CSTSF Modding Competition 2017 - Submission and Discussion Thread

Hello everybody! I've been planning to host one of these for quite a while, and I felt that the eve of the next month was the perfect time.

So, prepare yourselves for...

THE CAVE STORY TRIBUTE SITE FORUMS MODDING COMPETITION (contest?) 2017:
Return of the Modding Contest (or somethang)


This year is all about what you can make with your limitations; to challenge everybody to do their best when they're missing a part of modding that they may often heavily rely on.
I have decided not to give out prizes this year, as somebody's motivation should be their passion rather than monetary gain.


ENTRY RULES:

1. You have to use an unmodified version of either this .exe (50FPS) or this .exe (60FPS) in your mod. This means no assembly hacks, or .exe edits of any kind; you mustn't change a single bit (binary digit) of the executable. It is best to re-download the .exe if you believe you have made any edits to it by accident.
2. You must be responsible for all the playable content in your mod. You may enlist beta testers and people to make assets for you. But they cannot be making you maps, scripting, or doing planning. This is a one-person job.
3. Anybody/everybody involved in making your mod must be credited in a "credits" or "readme" file included with your mod.
4. You can't just submit a mod you were previously making for some other purpose. This year is more about making mods specifically FOR the contest.
5. Your mod must have some degree of effort put into it, and cannot be incredibly short. For instance, if you've had no time to work on your mod and is total garbage, please do not submit it.

Failure to follow these rules will result in disqualification.
Please withhold from submitting demos of your publicly before the mod is ready. And once you submit your mod you can not update it unless there is something critically wrong with it; in which case you may update it once.


This year's contest will be judged by a panel of 4 judges. If you wish to judge the mods this year, step forward now! If we are unable to get 4 good judges, I will step in as one of them.

You cannot judge if:
1. You have no modding experience.
2. You're submitting (or planning to submit) a mod this year.
3. You have better things to do than play lots of Cave Story mods.

As a judge, all you need do is play every mod all the way trough (or as far as you possibly can), and give them a rating between 1 and 5. (you may use decimal places as needed)
If you find that a mod breaks the rules, just notify me and I will handle everything.

Spoiler: Information About The Competition's EXE

The exe for this year's competition is available at 50FPS and 60FPS.
This version contains a few competition specific graphics, and 2 small hacks.
First of all, all facepics appear instantly. Secondly, the titlescreen hack. If you are not sure how the titlescreen hack works, you can simply replace your Title.bmp with this template.

I believe that's everything...
Oh, and entries close September 15th at 12PM (GMT). The deadline may be moved forwards in the case of more enteries being presented.

 

1. You have to use an unmodified version of either this .exe (50FPS) or this .exe (60FPS) in your mod. This means no assembly hacks, or .exe edits of any kind; you mustn't change a single bit (binary digit) of the executable.

Can we at least change minor things like map names, considering those are stored in the executable?

 

I would like to volunteer as a judge for this contest. I'm pretty busy right now, but I will have a considerable amount of free time between early and mid May to play and evaluate the entries. Will you have us give our scores over PM, or post them here as the entries get submitted?

 

Volunteering for judging could be interesting (time won't be an issue anyway for someone like me)
But I'm kinda worried about wether there will actually be people who will make a mod for this(can't say I'm motivated enough for modding currently, sadly).

 

You could not have possibly picked a worse time to start a modding contest. I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but people in college have to deal with a generally increased amount of classwork due to the school year winding down. In my case, I'm bogged down with a load of projects: modeling, recording, editing, etcetera.

Aside from that, not being able to change the executable file in any way is a poor choice of limitation in my opinion. I get that one of the main reasons to do so is to not pack a mod with ASM hacks, but what if you need to change the tilesets/NPC sprites of a map or change how it scrolls?

 

yeah if not for my strangely easy course load i would be swamped, as it is the exam period for me for the next month or so. i guess this theme limitation could generate nice stuff? it seems like it puts way too much of a damper on creativity tho

 

You may enlist beta testers and people to make music, art, and more for you.

Guess that's kinda obsolete with the exe being not allowed to be edited isn't it.

