Completed Mods?

Hey,

I've been looking at these forums after having a revived interest in cave story mods, due to the fact that I can play them with a PC my friend built me.

After playing a few, including Jenka's Nightmare, WTF story, Shcizm, Magic, and Legacy Story (made by a friend of mine) I continually was met with a question?

Why are all the Cave Story mods incomplete? (Not Finished?)

I know, I know, before I go off on a tangent I will admit a few things:

Coding is difficult. I myself work with Flash CS3 and Action-script 2 (and have tried AS3) so I know it can be frustrating. I realize that this is different than the C++ code used in cave story mods, but it seems that by the look of many of these mods (like Jenkas Nightmare) there are (at least a few) people that understand it quite well. (Although a step-by-step tutorial on how to made a mod on youtube or a website would be appreciated for noobs). It seems that coding knowledge is not the issue for most people, I think?

Time? I can understand that these would take a long, long time to make. For example the game "The Underside" (very similar to cave story) took 4 whole years for the author to create, and it is not even finished! Is the problem that making these mods takes too much time to fully complete. It seems odd, like in Jenkas Nightmare, to invest so much time into something (like a project) just to end up abandoning it after all that hard work and effort! I understand that we all have lives and school, but....sigh. I just feel let down by all these great mods that are never completed, some of the storys' were quite interesting...

Bored? Many authors it seems grow tired of working on their current mod, ditch it, and start another. I understand this if your mod is short or really bad quality, but many abandoned projects were quite fun to play, and many players looked forward to their endings...


So let me ask directly, no beating around the bush, what is the main issue (or 3 issues) that prevent you from completing your mod?


I don't want to sound rude, but I think that part of the problem might be just the length and scope of the stories thought up for these mods. They are very large and take enormous amounts of time to fully create. I know that often a longer, more thought out story is better in most cases, than a shorter simpler one. But a long story that is incomplete is worse (in my opinion only, MY opinion) than a short one that is complete with a beginning, middle, and end.

Ok, now here is where you can prove me all wrong. If I have, in fact, there are fully complete mods that I have just not found, please post download links at will.

Note: The mod must not be a re-skin of the original cave story plot, must be unique story and levels.

I really do enjoy these mods, but I feel that I would enjoy them much more if I wasn't feeling half-satisfied after playing them because they are all demos.


Thanks for taking the time to read my concerns,

BackyardcabinXY

 

Spoiler

Hey,

I've been looking at these forums after having a revived interest in cave story mods, due to the fact that I can play them with a PC my friend built me.

After playing a few, including Jenka's Nightmare, WTF story, Shcizm, Magic, and Legacy Story (made by a friend of mine) I continually was met with a question?

Why are all the Cave Story mods incomplete? (Not Finished?)

I know, I know, before I go off on a tangent I will admit a few things:

Coding is difficult. I myself work with Flash CS3 and Action-script 2 (and have tried AS3) so I know it can be frustrating. I realize that this is different than the C++ code used in cave story mods, but it seems that by the look of many of these mods (like Jenkas Nightmare) there are (at least a few) people that understand it quite well. (Although a step-by-step tutorial on how to made a mod on youtube or a website would be appreciated for noobs). It seems that coding knowledge is not the issue for most people, I think?

Time? I can understand that these would take a long, long time to make. For example the game "The Underside" (very similar to cave story) took 4 whole years for the author to create, and it is not even finished! Is the problem that making these mods takes too much time to fully complete. It seems odd, like in Jenkas Nightmare, to invest so much time into something (like a project) just to end up abandoning it after all that hard work and effort! I understand that we all have lives and school, but....sigh. I just feel let down by all these great mods that are never completed, some of the storys' were quite interesting...

Bored? Many authors it seems grow tired of working on their current mod, ditch it, and start another. I understand this if your mod is short or really bad quality, but many abandoned projects were quite fun to play, and many players looked forward to their endings...


So let me ask directly, no beating around the bush, what is the main issue (or 3 issues) that prevent you from completing your mod?


I don't want to sound rude, but I think that part of the problem might be just the length and scope of the stories thought up for these mods. They are very large and take enormous amounts of time to fully create. I know that often a longer, more thought out story is better in most cases, than a shorter simpler one. But a long story that is incomplete is worse (in my opinion only, MY opinion) than a short one that is complete with a beginning, middle, and end.

Ok, now here is where you can prove me all wrong. If I have, in fact, there are fully complete mods that I have just not found, please post download links at will.

Note: The mod must not be a re-skin of the original cave story plot, must be unique story and levels.

I really do enjoy these mods, but I feel that I would enjoy them much more if I wasn't feeling half-satisfied after playing them because they are all demos.


Thanks for taking the time to read my concerns,

BackyardcabinXY

First of all, CS mod aren't coded using C++, rather a combonation of ASM hacking and TSC.

Second, This is a list of most of the mods, completed or otherwise.

From my point of view, most mods are abandoned because their creator's got bored of making them. However, some, such as WTF story, King: Strife and Sacrifice, and Schism, are just taking a while because of how much effort GIR, Noxid, and Xaser respectively are putting into them.

Also, a video TSC tutorial, well a video tutorial for ANY coding language, is not a good idea. A written one, like This (Made by DragonBoots) is much better, because you don't have to constantly pause/play it, you will always be able to actually SEE the code, and you can more easily search for a specific item.

