*Read First* Threads about Hacking Cave Story for WiiWare

Technically, resolution is not a good enough reason to stop anyone from using a higher resolution mod. The only thing is to not use the CS Wii sprites in it. That's it. There's nothing else besides the inability to use the Wii sprites.

And to be honest, I do believe we could do better than those. |D One's artistic ability is limited only by their imagination. And they did skip out on a great many things. Now, I'm not saying to modify the originals, but to make a custom variant of them.

 

This is what this post is about. Anything having to do with hacking the WiiWare version of Cave Story, be it sprite sheets, code, transfering data to and from the Wii to the PC, whatever the case may be, it fall within the realm of piracy and will not be allowed here at this forum.

I completely agree that this forum is not the place for piracy discussion. However, I do believe there is merit in looking at the contents of CS Wii in a non-piratey kind of way that can be good for the community.

For example, this thread addresses several examples of small bugs that, in some cases, are better understood by examining the source files (and, if Nicalis does release a patch for CS Wii, this thread will be invaluable to their efforts).

Similarly, this post by Noxid reveals some Easter Eggs that wouldn't be discoverable simply playing the game on the Wii.

If I understand your statement correctly, these types of discussions are no longer allowed. Even if nothing illegal is occurring (if each person has individually transferred their PURCHASED copy of CS Wii to their PC), these discussions are still not allowed.

Again, I understand the want (and need) to halt piracy-enabling discussions here. However, I do not understand such a blanket ban on ANY type of CS Wii discussion outside of its normal playing on the Wii.

It is my hope that you reconsider your decision in light of the potential benefit to the community these discussions could have .

 

Cave Story Wii took mods from this forum and added them as Boss Rush and Time Attack in their release.

The original AG translation is still there among all of their data files because of this, even though most of them would not be used, because they didn't even take the time to remove all of the pbm files, much less the completely unused redundant copies of maps with the other translation's scripts running, or fix any of the errors which existed in even the used map scripts.

Perhaps it is mean spirited of me, but you already completely erased the thread with my previous apology in it: I see no reason why we shouldn't take from them as well.

That said, there is nothing more I can do here but express my frustration. I am deeply sorry to Pixel for having become the object of this tug of war. At the least, you should know that I only dream of improving things beyond what is already there, regardless for what is legal or will be completely misused.

The excitement of discovering the method of dissecting and recompiling Cave Story Wii's data files lit a small spark in me, a light which merely said "I can improve this". I do not trust someone else to release a patch for it, official or otherwise; I only wanted to do my part, of what limited things I can, to let things be fixed and improved, and hopefully appreciated. Nothing more.

No pirating, no ill intentions, no harm meant, the least of which to Pixel. Again, I am sorry.

 

<DoubleThink> Whatever
<DoubleThink> CS Wii hacking is dumb anyway

I'm kind of hesitant to touch anything so would you prefer to take care of the errant threads yourself or...? (Welcome back by the way. Maybe they should release CS Wii every month >_>)

I'll most likely be monitoring this place for a little while. But I don't plan to stay around that long. I'm very busy and I don't have time to monitor this community, let alone other communities that I may wish to remain active in. So that's why this point needs to come across now so that it remains in effect, even if I'm not around to enforce it.

Anything that is going to hurt any type of profit for Pixel-san is unwelcome here.

And no, while Quest for Calatia is a mod of sorts, it is almost entirely developed with new graphical content by the designers themselves. I'd say at least 70 - 80% of it and it isn't a romhack in the least, but rather an entirely new Zelda game built from the ground up for PC. There is nothing illegal about what they are doing, unless I've missed something and they've released a ton of Zelda roms that I didn't know about...

SkyeWelse

 

Anything that is going to hurt any type of profit for Pixel-san is unwelcome here.

What are you talking about? Pixel isn't making any profit from Cave Story Wiiware.

 

If I understand your statement correctly, these types of discussions are no longer allowed. Even if nothing illegal is occurring (if each person has individually transferred their PURCHASED copy of CS Wii to their PC), these discussions are still not allowed.

Again, I understand the want (and need) to halt piracy-enabling discussions here. However, I do not understand such a blanket ban on ANY type of CS Wii discussion outside of its normal playing on the Wii.