 

I don't even mod much or participate in these contests, but it's pretty clear that the requirement for the EXE to be absolutely unmodified puts too much of a damper (and an unnecessary one at that) on creativity and what you can do. It forces unnecessary complexity as modders would need to find alternate solutions to things like mapnames and makes organization difficult as you'd need to stick with the image filenames from the old CS. If your primary goal is to disallow assembly hacks, it's not that hard to create or find a program that shows file differences and then you can just check the .text section.

And then also the timing is poor - I think most people don't have school from late June to early August, so that's probably the most optimal time to host a mod contest.

 

What do you mean by you can't be a judge if you have no modding experience? Does this mean you have to have made a mod before, or that you have some basic understanding of how modding works? (and what happened to community judging...)

 

Sure, I'll enter this. I'm just a bit concerned about the whole no modding the exe thing. I might be able to scrape it by just in time for the deadline. You might want to move the deadline into June or July because many of the members here do have school to attend, including me. Maybe you should flesh out some more details, especially those regarding the exe hacking, and the deadline.

 

Hello everybody! I've been planning to host one of these for quite a while, and I felt that the eve of the next month was the perfect time.

So, prepare yourselves for...

THE CAVE STORY TRIBUTE SITE FORUMS MODDING COMPETITION (contest?) 2017:
Return of the Modding Contest (or somethang)


This year is all about what you can make with your limitations; to challenge everybody to do their best when they're missing a part of modding that they may often heavily rely on.
I have decided not to give out prizes this year, as somebody's motivation should be their passion rather than monetary gain.


ENTRY RULES:

1. You have to use an unmodified version of either this .exe (50FPS) or this .exe (60FPS) in your mod. This means no assembly hacks, or .exe edits of any kind; you mustn't change a single bit (binary digit) of the executable.
2. You must be responsible for all the playable content in your mod. You may enlist beta testers and people to make music, art, and more for you. But they cannot be making you maps, scripting, or doing planning. This is a one-person job.
3. Anybody/everybody involved in making your mod must be credited in a "credits" or "readme" file included with your mod.
4. You can't just submit a mod you were previously making for some other purpose. This year is more about making mods specifically FOR the contest.
5. Your mod must have some degree of effort put into it, and cannot be incredibly short. For instance, if you've had no time to work on your mod and it's total garbage, please do not submit it.

Failure to follow these rules will result in disqualification.
Please withhold from submitting demos of your publicly before the mod is ready. And once you submit your mod you can not update it unless there is something critically wrong with it; in which case you may update it once.


This year's contest will be judged by a panel of 4 judges. If you wish to judge the mods this year, step forward now! If we are unable to get 4 good judges, I will step in as one of them.

You cannot judge if:
1. You have no modding experience.
2. You're submitting (or planning to submit) a mod this year.
3. You have better things to do than play lots of Cave Story mods.

As a judge, all you need do is play every mod all the way trough (or as far as you possibly can), and give them a rating between 1 and 5. (you may use decimal places as needed)
If you find that a mod breaks the rules, just notify me and I will handle everything.


I believe that's everything...
Oh, and entries close May 15th at 12PM (GMT); get busy!

1. You have to use an unmodified version of either this .exe (50FPS) or this .exe (60FPS) in your mod. This means no assembly hacks, or .exe edits of any kind; you mustn't change a single bit (binary digit) of the executable.

an unmodified version

you mustn't change a single bit (binary digit) of the executable.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.
Goodbye

 

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.
Goodbye

Crazy right? Having to design and create not one level, but multiple levels without a single ASM hack. Unthinkable...

 

Anything I could do with Cave Editor and the NPCTBL Hacking Tool is fair game right?

 

oh yeah that's another point, BL users are fucked because BL automatically modifies the exe doesn't it?

 

Also,
You can do a lot without turning to assembly. Assembly gives you indefinitely many possibilities, but without reliance on it you can still do many things.

There's not wanting to have someone submit a mod that turns the game into Space Invaders, and then there's limiting someone to a finite amount of maps that can have the same tileset and having to work around those maps' default NPC sets.

oh yeah that's another point, BL users are fucked because BL automatically modifies the exe doesn't it?

This is a problem, too.