Cave Story

If you're not familiar with Cave Story, you should be. It's a fantastic game! This page deals specifically with the original free-as-in-beer version of the game, and even more specifically to the Linux port of that version (though I think it would apply to at least any of the PC versions of the game). It does not apply to the newer Cave Story+ versions, nor to to the versions released by Nintendo onto the Wii or other of those platforms. Still, if you've still got a copy of the original game lying around, read on!

Sacred Ground Savefiles

Anyway, a little while ago I wanted to go see what it was like going through Sacred Ground using the various weapon choices that you've got available, and found that, apart from the boss battles, the game does get rather dull once you've played it through a couple of times. Figuring that others could possibly benefit from the fruits of my labour, though, I figured I'd throw up a set of savegames from just before entering Sacred Ground. All of these savegames feature full health, full missiles, and the Life Pot (and, of course, the Nikumaru Counter). The Snake and Spur savegames are missing Chaco's Lipstick, unfortunately, though the Polar Star and Machine Gun saves do have that item as well. As far as I know, that's the only thing missing from any of the savegames.

To use these, save them as "Profile.dat" in your Cave Story folder. Note that this'll overwrite whatever your current savegame is, so make backups if that bothers you. I should also point out that these savegames were created using the Linux version of the game. I'm guessing that they're compatible with the savegames from other platforms as well, but I can't be 100% positive about that.

	Blade	Nemesis
Polar Star (heh)
Machine Gun
Snake
Spur
(Click the images to download the savefiles)

Savegame Format

Shortly after collecting those, I got curious about the savegame format, too, and I took a little bit of time to figure out a bit of the syntax. If you feel like hacking on a savegame to give yourself some different weapons, etc, this could save you a few minutes.

I actually also put together a little "cheating" savegame, if anyone's interested, which will start you out at the very beginning of the game with the following: Spur, Snake, Machine Gun, Blade, Super Missile (with 30 missiles), 50 health, the Arms Barrier, Turbocharge, Booster v2.0, and Whimsical Star. You can download that one here: cheating.dat. Enjoy! Disclaimer: I have no idea how this will end up interacting with the rest of the game, down the line. I only played it pretty briefly. It was pretty fun just storming through the Egg Chamber, though.

When I say "short" I mean an integer that's two bytes long. When I say "int" I mean an integer that's four bytes long. It's also worth noting that for weapon slots and inventory, the game will apparently just continue to load in weapons/items until it gets a zero for the weapon/item type. While playing around with stuff, I was able to actually give myself all weapons at the same time, and have enough items to start overwriting bits of the screen that they're not really supposed to. I don't recommend doing that. For instance, If you give yourself at least nine weapons, the ninth weapon slot actually overlaps the first inventory slot in the file (the file is fixed-length), so if you give yourself a ninth weapon of the Bubbler, that'll suddenly make the ID Card appear in your inventory. As the weapon changes in level, etc, your inventory slots will keep changing as well. I'm not sure if anything else is used inbetween the fifth weapon slot and the beginning of the inventory, so you'd best just stick with five.

(Note too that it's possible my Cheating savegame could cause problems. For instance, you can still go pick up the Polar Star right at the beginning, and it'll be added as a sixth weapon. It's possible that doing so is inadvertantly setting some other game flags which could have strange results later in the game.)

(Also note that this is clearly not the entire file. This is just as far as I got before losing interest. I can't think of anything else I'd really want to be able to modify in a savegame, anyway.)

Offset	Type	Description
0x1C	short	Maximum Health
0x1E	short	Whimsical Stars currently active (zero through three)
0x20	short	Current Health
0x38	5 ints	First Weapon Slot Each weapon slot takes up five ints, for a total of twenty bytes. int Description 1 Weapon ID 2 Weapon Level (1, 2, or 3) 3 Extra Energy (towards next level - will result in graphical glitches if you go higher than the weapon's max for its current level) 4 Maximum Ammo 5 Current Ammo Max Energy per Level Weapon ID Weapon Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 0x01 Snake 30 40 16 0x02 Polar Star 10 20 10 0x03 Fireball 10 20 20 0x04 Machine Gun 30 40 10 0x05 Missile Launcher 10 20 10 0x07 Bubbler 10 20 5 0x09 Blade 30 60 0 0x0A Super Missile 30 60 10 0x0C Nemesis 1 1 0 0x0D Spur - - -
0x4C	5 ints	Second Weapon Slot (see above)
0x60	5 ints	Third Weapon Slot (see above)
0x74	5 ints	Fourth Weapon Slot (see above)
0x88	5 ints	Fifth Weapon Slot (see above)
0xD8	int	First Inventory Slot Inventory seems to be just a string of integers. Inventory has six columns, and four or five rows (see above for why I'm not sure what the actual limit is). Note that merely having an item like Booster v2.0 or Whimsical Star doesn't automatically make it active (even though I don't think Whimsical Star needs to be activated when you get it during the actual game). Arms Barrier and Tubocharge seem to be automatically active if they're in your inventory, though. Go figure. ID Item 0x01 Arthur's Key 0x02 Map System 0x03 Santa's Key 0x04 Silver Locket 0x05 Beast Fang (?) 0x06 Life Capsule 0x07 ID Card 0x08 Jellyfish Juice 0x09 Rusty Key 0x0A Gum Key 0x0B Gum Base 0x0C Charcoal 0x0D Explosive 0x0E Puppy 0x0F Life Pot 0x10 Cure-All 0x11 Clinic Key 0x12 Booster v0.8 0x13 Arms Barrier 0x14 Turbocharge 0x15 Curly's Air Tank 0x16 Nikumaru Counter 0x17 Booster v2.0 0x18 Mimiga Mask 0x19 Teleporter Room Key 0x1A Sue's Letter 0x1B Controller 0x1C Broken Sprinkler 0x1D Sprinkler 0x1E Tow Rope 0x1F Clay Figure Medal 0x20 Little Man 0x21 Mushroom Badge 0x22 Ma Pignon 0x23 Curly's Underwear 0x24 Alien Medal 0x25 Chaco's Lipstick 0x26 Whimsical Star 0x27 Iron Bond

That's about it for now, I think!

Let me know if you've got questions, comments, or barrels of money you'd like to send my way.