzzle in there. I really wanted to make stages with puzzle elements, and I honestly think I could do this and the next stage much better.

I really wish I did a better job at spriting the Deku Baba enemies, tbh.

Only three blocks, seems easy enough.

Pokemon reference!

So, it is possible to go through this section in one go. Also I kinda got lazy with the second and third switches, the map was already made, I just didn't want to have to go through extending it just for two switches...

Yeah, I got nothing for the Dark Crystals. They're just there.

Okay, turns out this Air Master, has a sort of ulterior motive. No, he doesn't. So, I haven't fully planned the whole "The One" schtick, it's just a proxy for hero of time/warrior of light. I did think about getting that elaborated probably not in the third demo, but more in the fourth demo. It's just weird timing for him to mention that.

What a lovely bridge, I hope nobody kills my friend while I'm trying to heal them.

I love how Terri can be such an idiot, but still be able to understand someone when they speak in hexadecimal.

If anyone's curious, here's what was said:

59 6f 75 20 77 6f 6e 27
74 20 75 6e 64 65 72 73
74 61 6e 64 20
6e 6f 77 2c 0d 0a 62 75
74 20 79 6f 75 20 77 69
6c 6c 20 64 69 65 20
75 6e 6c 65 73 73 20 49
20 74 61 6b 65 0d 0a 6f
76 65 72 20 79 6f 75
72 20 62 6f 64 79 2e
------------------------------------
You won't understand now,
but you will die unless I take
over your body.

------------------------------------
57 65 6c 6c 2c 20
49 27 64 20 73 61 79 20
69 74 27 64 20 62 65 20
65 61 73 69 65 72 20
74 6f 20 6b 6e 6f 63 6b
0d 0a 79 6f 75 20 6f 75
74 20 74 68 61 6e 20
65 78 70 6c 61 69 6e 69
6e 67 2e
------------------------------------
Well, I'd say it'd be easier to knock
you out than explaining.

So, who is this mysterious person who Terri fought? Well, you may figure it out who it was through her attack animation, and her taking over Terri's body.

And now something ominous:

Man, this is too dark. I feel that could've been handled much better.

Thanks for STATING the obvious here! :V

Like honestly, I wish I removed the mystery person and just had it lead up to the transition instead. That was a cool effect, and that really got underplayed by unnecessary exposition.

Btw, if you want to know where the second demo part begins, the cutscene after the dream, it shows an animated scene that's kinda unlike the normal npc animations. I used <SMP for that instead, and it makes things a bit more unique, imo. I really don't see anyone using those for just characters instead of, you know, tiles themselves. If Noxid ever made his multi-layer hack public, I'd abuse the hell out of that just for stuff like this.

I do kinda feel bad that there's only one time where you hear Awakening from Final Fantasy 6 play, I had it extend long enough after the cutscene so you can listen to the full song, but when you get out, it's back to Safety.

And um, yeah, I'll leave it off from here, next part, which I'm more than certain will be on another post, because 100 image limit is so fuuuuun, Terri and Curly are going on a date x3

Fun fact, the park was originally going to use this background, and it was not going to use the generic night background from the vanilla game. However, as nice as it looks, it looks a bit too... adobe flash/newgrounds-y, and it was extremely jarring compared to the foreground graphics. I wonder who that shadow is on the moon tho...

Usagi-no-Mekiki · Jul 16, 2023

Happy 10 Year Anniversary, Serri!

Serri · Jul 23, 2023

One busy work week later, and I'm actually available to continue on this shit project.

So not gonna lie, I left a placeholder here, I think there was supposed to be a solid H/V Trigger preventing you from jumping into the water instead. Also why the fuck does Terri have access to the lake? In the suburbs of all places?!

Okay, and now an inside joke, I can't remember if I came up with it, but I'm pretty sure this was from when Mint, Kenzo and I were all talking to each other. I don't think Shaggester was talking with us just yet, I can't even remember if the Lounges were already established or not. Regardless, I'm pretty sure the "I'm all ears, elf ears" joke was associated with Terri at some point, so I put it in the mod. I'd be surprised if this mod was the reason why.

And now this, I did want to start pouring in a hint that maybe Quote, Curly, and Misery weren't from the same world as Terri after all. And funnily enough, "12 years ago" absolutely refers to the game's release in 2004. I know for certain this would be explored further in at least the fourth demo.

The City Church, I can't actually remember if that was going to be a red herring or not. I honestly actually didn't even remember that ever being mentioned until now.

Okay, so I think I had plans for this to be functional, I remember making a test mod years later in 2018, or was it 2019?, and it was pretty much what Terri's Night Out could've gone if you could play as the party members individually.

Here's the stuff on the test mod anyway, wasn't like I had much to even say or do with it to begin with.

So initially, it was going to be used as a test mod for making an RPG style battle, but I also had it so you can play as the characters individually. So either after reaching Blargo, I planned for it to either become a static jrpg battle, or a standard battle that you must do regardless of stats (rip Headman).

Also yes, Headman is in the mod, I was showing it off in the CSMC while working on this for the short amount of time I did, I needed a fourth party member, and just allowed any mod character to be it, don't worry, it wasn't going to be finished anyway.

I do recall scrapping it because I realized "hey, i can actually turn Cave Story into a JRPG", which hoo boy, led to the production of TSC+ Improved, and then several attempts to make such a mod, but I never had the patience to really work on anything.

Welp, after this side note, back to Terri 2016.

Also what the fuck is this

Oh riiiiiight I think the Church was going to be in Ossa. Why didn't I have this be explained?! But yeah, slime invasion. Yay.

And now plans for a cameo for a certain mod character that showed up in everyone's mods at some point at the time. Let's talk Jenn and Saki, they were definitely going to be in Terri's Night Out, I think starting in the third demo, with you being able to visit them. @JonSpider gave me the okay for that, I'm pretty sure in the third demo, when you do visit them, Jenn will give you a watermelon for being the first neighbor to meet them, and your HP will increase from that, like how it did in Jenn's Journey. I think at the same time too, Jon was already in the works for making his mod into a game, idk how progress has gone since like, 2018.

Also, I just love character immersion. We need more lively npcs! None of that regular two sentences and that's it. In the original Cave Story game, the only npc who talks to you the most funnily enough is Mahin. Mahin's a real one.

Guys look, it's the Aar TF2 recording his video!

And now, something that showed I was massively influenced by something. Yep, I modeled Cygnus Tower after the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. I was watching videos on youtube about cities in southeast asia, and I've always found them interesting, it was also funny learning Taipei is actually a sister city to Phoenix, which is what Cygnus was based off of.

Ah, blank walls, I did have plans to include paintings and light fixtures in the lobby for the third demo. Also the background music for this is Rubber Resort, a song made on PiyoPiyo by Pixel himself. I wanted to hear more PiyoPiyo music be transcribed to Organya, so I did one myself.

Uh oh.

54 65 72 72 69 21 20
42 65 20 63 61 72 65
66 75 6c 21 20 54 68
65 72 65 27 73 20 61
20 64 61 72 6b 2c 20
73 68 61 64 6f 77 79
20 66 6f 72 63 65 20
63 6f 6d 69 6e 67 20
61 66 74 65 72 20 79
6f 75 21
------------------------------------
Terri! Be careful! There's a dark, shadowy force coming after you!
------------------------------------
49 74 27 73 20 74 6f
6f 20 6c 61 74 65 20
74 6f 20 65 78 70 6c
61 69 6e 21 20 53 68
65 27 73 20 63 6f 6d
69 6e 67 20 72 69 67
68 74 20 6e 6f 77 21
------------------------------------
It's too late to explain! She's coming right now!