 

However, some, such as WTF story, King: Strife and Sacrifice, and Schism, are just taking a while because of how much effort GIR, Noxid, and Xaser respectively are putting into them.

I don't know, I haven't seen Xaser in forever on the forums, and unless someone else is keeping in contact with him (if so, please reply), then for all I know schism is pretty much dead/on hold.

And the reason my mod is taking so long is both the work required, and that I'm a bit lazy.

 

99.??% of mods are incomplete: That is true.

Adark is correct. C++ is not used to create CS mods. Most people will stick with TSC, a scripting language created by Pixel that is part of the reason modding CaveStory is such a common phenomenon.
Many a great mod, such as Jenka's Nightmare and Schism, have been created mostly with TSC and sprite edits (and custom music, in the case of the latter).

More functionality can be added to the game using assembly hacking; at least that's the route we've chosen. Assembly is on par with the difficulty of coding you're describing, though not every mod has assembly hacks, nor does every mod really need it to create a full storyline.

Time? Yes. Creating a good mod takes a large amount of time. Demo releases can take within a couple months to a year to make, depending on the overall complexity of the mod.

Boredom? Yes. People get bored with making mods. People mod because it's fun, and when it's not fun to mod anymore, people stop doing it. This happens even if the creator already put a lot of time into the mod, and also even if the mod has already received a large amount of praise.

EDIT: I think there are about 4 or 5 finished mods, which includes the Boss Rush mod. Click on adark's link to DT's mod guide to see them.

 

I'm a bit lazy.

I'm lazy-er.


I will randomly stop modding, wait five minutes on hold, walk around my house once, and then get back to modding, just because I don't want to mod right then (Even though it's all I really have to do for a while *coughfiveyearscough*)

 

I think a lot of it really comes down to the amount of time/effort it takes to complete a full-length mod. Most of the people who have attempted to make a mod have been very talented, but inexperienced, and modding sort of lends itself to extravagance. By the time they've made a an hour or so of gameplay, they're tired of the story, or they know they can make better maps now, or they've come up with a new idea, or they've run out of spare time, or they never really had the later parts of the mod planned out properly. There are other problems too, e.g. in my case the biggest thing holding me back is that I can't draw well enough to make decent facepics and the like. HMM THIS GIVES ME AN IDEA...

In terms of completed story-based mods, however, things have really begun looking up. A Lost Land and The Mimiga Army were both finished recently, and The Wrath of Ravingcustard was finished last year. Most of the ones that are active at the moment are likely to be completed too, I believe.

 

Most of the time the problem is boredom, and ignorance of your emotions in the future. When you start making a mod you're usually really enthusiastic, thinking that people will say they love it and you'll make it great in less than two weeks. But then you notice that the cool trick that makes the tiles change with cool smoke and sound effects, forming an awesome new map, takes two days to make. And it's just fifteen seconds of excitement for the player. By ignorance of your emotions in the future, I ment that you can't know if you'll get bored in the future. You have no idea if modding is going to be fun in two weeks of hard labor. Besides by the time you've finished a third of your mod you'll already have other awesome ideas that are going to end the same way...

The only solution to this is making a mod with someone else. Both of you will feel lazy, sometimes frustrated, both of you would LOVE to abandon this mod since it's so boring. But neither of you want to upset your modding mate.

But hey, that's just my opinion. And I'm from eastern Europe.

 

So let me ask directly, no beating around the bush, what is the main issue (or 3 issues) that prevent you from completing your mod?

1) Time: It takes a lot of it and sometimes I don't have any to spare.
2) Graphics: Not even kidding but most of my delays come from not actually having graphics to work with and not wanting to do them because I'm bad at it. That's why I took up ASM, to have something to do in the meantime.
3) Ideas: Because eventually, most people are going to get to a point where they say "Okay, and now what?"

As has been said before, modding is like so many other projects in that sometime the scope just gets too big for people to handle. The mods stretch out over long periods of time and it's understandable if people might lose interest.

 

problem
at least you could of put a link to a nother more acsesable site than media fire my internet has no band with where a am it suck the internet where i am is filtered and very poor strengthhttp://www.cavestory.org/forums/images/smilies/frown2.gif

 

What link are you referring to?

And what does this have to do with the topic?

 

On-topic, Jenka's Nightmare looks like it's got a second lease of life.

 

I don't think Ollie is going to stop making The Show until it's finished so.

There's another one to add to the tally.

 

I don't think Ollie is going to stop making The Show until it's finished so.

There's another one to add to the tally.

:J!!!


Yes.

 

Due to the large number of incomplete mods, my strategy is to assume that every mod that is started will not be finished, and that this will hold true only until the mod is complete. That way, if a mod isn't finished, I don't have to be disappointed when the mod creator disappears.

Yes, by this logic, I am also assuming I will never finish my mod (which, to be honest, almost seems like that will be the case, since the goal is always so far away).

 

You're the exact opposite of me, Giraka! Whenever I see a mod I expect it to be completed, and then discussed for years. Remember that mod where you're a mimiga and somehow you go underwater but ask Mahin to pull you back up which he does? Yeah...What ever happened to that one?