cave-story-md

STUDYしましょう Edition

Today's date has a lot of 2s in it.

Changes:

• New languages: Chinese Simplified, Korean
• Rewrite CJK text renderer to use 12x16 font and 3 rows in the message window
• Fix latin languages displaying the wrong glyphs for non-ascii chars
• Flatten message window border to hide plane overlap
• Fixes to various graphical glitches in HUD / menus
• Fix most (but not all?) graphical glitches on certain consoles caused by Z80 bus bug
• Some optimizations to array lookups in object/tileset code
• The issues tab went from 49 to 22 and I don't feel like digging out the numbers

Video of the day

Mucho Linguas Edition

I tried using the SSF mapper to get everything on one ROM but it turns out nobody implements it in a consistent manner, so here's 8 ROMs instead. Each has been booted to make sure they start and display text properly, but I didn't play through the whole game 8 times.

Changes

• New languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portugese (PT and BR)
• Occasionally, when the music stopped it would play really fast for a second. This should no longer happen
• Restore 8 pixel border so the camera doesn't bounce around on single screen maps
• CS+ Speed setting
• Fix some of the credits bugginess and missing things (but more to go)
• Water drops in First Cave
• You can stand on presses again
• Labyrinth blocks don't go too far into the walls anymore
• The trees are in front of the island in the ending cutscene
• Fix #256 #276 #320 #321 #324 #325 #326 #327

Video of the day

Stuck at Home Edition

What's New?

• All music tracks completed
• The music won't slow down when the game does anymore
• No more OOM when loading a level, for real this time
• Nicer effects for polar star, fireball, snake, and bubbler
• A whole lot of other stuff fixed

What's Next?

• Bugfixing and polish mostly

Video of the day

CAVE STORY MAKES YOU HAPPY, PRETTY, LOVELY! Edition

There were a few bugfixes and the Nemesis should be more accurate now. I forgot what exactly was changed though, whoops.

Video of the day

Gold Edition

Video of the day

(...if you're bad, hold mode)

Fix 0.5.1a: Core water was too high #241

Getting Crushed Edition

New stuff:

• Tried to reduce slowdown to some success
• Snake and Spur work but don't have proper graphics yet
• Counter
• Intro
• Moving smoke
• Fixed a bunch of stuff I don't really remember

Known Issues:

• Yes

What's next:

• I need a break
• Weapon effects like fireball trails, boom flashes, polar star dissipation
• Try to fix the rest of the lag

Video of the day

0.5.0a fix: Camera was locking to the ceiling on Ballos second form.
0.5.0b fix: Cursor was missing in config menu.

Extremely overdue edition

After taking month long breaks and working on several things that aren't Hell, here we are.

A lot of new stuff:

• Hell and Ballos fight are beatable
• Multiple saves
• A config menu for remapping controls and toggling some other settings
• Combined ROM handles both NTSC and PAL
• 日本語台詞
• Nemesis is usable
• The wind/current tiles actually animate instead of just being arrows now

Known (notable) issues:

• The "Running Hell" and "The Way Back Home" tracks have too high a pitch on one channel when looping. I believe this is an XGM issue.
• There are a decent number of things missing from Hell, for example Curly doesn't shoot her Nemesis, and Ballos doesn't summon Red Butes. The ending scene is also uhh..
• Misery and Sue are still acting weird in that Undead Core fight.
• The SRAM format in the config menu doesn't do anything.

Planned for 0.6.0:

• Toroko & King's themes
• Texture compression so I can fit Toroko & King's themes
• Nikumaru Counter
• Spur and Snake hopefully

Video if the day

Beat the game edition

Going on 2 week vacation in a couple days so better to put this up now.

New Stuff:

• You can reach the normal ending and watch a buggy credits sequence
• Bubbler and Blade are in, Nemesis sort of works maybe
• Boss health bar
• Press X to open the map quickly
• Lots of little fixes everywhere

Plans for 0.5.0:

• Hell
• Spur, Snake, and Whimsical Star
• Options menu that includes remappable controls

Video of the day

Nobody saw that edition

Dropping this here because of some critical issues in v0.3.2. Only other notable change is more backgrounds are fixed to not look like vomit.

Video of the day. It's the Undead Core

Second anniversary edition. I don't know the actual day I started I just know it was a February.

New stuff:

• Level Select: No more running a wonky command line utility to convert saves, they're built in now.
• Experimental PAL support: The windows/menu are a tad too high, the rest should be ok.
• Ma Pignon has a sprite and is defeatable (a couple things missing from the fight still), so now the hidden Last Cave is reachable without cheating.
• Balcony is still largely unfinished, but the background is looking 👌
• A lot of little things

Stuff I would like to get done before 0.4.0:

• Revisit the Core fight, mostly to fix the projectiles
• Actually make the Undead Core beatable, and make the ending scenes work
• Bubbler and Blade

Video of the day

Small bugfix :^)

Also a few of the music tracks are updated

There are a lot of crashing fixes after 0.2.1 so if that version crashes during a map transition try this.

You SHOULD be able to reach the last bosses. All of which are messed up and buggy. Plantation is also messed up and buggy.