And there's the main villain that shouldn't have been, Dark Terri. Can we just talk about how blatant I have been about Terri being female Link? I haven't? Well I'll tell ya, it all started in 2012 when I first drew he- Oh you already know that. Welp, so Dark Terri has been a planned villain for even Terri's Night Out 2 when that was a thing, but I never did have the chance to get to her, I'm glad I got to put her in this version of the mod, and in hindsight, I feel she has been overhyped. Especially when Cosplay Girl was introduced in the first demo. The third demo was going to dive deeper about her, if at all.

Even Terri was expecting the Cosplay Girl, who mind you, is still at large after three years.

Also yeah, Dark Terri was supposed to be super easy for that first battle. I mean, with her rushing at you real fast, she's acting like she can counter melee attacks, so ofc it'd be completely unexpected to throw fireballs at her.

Damn, I think Dark Terri may be broken. Damned ASM! But yeah, so, a bit of development lore of Dark Terri, if you've seen Bravest Warriors, then you'll know what may happen of her. So there's an episode where the characters successfully bring in a video game character from their virtual world simulation over to real life. However, in the episode, turns out because the character is in the real world, he suddenly becomes God and he explodes to become basically assimilate the universe with himself, and so everything is all Wankershim. That's basically Dark Terri, but she's had failproofs that certainly won't fail. Maybe.

Also Terri gave her that name confirmed.

And because of Dark Terri now existing in the real world, turns out Mystery Girl is just Terri's subconscious/past life. And yes, her appearance is absolutely based on Link from BotW (and I remember at one point people thought Link was a girl after that teaser trailer) Don't worry, we'll get to the lore in the third demo!

Hold up, aren't you from somewhere else?

And now more missed stuff that was going to be in the third demo. So first elevator, of course, if you played the first demo, that would take you to the basement, which I don't think I had plans for at the time, but I knew that was going to be where you do get that heart crystal from when the building was under construction. Second elevator, is to take you upstairs to a mall-like area, and I think that's where Burger Town is going to be relocated to. Hair dye quest pending. Also, after posting that last part of the commentary, I now remember, I think the hair dye quest was going to be party of a larger quest for the ultimate weapon, which was going to be the Rainbow Spur from Terri 2014. That was still planned to be in the mod. Third elevator, that'll take you to the sewers, where the next part of this commentary will go to! And I mean, we don't really have a choice, the second elevator is under repairs, and the first elevator is busy at the time being.

Fun fact, the quote box is stupid. Idk if it's a bug on my end or on the forums' but sometimes the "click to expand" feature will be missing.

So, how come we gotta go to the sewers to either access the other town, or even the other side of the city? Anyway, on to the sewers!

Oh shit it's Hinata Hyuga! ...Never mind it's Cosplay Girl.

And now finally, probably the real hero of this mod, Rikku (I mean she had one K in her name at the time, but shh). So, Katie Navarro, renamed to Rikku Kadena, is basically the local town hero, and I can write a fucking essay about her, she had a few reiterations since Terri 2016 because for a augmented cyborg, she doesn't deserve to wear such basic clothing.

And she's very much the only serious character in this whole mod.

Damn I wish I had her say "haven't we met before?" They never have. Terri doesn't even realize Rikku's her neighbor, lmao.

Also the Peace Slime, I couldn't think of anything. He was originally going to look different, but I thought his appearance was a bit too similar to the sewer boss, so I decided to change his appearance up.

Also I just love the immediate rivalry between Terri and Rikku, like, the audacity of this bitch. I leave it to interpretation on who'd think that.

New party member!

Also this. I mean, imagine being a professional and you have to be accompanied by a couple people who have zero knowledge of what the hell is going on.

But yeah no, the sewer level, I really wanted to put one in since Terri's Night Out 2, because not many mods really used the concept, I know Japanese Cave Story 2 used a similar stage, even though it's still very much just the living waterway. I also very much just wanted to make a level that doesn't start on the left side, cuz let's be real here, everyone's done that. For the music, yes, I know Jenka 2 is playing, and I mean, at the time of release, it works, I really wanted to use Dreamer from Streets of Rage 2 for the music, it really suited the stage better, but I wanted to release the second demo on September 24, which is Terri's birthday, so I had to cut that idea and save it for the third demo.

Btw, I love the tutorial in the save room, I can't believe that's the first step of level design I made in this mod. So, Aar tells you to look out for open pipes that you can enter, and lo and behold, there's one in the save room. Cuz then you get to see this mario reference, that was entirely done with the <SMP command.

Okay so, the whole puzzle in this level, I feel it could be done better, if I had <VAR installed, I'd definitely have the changed water levels save if you leave the main room. Also there was no water level sinking animation that I could find, it seemed to go up and only up, so I had to do what was done for the water puzzle in WTF Story and manually move the water level entities down. It was such a shame too that this mod predated the water-level hack, where you can use any background and have the water sprite use an entirely different spritesheet altogether. Literally all the "background" part is all tiles. I was running low on space.

Now, interestingly, as shown by @SeasonsOfDestiny, but it's actually possible to bypass the second terminal, cuz I put in four that you have to interact with, and with how high the water level is in this section, you'd have to find another terminal to get to there first. But it is possible to use the third terminal instead.

The second terminal's actually here.

Also this section is such a gotcha moment, it kinda sucks.

There we have it, Aar is basically Luna and Artemis. We're just playing Sailor Moon this whole time!

I can't remember if I just forgot about it, but, I could've sworn there was a shut off entrance to another room over here. Like, I think it was for one of the optional quests for the Rainbow Spur. Huh.

Yeah, it was going to be another pair of these, but in that save room.

This section's fun. I love how you can just manipulate how frequent the drops can fall.

Uh oh.

I feel this could've been done much better. I've had people say the background sorta tripped them up during this section, which I mean, fair.

And we're back to using Mk II and that was actually going to be left permanent after the sewer level. There were plans for there to be a Mk III, I think that was going to be used for the Nemesis. At that point, I probably would've used ASM and turned the ducks into a slow, but devastating projectile.

That's what she said.

We're in the home stretch now. So, the giant slime boss, or Suu, I really didn't know how that could be done, cuz I wanted it to be a TSC boss, but I also wanted to put some ASM into the mix as well, I had @BLink change the shooting Gaudi entity so it can be a patterned projectile shooter coming out of Suu's tendril. I was heavily inspired by Battle Kid for the idea too, especially when at the time, I was doing a playthrough of the game on my youtube channel.

I am upset I didn't use <CMN for all the tiles except for the bottom two rows, that would've made the effect look so much more dramatic.

Rikku really just wanted to see Terri die.

And boom, she's done. And that is it for the mod.

So, what was going on in Terri's Night Out? Who was Cosplay Girl? What's up with Dark Terri? What happened to Legend of Terri? I have so much to unpack here.

In the third demo, which starts right after the fight, Terri can walk past the left force field and will go to the next room, where it shows Suu in her signature bucket from Monster Musume, turns out she wasn't getting any pay for her job in the night club, so she started a job strike, but the other slimes took it as a means to protest against the city pretty much, which wasn't her intention, and so she asks Terri to take her to Ossa to hide.

However, Dark Terri shows up, floating in the air, and catches the gang off guard and opens the flood gates, rushing everyone out of the sewers and into Ossa Lake. I can't remember if Terri washes up at the shallow end or if she has to swim out, beats me, and when they realize they're at the other side of the bridge, they decide to let Suu go and continue on their journey to the Church, also unlocking the route back to Terri's house, and consequently, Downtown Cygnus. @X-Calibar pointed out there wasn't any special interaction if you go to Rikku's house with her in the party, that was a massive oversight on my part and that was going to be in the third demo, you would also be able visit Jenn and Saki, where they give you a watermelon for more HP. You'll also be able to go to the upper level in Cygnus Tower, where you can continue the Hair Dye quest, as well as shop around. I think I had plans to be able to buy stuff, but since this was before <BUY ever existed, and I didn't know how to use <VAR, I figured the upper level of Cygnus tower could be where you can unlock more side quests, all of which would lead up to you building the Rainbow Spur. Sorta like how you can get the Broken Spur fixed in WTF Story, when you unlock all tickets in the amusement park.

