CSTSF 2016 Modding Competition Discussion & Submission Thread

hey look a competition for cave story mods
but i'm awful at modding
oh well i'll do something anyway
CatFall, a game within a game

download: at https://20kdc.duckdns.org/Public/catfall/index.html
(EDIT: The latest version fixes the issues. If you are still having upload issues, re-download. This is patch number 1, in case I ever release any further patches.)
(EDIT2: Links moved to different hosting provider as of Dec. 2016, it's all Dropbox's fault.
Also note that my email server has been down since forever. Just don't bother uploading a score.)
now, to avert any argument as to if this mod is intentionally bad or not, I know I'm bad and I'm just admitting it.
It's not intentionally bad, but I get the feeling it probably is bad.
Good luck getting a high score. (And/or cheating the system so I receive an email "proving" your high score & such.)

 

hey look a competition for cave story mods
but i'm awful at modding
oh well i'll do something anyway
CatFall, a game within a game

download: at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21184720/catfall/index.html
now, to avert any argument as to if this mod is intentionally bad or not, I know I'm bad and I'm just admitting it.
It's not intentionally bad, but I get the feeling it probably is bad.
Good luck getting a high score. (And/or cheating the system so I receive an email "proving" your high score & such.)

your "warning" image on the download page is a 404
but i'm going to try this out. should i post the result here or pm you?

 

your "warning" image on the download page is a 404
but i'm going to try this out. should i post the result here or pm you?

use the score uploader, if it works... (you may have to re-download to get a fixed build. Blame ISPs who block port 25 connections.)
also the warning image being missing is kind of intentional/me being lazy
then post your uploaded score ID to, idk, somewhere???

 

use the score uploader, if it works... (you may have to re-download to get a fixed build. Blame ISPs who block port 25 connections.)
also the warning image being missing is kind of intentional/me being lazy
then post your uploaded score ID to, idk, somewhere???

okay nvm i can't even complete it because i'm too lazy to click

Spoiler

as simple as it is, though, i like the general idea; it's simple, the cats fly at you, you shoot the cats, no big deal...
i hate you for using the shaking font and at the same time i love you for making it skippable by pressing esc
baka baka cirno
thanks for nothing

i'll drop you a message when i actually win

 

Okay well Cat Fall wasn't a very fun game, I'm just going to say that outright. The best strategy as far as I can tell is just to spam the shoot key, which will kill things if you're fast enough (also ow, my arm/wrist). There's no point in really moving otherwise, especially on the last level. I was going to ask if the last level is even possible to beat but it seems that you get more and more health on subsequent tries, which means you eventually get enough hp to survive it. But it feels really bad design wise that you can't avoid taking damage on that level, since the cats just spawn so quickly.

The music is ok but not great, and the lack of sfx for the cat game is kind of odd (you could've used some existing CS sfx at least?). The graphics are also just alright but these aren't as much of an issue as the design of the gameplay itself.

The music player is neat but that's about it. Not really much fun to be had there besides listening to some tunes, so not enough to compensate for cat fall's lack of fun.

Also I'm not sure why you chose to represent the number of cats left in words instead of just a number? It's not any easier to read (maybe harder, infact), so it just seems kind of pointless.

I'd recommend maybe giving the player fully automatic bullet firing? And also making the last level less ridiculous. Those 2 changes would be a good starting point for making this more fun.

 

So... Maybe a few of you guys could try this, now that the contest deadline is drawing near?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwp57g48s11w1f5/Critter_TD_v0.2.6.zip?dl=0
Credit to:
Pixel for obvious reasons
Wistil for Cave Editor (Sorry Noxid you don't get any credit because I didn't use BL lol)
DoubleThink and zxin for testing
EDIT: Oh damn I forgot! Credit to whoever made the <MIM command

Oh yeah, and gamemanj, I played your mod for a while, and it's pretty boring once you play for a long time. Nice (no pun intended) coding though! A mod with great potential, if you do have the time to improve it a bit. Also the score that shows up after you win goes off the screen because it can't fit the words 'One thousand seven hundred' and something else
BTW, 40 is spelt 'forty' not fourty.