It is my hope that you reconsider your decision in light of the potential benefit to the community these discussions could have .

Sorry, but that's the way it is going to have to be. There's nothing stopping you from figuring this stuff out for yourself and modding what you personally own. But there is a problem with discussing how one would go about doing that here at this forum. Even if that wasn't the intent to pirate the game, content from the WiiWare version is or was intended on being used for some other purpose than being played on the Wii, which falls in the realm of piracy. As the owner of this site, I cannot condone such actions, no matter how good or honorable those intentions are.

@Fire1052, and why would you think Pixel-san isn't getting anything from this game. There was a license agreement between Nicalis and Pixel. Of course there is a monetary transaction. Maybe he doesn't get royalties with each purchase, but supporting the official version in a sales capacity shows that Pixel is able to make a profit, which in turn makes him profitable and hire-able for future gaming projects.

-SkyeWelse

 

Always under times of stress he shows...

What are you talking about? Pixel isn't making any profit from Cave Story Wiiware.

@Fire1052, and why would you think Pixel-san isn't getting anything from this game. There was a license agreement between Nicalis and Pixel. Of course there is a monetary transaction. Maybe he doesn't get royalties with each purchase, but supporting the official version in a sales capacity shows that Pixel is able to make a profit, which in turn makes him profitable and hire-able for future gaming projects.

Actually, from what I've read, there's a certain 'cap limit' Nintendo sets up with it's WiiWare developers.
They don't get paid if their games don't sell enough, but once they hit the 'cap', they get reimbursed for all the games sold, plus the any ones that will sell after, too.
It really does matter for each copy sold, at least until the cap's reached.

 

Noxid's really huge rant that he'll probably regret posting later

You guys don't need to worry about my mod. It's my labour of love, and it'll take a hell of a lot more than Nicalis to get me to give up. And yes, I have backups... archived in three different types of media storage, going from version 0.0.1.2 to current. I've got 16 different .exe files from various stages of progress just in my working folder (although I really should clean that up...)

But, that's not the point. I think I would like to take this time to lay out the basic timeline of what's led up to the hack. It'll make me feel better at least.
Note: it's very long.

Spoiler

Well, it started out just like any other ASM hack for me - somebody suggested something, I didn't have it, and I wanted it. Trickybilly made a comment on my blog about flashing lights or something, and I thought it would be fun (I'd been toying with the idea myself) but I figured it'd probably look kinda lame since there was no transparancy and therefore no way to produce a reasonable looking light effect. I asked GIR what he thought about it and he told me that I should just hack in transparancy myself. I figured I'd always wanted transparancy anyway so it would probably be a worthwhile endeavour. According to the blog, this puts it at around Mar. 6 that I first started toying with the rendering engine. Of course, I got nowhere fast, so I got bored and set the idea aside.

Well, the very next week, I'd forgotten the power cord to my laptop, and wouldn't be able to get it until the next weekend. As luck would have it, I found a USB stick and managed to grab my mod before the batteries died. I didn't really want to work on any of the big stuff on my mod without all the rest of the backup info on my laptop (and I didn't want to do graphics work on a public computer so, I downloaded Olly and my compendium and took another look at the graphics rendering stuff. After a few hours of fooling around, I came up with what amounts to the very first image I posted in the "Wiiware on PC" thread. I was quite excited for what I had done, and it was all I could do to keep myself from looking like a fool in that computer lab. I spent pretty much every night of that week in the computer lab, as soon as I got off class until 2 or 3 AM when I could barely see the screen anymore. There were a lot of obstacles to overcome, but I was making good progress. Around midweek I got really hung up on a particular problem and that's when I enlisted the help of GIR. So, with his help, we managed to get it down to about 85% working-ness by midway-through the second week - probably around march 10, I'm not really sure. Anyway, after a short break we got around to finishing it up to about 95% completion. It was at this point GIR suggested that we forward our proposal to Tyrone and Nicalis, since the possiblity of what it might be used for (CSWII-CSPC) had arisen to our attention. Thus, it was March 14 that I sent my first message to Nicalis.