Terri and Curly separate from Rikku, who says she's got more important stuff to do and leaves the party, and they go and check the church to see if there's any documents pertaining to Curly from 12 years ago or prior. No data was found, but for Terri, the archive has noted that there's an ancient ruin that could be of interest to her, as she seems to have ties to it, but it's in the other side of the planet and far from the area. At first, Terri doesn't really see much of a reason to go, but then all of a sudden, she gets a call from her mom, who asks her to visit her (I can't remember where in the world the ruins were set in, I know I didn't exactly want Cygnus to be in Arizona, so I wanted to use another coastline, and funnily enough, looking in the development files, it's just the Kanto area in Japan.

So after flying over to Terri's mom's place, the three started to hang out and chat, nothing much, I think there were also going to be more side quests in the surrounding area, I really wanted to make it feel more like a metroidvania than Cave Story did, despite the seemingly linear story. Terri decides to sit outside and take some fresh air, and she suddenly gets attacked, on guard with how Dark Terri has been after her, but instead, it turned out to be Cosplay Girl, except she's not in cosplay, even though her appearance is very much based on Linkle's from Hyrule Warriors. In the original notes, her name was just going to be a corruption of Terri's name, from Terri to Teddi, but looking at it now, it's sorta stupid. And I remember there was going to be a chase sequence and Terri manages to escape Cosplay Girl, for the time being, she goes back to her mom's house and notices Curly isn't there, Terri's mom points out that Curly thought she went to the ruins and so Terri decides to go and catch up to her.

I didn't really have much plans for the ruins, I know it was going to dive deep into Terri's, as well as Mystery Girl's past, since they're both one in the same person. This is all I have made for the ruins, and it's just a few tiles.

Let's see, I think you fight a stronger of Dark Terri in the ruins, she then goes and kidnaps Curly, saying she's also kidnapped her friends as well, and has taken them all the way back to Cygnus, to Omen Mountain. Rikku shows up, saying Dark Terri has suddenly become a new threat, and tells Terri to stay put while she takes care of the problem, which the elf takes huge offense of, and decides to go anyway, unlocking the double jump and going herself. And I think that was going to be the end of the third demo, from what I remember of my original plans, until I decide to make a game out of the ideas instead of putting it all in a Cave Story mod. Ofc, the Cave Story and Monster Musume references have to be scrapped anyway, but I did plan the ending for this mod, believe it or not.

After returning to Cygnus, Terri decides it's all or nothing and climb up Omen Mountain, and she gets halted by Rikku, and they both have a battle with each other, but it ends in a draw as they get interrupted by Rikku's caretaker, Nekoma. The very person spotted in Terri's premonition. Nekoma realizes this whole thing was Terri's fault and orders the two to work together, before heading off, and tells them to meet her in the power plant embedded in the mountain. After reaching the end of the level, Nekoma decides to upgrade the two's artillery and give a lore dump, which I mean, I didn't get that far in writing the story. When they head outside and reach the top of the mountain, Dark Terri elaborates that this world isn't so different from hers and Terri's, and the whole world can be manipulated with the shadow clone's newfound powers, she uses the power plant's supply to drain Quote, Curly, and Misery of their powers, allowing Dark Terri to transform into her full powered form, and Dark Terri decides to showcase her new strength by launching her and Rikku over to Cygnus Park. Terri and Rikku have a big argument, and Rikku insists she's going to stop this once and for all, while Terri lays and slumps in depression.

I don't think I wrote in anything between that and the final battle, I know another character resembling Nekoma shows up, him being Mark, Nekoma's boyfriend.

Now, the final battle, Terri gains her powers after incorporating Mystery Girl into her soul fully, she wards off Cosplay Girl, who is actually completely unaware of what's been going on, after her defeat, she says she'll be back, leading for a sequel that'll never happen, but the idea was going to be used for her to replace Dark Terri in Legend of Terri. As for Dark Terri, she has an even match with Terri, and Dark Terri starts losing her upper hand, and was about to be taken down by her good counterpart. As Terri deals the finishing blow, she thinks everything is finally over, and she gets to put her into an eternal rest, free from her world, and the world Terri's in. But then Dark Terri's powers go out of control, taking her corpse as a vessel and transforms into the final boss, Queen Daisuki. Queen Daisuki never really was explored much, I had a couple concept art ideas, but the only one I have saved with me is a facepic I conceived, I didn't like it though. She was planned to be a malicious code that Terri's masters never managed to keep away, which would lead to further confusion on Terri's past. Anyway, Nekoma, Mark, and Rikku help boost Terri's power, allowing her to have the edge over Queen Daisuki and destroy her, saving everyone and the world, Terri proposes to Curly, and they live happily ever after. ... Or do they?

Legend of Terri was basically just Terri's Night Out, but without any Cave Story or direct anime references, I had plans to make it a game done on Game Maker, I never did get into working on it because well, I'm lazy. Cosplay Girl was going to be the main villain, Terri's sister was going to be in the game, I know Dark Terri was going to have some sort of cameo, but I forgor.

You may think that's the end of it, but there's one more detail that was going to be in Terri 2016, believe it or not. And it was going to be the Save File story. Which would lead into the mod I'm going to talk about the next post! There's a reason why I touched upon certain characters very lightly, they've been in the mod's files the whole time!

No more Terri this time, I promise! Trust me... or not.

Serri · Aug 1, 2023

Time for another modcon entry, this time with The Final Level! The premise for this mod is that it's the final level of a game you've never played, and yeah, I got nothing else to say about the premise. So I really wanted to use some of my characters from 2011, a time before Terri was even created, and I thought it'd be a neat little idea to make this mod, put in a level or two, give the story that never existed an end, and it'd be all and stuff. At least, if I wasn't given such handicaps. This mod went through such a development hell, I was essentially handicapped for like, 10 days, during the month long period given to work on this mod, because there was a deadline. My old laptop, it was already going through issues with a flickering screen, but then one day, while I was working on the mod, it just flat out stopped wanting to work. I had to order a new screen immediately, and then manually install it, it was hell. Never repair laptops, you're better off with either getting a new one or just getting a desktop PC entirely. With the handicap, as well as deadline, I had to cut corners, and I still somehow got 5th place. For a mod that uses almost no ASM. And I did this contest just so I can take the joke prize. I ended up not taking it, but I got some good games out of it, and I even got RPG Maker VX Ace, a program that was used for the joke prize. I wonder this mod is still worth its ranking...

So right off the bat, there was going to be an image to the right in the title screen, but due to time constraints, I couldn't really do that, so we have a title screen that essentially got Mega Man 3 syndrome.

Ah Cook.pxm, how are you today? So you play as Judith Estrella, a character who was based on an IRL friend of mine from back in middle school/high school, her only other appearance was in Terri's Night Out, which was then changed in the second demo, because shoot, how the fuck do we explain that? The two mods were decided to be connected to each other, after this mod was released, and I kinda didn't like the random continuity error.

Oh hey it's this joke.

God I forgot how this place looked, I still surprise myself.

So I decided to have Judith's cousins be the ones in charge of her, I think Judith wasn't a fighter but she was enlisted in the military anyway, and this is the part where she has to do the fighting herself because, god knows why.

