CS community meta discussion

But seeing that you guys clearly don't want to and are trying to treat this like some of us are talking out of our asses (a language that translates well here), then how about you show the examples you claim to exhibit rather than tell us to do it ourselves? We've already done our parts, the ball is now in your court.

Honestly my problem is that either by bad wording or whatever I just get this "I've already done shit but this place sucks, you guys should fix it" vibe and I'm realizing it's causing us to just go in circles with this topic so I wanna try turning it around a little if I can before we go a bad direction.

Fair points are being given- CSE2 is not great to anyone not already working with it given it's illegitemate status and while learning rust is nice to have in your portfolio obviously not everyone wants to go and learn it.
I'm also happy to see that at least one person in the CSMC has been inspired to start trying to make a godot version.

Freeware? I think there's personally nothing wrong with it but ASM does put a damper on anyone wanting to go a bit further on their ambitions (such as everyone wanting to make new weapons) and admittedly half my modding gimmick has become abusing out of bounds memory manipulation tricks.


I'd rather be more open to talking about what some of us could be doing to help foster more interest in modding in the first place and keep the place cool, wether it'd be inspiring or motivating peoppe or just tossing ideas.
For example: Jade if you have issues with the rules in these communities why don't you tell us what needs to be changed rather than talk about why things are bad right now.

 

Freeware? I think there's personally nothing wrong with it but ASM does put a damper on anyone wanting to go a bit further on their ambitions (such as everyone wanting to make new weapons) and admittedly half my modding gimmick has become abusing out of bounds memory manipulation tricks.

I do want to add onto this, the ASM hacking part is absolutely fine and if someone were to try saying "don't use ASM" to places like SMW Central or RomHacking.net, they're going to end up getting humiliated at so bad, they're going to wish they didn't find it kinky in the first place. It took me 10 years to learn such a "useless" talent, all while we got people having their priorities straight, by doing shit like speedrunning "sheep frickers" in Minecraft, or saying the forums needs to centralize their focus on Cave Story better. Or grinding all combat jobs and getting a high item level in FFXIV.

So I do want to at least ask this from you, Jade. I absolutely get it, I even agree with you on some points, but this thread should definitely be given a rest already, and it's time to show you mean it by becoming more active, be it on your end or to give the overall feeling in the forums. And again, backtracking to my earlier point, I'm more than down for turning this place into a general gaming forum. I daresay it was even moreso like that when there were more people here for Cave Story in my earlier years, than it is today.

 

Also, we do have a place that documents tools and other creative stuff we've done. It's http://wiki.doukutsu.club/. And no, this is not the fandom wiki. Obviously it's not a blatant advertisement for stuff like the previous one was but it's still being worked on and it's the best we have to offer right now.

It's obviously not getting the emphasis that it needs. Vinny never mentioned it and your average layman looking for "Cave Story Mods" gets a fandom, a gamebannana, a reddit thread, etc.
I've agreed from the beginning that site was an amazing idea and you can go back on the CSMC Discord messsages I've sent (ok maybe don't do that there's some cringe shit there) and see that I always had high hopes for that site and used it myself for some really shit mods, none of my mods are good lmao

If you want this to be the primary online resource for CS modding it needs to not be as tucked away as it is right now, it needs to be the first thing you find when you look up "Cave Story Mods" because I think it's intuitive for that.
A simple SEO thing could suffice lol, "CaveStoryModding.com" sounds a lot more intuitive than doukutsu.club , I think the current domain is cute and all but at least make it make sense.

I do want to add onto this, the ASM hacking part is absolutely fine and if someone were to try saying "don't use ASM" to places like SMW Central or RomHacking.net, they're going to end up getting humiliated at so bad, they're going to wish they didn't find it kinky in the first place. It took me 10 years to learn such a "useless" talent, all while we got people having their priorities straight, by doing shit like speedrunning "sheep frickers" in Minecraft, or saying the forums needs to centralize their focus on Cave Story better. Or grinding all combat jobs and getting a high item level in FFXIV.

