Jul 15, 2019 at 7:04 AM
Join Date: Apr 5, 2013
Location: In my mind and of my body.
Posts: 1640
Age: 27
Pronouns: he/him
Greeting Critters and Gaudis, and welcome to MODCON 2019!
THE place to take your greatest Cave Story mod creations, and claim this years bragging rights, (a small sum of cash) and be crowned champion of this years MODCON!!
Without any haste, here are the rules for this year!
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#1 Your mod must be of the video game Cave Story
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Version of CS allowed:
Freeware
CSE2 (including al branches/forks aka CSR, CSE2e)
NxEngine
Modifications that require the user to already have a copy of CS+ to play are banned!
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#2 No NSFW content in your submissions.
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There have only been a incredibly small handful of mods ever made (most all of them joke mods) that ever even touch this material, but I would like to mention straight up that it is banned. I will be streaming all of these mods blind (at my twitch page) and I have no desire to get banned from twitch when I stream these mods, so keep your polar star in your pants, thank you.
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#3 You may not submit a mod that has been submitted to a previous "modcon"
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More detail on this rule below.
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#4 You mod must fit into the genre of "side-scroller, shooter, and/or platformer,"
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We personally love mods such as "H4CK3R ST0RY" and "Hullet Bell" but feel they are incredibly lovingly beautiful in a way that is not healthfully, competitively viable when comparing them to other mods. In short it's like comparing apples to oranges as they say, and we feel that we want to narrow this scope *slightly*. Most cave story mods ever made fit into this category already, so don't worry about it as long as you're not doing anything *too* crazy.
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#5 Your mods playtime must be less than 4 hours in length
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Any playtime outside of this playing period will NOT be evaluated towards your final score on your entry.
There can be exceptions to this rule if the gameplay continues to be very engaging, but I would highly suggest not coming close to 4 hours if you do not to risk your chances to get a good score from me.
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#6 All submissions must be submitted to pixeltellsthetruth.solutions at or before December 31st 12PM PST and they must be tagged with the tag "MODCON 2019"
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All submissions must be created by and submitted by you, if you are working by yourself you are only allowed to have one submission. If you are working as a official member of a development team of a mod you can work on 2 separate mods. If you have just given some feedback on a mod or written a few assembly hacks I won't be counting that as a "development team member" but submitting a decent amount of content will be judged on a case by case basis so contact me if you're not sure if you are considered on a team or not.
You are also allowed to make a thread of your mod before submitting it to the contest (this is recommended to get public feedback and testing done to prevent major bugs from happening in your submission/ during my stream of your mod) , if multiple versions of the same mod are uploaded to your thread or the doukutstu club, the most recent version at the time of judging is evaluated.
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#7 To place entities in Boosters Lab press the "i" key
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Seriously this is important!
In relations to rule 3 specifically.
Prizes will be announced soon. (closer to the deadline)
Judging will be handled solely by me, It's easier this way and cuts down on judging time a lot for a cleaner, and more efficient turnout.
There will be an update and "check in" on progress (either private or public, your choice) in about 3 months time, just to see how all is going. No I don't need a playable demo, I just want to make sure everything is going smoothly/ you still have interest in entering. (and if you start your mod after that then it's also fine as well)
The best of luck to all of you, and may the best game designer win.
THE place to take your greatest Cave Story mod creations, and claim this years bragging rights, (a small sum of cash) and be crowned champion of this years MODCON!!
Without any haste, here are the rules for this year!
--------------------------------------------------------------
#1 Your mod must be of the video game Cave Story
--------------------------------------------------------------
Version of CS allowed:
Freeware
CSE2 (including al branches/forks aka CSR, CSE2e)
NxEngine
Modifications that require the user to already have a copy of CS+ to play are banned!
--------------------------------------------------------------
#2 No NSFW content in your submissions.
--------------------------------------------------------------
There have only been a incredibly small handful of mods ever made (most all of them joke mods) that ever even touch this material, but I would like to mention straight up that it is banned. I will be streaming all of these mods blind (at my twitch page) and I have no desire to get banned from twitch when I stream these mods, so keep your polar star in your pants, thank you.
--------------------------------------------------------------
#3 You may not submit a mod that has been submitted to a previous "modcon"
--------------------------------------------------------------
More detail on this rule below.
--------------------------------------------------------------
#4 You mod must fit into the genre of "side-scroller, shooter, and/or platformer,"
--------------------------------------------------------------
We personally love mods such as "H4CK3R ST0RY" and "Hullet Bell" but feel they are incredibly lovingly beautiful in a way that is not healthfully, competitively viable when comparing them to other mods. In short it's like comparing apples to oranges as they say, and we feel that we want to narrow this scope *slightly*. Most cave story mods ever made fit into this category already, so don't worry about it as long as you're not doing anything *too* crazy.
--------------------------------------------------------------
#5 Your mods playtime must be less than 4 hours in length
--------------------------------------------------------------
Any playtime outside of this playing period will NOT be evaluated towards your final score on your entry.
There can be exceptions to this rule if the gameplay continues to be very engaging, but I would highly suggest not coming close to 4 hours if you do not to risk your chances to get a good score from me.