 

So... Maybe a few of you guys could try this, now that the contest deadline is drawing near?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwp57g48s11w1f5/Critter_TD_v0.2.6.zip?dl=0
Credit to:
Pixel for obvious reasons
Wistil for Cave Editor (Sorry Noxid you don't get any credit because I didn't use BL lol)
DoubleThink and zxin for testing

Oh yeah, and gamemanj, I played your mod for a while, and it's pretty boring once you play for a long time. Nice (no pun intended) coding though! A mod with great potential, if you do have the time to improve it a bit. Also the score that shows up after you win goes off the screen because it can't fit the words 'One thousand seven hundred' and something else
BTW, 40 is spelt 'forty' not fourty.

Oh, you use CE too? Eh, I'll try it out. (Only because it was made in CE, lol.)

Spoiler

OK. I'm too lazy to post pictures, so... Modtester version? Is there a difference? I'll do that one. Actually, I'll do the normal version, lol. Wait, nvm. (MAKE UP YOUR MIND, VB). OK, so I played the first level, and it was pretty fun. It's just Tower Defense in Cave Story though. I liked it. In terms of story, there was none, but whatever. The gameplay is OK, but I kinda can just win by putting one spur tower right at the end to kill them. My final rating: 6/10.

 

So... Maybe a few of you guys could try this, now that the contest deadline is drawing near?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwp57g48s11w1f5/Critter_TD_v0.2.6.zip?dl=0
Credit to:
Pixel for obvious reasons
Wistil for Cave Editor (Sorry Noxid you don't get any credit because I didn't use BL lol)
DoubleThink and zxin for testing

Oh yeah, and gamemanj, I played your mod for a while, and it's pretty boring once you play for a long time. Nice (no pun intended) coding though! A mod with great potential, if you do have the time to improve it a bit. Also the score that shows up after you win goes off the screen because it can't fit the words 'One thousand seven hundred' and something else
BTW, 40 is spelt 'forty' not fourty.

This is really neat. I'm gonna play this more when I go through all the entries after the deadline, but from what I've played so far, it's pretty solid.

Spoiler: Minor Bug

I tried removing the Snake tower I had set up here, but whenever I try to replace it with a Super Missile tower, it asks me if I want to upgrade the tower. If I do, it just puts a Snake level 3 down.
EDIT: Apparently this isn't the only block this happens on too.

 

So... Maybe a few of you guys could try this, now that the contest deadline is drawing near?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wwp57g48s11w1f5/Critter_TD_v0.2.6.zip?dl=0
Credit to:
Pixel for obvious reasons
Wistil for Cave Editor (Sorry Noxid you don't get any credit because I didn't use BL lol)
DoubleThink and zxin for testing

Oh yeah, and gamemanj, I played your mod for a while, and it's pretty boring once you play for a long time. Nice (no pun intended) coding though! A mod with great potential, if you do have the time to improve it a bit. Also the score that shows up after you win goes off the screen because it can't fit the words 'One thousand seven hundred' and something else
BTW, 40 is spelt 'forty' not fourty.

This is actually really fun. The gameplay is good and it has a good difficulty. I just beat the first cave and will try the other levels. The concept is also pretty original, I haven't seen a mod like this before. It's much better than Rise of Ballos for sure.

 

Autopilot
============
QuoteOS booting up...​

After a rather stressful month of modding and playtesting, I present to you my entry for ModCon 2016: Autopilot. Instead of typing up a summary of the mod, it will be better if I let you experience it for yourselves.

Download
​

In case you get lost after your first playthrough, consider checking Credits.txt for a hint.

