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Cave Story+

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games

This page is for the enhanced version. For the original game, see Cave Story.

Cave Story+
Cave Story+ cover
Developers
Studio Pixel
Nicalis
Publishers
Nicalis
Release dates
Windows November 7, 2011
macOS (OS X) September 7, 2011
Linux December 13, 2011
Reception
Metacritic 83
OpenCritic 88
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Microtransactions None
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Scrolling, Side view
Controls Direct control
Genres Metroidvania, Platform
Themes Sci-fi
Series Cave Story
Cave Story+ on HowLongToBeat
Cave Story+ on IGDB
Cave Story+ guide on StrategyWiki
Cave Story+ on MobyGames
Cave Story+ on Wikipedia
Cave Story
Cave Story 2004
Cave Story+ 2011
Cave Story's Secret Santa 2021

Warnings

The macOS (OS X) version of this game needs a fix to work on macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later (see API for details).

Key points

Three versions of the soundtrack plus two graphics modes.
Development for this version has been abandoned, as shown by the Mac version being broken by default,[citation needed] and missing features from the Switch release.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Epic Games Store
DRM-free after installation through Epic Games Launcher (notes may include more details)
DRM-free when launched directly from executable.[1]
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
Humble Store
DRM-free
Icon overlay.png
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Linux
Mac App Store (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
macOS (OS X)

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Profile.dat[Note 1]
GOG.com %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Cave Story+ (Galaxy)\Profile.dat
macOS (OS X) $HOME/Library/Application Support/
Linux $HOME/.local/share/CaveStory+/
The game supports XDG on Linux, but crashes when the value is set.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Profile.dat[Note 1]
GOG.com %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Cave Story+ (Galaxy)\Profile.dat
macOS (OS X) $HOME/Library/Application Support/Profile.dat
Linux $HOME/.local/share/CaveStory+/Profile.dat
Profile.dat stores save game data.
The Steam save games on OS X and Linux are not compatible with the DRM-free and Steam for Windows versions.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
Epic Games Launcher
GOG Galaxy
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud

Video

General settings.
General settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
640x480 for HD, 320x240 for Original.
Option to scale either Sharp (Nearest neighbor, black border) or Stretch (Bilinear filtering, letter/pillarboxing).
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Freely resizeable.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS
Frame rate is capped at 60 FPS. Uncapped framerate is supported by doukutsu-rs.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Input

Input settings.
Input settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse not used at all.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller might need to be enabled from input settings and rebound.
Quitting the game without deliberately dying requires Esc.
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
Digital movement.
Controller Y-axis inversion
Controller types
XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Generic prompts are used regardless of controller. Use doukutsu-rs for Xbox prompts.
Impulse Trigger vibration
PlayStation controllers
Recognized as a generic DirectInput controller. doukutsu-rs has native DualShock 4 support.[2]
PlayStation button prompts
Use doukutsu-rs for DualShock 4 prompts.
Light bar support
doukutsu-rs supports DualShock 4 light bar. Blue for Player 1, Red for Player 2.
Adaptive trigger support
DualSense haptic feedback support
Connection modes Wired, Wireless (Bluetooth)
Generic/other controllers
Button prompts Input settings icon - Generic Controller.svg
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Not available in this game. Use doukutsu-rs for haptic feedback for XInput, DualShock 4, and Switch Pro controllers.
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M
Select controller as input device.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
All speech is text-based.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
By default lowers the volume.
See Mute on focus lost.
Royalty free audio

Mute on focus lost

Set mute in background[citation needed]
  1. Download Special K.
  2. Copy SpecialK32.dll to the installation folder.
  3. Rename to OpenGL32.dll.
  4. Run the game and exit.
  5. Edit OpenGL32.ini in the installation folder.
  6. Find [Window.System].
  7. Change MuteInBackground=false to MuteInBackground=true.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Japanese
Russian
Fan translation by Tolma4 Team.
Spanish
Fan translation, download.

Issues fixed

Game will not start, or crashes on start

Disable triple buffering[citation needed]
  1. Go to Graphics Settings
  2. Disable triple buffering

Triple buffering can also be disabled in Catalyst Control Center, among other graphics card programs.

Install VC++ and .NET 3.5 (Windows)[citation needed]

In some cases you may need to install or update your versions of VC++ and/or .NET. They can be downloaded from here:

Create a "steam_appid.txt" file[citation needed]

If the game launch from Steam, but does not launch outside of Steam, create a "steam_appid.txt" file containing the text "200900". 200900 is the Steam ID for this game. Place this text file in the installation folder.

On linux: disable all monitors but one[citation needed]

There is a known bug that only happens with systems using multiple monitors, crashing the game on launch.

Black screen

If the game loads to a black screen in Windows 7, setting the game to compatibility mode may fix the problem.

Run in Compatibility Mode for Windows XP SP3[citation needed]
  1. Right click the CaveStory+.exe file and select Properties
  2. Select the Compatibility tab
  3. Check the box Run in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 3)

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
OpenGL 1.4
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Only a 32-bit build has ever been released, which makes the game completely broken on 10.15+. You can use doukutsu-rs as a workaround instead.
Linux

Modifications

doukutsu-rs

A open source re-implementation of Cave Story's engine written in Rust.
Game speed is independent from framerate. The game speed can also be toggled between the original 50 FPS from the freeware version or 60 FPS from Cave Story+.
Fully compatible with data files from Cave Story+.
Support for various edition-specific quality-of-life features such as custom soundtracks, animated face portraits, and new rendering effects.

Plus Porter

Allows the porting of the mods from Cave Story into the Cave Story+.
Can be used to install already ported Cave Story+ mods with minimal errors.
Cave Story Mods converted to run with few compatibility problems.
Currently unsupported on the GOG version.

Cave Story with a fourth ending

A simple mod that adds a fourth ending to the game.
The Cave Story+ version comes with additional bugfixes for the mod compared to the version of the original Cave Story and the Mac and PSP ports.
  • Cave Story+ version of the mod needs to be installed using the Plus Porter.
Seamlessly adds a fourth ending of the game without any major alterations to the base game.

Wii-Balanced

A fix for the WiiWare, or "New" soundtrack of Cave Story+.
Comes as a set of Ogg files to replace, go to the game directory (Such as <path-to-game>\Cave Story+\data\base or Steam/steamapps/common/Cave Story+/data/base) and replace the existing Ogg folder with the downloaded one.
Completely functional replacement.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) Intel Core Solo
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 64 MB
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM
macOS (OS X)
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 10.5.8, 10.6.3
Processor (CPU) Intel only, PowerPC not supported
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 64 MB
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM
Linux
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 2.6
Processor (CPU) Intel Core Solo
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 64 MB
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References

  1. Verified by User:Baronsmoki on 2020-12-03
  2. Verified by User:AmethystViper on 2022-08-27