I believe the reasoning for asking them about it was, with the launch of the Wiiware title less than a week away, we didn't want to get in trouble with them for putting out what would turn out to be essentially the entire selling point of their port - the extra graphics capability. It was pretty obvious that it would only be a matter of time before the graphics and data from the wii version got ripped up and spread over the internet, with a group of resourceful fans such as the CS hackers. They'd been doing it all along to the PC version, and since nobody said "No"...

Well, anyway, it was almost half a week before I got a reply, and in the interim I made a mockup video showing Kanpachi in the core using tile sprites from some of the screenshots on Nicalis's blog. It was supposed to be a joke but I don't think anyone got it >_>

Tyrone basically told me that they needed time to discuss the matter, and to discuss it with Pixel himself. He said something to the effect that people stealing and using the new Wii graphics and stuff Pixel worked hard on might discourage him from doing future games. Anyway, we dropped work on the hack in anticipation of their response.

After a week and a half of silence, I got so bored that I started playing with the hack in my spare time, tinkering with it and refining some of the procedures. After reworking one particular instruction set, almost all of the minor bugs we'd encountered suddenly seemed to evaporate. At this point, the hack was pretty much 99% done - there were only a few minor glitches in the credits/ending sequence, and it wasn't anything so bad as to make it unviewable. So, on the 30th of March, I sent another email to Tyrone asking if there had been any progress on the discussions. He said they were still busy discussing, and hadn't had time to speak to Pixel yet. Okay, I figured. I'd give them some time. They were probably very busy what with the release of the Wiiware and all.

Well, it's now April 12, and I've still not heard back. I'm trying to imagine why it's taken so long to come up with what I thought would be a simple answer. I just wish that they would tell me SOMETHING, just give me a little bit to go by. All I want is to be able to use this in my mod, to make it special, show off how hard I've worked and how much it the mod means to me that I would go to such lengths. But, from the last email, weeks ago, they wouldn't even be able to tell me if that was okay.

If it comes down to it, I'd fight for my right to include this in my mod. It's gotten to the point for me where I'm getting fed up with not being told anything. CS PC Hacking has gone on for the better part of 3/4 years now, so there's a certain precedent set. If I want to do this for my mod, I don't think there is any legitmate reason that they can give to say absolutely, no way, you can't do that. I've been holding off, waiting, hoping, purely out of respect for Pixel as my biggest inspiration and/or hero. I mean, his awesome game is the reason I ever bothered to undertake something like this mod...

Ever since I got Tyrone's last email back I've been feeling nothing but resentment for this hack. I hate it, I wish I'd never started so I could be free of this stupid politics and nonsense. But it's done, and I'm not one to let my honest hard work be marginalized.

If you don't care then feel free to skip over this, but I had to get that off my chest. I just don't even know anymore.

I don't even know.

 

Well, I'm glad you posted it.

I'm not entirely sure how to word this, but the effort that Noxid put into this hacking project clearly means a lot to him. I don't think anyone should deserve to feel grief for such a thing they worked upon.

I'm sorry if I said anything earlier that may have seriously aggravated the situation. Noxid, I wish you the best of luck in your journey.

I want to see King's Story grow and flourish, not fall victim to some bad timing with Cave Story Wii.

 

The 2xRes mod is fine in my book as long as it doesn't contain copyrighted material from the WiiWare version. And I believe the early beginnings of that mod predated the initial announcement of the WiiWare release. You just chose a very incriminating thread to post in, that's all.

 

I'll most likely be monitoring this place for a little while. But I don't plan to stay around that long. I'm very busy and I don't have time to monitor this community, let alone other communities that I may wish to remain active in. So that's why this point needs to come across now so that it remains in effect, even if I'm not around to enforce it.

In that case I hope you've looked at that proposal SP sent you.

 

The 2xRes mod is fine in my book as long as it doesn't contain copyrighted material from the WiiWare version. And I believe the early beginnings of that mod predated the initial announcement of the WiiWare release. You just chose a very incriminating thread to post in, that's all.

I was sort-of responding to the stuff that was being said on the previous page but it took me a really long time to write all that >_>

 

While I agree that uploading pirated files should not be allowed, I disagree with you on that "Wii Version hacking" part.
With all due respect but I can not understand this. "Hacking" it, is only possibly legal. But posting information about how to hack "Wii Cave Story" is definitely not illegal.