 

Autopilot
============
QuoteOS booting up...​

After a rather stressful month of modding and playtesting, I present to you my entry for ModCon 2016: Autopilot. Instead of typing up a summary of the mod, it will be better if I let you experience it for yourselves.

Download
​

In case you get lost after your first playthrough, consider checking Credits.txt for a hint.

So, I just tried this, and it's great. I did the first ending without touching a thing, and I liked it. I'm doing my second run now. I loved the level design. The Balrog fight was great.

 

Autopilot
============
QuoteOS booting up...​

After a rather stressful month of modding and playtesting, I present to you my entry for ModCon 2016: Autopilot. Instead of typing up a summary of the mod, it will be better if I let you experience it for yourselves.

Download
​

In case you get lost after your first playthrough, consider checking Credits.txt for a hint.

Don't Let Go 2: Just Let Go

 

This is really neat. I'm gonna play this more when I go through all the entries after the deadline, but from what I've played so far, it's pretty solid.

Spoiler: Minor Bug

I tried removing the Snake tower I had set up here, but whenever I try to replace it with a Super Missile tower, it asks me if I want to upgrade the tower. If I do, it just puts a Snake level 3 down.
EDIT: Apparently this isn't the only block this happens on too.

Okay, the demolish glitch should be fixed now for new downloads. This is what I hate about TSC - I have to make sure every single possibility is covered. The first time I made this game my TSC overloaded the entire parser! You guys could try loading either one of the map TSC or the head.tsc to see how big all that stuff needed to be.

 

This is what I hate about TSC - I have to make sure every single possibility is covered.

This is actually true for all coding in general. You want to make sure all cases are covered, even the rare "edge cases" (which are the ones that can mess things up the worst).

Anyways I'm going to play some more of these mods now, will post about them in a bit.

 

This is actually true for all coding in general. You want to make sure all cases are covered, even the rare "edge cases" (which are the ones that can mess things up the worst).

Anyways I'm going to play some more of these mods now, will post about them in a bit.

Nah, but you should check the TSC in my mod, because TSC doesn't even have a CALL command, nor a 'PUSH/POP' command where you can save/store numbers; only flags, which are dodgy in general and can only store bits. So basically every single possibility has to be written down, and in a tower defense game, there are a LOT of possibilities.
Even as I've already added 5 new TSC commands, it's still a MASSIVE amount of code.
If I didn't hack the TSC parser, I would have to do FLJs, FL+s, and FL-s for EVERY SINGLE BIT of money (since money is actually made up of TSC flags) that the player has, whenever he either spends or gains money!

I might add a bonus level if I have time.

 

Autopilot
============
QuoteOS booting up...​

After a rather stressful month of modding and playtesting, I present to you my entry for ModCon 2016: Autopilot. Instead of typing up a summary of the mod, it will be better if I let you experience it for yourselves.

Download
​

In case you get lost after your first playthrough, consider checking Credits.txt for a hint.

Great mod! Played right through the best ending!

 

snip

I would appreciate it if you didn't spoil the hidden boss.

 

I would appreciate it if you didn't spoil the hidden boss.

Oops.
You just made it worse.
I never said that was the hidden boss

 

snip

It says in the credits that there's a custom ORG.

No but really, can you edit your posts?
ok thanks

 

Nah, but you should check the TSC in my mod, because TSC doesn't even have a CALL command, nor a 'PUSH/POP' command where you can save/store numbers; only flags, which are dodgy in general and can only store bits. So basically every single possibility has to be written down, and in a tower defense game, there are a LOT of possibilities.
Even as I've already added 5 new TSC commands, it's still a MASSIVE amount of code.
If I didn't hack the TSC parser, I would have to do FLJs, FL+s, and FL-s for EVERY SINGLE BIT of money (since money is actually made up of TSC flags) that the player has, whenever he either spends or gains money!

I might add a bonus level if I have time.

you know I wrote a general-purpose "use numeric variables in TSC" hack that anyone is allowed to use ... right?