Hey weren't you in Terri's Night Out? How did you end up in Cygnus Tower?

God, this elevator was a pain to work with, because the original entity was extremely slow, but also you had to give each one of the entities their own event number, there's some cases where you can assign the same event number to an X amount of entities so they can do stuff simultaneously, the lift block entity is not one of those that can allow you to pull that off.

Hey gurl! I am for sure I got this from Adventure Time.

Ah yes, the elements. The macguffins of importance. You know, from earlier in the game.

And Judith's so excited to learn more about them.

Okay, General Mitch, I think he was the most fleshed out character in this mod, mainly because I knew what sort of role he was going to have from the get-go. So essentially, he's a cross between your typical evil dictator, your typical evil mutant, and Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy 6. He was an experiment that got too powerful for his creator's own good, let's just say. Also music is for this scene "Another World of Beasts" from Final Fantasy 6.

I can do this so much better now.

I love this effect, it's just using the Green Devil generator and a few Rollings. Also, those sprites, they were ripped from Super Mario Special 3, a bootlegged game created by Makon Soft. tl;dr it has awful controls and it's basically unplayable.

Now, contrary to what some people think, I just made up some random bullshit for the elements. It was a month's time to make the mod, what you think I had the time to actually think this all through? The censored object is even an indirect Futurama reference. Again, cutting corners here.

My honest reaction to necessarily unnecessary exposition. Like, it had to be explained, but not really, but also we're starting from right at the end. I was given criticisms for making this scene be absolute exposition, some in a more harsh light than others. If a mod can have story, let it have story. Not everything has to be so cryptic, but they don't have to be so hand-holdy either. I still think this whole scene was necessary for the mission briefing, and even then, if this were part of a full game, a portion of all this would still have to be explained anyway, as well as a fully thought out idea of what the elements would even be.

And now for the battle outfit, where the only perk is having the ability to fly. I mean, it's pretty alright, I just an excuse to use the Booster 0.8, because every mod ever uses the Booster 2.0 right off the bat, for better or for worse. But for this mod, the Booster 0.8 is more appropriate.

This isn't good.

Okay, this ship is just straight up inspired by the one from Battle Kid. I think I was playing Battle Kid on my channel at the time. I can't remember.

This shot took so much effort, it uses sprites from Ikachan, Cave Story, and Lagrange Point, a game that Konami made for the NES. I've had so many people asking why I used two moons, because the one from bkOside was used. It's supposed to be the sun, how was it not obvious with the shadows cast over the objects?

CXG 2011, that is a double reference, 2011 being the year some of the characters in this mod were created at, but also it was based on one of my old usernames, CrackyXG. I never did remember why I came up with that, it was part of my old channel's URL, and thank goodness I didn't use this name here.

Gurl, they're probably dead. I never did determine what their fate was going to be, but even if you consider the end, everyone was going to die anyway.

And now time for the level, the playable part of this mod. I really wanted to use robots and other enemies, as well as a different tileset, but I didn't have the time. I sure had time to give the stage new music, which was the Wily Station theme from Mega Man World 3. Mega Man was definitely a main inspiration for the stage, and I think it was a bit too inspired...

All thanks to these.

And this is a good reason why we have the Booster 0.8.

I really wanted to only have the camera go left to right in this section, by having it focus on an H/V trigger as you go, but for some reason, if you stop and go stationary, the camera will shake. I may have been at fault for that, because I had the camera follow you at a rate of 20 ticks, instead of the default 16 ticks, so I think with the fact that the H/V trigger follows the player at the same speed (16 ticks), it makes the camera bug out. I just really wanted to emulate Mega Man's screen scrolling.

Oh no what is this.

Oh god damn it. I have to thank Kenzo for the idea, back when he made FS_SF. ~~Also side note, I just realized the thread's number is 6969.~~

To be fair tho, despite the unintentional Booster skip for that segment, I didn't disable the Booster anyway. Now cue to earlier in the game where you have to do the Yoku block sections, and it's just Judith in her normal attire instead of right now.

This was a cool section. I have a tunnel around the room where those orbs were traveling through for the effect.

Oh boy, the drop, you know what his means.

This force beam in particular, it was such an IWBTG moment. The saving grace is that I put in a save point right before that segment.

So this room, it was originally going to be the second part of the level, but the time constraints wouldn't really let me do that, so I decided to just make it a walking sim corridor before getting to the final boss. But, why is Quiet playing, then?

I even decided to play on how empty this room was.

You have terrorized our every day life for quite some time, and I shall somewhat see the end of it!

I think I played around my time constraints a bit too much. I get the whole fourth wall thing wasn't for everyone. I had to come up with something.

Who the fuck is this asshole.

Mmmm, that aged a bit too well. "He" isn't even a "he" anymore

I like how the boss battle was done tbh, it's just a modified Doctor battle. The battle theme was Catastrophe, an original org made by @VinylCheese, and it was for the boss music contest that @SuperJaws100 hosted back in 2015. I figured that suited the boss well enough.

Well that was... convenient.

Yeah no this IS overkill, why would the most powerful human ever go for using a giant robot?

An Undertale reference... Blehhhhhhh

And the boss, it's all TSC. No custom entities for this one. I just had some null entities turn into invisible Stumpies with the "Run event on contact" flag on, and make it so certain attacks can run when the player unknowingly crosses paths with them.

Didn't ask.

And now credits, the only time one of my mods has credits, with a high quality version of The Way Back Home playing!

And now that The Final Level is finished, I'll be able to explain this room at the end of the mod. For what reason did I have with this? I'll explain it all very soon!

Hmm, I wonder what was behind the door...

So, what was the room at the end of The Final Level? And what were my plans for behind the door? Well, this was like, while I was working on the second demo for Terri's Night Out, and I wanted to integrate a little side story for the mod, because people were still playing my two mods at the time, and I thought it'd be interesting to do a little follow-up for The Final Level anyway, since people seemed to want more. Unfortunately, because I wanted to release the second demo on Terri's birthday, I decided to postpone work on the scenario for work on the third demo. I did have to move some maps around for the second demo, but I was glad to just be able to at least implement the map in the mod already.

(From left to right: Terri 2016 Demo 1, The Final Level, Terri 2016 Demo 2)

And what do you get when you load the save file in the mod? This.

To this day I don't think anyone's ever actually tried using the save file, I did hint towards it and even downright say you can do that in the CSMS a long time ago, but even then, people didn't play Terri's Night Out anymore, if anything, people were wanting me to make the Final Level prequel, which I haven't really done anything with for the idea.

I think the only person that really did catch on to me having the Judith sprites and facepics in there was Slither, but even then, they paid more attention to the fact that Jenn and Saki were in there instead. Now what if I told you that wasn't the only time the Save File was planned for something again? Besides the Final Level prequel or Terri's Night Out? Now, I do plan on covering MaGCSL Story Mode, an unreleased mod that saw development hell due to burnout, inner drama, and a tie that felt so personal that I couldn't keep on working on it even after everything has been cleared up. But, I feel it's appropriate to show what happens if you use the save file from The Final Level to the mod.

I am so glad I got to use <VAR to my advantage, it makes resetting every flag that was originally set in The Final Level so much easier, I thought of dedicating a chunk of separate flags for the scenario in Terri's Night Out, but with how many flags MaGCSL already uses, I had to make it so every flag counts, as well as the fact that they'll need to clear after the mini-game ends anyway, save for a Variable that will hold onto some data that shows you've played it, I can't remember if there were any further rewards planned for this scenario, besides the new skin you already unlock when you load the save file. I mean, 4600 flags was more than enough to use for the levels, and The Final Levels used such negligible amounts, but they went to Flag 3000, apparently.