This place is not remotely like SMWcentral.
Cave Story is nothing like Super Mario World in terms of how it interacts with the machines it's made for.
SMW is a proprietary game for proprietary hardware, CS is a freeware game meant to run on Windows, which idk if you know this or not is nothing like the SNES.
They have next to no choice but to use ASM due to decompilations having not been as viable until more recently given the increase of resources on the internet just due to People Being Born. Doukutsu.club is a similar thing of "We didn't have this before but we do now"

ASM is something the programming community in Current Year (not 10 years ago Serena ik you're old but the climate has changed) doesn't write anything in ASM.
The only people that work with it anymore have essentially automated away the need to work with it directly because even they agree ASM is not the best option out of all the given programming languages and its datedness hurts the workflow.

Also those communities worked on decompilations of their own. The SM64 community tore apart the game and stuff, but if I recall correctly the current code the community works with for the PC port and stuff is more adjacent to Doukutsu-RS in its nature. Correct me if I'm wrong because SM64 isn't really what I pay the most attention to as far as game modding goes.

Doom was given by the devs, most other communities either do decomps or rewrite the code from scratch just based on whatever the company in charge of it says.
The community could always just... y'know. Ask Nicalis directly and say "Hey we want the freeware code to be open source for this reason and look at where it got the doom community" and if they don't want to budge then that's our answer.

Do not boil this down to a "This forum sucks you guys fix it" thread because the discussion we're having itself is literally the process of fixing it.
That's how politics works dude.
Nobody has a perfect idea but if they can atleast discuss their shitty ideas with eachother and call eachothers ideas shit then we can better define what's shit and what's not shit and pick apart why.
Getting that conversation started between people is all that really needs to happen to get some constructive ideas flowing and I mean hey we have soaprun now that's pretty fuckin sweet.

Edit : Also not everything I say in a post has to directly call out "Person A", "Person B". If something feels like it's not directed towards you specifically then it's probably not meant for you specifically. Broad statements exist to defer towards specific people who are more qualified on a specific subject to chime into the conversation.

 

it wasn't just a decompilation, it was an attempt to recreate the source code for CS as accurately as possible.

That's literally what a decompilation is. Just because they got the symbols (from an official freeware release) doesn't make it illegal. Honestly the whole DMCA was a farce and the devs should have just moved CSE2 to a different site. What are Nicalis going to do? Sue? They don't even have the budget to port the Switch version to PC.

 

Do not boil this down to a "This forum sucks you guys fix it" thread because the discussion we're having itself is literally the process of fixing it.
That's how politics works dude.

I mean, if all you really care about then is post count, why make a thread in Satellite Lounge?

 

I mean, if all you really care about then is post count, why make a thread in Satellite Lounge?

...Because the point of using a forum is not to increase your post number? Like that's not my priority I'm using this website for its intended purpose not to increase a number that's a really bad mindset to have.
Satellite Lounge was literally made to not increase post count because of threads like this lmfao'

Edit : Lowkey makes me think we should hide post counts or clarify this more in the rules that way people don't get it twisted like that. We shouldn't be treating this place like Reddit. Reddit sucks because of all its stupid upvotes and karma and reddit gold and crap.

 

Vinny never mentioned it

Because the person, who made the package for this stream, was unaware of CSMC (and even cavecord). What we could do, use telepathy to influence them?

Ask Nicalis directly and say "Hey we want the freeware code to be open source for this reason and look at where it got the doom community" and if they don't want to budge then that's our answer.

If you know and helped Pixel so much, why not ask him now (Nicalis cannot do anything on Cave Story IP without his opinion)?

 

If just creating this thread is just to make a forum active again, fine, you got us, we'll give you that, but at this point we're going in circles. Even you gotta attest to this, Jade. And I strongly advise everyone else involved to cease from posting further in here. Unless you got other ideas that you plan to execute already, then we really shouldn't be needing any more of this.

inb4 "are you in charge of the forums now"

 

Because the person, who made the package for this stream, was unaware of CSMC (and even cavecord). What we could do, use telepathy to influence them?

If you know and helped Pixel so much, why not ask him now (Nicalis cannot do anything on Cave Story IP without his opinion)?

