Cave Story GBC in the works!

What do you think?


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Oct 6, 2020 at 4:13 PM
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You thought it couldn't be done...
This absolute madman is currently working on Cave story for gameboy color.
Please send love his way! This opens doors to the DS/GBA port being completed.
 

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Oct 6, 2020 at 5:43 PM
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This is really cool, it seems like there is a lot of work to be done though, however, I hope this gets finished as it looks like it would be really fun to play! I'd be interested in looking at what they're using or how they are porting it to the GBC personally.
 
Oct 6, 2020 at 7:02 PM
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Holy hell, I'm seriously interested in this!

I wish good luck to 2000brix, because I'm looking forward to seeing more progress on this.
 
Oct 6, 2020 at 7:28 PM
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This looks intruiging, i get that this is rough because its an early build, but that cover of gestation hurts my ears...
 
Oct 6, 2020 at 8:43 PM
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This looks intruiging, i get that this is rough because its an early build, but that cover of gestation hurts my ears...
I found one further ahead in the game and sound department. It seems that there's at least three coders making a GBC port...
I hope they work as a group instead of all starting from scratch
(If anyone has a reddit account please contact https://www.reddit.com/user/MaidenAbyss/ about this)
 
Oct 6, 2020 at 11:16 PM
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Yeah, this port has some potential. The developer is in the CSMC server, actually. Quote_02 (Raichu) is their username.

I know Skittles also has a regular GB port in development as well, but I'm not sure if that's been shelved or not. They make some very cute art, tho.
 
Oct 7, 2020 at 2:09 AM
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Very interesting. I don't know what all the hardware limitations are for the GBC, but I'm sure this is an impressive feat. Naturally, I look forward to some more of those details getting a bit more polish. I guess some aspects of this might have to stay rough around the edges due to hardware limitations, though.

I looked at the comment section of that video and saw that he's using the GameBoy Developers Kit (GBDK), which basically appears to be an SDK for making custom games for the GameBoy. From what I can tell, it looks like a very tedious process, and he's probably had to re-write the whole game from scratch, so that's definitely gotta be a lot of work. Kudos to 2020brix/Quote_02/Raichu for the effort.
 
Oct 7, 2020 at 2:22 AM
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somehow the more developed on has worse music ow my ears
 
Oct 7, 2020 at 1:57 PM
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I hope 2000brix will finish even if it isn't a completely faithful port.
(Also whoever is harassing Maiden, suck on a lemon)

I think cave story gba/ds will most definitely work if new tracks and stages are created. Maybe, it can be an alternate universe storyline to explain the changes.
 
Oct 13, 2020 at 11:41 PM
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God this sounds interesting, I can't wait to see what comes of it!
I wonder if it'll become something akin to Mega Man Xtreme / Xtreme 2 (ports of X1 and X2)
 
Oct 14, 2020 at 4:18 AM
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i didnt know i wanted this but now i need it
 
Oct 14, 2020 at 4:50 AM
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Cool Cool Cool, can't wait to see more!
 
Nov 25, 2020 at 4:20 PM
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This is really interesting, I'm anxious to see more of this
 
Jan 1, 2021 at 4:50 PM
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What?? Someone made a thread for my GB port??
 
Jan 2, 2021 at 3:52 PM
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Well, just so y'all are updated, sadly I have cancelled this port due to being frustrated with GB Studio and Game Boy limitations. Yes, I used GB Studio to make this "demake" (no it isn't a port, everything is hard-coded). It just uses GBDK to compile the code.

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

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

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

Finally,
GB Studio does not support slope collisions at the moment, meaning you have to use 8x8 tiled collisions.

It would be more economic if I learned C and re-wrote a custom engine, having some things hard-coded vs. having everything hardcoded. I favor originality.
 
Jan 2, 2021 at 5:18 PM
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Firstly, the Game Boy uses 8x8 tiles, but it can only have 192 of them loaded per map. Cave Story tiles are 16x16, meaning 1 Cave Story tile is 4 8x8 tiles. It is impossible to have Cave Story maps on Game Boy without reducing the tile count, or heck, descale all the 16x16 tiles to 8x8.

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

And thirdly, GB Studio has a frame limit of 25 frames. This makes it difficult to have bosses and other large objects in a huge map, because 16x16 sprites have to be tiled to achieve this effect of a larger boss, and that takes up many frames.
Isn't the point of making a GB demake working with the limitations in order to make it work? And it's been proven multiple times that Cave Story music can be done with only 4 channels, even less!

Here's hoping Skittles is still working on their demake...
 
Jan 2, 2021 at 5:44 PM
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Isn't the point of making a GB demake working with the limitations in order to make it work?
Here's hoping Skittles is still working on their demake...
Firstly, If the Demake's gonna be similar to the original, then it's better to make a fan game instead.
Also, Skittles canceled his remake to work on his other game, LUNA.
 
Jan 2, 2021 at 6:39 PM
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It's understandable that this would be discontinued, projects like this generally don't have much reward other than just to show that it can be done. This was a cool little project to see a demo for though, and projects like this often serve as good springboards into bigger and better things, so best of luck to you on what you do next.
 
Jan 2, 2021 at 7:15 PM
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This project isn't really cancelled, I am likely gonna restart after I finish my Cave Story mod.
 
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