CS community meta discussion

I mean, there is the SDE (I kinda forgot what that stands for) that Jakzie is developing over in the CSMC (which, yeah, does lead to the point that only people in the discords are ever really aware about). Not like I know much about it myself because I'm still using BL v500 like the grumpy doomer I am.

I don't think however making a modding tool be completely all-in-one, I recall a conversation with Noxid in god knows where (it may have been in the CSTSFDG, if not in the forums), asking why DouA wasn't implemented in BL, because the source code for the program is available. The answer in short, besides connections with CarrotLord, it'd be a pain to work with if it's all in one program.

 

So that means the first steps in this process have already been taken.

My counterpoint to past Noxid (they might not believe this anymore) is that isn't how software is developped.

Github exists for this reason and it's very easy to use if the team involved is coordinated and makes sure to not step on each-others' code, you just need to make the program's file structure work better with it. Programs like Godot, Unity, Unreal, and Game Maker are already designed with this and Godot could literally just be used to develop software that isn't just games. It's a general software development tool not just a game development software.

The reason they thought it was a pain back then is because they don't have access to the source.

While we don't have access to a source code, we do have two recreations of the source code. One of them is nxengine, oops, but

Doukutsu-rs is a thing.


I know developers don't want to work in rust but rust as a language can be translated into gdscript pretty easily. Which means Cave Story's entire source code could be ported into Godot and we could work from there.

I think this is similar to what happened in the process of the mobile ports of the classic sonic games, the developers originally were just trying to make a fangame but then they ported the game and pitched it to sega.
I think for us it might be better to first do this grunt-work of "port the game to godot and do some shit to take advantage of it" then pitch it to Nicalis to work with us as a community.

 

Okay, so after a deliberating with Jade in dms, I do think she and I are more in understanding terms with each other when it comes to our points and such in this thread. I still think she's absolutely out of pocket for all this, but given how we both want to see activity in the forums again, I can only say time is the biggest obstacle to her and I'd still rather see these forums have a more diverse focus over a continued focus on Cave Story.

 

And now people are getting mad at me in your server because, to be honest, I was going through a bit of a manic episode when writing the thread because of events that happened in my life that have caused a lot of turmoil for my entire family. I don't think this reflects well on the state of the Discord that it's being used as a place to argue with someone behind closed doors, and this argument pretains to the entire CS community not just that Discord.

Just so you're aware because it sounds like you're only hearing things through osmosis; I genuinely haven't seen anyone be 'mad' or upset in the modding server, just kinda confused and not taking this too seriously as a result.

I firmly agree that Discord servers are shit at actually keeping things accessible (one of the primary reasons I don't touch modding in FFXIV despite constant nagging from friends is it's awful overreliance for using discord accounts for a bunch of things) but my have we grown used to instant messaging Discord should just add a way for servers to be readable for non-logged in lurkers instead of being anti-lurker by design, I personally never join public servers partially because I don't enjoy diving into communities behind closed doors and that said my current presence in the CSMC is a miracle. So I do mostly agree with the anti-Discord sentiment.


Is it possible to bring more modding activity again here? ...maybe?
Undeniable right now is that nobody is really bothering to write reviews/playthrough of mods anymore partially because there's now a lot of mods getting uploaded to just Doukutsu Club and not really here (I still try to make threads for them though), and rarely anybody is actually going out making content (streams/youtube playthroughs) surrounding these mods anymore besides the Modfest streams from Enlight.

Arguably one thing that would help bring more attention to the forum is to bring back more modding-related activities here (like making modfest happen both in the csmc and in a forum thread) i guess?
Would be cool and probably helpful to visibility is to see more people playing and responding to mods again outside of quick responds in the one modding discord channel, people writing more up-to-date and in-depth guides (I have been cooking up a small TSC-related text dump by the way) or do playthroughs of mods again (the thought of streaming /recording some mods here and there has been on my mind but I've been getting in my own way on that) but.. I would not have any idea how anyone would actually get people motivated into doing that though.


