Designing Cave Story

Jul 11, 2007 at 12:06 PM
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Who created Cave Story? And if not one person, how many people created it? also, What exactly was used to code it? I've never seen anything pieced togehter like Cave Story really.
 
Jul 11, 2007 at 12:43 PM
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Please use forum search next time, also it is in the readme.
 
Jul 11, 2007 at 4:59 PM
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One person created Cave Story - A Japanese guy known as Pixel. I believe he used C or C++.
 
Jul 12, 2007 at 2:52 AM
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I believe he used C++ along with DirectX. I've been dying to make a cave story-ish game--i even finished a game engine with C++/SDL/OpenGL, but i can never get myself to work on an actual game for more than a week. I give pixel mad props for spending 5 years(or so i heard) on development.
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 3:54 AM
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I give him credit just for coding it. I love C++, yet I can't stand it. Everything must be perfect.

Wasn't Pixel coming out with a new game? Some space game.
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 8:32 AM
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Omg, are you serious. How on earth could he program somthing like this on C++. I spent like a week trying to work on C++, boy... is it a program and a half. Seriously, I'm not sure why he bothered with it just to make a 2d platformer. Come on, I wanted an example for opening a window... it took like 100 lines of code just for that.
Thats a bit dissapointing really, I've always aspired to making something like this, and I really thought the program he was using to design it was perfect, but I am certainly not going to put half my life into learning C++.

Damn, and thanks
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 10:59 AM
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C, C++, and C# seem to be pretty commonly-used languages in video game programming. I'm going to college for programming (mainly focused on games), and we started out with C, moved quickly into C++, and I think, other than maybe C# later, those are the only languages we do.

If you're just starting out, though, maybe you should try something like Java (first language I used). It seems to be easier to learn, and, once you have one language down pretty well, it's easier to learn new ones.
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 9:55 PM
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BASIC is easy too. Though any code you use, you might want to get a program that checks the spelling and stuff. Otherwise your program will go nuts and crash, and it takes forever to find out what is misspelled.
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 10:17 PM
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It's written in C
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 10:20 PM
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Wow, that would make it really hard. Ouch. But also go Pixel!
 
Jul 13, 2007 at 11:06 PM
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True Hitoare said:
C, C++, and C# seem to be pretty commonly-used languages in video game programming. I'm going to college for programming (mainly focused on games), and we started out with C, moved quickly into C++, and I think, other than maybe C# later, those are the only languages we do.

If you're just starting out, though, maybe you should try something like Java (first language I used). It seems to be easier to learn, and, once you have one language down pretty well, it's easier to learn new ones.

Better don't learn C#, it's propietary and only works with .NET or Mono, and thus isn't really used much in game development.
How about learning a shading language like GLSL for optimal usage of GPUs?
 
Jul 14, 2007 at 2:47 AM
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Toe Fungus said:
Omg, are you serious. How on earth could he program somthing like this on C++. I spent like a week trying to work on C++, boy... is it a program and a half. Seriously, I'm not sure why he bothered with it just to make a 2d platformer. Come on, I wanted an example for opening a window... it took like 100 lines of code just for that.
Thats a bit dissapointing really, I've always aspired to making something like this, and I really thought the program he was using to design it was perfect, but I am certainly not going to put half my life into learning C++.

Damn, and thanks

Hey, C++ is hard but it isn't nearly as hard as some people think it is. Mere mortals such as you and I can figure it out; it's not just some proverbial pie in the sky.

Oh, and this would be my first post here. Hi.
 
Jul 15, 2007 at 8:40 PM
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C# is great for beginning programmers. You may argue that it sucks and it MS infested, but its really a great language, excellent for writing GUI based programs in, and its very easy to use. Once you know C#, C++ is much easier to understand.

