Introduction and TSC Questions

Hey SeriousFace, it's me.

Most of you haven't heard of me, so I suppose I'll introduce myself first.

I'm a somewhat experienced programmer and an ardent fan of a few gazillion video games. My assembly language skills are extremely rusty but probably intact; if anyone has notes on the Cave Story code that they're willing to give out, put me in line. I'd love to work on tools to help people make mods of this game. However, I know next to nothing about the process of making mods itself, besides what I learned from studying those made by the members of this forum (Jenka's Nightmare was one particularly helpful example, off the top of my head).

On the other hand, I've done Hell in 3:46 and I'm quite proud of it, and I got to Five in Corridor (hardcore mode, of course) and got to Ballos with purple-hair-chick in Heaven's Tower, so I guess I'm fairly competent at actually playing the game, for a keyboard player. Feel free to shoot that down, though.

I currently use Sue's Workshop, the one that supposedly doesn't crash bosses with different room numbers, but I haven't tested that. Are there any other programs available to specifically modify Cave Story? I've heard that RuneLancer is making a weapon editor but isn't done with it; what else?

I'm making a mod of Cave Story (who isn't?), and I have a couple of questions about the scripting. That was the original purpose of making this thread, but then I realized that none of you knew me yet =P

First, about the <CMP command. Is it possible to make the map changes permanent? Can you prevent the smoke puffs from showing up?

Is there a good way to simulate subroutines (or methods, or functions) using TSC script? I haven't found one yet, just a way to do nested conditional branching. Combined with some creative use of flags, you can kind of almost do subroutine-like things, but it's very limited and makes your script file look very congested, not to mention it uses a flag for each place you would call the subroutine from.

Would people play a mod that consists entirely of the puzzles for my "real" mod so that they can say which ones are harder and which ones are easier, helping me place puzzles and rewards accordingly, despite knowing that they'd totally spoil the puzzles for themselves? If not, how should I test my puzzles? I obviously can't do it myself because I already know all the answers!

Thanks very much for your time.

 

Hello, FireHaven, welcome to the forums!

It's nice to hear people are playing my mod. I'm sure you'll get five pretty quick, it's not hard once you learn to understand rollers.

Sue's is the current editor that I use, RuneLancer was making a weapons editor called Ballos' Lab (though I am under the impression that it has been halted, possibly forever). There is another editor called Miza which exists, though I believe Sue's is superior to it.

I am very willing to try out any puzzles you can throw at me, just send me a link or e-mail me at softmints@jwebireland.com. <CMP does not appear to be permenant, though it is possible that one could use events 90-94 which run upon entering the map to make the changes you wish before they become visible (flags to id the changes). The smoke could only be gotton rid of through assembly (removing that sprite from the command) or editing the graphic to black, but that would ruin a lot of effects.

 

Hey, nice quick response time! (Softmints talked to me!)

Man, Ballos' Lab is frozen? I guess that means I have to make my own... eventually...

Yeah, I've used Miza. It's kind of horrible. I agree with you.

Yes, I'm currently using 90-94 to <CMP all the tiles when you re-enter a room. My problem is that a few dozen of these tiles are within sight of one of the doors, so every time you enter, you see a distracting smoke effect. The solution I'm considering using is to <CMP all the tiles before the fade-in, but because I can't subroutine the <CMP commands, this would require a bunch of duplicated scripting or the inability to chose which direction you fade in from.

Actually that second drawback doesn't sound too bad. No one would notice, if I was careful enough.

But even then, there would either still be smoke around when the fade-in happens or the fade-in would be noticeably late (if I avoided the smoke with a <WAI).

Yeah this is a really small quibble to be worrying this much over. I could be making progress. Oh well.

And, well, I don't actually have any puzzles to give out yet. But I guess I'll add you to the list. =)

 

There's no way to make changes made through <CMP permenant (I assume you mean for later visits to the same area). Getting rid of the smoke, if possible, can only be done by hacking the executable, and it would probably cause all uses of <CMP to not produce smoke.

The two basic options you have are 1) setting a flag and having the map script change those tiles whenever it loads after that flag gets set, and 2) making an almost exact copy of the map and sending the player to the second map after the changes have been triggered.

The first option is good if it's a small change and it will never be on screen when the map gets loaded. The second option is good if it's a small map and/or the areas that are changed are on-screen when you enter.

 

Oh, you can find some notes on TSC and NPC data in my folder; http://www.esnips.com/web/softmintssOtherStuff

 

Thanks, Softmints. I was already using an online reference for TSC script but yours is more recently updated, and the NPC data will save me hours of testing.

I would be happy if <CMP never produced smoke. Can someone tell me where to find this in the game?

If not I guess I can randomly corrupt until I get some relevant changes >>

 

@Firehaven: Welcome, enjoy your stay, all that stuff! You really seem to know what you're doing already... moreso than me anyway, it seems.

And too bad RuneLancer isn't a regular here any more. He's the king of assembly around here (well... *was* at least), and I'm sure he'd know exactly how and where to point you in the right direction. *sigh*, 'tis a tragedy, truly.

Oh, bloody hell. Fifteen posts and I'm already acting like I actually know what I'm doing. XD

@Softmints: Hehe, thanks... all right so I never asked for them, but in all fairness, your notes *are* more updated than mine. Hope you don't mind.