But even with all that one thing you really can't stop is the fact that it's just really way easier to ask for help in a instant messaging client than a forum, especially now that Discord has the whole threads board thing going on, and people aren't as inclined to talk about their daily going-ons in forums anymore.
And people talking behind other people's backs (which i assume is one of the issues with the splintered community here?) is something that's gonna happen no matter what you do. Even if you ask if mods of bigger servers can be a bit more watchful about that so it's handled more respectfully it's not like there's still gonna be more private groups and servers that won't.

I dunno though, it's kinda difficult to really get my feelings on this whole topic into proper words.
I do think it'd be cool to see this place be more active again and I'm open to contributing where I can but i feel like it's certainly gonna have to take a lot more than just telling people to stop using instant messaging clients.

I personally also still kind of have trouble seeing what about the community discourages newcomers besides the closed doors discord servers that also isn't an issue with today's internet as a whole.

So that means the first steps in this process have already been taken.

My counterpoint to past Noxid (they might not believe this anymore) is that isn't how software is developped.

Github exists for this reason and it's very easy to use if the team involved is coordinated and makes sure to not step on each-others' code, you just need to make the program's file structure work better with it. Programs like Godot, Unity, Unreal, and Game Maker are already designed with this and Godot could literally just be used to develop software that isn't just games. It's a general software development tool not just a game development software.

The reason they thought it was a pain back then is because they don't have access to the source.

While we don't have access to a source code, we do have two recreations of the source code. One of them is nxengine, oops, but

Doukutsu-rs is a thing.


I know developers don't want to work in rust but rust as a language can be translated into gdscript pretty easily. Which means Cave Story's entire source code could be ported into Godot and we could work from there.

I think this is similar to what happened in the process of the mobile ports of the classic sonic games, the developers originally were just trying to make a fangame but then they ported the game and pitched it to sega.
I think for us it might be better to first do this grunt-work of "port the game to godot and do some shit to take advantage of it" then pitch it to Nicalis to work with us as a community.

I can imagine if a number of people are a bit sour or unsure on this idea after the whole CSE2 thing. Edit: apparently i didnt really understand the difference between d-rs and cse2

 

I think if we want to bring back modding activity we should refer heavily to how Mario 64's modding community became an actual source of market income for content creators such as SimpleFlips, or how Undertale's became that way for Shayy.

We should bring back regular public competitions, give cash prizes, do forum trophies (ik it's stupid but I know you guys would lock tf in to have a trophy of your favorite scrimblo next to your name)

Actually that's a cute idea hold on.
If you want to gamify this process you could use it to make it look more interesting to onlookers, as in seeing a more nonstandard use of a forum's functionality you could use the forum's layout itself to force people to look into the most engaging aspects of the community.
If we funnel people into the creative process this way it means people on the forum are all incentivized to make cool shit.
Wanna know why?

Profile trophies would be rewarded based on votes. It'd be pure hard fucking DEMOCRACY.
And it'd be less toxic than upvotes, a lot less toxic. No ratios, no "the nazi makes a bunch of bots updoot his post"

Trophies on the website that are made by pixel artists to reward winners of modding contests. The trophies are styled like a Cave Story item and if you hover over the icon it displays a larger trophy art. It'd be cute and there's a lot of pixel artists here and I'd be willing to do the initial assets myself and do further concepting if we wanna go forwards with this.

Trophies have existed on forums in the past iirc, I think this might be what we need now.
I think all trophies should be based on activity on the forum itself though, so trophies are given out to reward people for doing things that are genuinely helpful for driving one conversation or another forwards. It'd make it easier to tell who's good at what and let every person somewhat intuitively guess what they should improve on.

This enables artistic competition, and while it will take a lot of moderation to give a healthy environment, I think it'd work.

 

while it will take a lot of moderation to give a healthy environment

That's defenitely no overestimation, if we had nuclear wars over vanilla vs heavy asm back then I fear the concept of freeware vs CSE2 lol.

 

That's defenitely no overestimation, if we had nuclear wars over vanilla vs heavy asm back then I fear the concept of freeware vs CSE2 lol.

Miiiint, can we make MaGCSL 2?

 

I don't think I want to return to moderation right now after the disaster that was my running of the CSMC and especially what followed as BLink left the picture. I handled that terribly and it's embarrassing to even think about it.