Also, may i interject that it would seem as though pixel used some sort of RPG maker, or at least a prebuilt graphics engine.
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 1:26 AM
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But you guys make mods and stuff for it all the time? Is there another program or something to do that? and if so what?
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 2:43 AM
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Blackhole said:
C# is great for beginning programmers. You may argue that it sucks and it MS infested, but its really a great language, excellent for writing GUI based programs in, and its very easy to use. Once you know C#, C++ is much easier to understand.

Also, may i interject that it would seem as though pixel used some sort of RPG maker, or at least a prebuilt graphics engine.

I agree that C# is quite good. Garbage collection is a nice feature and there are many other things that the language handles for you.

As for me, i didn't think C++ was extremely difficult per se. I did have some trouble beginning, but hey, i was one of those persistant ones who never gave up. The only basic thing that really tripped me up at the beginning were pointers; they weren't _that_ hard, it was just a concept i haven't heard of and it confused me for a long while.

Also, I don't think a simple window would be 100 lines of code, unless you were programming Natively for Windows(lol :p).

On another note, why would you say Pixel "seemed" to have used an "RPG Maker" or something of the sort?

Oh yeah, DestronPrime, people here usually use Sue's Workshop; they aren't programming from scratch, but actually changing the data files that go into the Cave story program. I haven't really looked at it too much, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 3:25 AM
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I can't seem to grasp the fact that Pixel used C for this whole thing. And the fact that it's a huge game (well, not huge, but pretty big) makes me agree that he must have used some kind of engine. Even if just for some things.

Then again, he did spend five years on one game.
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 3:32 AM
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I doubt he used C. He started this in 2000, so its practically garenteed that he used C++. Also, he was a software developer, so its likely that he used a graphics engine and then built the game engine on top of that.

On another note, why would you say Pixel "seemed" to have used an "RPG Maker" or something of the sort?

Read above.

Also, I don't think a simple window would be 100 lines of code, unless you were programming Natively for Windows

It doesn't. It takes 40 lines of code. But is that the hard part? No. The hard part is using windows API to put controls on a form. Its such a royal pain in the ass i quickly gave up trying to write a GUI based program in C++. I'd rather do my C++ stuff with directX and the like.

Oh yeah, DestronPrime, people here usually use Sue's Workshop; they aren't programming from scratch, but actually changing the data files that go into the Cave story program. I haven't really looked at it too much, so anyone correct me if I'm wrong.

You are correct, since its utterly impossible barring a decompilation of the EXE to change the source code. Its all data editing. Data editing is surprisingly powerful if the engine has been well constructed, like Cave Story's.
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 3:55 AM
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Blackhole said:
C# is great for beginning programmers. You may argue that it sucks and it MS infested, but its really a great language, excellent for writing GUI based programs in, and its very easy to use. Once you know C#, C++ is much easier to understand.


So you're basically saying it's a gateway drug? :p
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 5:08 AM
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Where did my post go?

Also, if by graphics engine you mean something like DirectX, yes, he used an API, but he didn't use something like RPG Maker or Game Maker that handles a majority of the basic system-things. I'm convinced of that, mostly because the DS and PSP ports that got ahold of the source code to aid in their ports reported that the source is in C (Or possibly C++, I can't remember which).
 
Jul 16, 2007 at 5:35 AM
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Well of course he used directX, it was made in directX 5, but thats an API, not a graphics engine. You know as well as i do that there is a big difference there. I don't mean something like game maker, i mean some kind of graphics engine. He didn't use RPG maker or anything like that, since if people got ahold of the source and say its C or C++, there wouldn't be any point. But i do think he may have used a graphics engine. Then again, maybe thats just me and he didn't. I've done a tidbit of research and from the looks of it, i think he coded everything himself considering he's a programmer by trade, and programmers are notorious for only trusting their own code (me included :p). I think he also coded that ORG thing, since he said that he's working on some musical composition software right now. So, judging from all of that, the best answer would probably that he did indeed code everything. No wonder it took 5 years.
 
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