*EDIT* - @Firehaven - Maybe this thread could be of some use, assuming it makes any sense?

 

ill try those puzzles when you make them

 

Thanks for that thread, with a bit of poking around I might be able to find the place where <CMP jumps to the pointer table and that would let me avoid the smoke entirely.

Any other old stuff by RuneLancer that's still archived somewhere?

Edit- I've been wading through his old posts and man, he doesn't seem to give out much, does he? "A hack should be a reflection of the hacker's skill" and all that. Oh well, now I know where the booster code is, kind of, that's something I'd like to play around with.

 

I did upload all of my stuff and that's all of the stuff which was ever here on forums :x

http://www.cavestory.org/forums/threads/501/

The rest is spread in his post should be np to find it...
But well if you really consider to make an editor then I would like to help you with stuff, like .INI's
You could make another editor, cause Prof. Eich doesn't seem to have much time anymore and I don't know if it's still going to be updated :/
Also I did some stuff like Sound hacking or using .bmp's for the exe instead of .pbm's and hacking Sue's but I never shared how to do it (I should I think)

And too bad RuneLancer isn't a regular here any more. He's the king of assembly around here (well... *was* at least), and I'm sure he'd know exactly how and where to point you in the right direction. *sigh*, 'tis a tragedy, truly.

Actually Prof. Eich is the king of assembly around here ;P
He did find stuff about NPC hacking before Runelancer even joined the forums hehe
I could point someone too I think :x

I have got lots of idea's but actually its up to Fire...

 

Well, I've made a disassembly of Cave Story's original code. People were looking for one so I've hosted it myself, try not to eat up my bandwidth too quickly =P

WARNING - 8Mb TEXT FILE
(that means don't open it in notepad, use wordpad or something instead!)

let me figure out the links on this board >>

http://www.freewebs.com/koneko99/cavestory.txt

Oh, that was easier than I thought.

This is what I'll be looking at to determine how to do assembly hacks.

Maybe someone else could find it useful as well.

Off to figure out weapons code...

(my assembly really is rusty O_O... oh well, at least it's not coded in brainfck)

 

Well, I've made a disassembly of Cave Story's original code. People were looking for one so I've hosted it myself, try not to eat up my bandwidth too quickly =P

Rune made one before but this is usefull too, thanks

 

Well, I've made a disassembly of Cave Story's original code. People were looking for one so I've hosted it myself, try not to eat up my bandwidth too quickly =P

You, sir, are awesome.

There is also a third option for changing map tiles, but it depends on how many different types of tiles you are changing and if you are able to make a custom tileset that'll fit everything. Instead of using the <CMP command you can use the <SMP command, which changes a given map coordinate to the previous tile in the tileset. It does this without creating smoke.

 

Oh thanks! I like praise!

<SMP could actually be really good, I could <SMP when you enter a room and <CMP for all the other uses, giving me smoke when things change but not when you enter a room.

<SMP all the time wouldn't work for me because the player can toggle the map changes, so if they changed it back and forth you wouldn't get the original tile.

I wonder if it would be viable to change the weapons to use a standard format for scripting... that would make making a tool for it a lot easier.

This has sort of turned into an all-purpose FireHaven thread, huh. Would it be better to have the thread name changed or just move on to another thread for each (sufficiently large) subtopic?

Also I just recently discovered that the ROM Hacking forum seems to actually also be about modding Cave Story? What's the difference in usage between that and this?

 

I wonder if it would be viable to change the weapons to use a standard format for scripting... that would make making a tool for it a lot easier.

This has sort of turned into an all-purpose FireHaven thread, huh. Would it be better to have the thread name changed or just move on to another thread for each (sufficiently large) subtopic?

lol, well we could rename it to "New Editor?" if you consider to make one and move it into the rom hacking section

Also I just recently discovered that the ROM Hacking forum seems to actually also be about modding Cave Story? What's the difference in usage between that and this?

Its not rom hacking its about hacking Cave Story

 

Also I just recently discovered that the ROM Hacking forum seems to actually also be about modding Cave Story? What's the difference in usage between that and this?

Beats me. The two subforums do seem kinda redundant. Threads about specific mods seem to go here, where threads specifically about assembly seem to go there. Everything in between though kinda applies to both, so who knows? I don't think anyone is going to get confused if you post in the "wrong" forum. =P

 

Beats me. The two subforums do seem kinda redundant. Threads about specific mods seem to go here, where threads specifically about assembly seem to go there. Everything in between though kinda applies to both, so who knows? I don't think anyone is going to get confused if you post in the "wrong" forum. =P

Its not rom hacking its about hacking Cave Story

One is about hacking one about the hacks.
Whats so hard?

 

I tend to view them as "Editing" and "Projects", really, with the main category filling in as "General". I kinda like it better this way, so you know to keep your ongoing progress threads in the designated Projects/Mods forum. Works for me.

And I would be very interested in seeing any type of tweaking around with assembly, hehe. Some interesting effects to be had... Too bad I can't be arsed enough to learn it myself.

 

One is about hacking one about the hacks.

You answered your own question. =P

 

One is questions about doing stuff and the other is for talking about the projects themselves - Games and Questions, basically.