Why is posting information forbidden? (Its legal)
Why is even bringing this subject up forbidden? (Those are methods that dictatorships are using)
Why are romhacks of other games are allowed, while Cave Story Wii Romhacks and discussing about hacking it is not allowed?
Why do we have to force our opinion to other people?

No offense, really, but I can't understand it.

Nicalis "pirated" the boss rush mod, a member of our community made this mod. He modified it only a bit for the wii version. (From what I heared, he also "pirated" another mod from this forum)
Nicalis "pirated" the original english AP Translation for Cave Story.
Pixel is only mentioned at the credits and Nicalis is mentioned a lot more in the game and at websites as a developer, he takes all the credit.

And now he is complaining about us, forgive me if I might come off as disrespecting: But doing this looks really hypocritical in my eyes.

How is this fair?

Members who start and/or heavily contribute to discussions regarding this subject will be banned.

I think that information should be freely distributed and muzzling the users is not a good idea in my opinion.
Free speech should be valued in this forum but maybe it's not, because this seems a bit too harsh. o:

I'm quite ashamed to see a site that was started as a tribute site to Pixel-san and Cave Story, used as a method of distributing pirated content that not only hurts Pixel-san himself, but any future commercial endeavors he may pursue one day.

I really do not want to start a discussion about this. Because this subject is really debatable. Of course it could affect his commercial endeavors, but I highly doubt that this ever will be critical. o:
However, in my opinion hacking makes the game more popular, not the other way round.

- Oliver

 

^ Truth. (10chars)

 

For example, this thread addresses several examples of small bugs that, in some cases, are better understood by examining the source files (and, if Nicalis does release a patch for CS Wii, this thread will be invaluable to their efforts).

Similarly, this post by Noxid reveals some Easter Eggs that wouldn't be discoverable simply playing the game on the Wii.

If I understand your statement correctly, these types of discussions are no longer allowed. Even if nothing illegal is occurring (if each person has individually transferred their PURCHASED copy of CS Wii to their PC), these discussions are still not allowed.

I'm not entirely sure, but my impression was that those types of threads are allowed. They are not a discussion of hacking or ripping CSWii; they're merely discussion of its content.

"Hacking" it, is only possibly legal. But posting information about how to hack "Wii Cave Story" is definitely not illegal.

Why is posting information forbidden? (Its legal)

While it may not be illegal to spread information about how to do illegal things, it's perfectly reasonable for a forum administrator to not allow it on their site, lest they be thought to be aiding those people doing illegal things by hosting the information.

...does that make sense?

Why is even bringing this subject up forbidden? (Those are methods that dictatorships are using)

Forbidding even bringing up the subject is fine as long as it's not a bannable offense.

Why are romhacks of other games are allowed, while Cave Story Wii Romhacks and discussing about hacking it is not allowed?

Um, are they? I know hacks of Cave Story PC are allowed, but Cave Story PC is freeware.

Why do we have to force our opinion to other people?

...what? Who's forcing opinions on people? Don't forget, this is a privately run forum. It's not a democracy, unfortunately.

As for your mention of hypocrisy and stuff... I dunno. There might be a good point in there.

 

Forbidding even bringing up the subject is fine as long as it's not a bannable offense.

Eh? How can they expect to forbid it if it's not a bannable offence?

...what? Who's forcing opinions on people? Don't forget, this is a privately run forum. It's not a democracy, unfortunately.

Just because it's a privately run forum doesn't mean the admins don't have an ethical obligation to treat forum members fairly and respectfully. They do, regardless of what the law says. Ethical principles trump laws. Unfortunately, not everyone acts as though that is the case.

 

Eh? How can they expect to forbid it if it's not a bannable offence?

Easy. If someone does it, tell them not to. If they persist, warn them again. If they continue to ignore you then ban them. The ban, then, is for not heeding the warning rather than for the original offence. Sort of.



I suppose there's some truth in the other part of your post, in that if they didn't do that the forum would die because no-one would want to come here.

 

While it may not be illegal to spread information about how to do illegal things, it's perfectly reasonable for a forum administrator to not allow it on their site, lest they be thought to be aiding those people doing illegal things by hosting the information.