If you decide to play the mini-game, nothing much as made for it. You just get lore for that was going to be set for the Final Level prequel, and a long corridor that goes nowhere when you reach the end of it.

K. Navarro, that name sounds familiar...

If you do choose to skip the mini-game, which you can very well do, you'll start MaGCSL like normal. But with Judith unlocked in the player skin room.

And that's just about it really for the save file, while this feature was never implemented in any of my cancelled mods, I didn't forget to keep trying to use it. Who knows, maybe in a future mod I'll consider trying it again!

Welp, only one more mod, or rather, one series of mods, to go, and one of them wasn't even released until September 30, 2021, on Doukutsu Club of all places. That's right, soon we'll be going through the development process for the Make a Good Cave Story Level contest, and I'm kinda excited to go over some of the stuff, because hoo boy, while the contest ended, and the winners were announced, the whole process behind the scenes was hell. So bear with me when I go over it.

This should hopefully fit in the rest of this post. We're now getting into the Make a Good Cave Story Level contest, and honestly, the whole setup for it was a mess. So back in 2017, I got heavily inspired by the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest from the Sprites Inc. forums, I used to watch RoahmMythril do a playthrough on the first two contests, I watched Nico Evaluates torture himself by having to play through the slop in the second contest, point being, I wanted to do a similar thing for Cave Story. And at the same time, I think it was Modcon 2017 and the multiple other contests happening that same year that caused a bit of a strain in the community, because you have people trying hard to make Cave Story mods that are completely based on the vanilla game itself, and then you have the mods that were absolutely gimmicky and was heavily focused on ASM, that the creators sorta forgot how to do proper stage/game design and have them released half-baked. So I proposed the idea to @Mint that there should be a modding contest solely based on level design, and we decided to start it up.

Before the contest, we held a vote on any custom assets that could be implemented, as sort of a middle ground for going either pure vanilla or going very limited on the ASM, and ofc we had to face backlash over that idea by some people, because nobody wants to have fun in a contest aimed for level design. And then we opened up for the judging applications, and I had the idea for me and Mint to create a mod for that.

Yeah, the Judging Applications mod was an interesting idea, so basically we put in three sample levels so people can be able to critique them all. As hosts, Mint and I automatically became judge, and we decided to have three slots open for the role. Of the people who ended up becoming judges, only one of them played the damned thing. As for the levels, we had one made by me, one made by Mint, and the third stage, I thought how funny it'd be if people would go and have to review an actual level from Cave Story, one that Pixel made.

Stage 1 was an unfinished thing for a mod Mint releases later on called vorC, I may have dropped the ball on it and had her rush on the magcsl version, I just kinda wanted to go with a schedule for things, and having a 8-9 hour difference between time zones was pretty straining. At very least, Mint decided to finish the mod on her own time, and later on make a mod called Special World: Moonside in 2022. Definitely check both mods out.

Stage 3 was basically Last Cave, but you go in reverse. It was a dumb idea, at the very least it's very well doable, I think this level was actually the hardest to review because well, it's Pixel's design, and nobody here, me and Mint included, has ever really thought "hey, i should review Cave Story as if it's a mod itself!" I still think that it'd make a good mental exercise if you want to review something for what it is, as well as remove the tinted goggles that we still wear to this day when it comes to this game. ~~I mean, we can all agree Cave Story sucks, but that's beyond the point.~~

And then there's Stage 2, there's a reason why I went over the other two in this order, because this is a level I made. So this is Nimbase, I mean, Sky Base. I just wanted to use both the Egg Corridor and the Core tiles in the same map, and they both worked together pretty well, I thought. The music playing for it is a cover of Tengu Man from Mega Man & Bass, made by Tpcool. I think the music choice was an unintentional tongue in cheek reference, considering what had influenced me to work on this contest in the first place.

...Maybe this is Nimbase. I think I had Legend of Zelda on my mind when I did that, tho.

I really wanted to have it so the enemies get in your way as you go down and try to light the torch up, but that was when I learned running TSC events gives you invincibility, so I had to design the part like this instead.

I don't think anyone knows about this easter egg. But basically, you can shoot Toroko, and that will shock Momorin up. That will cost you half your health, tho.

Like this.

So the whole point of the level is make it so you can climb up this area. Just light the torches up and wow, this is actually pretty similar to the park level in Terri's Night Out.

Uh oh.

I love a good fakeout. Don't worry, a basu showed up and I killed it.

And down we go.

I think I wanted to put in a second segment in, but I just wanted to get to the boss so you have Quote falling through some clouds instead.

And this is the boss I went with. Lol

This is how the stages were made to end, because that's how MaGMML did it.

Oh hey, it's us!

But yeah, the judging levels, they weren't even needed. @Bubbler ended up taking the role because he played it, and then @Hiino and @Noxid also became judges because well, they and everyone else convinced us to. :balrog:

But it was all good tho, we got the people we needed. And so, I made the template mod suited for the contest, alongside some help from Slither, and started up the contest for all to work on their stages with.

Btw, did anyone even notice this scene in the Judging Application mod?

Serri · Aug 16, 2023

The contest went on for a month, there was admittedly, a stagnant interest in the whole thing. People were more anticipating the upcoming Modcon than this one, there were some behind the scenes that I will not dive into, several patches for the devkit mod to make some stuff easier, and then there's the troubleshooting over something I had no control over and I couldn't really help them about it. Not even Slither or Noxid knew what the hell was going on, especially when the person reporting the issue didn't want to elaborate further. Then once all the entries submitted, I compiled them all into one mod so they can all be presented and played, for the judges and I to decide which one was the best. The mod was also released for crown opinions on which one their favorite was. I think that was going to contribute to something during judging, but I don't think that followed through, really. We all basically just stuck with the rubric I made for the Judging application:

Judging example rubric:

Playability: --/15 Whether the level is playable or not, and if it is something you enjoyed so much that you'd play it again.
Consistency: --/15 How difficult is the mod, and how fair is it when it as it progresses?
Mechanics: --/10 How well used are the gimmicks in the level, whether it's based on TSC or weapon usage?
Aesthetics: --/10 How does it look? Does it look good? Fine? Ugly? A glitched mess?

NOTES FOR WRITTEN EVALUATIONS:
- If the first playthrough isn't enough, you may play again and see if there's anything you've missed or if you've changed your mind.
- They do not have to follow the rubric's format.
- Meming is allowed, but toxicity and image links are not. This is to help give out a more detailed review, if necessary.
- Judge the levels for the levels themselves, not the people who created them.

Simple enough, so the only logical step is to play the five entries that were submitted.

Man this is nostalgia to look at. Credit over the project at the time went to me and Mint for being the founders and for arranging the whole thing those few months, and Slither got credited because literally, none of the messing around with <VAR would've been done without them, and I've made sure it all ran smoothly between playing the levels and exiting them.

Now, I chose to make the levels only mod because I was in the planning stages for Story Mode, and I wanted to have the levels at least be playable before judging was done, unlike a certain contest centered around Mega Man levels. Like, as nice of an idea as it was to play the levels after they were rated by the judges, the MaGMML games had so much extra content, let alone the increasing amount of levels between contests (first contest had 26 levels, second contest had 100+ levels, third contest had 176 entries, and who knows how many fucking more levels there's going to be for extra content, since that game is still in production after 5 years). It didn't feel worth doing something like that, and I wanted everyone to play them after they were turned in.

Also, a testament to how hard it was to iron out bugs for this mod, even though Slither was the one who made the TSC, I was pretty much the only other person who messed with it, and I wanted to make sure all of the flags and stuff don't cancel each other out. This is version 1.12 too, meaning there were 12 updates after being released.