I've gotten rather burnt out working on this and am gonna go play video games for a while.

Thanks for helping with the
debugging.
This is as far as the game goes
for now.
I'm thinking I'll make this next
stage the last one.
Wonder how far I can get in
just two months...

What's new?

• A whole lot of bug fixes and polish all around in the early game
• The map system works
• Major overhaul of sprites and AI, most z order and lag issues resolved
• Omega tries to kill you!
• Monster X shows up and also tries to kill you! It doesn't fire any projectiles
• Curly's AI is slightly less stupid, actually follows you through the whole map
• The Core is visible! It can't damage you though...
• Waterway is very playable, as is the Ironhead fight
• The return to Egg Corridor is playable too, to a lesser extent. Most of the sprites are there
• Dragon Sisters float around, flap their mouths, but don't breathe any fire yet
• Once you get to Kazuma everything is invisible except him. Continuing from that point is masochism

Since adding this mid/late game stuff this weekend, I have not retested the early game. Sorry if I accidentally broke something.

Also, I'm going to get rid of the sonic water in the Core room. The reason I added it was due to the Core sprite being so large, I thought I would have to use a background layer instead of an actual sprite. This isn't the case anymore, and the background layer is free for the water.

200 commits edition. It is possible to make it as far as the Ironhead boss room (which is very broken). Here are all the changes / current issues from the top of my head.

I'm going to start calling releases "alpha" until the game is beatable. Then it will be "beta" until the stuff I missed is added in/fixed.

• Text skipping now uses the A button instead of B. It has also gotten an upgrade, holding A will fast forward scenes (objects move 2x speed, <WAI times halved)
• The pause/item menu (press start) is finally usable. You need to use it to equip the booster 0.8 if you get it (the booster DOES work, as do the turbocharge, arms barrier and air tank)
• BOSSES: Balfrog shoots and spawns frogs, Curly, Toroko, and Pooh Black try to kill you. Omega and Monster X TBD. The core is killable, most of the AI is there but it still doesn't move and is invisible. Stand on the upper right most platform and just shoot the air until it dies (650 hp)
• WEAPONS: Bubbler, Blade, and Snake are not implemented. Don't trade Chaba for the Snake or you will be screwed
• The first half of Labyrinth is pretty much done apart from the ugly background and Monster X not existing. The part when Curly fights with you sort of works. She shoots things but gets stuck behind a wall early on and never catches up. The shutters in the core room are also missing sprites, and the water effect is unfinished
• There is a thing going on with moving platforms. If you approach them from the left side (player moving right, platform moving left), you will clip to the top of it. I'll fix it eventually
• A lot of enemies even earlier ones still don't fire any projectiles and there are a lot of other minor things wrong like motorbike is the wrong color. My focus right now is getting to the endgame

You can get through Sand Zone pretty reasonably now, though most of the enemies/objects still don't move. I forgot to add the sprite for the mimigas in the room with Curly, so after you beat Curly walk all the way to the right of the room and press down. That's the mimiga that tells you to take the puppy. Feel free to trade for the machine gun and tell me about every stupid mistake I made on that thing. I just added it an hour ago.

The frog sprite exists now (I forget if that was in 07.16), Mannan's bullets move like they should, and Balrog in the power room actually tries to kill you. His frog form does too, but just by jumping at the moment. I remember the room with the missile upgrade had a mimiga that fights you but it didn't spawn when I was in there. I assume if it does spawn the game soft locks, because I have given it no sprite or AI yet. Oh and press falls down now so the health upgrade in "execution chamber" is reachable.

• First Cave and Mimiga Village are considered "Complete". Only very minor things such as Kanpachi not blinking are left.
• Egg Corridor is "Almost Complete". There is still:
  • Igor walks past Sue for the last punch
  • Behemoth does not turn red & charge
  • Basu does not fire projectiles
  • The terminals in the missile room all show blue, a couple should be red
• Grasstown is coming along. Frogs are visible, bats don't go AS apeshit as before, and Malco sort of animates. Mannan's bullets use the correct palette now but still don't move. I'll figure that out eventually.
• I haven't touched Sand Zone in this release, or checked if the second half with the puppies even works for a long time. Please do not submit issues about Sand Zone.
• In the last 2 or so releases the game was a bit more laggy. It seems to do with a combination of compiler optimizations and giving SGDK's sprite engine additional VRAM space. So from now on I will stick to the default size and use the free VRAM space for specific objects.
• Sprites are still not sorted. I got too frustrated trying to add my own algorithm and it's really not worth the trouble since Stef is gonna do it anyway.
• The following are fixed and will be closed: #8, #10, #12, #13, #17

• Fixed issues #3, #4, #5, #10, #11, #12, #13
• Unverified: Attempted to fix issues #7, #9

Possibly broken in earlier parts but you can "technically" make it to labyrinth

• Grasstown is "beatable" again though most enemies do not move
• It is possible to make it to Omega at which point the game will probably soft lock
• Added a proper sprite for Chaco and Curly
• Animation of Quote crashing into King & Toroko finally

Minor improvements, fireball mostly working but need to match it up with the original game still.