Is modding Cave Story+ actually illegal?

I have always wondered, why is modding Cave Story+ illegal? Many mainstream games that charge money have mods, yet modding them isn't illegal.

For instance, Skyrim, it's 6 times more expensive than Cave Story+, yet the developers actively support modding, and there's a website for it.

I've also seen topics in Steam Forum where people mod CAVE STORY +.

Yet, why does the community here act like we're breaking the laws?

 

Just modding Cave Story + Isn't illegal, in fact NiCALiS supports it and made it possible to load your mod folder from the challenges menu, however, NiCALiS goes insane at just the idea of made it illegal to redistribute the official 2x graphics, so in short:You can make mods for cave story +, but you cant put downloads to the official 2x graphics.

 

Just modding Cave Story + Isn't illegal, in fact NiCALiS supports it and made it possible to load your mod folder from the challenges menu, however, NiCALiS goes insane at just the idea of made it illegal to redistribute the official 2x graphics, so in short:You can make mods for cave story +, but you cant put downloads to the official 2x graphics.

pretty much this

NiCALIS' god-awful PR has pretty much killed their relations with this community

 

I have always wondered, why is modding Cave Story+ illegal?

You are mistaken in that regard. You are not allowed to mod the console/handheld commercial ports (so no CSWii/CS3D/CS+3DS/CSDS/CSDSi modding), but CS+ modding is fine and always has been.

I really should clarify that in the forum rules at some point.

 

Yes, it's a horrible system.

Even though NiCALiS (how the #&**@ do you capitalize this word)
says that modding CS+ is allowed and even encouraged, it's just... ugh...

Pixel should just make Cave Story open source.
This will make him far more popular and far more wealthy.

 

Well, I can see why the graphics would be copyrighted. There really isn't much point in playing the port except for the extra content and the graphic.

Also, thanks for the answer.

 

Well, I can see why the graphics would be copyrighted. There really isn't much point in playing the port except for the extra content and the graphic.

Also, thanks for the answer.

I agree just a tiny bit, but this means that if you make a mod for cave story+ that uses some original tilesets, you have to 2X them YOURSELF. And thats just a pain in the @#$,especially in tilesets like grasstown. (It literally took me 25% to 35% of traveling to florida just to 2x grasstown.)

 

You're silly. All you do is 2x the changes if it's grasstown or something, then apply those to the officials.

 

Can't you go to the Doukutsu Bay and just torrent the double res sprites from the Wii version?

 

I'm pretty sure that you can use the base CS+ resources without ever including them in your mod folder. Like RM2K does with RTP. You can't distribute official 2xRes graphics but that doesn't mean that you can't use them in your mod. You only need to 2x res the graphical resources that you intend to modify. That's it.

Can't you go to the Doukutsu Bay and just torrent the double res sprites from the Wii version?

HELL NO! We are not reopening that can of worms. Plus that is no different tbh.

 

It's a good thing the Doukutsu Bay is a fictional version of The Pirate Bay.

 

I guess it's as illegal as downloading torrents.

 

no, downloading torrents has a small tiny bit of illegality

 

The way I see it, moding a retail game without permission is much the same as making a youtube poop or professional review using movie clips without permission. It isn't illegal, but it has every opportunity to be in bad taste.

 

Aren't they supposed to be cracking down on stuff like that now
I mean for a while USA wanted to shut down let's plays and other media videos altogether

 

Aren't they supposed to be cracking down on stuff like that now
I mean for a while USA wanted to shut down let's plays and other media videos altogether

Around this time last year, yes, there was a bill called SOPA that was going to outlaw that.
But there was enough uprising among netizens to pressure Congress into shelving the bill.

 

Well as I said modding cave story+ should be perfectly legal, just don't distribute official 2x res graphics in your mod and you should be fine. Cave Story+ loads official 2x res graphics from the main data folder if they are not present in the mod's folder.

The only problem with this is that to modify a pbm to edit one or two tiles you will need to upscale the entire image. Or hey, do a 1x res mod by upscaling all the graphics via nearest neighbour. Then it isn't a problem.

 

That is a bit of a problem, actually. Having to upscale graphics like that and not be able to take full advantage of the 2x res capabilities of the CS+ engine kind of defeats almost the whole purpose of even porting it to CS+. The magic and automation of the game using existing sprites is undermined if one single change has to be made to accommodate said mod. This is part of why I never got much into porting mods to CS+ since I wouldn't be able to distribute the ports without breaking the law, seeing as how almost every mod has at least a little bit of image editing. However, if somehow we were able to make a patch that only installs itself if the user verifies that he or she had a legitimate copy of the game...

 

No I mean that you can image edit as long as you scale the spritesheet/tileset/whatever yourself from the original CS.

Maybe if we create a library of free to use upscaled pbms then that would give us the ability to easily edit images without illegally distributing commercial content.

Who's up for it? I'd certainly give it a go.

 

Just upscale the pbms? I'd help with that.