Hacking it may not be illegal!

In the United States and many other countries, even if an artifact or process is protected by trade secrets, reverse-engineering the artifact or process is often lawful as long as it is obtained legitimately. Patents, on the other hand, need a public disclosure of an invention, and therefore, patented items do not necessarily have to be reverse-engineered to be studied.

He doesn't have a patent and so hacking it is not illegal when you bought it.

Forbidding even bringing up the subject is fine as long as it's not a bannable offense.

You should read again then:

Members who start and/or heavily contribute to discussions regarding this subject will be banned.

o:

Um, are they? I know hacks of Cave Story PC are allowed, but Cave Story PC is freeware.

Just because it's freeware, it doesn't make it more legal or illegal.
In fact you always have your copyright. Even if you're not going to sell it.
Just the interest in the copyright changes when you're selling it.
So technicially both versions are either legal or illegal to hack. According to law, both should be legal to hack, aslong as the programs are legally acquired.

...what? Who's forcing opinions on people? Don't forget, this is a privately run forum. It's not a democracy, unfortunately.

No comment.

 

Easy. If someone does it, tell them not to. If they persist, warn them again. If they continue to ignore you then ban them. The ban, then, is for not heeding the warning rather than for the original offence. Sort of.

Ah, that makes sense. It seems like on these forums that's pretty much how all rule-enforcement is done (with the exception of spambots). I mean there was that one time when andwhy went on a banning spree for about a week or so, and the recent unwarned banning of DragonBoots, but that sort of thing is the exception, not the rule.

That being said, I still say I agree with SP on this one. Regardless of whether or not the admins have the right to forbid certain topics of discussion on the forums (which is a different issue entirely), I see no reason why they should forbid the discussion of Cave Story WiiWare hacking. That's like saying threads like the elimination thread or wish-granting game should be forbidden because they talk about forum members being hurt/killed/murdered. And I think we can all agree that murder is a much more unethical act than pirating copyrighted video-game material (though they're both unethical). Just because people speak hypothetically about a topic doesn't mean they intend to do whatever it is they're talking about. In fact, the only thing that would be accomplished by banning someone for talking about CS WiiWare hacking would be to piss them off and make them more likely to do something illegal and/or unethical.

 

He doesn't have a patent and so hacking it is not illegal when you bought it.

Hacking and reverse-engineering it isn't illegal. Distributing hacked or reverse-engineered copies of it (eg the assembly code for it) is. [Using the reverse-engineered copy to create a clone, oddly, is perfectly legal.]

You should read again then:

Members who start and/or heavily contribute to discussions regarding this subject will be banned.

o:

I think I was stating my own opinion there, not my impression of what Skyewelse's opinion is. Though, in retrospect, that probably was an odd thing to do in that context.

Just because it's freeware, it doesn't make it more legal or illegal.
In fact you always have your copyright. Even if you're not going to sell it.
Just the interest in the copyright changes when you're selling it.
So technicially both versions are either legal or illegal to hack. According to law, both should be legal to hack, aslong as the programs are legally acquired.

Legal to hack. Technically illegal to distribute the hacked copies. (Here's another reason to create that platform-independent patch format that I mentioned in the CaveEditor thread...)

That being said, I still say I agree with SP on this one. Regardless of whether or not the admins have the right to forbid certain topics of discussion on the forums (which is a different issue entirely), I see no reason why they should forbid the discussion of Cave Story WiiWare hacking. That's like saying threads like the elimination thread or wish-granting game should be forbidden because they talk about forum members being hurt/killed/murdered. And I think we can all agree that murder is a much more unethical act than pirating copyrighted video-game material (though they're both unethical). Just because people speak hypothetically about a topic doesn't mean they intend to do whatever it is they're talking about. In fact, the only thing that would be accomplished by banning someone for talking about CS WiiWare hacking would be to piss them off and make them more likely to do something illegal and/or unethical.

I pretty much agree with you here, but I can understand why someone would not want this kind of discussion on their discussion forum. And since it's their forum, we should respect their wishes. There are other places where such discussion is allowed (for example, the IRC channel apparently).