And actually, before starting to play, I realized this mod hasn't been playable for at least 3 years, like, even when I thought I fixed the download last year, when @Cibryll wanted to play this. And I never realized I uploaded one of the development versions of the mod instead. And none of the levels were plugged into it. :balrog:

The download has been fixed, you can check the MaGCSL thread to play it as well if you're interested.

Also, here's my old evaluations from when this contest was up, I'll try to add the others' reviews to it as well.
Mint's reviews (not found)
Hiino's reviews
Noxid's reviews
Bubbler's reviews

So, let's play the levels or smth. Surely the first one to start with isn't actually a whole mod squeezed into the level requirements, and takes 3 and a half hours to bea-

Haha, NO. I may have been the only judge to have the patience to play through the entire thing, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have the patience now.

So, idk why Cyber did this, this level breaks the rules in multiple ways (using <IMG and tiles to bypass the <FAC limit, making all the maps absurdly massive, not crediting all assets), and most importantly, this level ended up becoming disqualified because none of the other judges wanted to finish it, and understandably so.

So, if I'm not going to play this level again, what was it all about? I should have the notes on me at least. You play as some robot called Insiemer, and you travel through a fortress, which is extremely huge for some reason. Then when you get out, you go through this hotel, and turns out several characters from several different mods have been brought to a different world instead. Hmm, sounds familiar. Then you gotta go through this extremely red world, your new partners get ambushed by the Doctor and Ballos, Then it turns out General Mitch from The Final Level was responsible for the whole thing, using the mind of a mod developer (who is very clearly Cyber) to make this new perfect world, but none of it is under his control. Then you gotta defeat the Doctor and Ballos, I think. It's all a blur.

This whole mod was absolutely a mess, with how long it takes to clear each and every room, as well as have all of them be an absolute fucking maze, the most I could ever really praise it for, and this comes from my own review for this level, "The story is pretty interesting."

Otherwise, unless you want to be a masochist, don't play this level. As much as it's still playable.

And now for the actual ranked levels, because Insiemer's Odyssey was disqualified. Starting with the level that got 4th place. Honestly, I forgot how this level went, I'm gonna have to play it and go off my original review for it.

Already an interesting start, idk how this can go. Also the physics are extremely fast and slippery. You also start with quite the variety of weapons.

The Spur, Shotgun, Bomb Launcher, Blade, and Fireball are your weapons.

Oh god, it's all coming back now, this fucking boss. So, this can be extremely frustrating, because you already have the crazy player physics, then you have these crows that don't fucking die, and you have to not only destroy a deleet, but also the red crystals that show up. And the crows are solid entities too, meaning they can make you clip through the floor, making it possible to get softlocked (thankfully i was only pushed in by a tile).

And then there's this, like, what the hell do I even do? The bones can't die, too??

Oh, you can skip the lot of it, but you still have to fight stuff.

Okay second try, I got to do what I was supposed to do. But there was really no tell or sense of direction to know what the hell I was supposed to do other than kill enemies. Like nothing happens even if I don't kill them until I kill every enemy, and the crystal that was surrounded by the crows and bones.

Huh, I don't think I ever actually went this far in my old playthrough, it's just again, the lack of direction. I tried going in the "well" earlier after a press fell in there, but the spike was still in there. And I thought how bullshit it would have to be to have to do the whole boss prior without taking any damage whatsoever. However, you just have to go left, away from the town, which is the last place where you would look.

Hell if I know, the forced interactions by colliding with the denizens is kinda obstructive.

And oops, the level wasn't finished. Even though it was only a month. X, were you just making a full on mod as well? I mean, everyone rated it so I guess it counts as a level, with everything that was submitted. And I mean, the finished parts did feel like a level, even though the whole gauntlet at the start was very unfair.

Now, I could just get the element now, but I think I'll see the rest of the stage.

I have made a severe, and continuous lapse in my judgement. The type of platforming and the physics, this is just pure kaizo territory, and i do not have the patience for anything kaizo difficulty.

But yeah um, I'm more than certain nothing happens if you collect all elements in this mod. So I'm just gonna go and say I'm done. Here's some screenshots of how the parts of the explorable level looks through Booster's Lab, which, yeah, it looks very interesting, I like how the church looks. Like, it's an interesting choice of going with tileset limits, even though you were more than allowed to make custom graphics.

So yeah, I do stand by my point from my old review, the concept is interesting, but the lack of direction and insane difficulty sways me from wanting to continue, I would've loved to see this get continued, even with a more fair difficulty setting. 5 years later and it looks like that isn't the case...

I do think it's still worth it's ranking at 4th place, there were prizes for the top 4 entries in terms of scoring, pretty much everyone except for Cyber got prizes out of this.

A couple weeks and a throat infection later, ~~and several recording sessions later,~~ it's time to get to the third stage, ranking at 3rd. So interestingly, it's actually pretty close between the top three, like, the judges and I each got our own tastes, some place them so much higher than others, it's especially even closer between this and second place, only off by a 0.4 point margin.

It was very much Mint's favorite stage, because challenging platformers are like, one of her weaknesses. ~~Yet she won't pick up Mega Man.~~ So let's see how this one goes.

A little introduction for the stage. Also I forgot Slither made the facepics, they hold up well.

Rood.

This is such a rare insult, like, it must be that bad if the last time you've bathed was a few hours ago. And I just had to remind myself that this is Tommy's style of comedy.

God, there's so many choices.

I love how the professor guy says it's a judgement-free zone, yet finds ways to roast you for choosing one of the only three options anyway.

And now this is the part where I could go and start running it through like normal, but here's a bit of an issue. There's variety in this whole thing. With three regular weapon stages, and 6 weapon/attribute combinations, I'd have to run through the whole thing 6 times. And not only that, I can't even just focus on playing the stages and typing everything down at the same time, because that'll take very long, and wanna hear the truth about the different stages? They're all copy/pasted variants of the stages, depending on what they are (weapon only, horizontal boost, double jump). So, what can I do then? Well, I've decided to play and record the stages, and then type about them as we watch them. Because no really, I'd still be here if I just typed this all in.

Okay so like, I chose to record this from hardest to easiest, as well as starting from weapons only, then to horizontal boost, then to double jump.

Weapons only

So right off the bat, Tommy knew what he was doing with the weapons, accommodating for what the weapons do. I will say there are some parts, especially for the blade where it can either get too close for comfort, yet still doable, or where there are segments where the lv 3 blade is probably a better bet than lv 1 or lv 2. And it's not the blade that you just throw like in regular old Cave Story, it's a hack that @Hina made, and it allows for melee combat. And for Level 3, you get to shoot a beam, not unlike the Master Sword from Legend of Zelda. In the original hack, it would shoot the level 3 polar star bullets, but they're too stronk and because Mint and I didn't want to mess with the bullet values because well, the polar star was still a weapon option to use for submissions, so we had the blade shoot lv 2 polar star bullets instead for a nerf.
As for the nemesis, it's a hack made by @Noxid where basically, it teleports you at the bullet's max range. While it can be used as a defense against enemies, it can very well send you to trouble if you're not being careful. It's especially useful with blocks where only bullets can pass through them, so you can progress further in the stage. It's honestly a really good weapon for puzzle stages, and that's been done pretty well. As a bonus too, if you jump before the bullet teleports you, you can keep your jump velocity, allowing you to jump just a bit higher as well. ~~Also what the hell was I thinking at the 1:51 mark of the nemesis video???~~
And then you got the shotgun, a weapon that should already be familiar to you if you read me play CSTSF Mod or Video Game Deluxe. It's essentially the rocket launcher from TF2, but you can also keep shooting 3-4 more times to get some more height. The shotgun stage is without question the easiest, and the most hilarious part about the shotgun video, I was fucking around cuz I thought I was going to die and have it edited out of the footage, cuz I don't keep outtakes.
I do like how there are health-ups scattered in the stages if you're in a bit of a pickle, I know the blade and the nemesis warrant that. And I'm a fan of the very beginning of the stages serving as a minor introduction to using the weapons before going further in the stages, get to mess around with them.