I would, but there's some stuff we need to settle first due to our contractual obligation with him regarding Azarashi.
Google dropped a bunch of shit on us and me, Sydney, and Alula have been busy trying to sort it out and we're trying to help Alula get medicated for her ADHD as fast as possible because it's been getting in the way of things. Also there's just stuff going on in our lives at the moment and I felt that it'd be better to start a thread like this in the meantime.
...Also it's pixel's code and you know how that stuff is.

Edit : For the record, Xysspon LLC. is in charge of developing Azarashi android, not Pixel. We just talk to him on occasion to supervise things and pay him accordingly. We won money from google in a class action lawsuit recently
we were gonna add new secret seals but the sprites I made were ugly as hell and I told alula not to add them because they were ugly.
This is also why there's widescreen and some other slight changes, it's just the modern source port by me and Alula. (I just helped steer her in the right direction, we're happy with it but think we can do more)

Also Vinny clearly likes CS idk just send him a better mod pack and he'd probably play it, he's clearly been on a "I wanna play all the shit I played like 15 years ago" binge right now. Lowkey makes me wish Bio actually finished Red Sands because I feel like Vinny would've been impressed by it.

 

If you know and helped Pixel so much, why not ask him now (Nicalis cannot do anything on Cave Story IP without his opinion)?

Now that I am actually think about it, you should actually do that, in one week or one year. Use your "influence" over Pixel to actually contribute to this community.

idk just send him a better mod pack and he'd probably play it

> But yeah best course of action is to submit a pack closer to the 20th anniversary that's smaller and more curated.
> Will also work on streamlining stuff in terms of difficulty and giving him a txt document with like 2 sentences per mod.
> I'm willing to put a ton of effort into this, but some time should pass.
EnlightenedOne on CSMC

 

Please don't frame this as "influence over pixel", that's not how this business works and it's not how art works either.
Developers talk to eachother, we don't rule over eachother. We all have our own financial situations that are relatively isolated so none of us are really obliged to help eachother, our collective end goal is "I need to put dinner on the table" and moreso "I think this looks cool as fuck" because let's be honest me and pixel are both just furry "generalist" artists.
Most inter-community drama and collaboration is just inter-developer drama and collaboration but blown out on a hilarious scale.

I agree with Enlight on that plan. It's helpful and the kind of thing we need right now.

Edit : But in my previous post I explained the Azarashi situation and that's step 1 right now. If you guys want to help this go along any further we'd appreciate help but we don't need you guys to help right now if you really don't want to. We're trying to start a Patreon soon for this kind of stuff but things happen and I've been busy on that front and working with everyone in my development chat to make it actually be worthwhile. We're going to be getting Alula a work visa for Xysspon LLC. pretty soon here but stuff in my own life has put that on the backburner temporarily because I need to move as well and that means our funds are split between those right now.
Edit 2 : Sorry that ive been making so many edits rn, I just caught covid right after I was done with the cold :sob:

 

Nicalis only took down CSE2 when someone mentioned it to them.

No one knows the exact reason why it was taken down, but they were aware of it existing for long time to my knowledge.
And notably, they haven't taken down the one specific fork that was messaged to Tyrone (CSE2-, still up on GitHub to this day https://github.com/Mitch-Muscle-Man-Sorenstein/CSE2-)

 

Do you think if someone just made CSE2- be able to load CS+ assets easily and then made an installer for it that replaces the steam exe that'd solve this entire problem

Edit : Call it CSE2-+ I think that'd be funny

Or cse2++

 

Or cse2++

When Cave++

 

When Cave++

Just move on already.

 

Edit : But in my previous post I explained the Azarashi situation and that's step 1 right now. If you guys want to help this go along any further we'd appreciate help but we don't need you guys to help right now if you really don't want to. We're trying to start a Patreon soon for this kind of stuff but things happen and I've been busy on that front and working with everyone in my development chat to make it actually be worthwhile. We're going to be getting Alula a work visa for Xysspon LLC. pretty soon here but stuff in my own life has put that on the backburner temporarily because I need to move as well and that means our funds are split between those right now.

