Homebrew Cave Story Engine 2 for Nintendo Wii U

[vbarros22]

Dont see any post here but see that on Reddit. Its made by a dev called Clownacy and all credits go to him.

Background from his GitHub page:
When Pixel made Cave Story, he compiled the original Windows EXE with no optimisations. This left the generated assembly code extremely verbose and easy to read. It also made the code very decompiler-friendly, since the assembly could be mapped directly back to the original C(++) code.

Technically, this alone made a decompilation feasible, as was the case for the Super Mario 64 decompilation project - however, there was more to be found...

In 2007, a Linux port of Cave Story was made by Peter Mackay and Simon Parzer. Details about it can be found on Peter's old blog. This port received an update in 2011, including two shiny new executables. What Peter and Simon didn't realise was that they left huge amounts of debugging information in these executables, including the names of every C++ source file, as well as the variables, functions, and structs they contained.

This was a goldmine of information about not just the game's inner-workings, but its source code. This is the same lucky-break the Diablo decompilation project had. With it, much of the game's code was pre-documented and explained for us, saving us the effort of doing it ourselves. In fact, the combination of easy-to-decompile code, and a near-full set of function/variable names, reduced much of the decompilation process to mere copy-paste.

To top it all off, some of Cave Story's original source code would eventually see the light of day...

In early 2018, the Organya music engine was released on GitHub by an old friend of Pixel's. On top of providing an insight into Pixel's coding style, this helped with figuring out one of the most complex parts of Cave Story's codebase.

And... that's it! It's not often that a game this decompilable comes along, so I'm glad that Cave Story was one of them. Patching a dusty old executable from 2004 has its downsides.

https://github.com/Clownacy/CSE2/releases

 

[HomeStarRunnerTron]

WHOA NALLY! I'm absolutely blown away by this-- I have a little Wii U inject for the vWii version of Cave Story that requires a little bit of hassle to connect the gamepad up, so for the sake of complete ease of comfort as well as feeling more pixel(hohoho)-perfect, this is absolutely it. So amazed by how perfectly it runs-- and how this beautiful game can have such elegant, unclunky code, hahaha. In a world of indie games made on unwieldy levianthans of engines, this is kind of a revelation. Thank you so, so much!

 

[vbarros22]

WHOA NALLY! I'm absolutely blown away by this-- I have a little Wii U inject for the vWii version of Cave Story that requires a little bit of hassle to connect the gamepad up, so for the sake of complete ease of comfort as well as feeling more pixel(hohoho)-perfect, this is absolutely it. So amazed by how perfectly it runs-- and how this beautiful game can have such elegant, unclunky code, hahaha. In a world of indie games made on unwieldy levianthans of engines, this is kind of a revelation. Thank you so, so much!

And looks beautiful on the gamepad screen
Do you think this is better than the Wii version?

 

[Lostbhoy]

Aw man, I did not know about this!! Love Cave Story and I agree with the above regarding the wii version and the gamepad sync.... Takes too long to start playing lol

I'm trying this right now!! Thanks for the info @vbarros22

 

[vbarros22]

Aw man, I did not know about this!! Love Cave Story and I agree with the above regarding the wii version and the gamepad sync.... Takes too long to start playing lol

I'm trying this right now!! Thanks for the info @vbarros22

Yeah man, I'm waited too long for an appropriate person who share this info but since no one posted I had to do it. So much grateful for Clownacy whoever is he

 

[Lostbhoy]

Massive thanks and kudos to that man or woman!! (or sentient jelly fish to keep it modern!!)

Only gripe i have is it needs a wide screen patch and a multiple game save option as my son likes this game also.... But I ain't complaining, both those options would mean it's no longer a port and they're available on the vWii one anyway.... My son can just play that one......

Seriously.... This is awesome.... Loving it!

 

[Vague Rant]

Only gripe i have is it needs a wide screen patch

Scroll down a bit further on the Releases page and grab CSE2 Enhanced. That version has widescreen support and a few other optional changes including full button remapping. Still only the one save slot, though.

 

[Lostbhoy]

Nice, I'll check it out @Vague Rant. Thanks for that!

 

[vbarros22]

Scroll down a bit further on the Releases page and grab CSE2 Enhanced. That version has widescreen support and a few other optional changes including full button remapping. Still only the one save slot, though.

By your tests, enhanced is better than portable?

 

[Vague Rant]

By your tests, enhanced is better than portable?

I definitely prefer Enhanced, personally. Portable is the original, unmodified game ported to other platforms, while Enhanced is the same thing plus widescreen, a toggle between the original 50 FPS and enhanced 60 FPS, smoother updates, button remapping, and a few other features I don't really use like multiple soundtracks. It doesn't include anything which dramatically alters the game, so it's still Cave Story, just ... enhanced.

 

[Lostbhoy]

I found a Sega Genesis version now!! Works pretty well on Gensplus which has gamepad support and is upto V 0.7.0 since 15 Sept this year! If anyone is interested.....

https://github.com/andwn/cave-story-md/releases

 

[HomeStarRunnerTron]

I found a Sega Genesis version now!! Works pretty well on Gensplus which has gamepad support and is upto V 0.7.0 since 15 Sept this year! If anyone is interested.....

https://github.com/andwn/cave-story-md/releases

Sweet syrups and jellies, that's amazing! 8D I am absolutely for the idea of CAVE STORYING EVERYTHING!

 

[Lostbhoy]

Seems the project was DMCA'd today...

 

[vbarros22]

GitHub - EwanGreen4/CSE2EX: Forked from Clownacy/CSE2EX

New repo but we have to compile by your own

 

[DracoSage]

Sorry what do you exactly mean by "compile"?
Just download the files and put them together?
Thanks for the answer (:

 

[Lostbhoy]

Sorry what do you exactly mean by "compile"?
Just download the files and put them together?
Thanks for the answer (:

You will need to install devkitpro and its wii u libraries in order to create a bootable rpx file.

 

[godreborn]

here:

might have this deleted, since I think it may contain copyright materials. I didn't even know there was a sequel to cave story. I got pretty far in one of the versions.

 

[godreborn]

btw, if you want to compile it yourself, there's a couple mistakes in the instructions, more like typos. near the end, the CSE2 stuff should be CSE2.elf. that's to strip and build the rpx.

 

[Lostbhoy]

might have this deleted, since I think it may contain copyright materials. I didn't even know there was a sequel to cave story. I got pretty far in one of the versions.

It's not a sequel its a port of the original but I'm sure the author made their own or used a custom engine as it came from a fan recreation of the 2004 original freeware version and I believe that's why the above repo has been allowed to remain as the other page is still down.

 

[godreborn]

It's not a sequel its a port of the original but I'm sure the author made their own or used a custom engine as it came from a fan recreation of the 2004 original freeware version and I believe that's why the above repo has been allowed to remain as the other page is still down.

so, it's okay just to leave it? I never tested it, so I'd appreciate if someone would. you may or may not need tiramisu, but I think maybe not if it's that old.