Me too, assistant guy.

What are the Horizontal Boost and the Double Jump, then? With the <PHY hack, created by VoidMage_Lowell, something that I didn't really dive into for this mod, you can use it to manipulate the player physics through TSC, and the horizontal boost, well, it just makes you move left and right much faster. Pretty much just sprinting the whole time, making it much harder to slow down or do precise platforming that would otherwise require you to have slower physics.

Meanwhile, the double jump, it's a modified booster 0.8 created by @gamemanj to where it's at the minimal amount of fuel you can give it, and give you a jump boost, allowing you to reach at a max height 7 tiles, compared to the regular 4 tile height without it. I wonder how funny it'd be if there was a route to combine both attributes, alongside the weapon you're using. Only a fool would go and combine the two attributes, the horizontal velocity, as well as extended jump reach, will leave you bonking against walls and end up bumping into mobs without looking first hand.

Professor's thoughts?

Blade + attributes

Going with the hardest combinations, based on my current opinion. Back in 2018 funnily enough, I thought the Nemesis stages were harder than the Blade stages. I was horribly, horribly wrong, cuz now I think the Blade stages are the hardest. While the stages still did a decent job handling all 6 combinations (jesus, Tommy), and the challenge warrants continuing trying, I fucking hate the Fire Whirrs so much. And even with the horizontal boost, it can get a bit tricky to dodge gaudi projectiles. I'm certain it's possible to just run through the water sections without stopping at an air pocket, but I'm not good enough to try, lmao. I do think the positioning of the upside down BuyoBuyos make farming them a bit difficult, if you're low on health or are in need of EXP, because of how short the blade's range is. It's also very easy to bump into enemies when trying to have a whack at them. Now, some of them are just very nitpicky complaints, the stage is doable just fine. I kinda wish I hosted a poll to nerf some enemies before the contest, and Ninja Gaudis would absolutely be one of them.
As for the double jump, things go a bit more swimmingly, but it's also one where you need to plan your jumps ahead of time and know where you're going. It can still get very easy to misjudge your blade's range as you land, and you'll either miss the enemy entirely or bump into them. I think that's gotta be the key difference between the horizontal boost and the double jump. One, you gotta time yourself, and one, you gotta time the stage. The horizontal boost can absolutely be used more for speedrunning, and the double jump can absolutely be used more for platforming. Not like the two focuses can't intertwine with each other, it just depends on what your preferred field is. I do absolutely recommend trying all combinations, however.

Nemesis + attributes

The Nemesis makes things a bit more interesting. Even though the bullets can absolutely be used to harm/kill enemies, you can very well still run both stages as if you're doing a pacifist run. And since the teleport nemesis already warrants puzzle-like stages, it can make very interesting stage design for both horizontal boost and for double jump. I do like how in some parts, you don't always have to go through the intended route just to reach the next segment of the stage. The teleport nemesis can in theory, keep you in air the whole time, so you can very well do a vertical teleport and then shoot forward to get to the part you need to go through, if you don't feel like being bothered with doing all the platforming perfectly.
The same can also be said with the double jump. And with the teleport nemesis, the puzzle aspect of running the stage is enhanced. And thankfully, with the platforms that only bullets can go through, it is at least alleviating to not have to start the segments all over again due to one slip-up. ~~Even though it's probably very possible to cheese the entire thing.~~ Given that I did the horizontal boost stage in one go and not with the double jump stage, both stages still boil down to "don't die", there's just more wiggle room in the nemesis stages to make beginner's mistakes and keep going.

Shotgun + attributes

Oh boy, the easiest stages. The shotgun feels the most like a normal gun, meaning it's best to farm the stages, or just be on a killing rampage. Despite them being easy, there's still a few factors to keep in mind, your speed, your ammo, and your timing. Even though the shotgun slowly reloads itself, it can get very easy to run out if you're not making the jumps or if you're trigger-happy on shooting anything in sight. The horizontal boost can also make the platforming a bit tricky, try to adjust yourself mid-air and you'll find yourself missing the platform entirely. And unlike the teleport nemesis, there are some segments where you will have to go back and start over, especially if you need the time to reload your ammo. There's also the added challenge that I kinda wish we got to see more of, and that is using the fuzz core enemies. If all your scatter bullets hit the fuzz core, the surrounding enemies surrounding it will charge at you, and they can hurt you or even trip you up while platforming.
The double jump is even easier than the horizontal boost when using the shotgun, with taller jumps, beckons for taller and wider platforming. Although I feel the ball is kinda dropped with it, as it isn't utilized as much when compared to the other combinations, and in fact, using both the double jump and the shotgun can kinda cheese some segments of the stage. Doesn't help that for one of them, the spread doesn't go so wild, so you can still shoot 1-tile wide gaps through star blocks, and pick the least annoying route to go through. I do really like though, the wind current segments, where you can't really depend on the double jump to go through them, so you'll have to use the shotgun instead.

If it sounds I'm just describing the stages rather than just evaluating them, that's because, well, besides my nitpicks based on what I could do if I made these stages, Tommy overall just did a solid job with not only making the stages fun for your choice in weapon, but also add different little twists whether you're using the horizontal boost or the double jump. And hilariously enough, looking back at my old review notes, I felt the same with this stage. However, I feel looking at the rubric, now I would bump up the difficulty score from 6 to 8, making it score higher than the 2nd place stage based on my own opinions, making it overall tied for second place when added with the other judges' scores! But how will second place fare in comparison? Hmmmmm...

I love how this is technically the only cleared stage in this playthrough, I could've already done that with cursed lands, but I don't have the patience for the platforming mixed with the physics in that stage.

Scoreboards so far, if I traveled back in time and rated them.

Second place coming soon...

Gonna be a pain to work on all this. I debated going over the levels themselves or not, cuz I technically have already reviewed them all, but it may as well be worth mentioning them or even just running through them. Plus, i haven't played any of them since 5 years ago, so I just wanna play (most of) them.

Fun fact, did you know my old website had pages solely for this contest? I knew my website has been long saved in the wayback machine, but the fact the contest pages were also saved, it's incredible, honestly. You can also go and see the rankings of the contest if you're interested in looking at it while this mega-post is in the works.

Ngl tho, it was kinda fun recording again, now that I have a computer that can handle a lot of things, maybe I could make videos again after 5 years!

X-Calibar · Aug 18, 2023

And oops, the level wasn't finished. Even though it was only a month. X, were you just making a full on mod as well? I mean, everyone rated it so I guess it counts as a level, with everything that was submitted. And I mean, the finished parts did feel like a level, even though the whole gauntlet at the start was very unfair.

Oh... I am quite entertained seeing my "level" played again after all this time. :debug:

I suppose it was being built like a stand-a-alone mod than anything else, and I might have intended to continue it... Except limiting my interactions with anyone, and not talking about the mod with anyone; turns it into a mod for myself; and after the disappointing deadline release I quickly looked away. Sadface.

If I recall correctly, the mod was supposed to go like this basically: You're *supposed* to start out immensely overpowered. STupidly insane movement ability; too many weapons at your disposal; and a ton of health. (I didn't count on it being too hard with the amount of health I gave, though I should have tossed in a revive mechanic or life pot!)
(I needed to polish up that first area; maybe have an enemies remaining counter; should have had playtesters... And would have been nice to switch up the graphics perhaps too...)