--------------------------------------------------------------
#6 All submissions must be submitted to pixeltellsthetruth.solutions at or before December 31st 12PM PST and they must be tagged with the tag "MODCON 2019"
--------------------------------------------------------------
All submissions must be created by and submitted by you, if you are working by yourself you are only allowed to have one submission. If you are working as a official member of a development team of a mod you can work on 2 separate mods. If you have just given some feedback on a mod or written a few assembly hacks I won't be counting that as a "development team member" but submitting a decent amount of content will be judged on a case by case basis so contact me if you're not sure if you are considered on a team or not.
You are also allowed to make a thread of your mod before submitting it to the contest (this is recommended to get public feedback and testing done to prevent major bugs from happening in your submission/ during my stream of your mod) , if multiple versions of the same mod are uploaded to your thread or the doukutstu club, the most recent version at the time of judging is evaluated.
--------------------------------------------------------------
#7 To place entities in Boosters Lab press the "i" key
--------------------------------------------------------------
Seriously this is important!
In relations to rule 3 specifically.
We have decided to change things fairly radically compared to previous ModCons, there has been a very scattered level of appreciation of the techniques, and methods necessary to score well in the contests.
With previous contests, the most optimal way to enter a contest is to have many ASM hacks made ahead of time, and to build a team to *assemble* a mod in a 8 to 12 week period. Obviously it goes a much deeper than this, but people who could code and could run a team of people had a very *very* significant advantage, there have been attempts in the past to snuff this out, such as banning assembly all together, but the contests removal of a integral part of the modding experience wasn't something that was accepted well (where as in the contest that actually banned the assembly hacking, the first place entry got around this in a loophole to load a .dll file, and scored first place
)
An example of the flaws in allowing certain kinds of assets but not others is Critter Tower Defense 2, where Txin ported a ton of assembly hacks he had worked on months prior to a fresh .exe and kept a few months work on an already existing project intact because of a fundamental flaw in the rule set of previous years that allowed some but not all types of pre-existing assets. (in this case assembly but not levels)
Another flaw is the power offriendship!!! teamwork. Building a team to produce raw unfiltered content and then spending the last few weeks polishing it up is a very good and over centralizing part of ModCons. Teams can do a lot of work in a short period of time, by having a long deadline, it gives one man teams a fighting chance against large teams to build something of equal quality. This isn't something that was directly used to it's fullest potential, but it's certainly an issue that needs addressed before it spirals out of control. This has been greatly effected by the 4 hours content limit, and the deadline being greatly extended, pulling all of the over-centralizing parts of using a team, but not devaluing the initial value of actually having one.
The new rules of the contest do not try to fight the ideology, but instead shift things in a new direction. All previous made assets are allowed. Polish on <4 hours of content is the new standard and moving the deadline to be a lot more lenient is ultimately for the better. It gives people more time to play with ideas and actually get groundwork laid without fighting a tight deadline. Having a mod go south a few precious weeks into development because of a fundamental flaw in a game design choice is no longer an issue, and a bias towards ASM hacks/ .dll loaders and the abusable power of working in teams to produce more content is all but completely removed.
These rules hopefully can pull away from, and prevent these flaws in previous contests from being abused. It will hopefully bring out the best game designer, and content creator, instead of the person who is best at breaking apart fundamental flaws of previous rule-sets.
With previous contests, the most optimal way to enter a contest is to have many ASM hacks made ahead of time, and to build a team to *assemble* a mod in a 8 to 12 week period. Obviously it goes a much deeper than this, but people who could code and could run a team of people had a very *very* significant advantage, there have been attempts in the past to snuff this out, such as banning assembly all together, but the contests removal of a integral part of the modding experience wasn't something that was accepted well (where as in the contest that actually banned the assembly hacking, the first place entry got around this in a loophole to load a .dll file, and scored first place
)An example of the flaws in allowing certain kinds of assets but not others is Critter Tower Defense 2, where Txin ported a ton of assembly hacks he had worked on months prior to a fresh .exe and kept a few months work on an already existing project intact because of a fundamental flaw in the rule set of previous years that allowed some but not all types of pre-existing assets. (in this case assembly but not levels)
Another flaw is the power of
The new rules of the contest do not try to fight the ideology, but instead shift things in a new direction. All previous made assets are allowed. Polish on <4 hours of content is the new standard and moving the deadline to be a lot more lenient is ultimately for the better. It gives people more time to play with ideas and actually get groundwork laid without fighting a tight deadline. Having a mod go south a few precious weeks into development because of a fundamental flaw in a game design choice is no longer an issue, and a bias towards ASM hacks/ .dll loaders and the abusable power of working in teams to produce more content is all but completely removed.
These rules hopefully can pull away from, and prevent these flaws in previous contests from being abused. It will hopefully bring out the best game designer, and content creator, instead of the person who is best at breaking apart fundamental flaws of previous rule-sets.
Prizes will be announced soon. (closer to the deadline)
Judging will be handled solely by me, It's easier this way and cuts down on judging time a lot for a cleaner, and more efficient turnout.
There will be an update and "check in" on progress (either private or public, your choice) in about 3 months time, just to see how all is going. No I don't need a playable demo, I just want to make sure everything is going smoothly/ you still have interest in entering. (and if you start your mod after that then it's also fine as well)
The best of luck to all of you, and may the best game designer win.
Last edited:
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