But if we have more clear guideliness, yes, less vague rules for the community, we could turn most decisionmaking here into a more democratic process.
I think the rules of the servers here might be too vague and maybe aren't categorized correctly?
Wait that's just the government.
God fucking damnit.

 

Miiiint, can we make MaGCSL 2?

Only if it's vanilla with only small tsc edit hacks like <MIM or my <TRA
It would certainly be interesting with today's knowledge but I don't know if it would be as much for the people who are more invested with not-freeware these days.

 

id be down for it ngl i dont wanna bother with complex bullshit if i would wanna do a shitpost mod to practice writing or art with.

Also I've been talking with serena in dms and we seem to be on the same page now, she's presenting ideas for new forum rules based on her past experiences with the community's specific drama.

 

Hi yes, I have no ideas. I was clarifying the current set of rules to her in dms. For most of them they are straightforward, there are some that yes, they should be enforced a bit more than usual (necrobumping, flame wars, etc), or even worded better. The only ones that I think that could really use an update are the rule on staff decisions, while there are now more ways to communicate the issue after a staff member has taken action, the forums have been clean since a very hot-headed individual got banned and we haven't heard from them since then; and the only other rule that could use an update is necrobumps/making new threads without awareness about the same topic being made. As long as someone isn't trying to reply directly to a post from 2009, then this really shouldn't be an issue, and while some general threads are pinned, the only factor to know is by going into the category those threads are in. While I recall it being a suggestion to have the rules/thread suggestions be present to new users, this has never been acted on, and even if new users go out of the way to find the rules thread, the overall layout can be a bit confusing, even with some of them conveying the message loud and clear.

Also please change the forum signature rule or remove it entirely, I doubt people have 800x600 screens on their computers nowadays, and it's been obsolete for at least a decade at this point.

 

Serena you just need to learn how to make those cool forum signature things other forums used and stop putting a giant klee picture on my screen every time you post
But anyways yeah as we talked in DMS:

There might be a good point in going through a lot of the rules, analyzing them and seeing how they've affected drama in the past and what got people over the edge and try to safepad the rules to prevent shit from spiralling out of control in the first place. It'd save us a lot of struggle, stop the sickness before it starts, y'know?

I think a lot of the more specific stuff like the forum signature rule is a good example of keeping this site accessible and making it less cluttered. It's easier to read when the text is front and center, though I wish we had a larger line spacing because I have dyslexia and it's hard to read this website.

Come to think of it that's another interesting problem, this site is really bad for people with dyslexia and that's another reason people tend to use Discord more, because it's specifically gotten adjusted more than forums have to be more friendly to dyslexic people.
I think maybe we should consider a major adjustment in the default font and line spacing of the website to make it a bit easier for people with my disability.

That's one step to lowering the barriers of joining that may help us.

 

Jenka is old

The amount of understanding required for this singular fact is so all-consuming that it instantly overrides any other possible information that could relate to the CS Forums. I can even show the proof for it. Jenka is old, which means she must be about to die soon. The fact that she hasn't died yet is actually just more evidence that she's totally about to, and even if she doesn't she's still continuously getting older, making it impossible for this statement to ever be less correct. Moreover, her oldness is baked into her character because she's named after an old Finnish polka dance that plays constantly while she's around. This patriotic attachment in turn means that part of the reason she's old is because she used to be the President... of Finland. That's why her house is close to the Polish, because Poland is known for being near Finland. Cave Story carefully conveys this by requiring that players must remove Jenka('s brother) in order to get the true ending and Finnish it properly, as a result of something that happened when she was less old. And seeing as she's only gotten older since then, this representation has only gotten truer, hence why it's known as the true ending.

Jenka being old is the very essence of Cave Story itself, and what it was designed to convey to us, its most diligent chroniclers. It is the only thing we need to understand in order to maintain the most philanthropic forum experience achievable.

Sorry for breaking the double-posting rule to post this but I needed time to think on this.

This forum itself is a very evident case of generational trauma. Drama from one generation is baggage for the next, this forum has had new generations for each new major release of the game and each new major streaming of the game and I think if we want to see not just Cave Story, but everyone, flourish, we need to accept that the people before us made mistakes and make sure we don't let anyone else repeat those mistakes.