Jade I'm gonna be honest here rather than just hide behind servers discussing this possibility and I hope you can debunk my admittedly not good thoughts with equally honest answers.
And I'm not saying this to make you sound like you're completely "wrong" here because I do genuinely wish the best for you and your company.

But it's beginning to sound like the reason this thread even exists is because Xysspon is doing poorly.

 

No.

I wanted to do this seperately in my own time because people in my life have been telling me I need to spend less time each day developing Harpy Star because it's started to take a severe mental toll on me. My doctors and just about everyone that works with me agrees that having a second hobby would help counterbalance the stress that's placed on me. Even though the hobby does lead into one it's moreso a "Practicing skills in one place to reapply them in another" type thing. Trying to see what I can do to help move things here while I go do my own thing.

HS is in a good spot development-wise (Ask Bio about it) I'm just trying to occupy my time by talking here more so I have time to recharge artistically while still keeping my gears turning. Because imo participating in discussion like this is healthier than rotting away and watching youtube videos all the time. I had a really bad habit of it back when I was still in the CSMC but I've been taking steps in life to just... you know. Improve as a person.
CS related stuff is fun for me to do on my own but I don't feel like making mods, I'd rather do stuff like drafting up web design stuff for this site and practicing graphic design for this place more if anything because I find that more fun.

Edit : Also I have more free time because my programmers need to catch up first before I continue. Also some other stuff happened with my other job but that's too annoying to get into rn. But I mean no amount of help I give the community could be 100% selfless if I'm still gonna make a Harpy Star thread when the demo comes out I guess. Not like mods of this place have worked on commercial titles in the past...

Edit 2:
So if you want a reason this thread exists, it's because I wanted to practice stuff that I really do need practical skills for.

 

Then I hope you can manage to find things to help distract your mind with, since I do feel like topics like these can snap your mind back into the not so great zones.

 

It's obviously not getting the emphasis that it needs. Vinny never mentioned it and your average layman looking for "Cave Story Mods" gets a fandom, a gamebannana, a reddit thread, etc.
I've agreed from the beginning that site was an amazing idea and you can go back on the CSMC Discord messsages I've sent (ok maybe don't do that there's some cringe shit there) and see that I always had high hopes for that site and used it myself for some really shit mods, none of my mods are good lmao

If you want this to be the primary online resource for CS modding it needs to not be as tucked away as it is right now, it needs to be the first thing you find when you look up "Cave Story Mods" because I think it's intuitive for that.
A simple SEO thing could suffice lol, "CaveStoryModding.com" sounds a lot more intuitive than doukutsu.club , I think the current domain is cute and all but at least make it make sense.

From what I recall, the reason the wiki doesn't show up when you Google it is because of the previous wiki showing up instead because of how Fandom works. I had no idea the gamebanana even existed and as for Reddit threads or whatever that's normal. I agree with renaming it to "CaveStoryModding.com" but the thing about it right now is that it's tied to Doukutsu Club, where current mods are uploaded to.

And to respond to your other points, it does feel like you're attempting to paint it as a thing where it's the community's fault why we don't have a lot of the stuff that other communities have, when again that's not the case. And no it's not as simple as "asking Nicalis for the freeware code" because it needs to go through Pixel first and he probably won't do that. There's a lot of legal stuff involved that I'm not in a place to get into but it's unreasonable to assume that it's the easy.

 

Yeah and I get that.

I think you should've seen what I said in response to Alula's information. I think we could circumvent this all by making a "Cave Story + Friendly CSE2 installer" and that'd really just solve the whole "Tyrone thanos snaps CSE2 again" issue but hell it doesn't even need to be CS+ friendly we could just use that one branch Alula pointed at as a basis for public branches to develop on from now on. That way we don't have the whole black box issue I've been complaining about since the beginning.
It sounds a lot more like other modern game modding communities and I think it'd give everyone more breathing room to do cool shit with the engine easier.

Edit:
Also my take on doukutsu club is that it needs to outdo curseforge in terms of user experience and aesthetic appeal, I think that's the end goal we should aim for with that.