You are thrown into the mix and it quickly turns into a fight without having any sense of why you are here.

Anyway, after defeating the horde, you are supposed to be given a bit of story. You can learn more or change how the story proceeds depending on your actions... (I need to play it again to remember everything but, I think depending on if you talk to the hermit multiple times, he'll give you more story, and questions that affect future events.) Will you notice the girl in the background during that conversation that wasn't there at the start? Will you be able to reach the girl before she falls into the well and disappears?

But, down the well... that area needed work lol. Though all the annoying NPCs had unique things to say. (I wanted them to be annoying, constantly jabbering if you bump into them...) And there was even a dark alternate path that could be uncovered depending on your earlier decisions...

Hmm... Looks like I'm on a tangent.

Keeping it short; you're supposed to start off feeling indestructible (with some challenge still); but the further you go into the mod, your movements were to become sluggish, and reduced. Weapons might break, and before long your jumping will be reduced just like the original Cave Story, and by the final challenge you'd probably be limited even further than Cave Story with a gimmick or two. (Instead of growing stronger like in most games, you'd become weaker the further you got. Less HP, less weapons, less movement ability... Losing your memories, all seeking to save your unknown friend or love. Past the town, to the castle/church, through the caves, to find the source of the curse... Would you even recognize the one you sacrificed everything to save? Would you lose it all? Or...

Alas... lol.

Thanks for playing it again though, I dreaded the reaction, but ended up enjoying and reminiscing~

(...there were lots of easter eggs hidden in the mod. Example one curious one happened 1/100th of the time randomly. Replacing the crystal surrounded by bones with Sue working on the mod... And if you talked to her, breaking the immersion... all hell breaks loose lol. It was actually part of a strange rare bug I ran into during development...
That mod/level was such a mess, maxing out entities to the point that they wouldn't spawn or act differently at times xD)

PS - The behind-the-scenes/reviews of your own works were quite interesting, forgot about some of these :momo:

and reminds me of some I need to revisit...
10 years... yikes. I think it'll be 20 years for me in a year or two... oof

Serri · Dec 24, 2023

Over 3 and a half months have passed... This has truly become the MaGCSL moment of all time. Keeping in theme with the subject in hand! But yeah, I figure it's been that long, I should continue on with my MaGCSL review, plus it can be a bit of a christmas gift from me.

FFXIV reference in the spoiler name, lol

The penultimate level, at least in terms of the entries. The scorings between this and first place was made clear when each individual rankings between the judges had a difference by 1-5 points. Honestly, of all the stages that scored in the top 3, I feel like I forgot what happened for most of it, so this is going to feel like a fresh new experience for me again. I can at least remember the gist in Slither's and Tommy's entries, but not Seasons'. So let's see how this goes again.

Future me here, I'm just saying that I played through the start of the level, and originally, I was going to take screenshots and describe as I go, but you know what really bugs me? This is a story-driven level. And it really felt like I couldn't just skim through any of the parts because it wouldn't do the level any justice. So like with the 9 replays of Tommy's level, I decided to record Seasons' level in its entirety. Only parts that got cut out were my deaths, but even then I think there a couple parts of them still left in. I'll do my best to commentate and put in time stamps to which parts I am referring to.

0:00 - Immediately off the bat, I'm loving the atmosphere in this, I feel he could've done a bit more with the dithering to portray dim light, or even some darker parts, but I can understand if there wasn't much space in the tileset.
Note: there is, but I can get why that'd be a pain to not keep them grouped together.

0:10 - By the way, you need to interact with everything in this stage, this is the biggest reason why I felt screenshots don't do justice on this. LIke, you either gotta play it or watch the video.

1:12 - I really like the how the theme's set in these dreams, and the implementation of how they're interacted was pretty fun to go through. You can even make something like the chase scene at 2:09 fun, but also have consequences if you decide to just stand and find out.

3:16 Wow that was embarrassing for me, lol.

5:00 This was an interesting boss, I do have to wonder if the lack of health bar for when the fireballs spawn is an intentional panic section, making you wonder why not only the boss is still up.

6:30 I mean, same... Although I wish I'd rather sleep than think.

7:00 Btw Nate, have you ever found that Bugatron game?

7:39 This was a fun puzzle room, getting to solve whether the equation is equal to the proceeding question or not. Something that isn't shown in the video is that the questions are randomized, with FLAGS, mind you, even with <VAR installed in the mod, but Seasons has made sure the same questions don't show up each time after you die during this part of the dream (which was probably common for those who aren't good at math).

8:40 I mean, this was simple enough, right? Yes, I had to take my time on these.

9:31 I like shakeup on this as well, hehe. I hope you've been paying attention~

I think I wanted to do something like this in MaGCSL Story Mode, but that never came to fruition...

11:00 Fun fact, it's possible to avoid death in the second part of this dream. You may grant yourself mercy for missing a target, but miss again and you may not be lucky a second time. after recording this level, I tried doing this a few times so I can see if I can record that for you, couldn't get to do it.

12:05 No, nothing got disconnected from your computer, this was on my end. I even got myself right now.

12:36 Ah, BETr-U. I hated this boss when I first did this. Because it felt similar to the EXO chip boss from Shipwrecked, especially if you step over these blocks and you accidentally summon a seeking missile to attack you. I think I attempted to do the same thing I did when I originally played this level while judging this, it's very easy to cheese this battle. I mean, surely the AI in BETr-U could've possibly foreseen this, even with the increased challenge in 14:16. Joking aside, it's challenging enough, especially with the added rolling that you gotta keep an eye out for so you don't end up killing yourself by landing on one, or in BETr-U's projectiles.

17:08 Man it must be nice to use candles to light the my room during nighttime...

17:50 Okay, so this dream, this one is a bit of a personal one for me. Like, dude, I feel you 100% on all this. After funnily enough, everything that happened in 2018, I'm glad I can relate more to this than I did at that time.

18:50 I can't remember, if the friends were based on Seasons' irl friends or by friends in the CSTSFDG/Lounges/CSMC servers.

Yeah, if this wasn't already figured out, this is very much a sort of a look of what goes on in Seasons' mind, dreams, and what he feels with things. I can imagine a good amount of inspiration came from behind the scenes over in discord, in either of the three servers, hell, even when we all migrated from skype to discord, basically killing off the old skype group. I know this review is from 5 years in the future, but I hope you're doing okay now, Nate. And I hope you know some of us were so glad to see you pop up back in January, like the oldbies we all are.

Looking at my old evaluations, who would've thought I'd mention the same points? Except here's something that I completely overlooked back then, you can actually swap weapons whenever you'd please during the third dream. I was just stupid and even now I did the same order as back then, but I knew this time. I wish I got to touch upon the story in the original review as well (Noxid and Hiino touched upon that in their reviews).

And ooh, I didn't realize even now it'd still be pretty close, but.

Yeah, I decided to dock some points based on my thoughts now compared to back then. Introspection is still a good level, but even with how nice it was, I don't think it's as worth replaying again now than I did back then, even if you decided to play it just to see the randomness in the first part of the second dream. But also surprisingly, it's still pretty close to how it ranked compared to Tpcool's level, despite the swap in rankings now. However, this isn't the last entry that I gotta go look at. Hopefully it won't take me another freakin' eternity until I get to reviewing that, lol.

According to youtube statistics, ~~only a small percentage of my viewers are actually subscri-~~ not a single person has watched any of my videos from the last time I continued this thing. I'm pretty sure the one view spotted there was from me. You receive 9 10 videos of my bad gaming skills, I receive a waste of your time. Do we have a deal?

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