Edit:
Anyways I think we need to start drafting new rules together and arguing about that. Who's gonna take dibs on writing the first draft

 

are you in charge of the forums now

 

(made in jest, I get the criticism)
(edit: made the image funnier)

 

bio what on god's green fucking earth is this edit

 

are you in charge of the forums now

Are you?

 

Okay, so when I first saw this thread, I thought it was just some joke, which maybe it was, but there evidently was a serious element involved here with wanting to re-invigorate some activity on these forums. So, you really stumbled around a lot at the beginning, but now that you've shown that you're serious about this, I guess I'll take this thread seriously now.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that I agree with many of the points that have been brought up about forums being a more suitable platform than Discord for public, search-engine-optimized content to be discovered and long-form discussion to flourish. I myself even made a thread a few years ago talking about this. But, I also recognize that that's not the direction that the wind is blowing in right now, and there are certain things you can't just artificially force. I'm happy for more content to be here again, but turning the tide on this with a grand vision like you're describing, Jade, just doesn't sound very realistic.

Another thing you're proposing is re-working these forums and the rules. I can see where you're coming from with your idea of expanding this into a more generic forum, but I'm not really sure how I feel about that. Another thing you're proposing is re-working the rules because you believe they're outdated. Can you point to anything in particular about the current rules that is outdated or missing? The current rules may be 13 years old, but they still hold up pretty well in my opinion.

There's also something else worth addressing, which 2DBro has subtly alluded to, but I think is worth stating more up-front. This is Andwhy and DT's site, at the end of the day. You're kind of popping up out of nowhere with this thread and almost acting like you own the place, with seemingly very little consideration toward the admins, which is kind of disrespectful. DT and Andwhy aren't as active as they used to be, but their activity level matches the activity of this site, so it's not a big deal. If you're really serious about breathing new life into the forums and maybe making changes, I'm not against it, but it's probably best to be a little bit more considerate of what DT and Andwhy have built and still maintain after all these years, and to show some willingness to work with them in bringing this vision to life.

 

I'm still on here basically every day, just again it's mostly spent cleaning out fake accounts

 

Yeah and I'm trying to say you guys could try changing things up more that way Cave Story's entire surface web presentation isn't a dead forum, a Reddit full of terminally online kids and a bunch of porn artists on Twitter.
That's Nicalis's job I know but helping this community grow again and introducing this community in its current state back to the people it appeals to the most would at the very least create the market for a Cave Story sequel, or at the very least inspire some devs to make more games that are like it.

Because you know this modding community has historically been "Modders moving on to go make games", so why don't we lean into that and help modding not be this thing that requires you to join into a scary server full of a bunch of people and instead it's just threads you can navigate through easily and find information through the deductive process.

Doing that personal knowledge digging on a Discord fucking sucks and I think we all know this.
I think it'd be smarter if we take advantage of the fact that forums, historically, are often used as supplimental modding resources alongside wikis and that the information gained there should be not only kept on the forum so others can learn easier but I think we should change our "community event" strategy that started in the CSMC to be something that isn't just isolated to that Discord. This will get more people in on what's happening and will get a lot of attention from those other communities that have kept seperate from the CS community.

I get you guys see this as me acting like I own the place but I'm really just trying to push for some systemic change so CS doesn't keep dying because idk about you guys but this game's pretty sweet.

Edit:
The reason we all thought Vinny playing CS again was such a big deal is because it's like the only thing this community has ever gotten in years. That's kinda embarrassing lmfao.
We shouldn't have to have a streamer decide to randomly play the game to have the game be relevant, that's stupid and obviously it didn't help the growth in a substantial enough way to make a difference.
This isn't because "CS is just not fun enough to new people"
It's because the site layout for "The Cave Story Site" is kinda weird and the forums on that site are kinda dead so like why would anyone care to talk about the game.

Edit 2 2edit2furious:
Also, again, I wouldn't want to take over the site because I don't think you guys have any good reason to trust me after the shitshow that was the way I fumbled CSMC back in the day.

Edit 3 : tokyo drift:
I'm saying you guys are good at your jobs but you're not using the forum for what it should be used for and that's kinda become a problem.