Hell, I practically grew up on this fangame. I can trace my introduction to the Sonic community at large back to two events: one was finding Simon Wai's Sonic 2 beta page and the other was SRB2. Sonic Adventure was still relatively new on the scene and it straight up blew my mind that I could play a 3D Sonic game on my janky old Packard Bell PC. Besides switching up the engine entirely, which I think might be the devs' favorite running gag by this point, I'm also hard pressed to think what else could shake up the core of the game as much as slopes or polyobjects. The run through 2.1 was already pretty awesome, 2.2 looks like it'll be something real special. These guys have got a serious vision for SRB2, it's just on the back burner for much of the time between releases.
Proper running along walls and ceilings like in the Adventure games would probably be the last big thing you could do. That's not really something you could easily implement with sprites though and I doubt it'll ever happen, whereas there had been modded slope physics in the game since at least 2.0, maybe earlier.
We're taking steps to play games together on the Discord, lately it's been SRB2Kart and Halo, but I'm sure folks will wanna at least co-op the redone campaign. Feel free to hop on in!
Since 2.2 launches tomorrow afternoon, I decided to go ahead and make a discussion topic about the new version in advance (provided it's not too similar to the current 2.1 discussion thread)
SRB2 2.2 has been released Download: http://gam.thewaitingroom.org/srb2/SRB2-v_220-Installer.exe Torrent: https://files.srb2.org/srb2.org/SRB2-v_220-Installer.torrent General Slopes have been implemented into almost the entire campaign, including support for launching off of quarterpipes. No, before you ask, loops still aren’t possible. An enormous number of graphics and textures have been updated or redone. Highlights include the title screen, Sonic and Tails, with separate sprites of Tails’s tails for optimum mofumofu. Practically the entire soundtrack has been redone. Character sprites now face the direction the player’s control inputs point instead of in the direction the camera is facing. Automatic braking, a new assist feature, has been added. While enabled, releasing the controls will cause the player’s character to attempt to stop instead of coasting forward. Tails’s AI has been significantly improved in Sonic & Tails mode, including allowing him to be commanded to fly you without using player 2’s controls. The attraction, elemental, and force shields now have a jump-spin ability like whirlwind and armageddon already did. Continuing the game after getting a game over now starts the player with more lives for each continue used. The intro cutscene has been revamped with brand-new art, and the game now has a short ending sequence. Levels Arid Canyon Zone Acts 2 and 3 now exist. Almost the entire rest of the campaign has been remade from scratch or significantly updated. Several bosses have had their arena and behavior updated. The final battles have been adjusted to make losing not kick the player all the way back to the beginning of Eggrock. A short, optional tutorial stage has been added. Two stages previously from the OLDC have been included as unlockables. Cooperative mode now uses the old 2.0 special stages, which have been slightly updated to be more multiplayer-friendly. Interface The menus have been massively revamped to both look better and be easier to understand. Controls, menus, and various other things have been renamed to make them easier to understand. Record attack now has HUD elements to display the buttons being pressed both during gameplay and while watching replays. Multiple accessibility features have been added, including closed-captioning and the ability to adjust the palette at runtime to add contrast to aid colorblind players. Engine/Editing The palette has changed again to provide slightly more diverse color options Music no longer restarts from the beginning after an interruption, such as getting an extra life. Plugging in a controller during gameplay will allow that controller to be used instead of requiring the game to be restarted to recognize it. Added support for paper sprites, which allow the sprite to be rendered as if it’s on an upright piece of paper, becoming thinner when viewed at an angle and disappearing entirely when viewed from the side. Think Paper Mario. Textures can now be used as flats (but not vice-versa). Skybox rendering has been significantly optimized. PNG images can now be used as graphics, at any resolution (but not too high or you’ll run out of memory). Sprite rotation is now supported. libopenmpt support Added support for the MD3 model format. So many Lua changes we couldn’t possibly hope to list them all here.
I've followed SRB2 since the early days, back when it was a 2D game in TGF. Even comparing this to v2.1, this may as well be a whole new game. The amount of polish that went into v2.2 is insane, and I haven't even seen all of it. Tails' assist, slopes and slope physics, redesigned menus, kickass title screen, a tutorial level, more fleshed out levels... the list goes on. Great work to everyone involved.
The hype is real. I'll check it out asap. edit: Played for a little while and honestly, the slopes feel so natural I've already forgotten how the levels played without them. The revised level design is incredible. That being said, I'm not the biggest fan of the remastered soundtrack. Maybe it's just a side effect of playing with the vanilla tracks for years, but the new tracks just sound... off.
I played it a bit, up until Castle Eggman. That zone is where the game takes full advantage of the physics engine and tells you to quit messing around and git gud because it is hard. Jesus. I love the update, though. My only trifle with it is that the slopes feel kinda weird, but I guess I'm spoiled by stuff like Utopia and the Bumper Engine, because I can't imagine getting slopes to work in what is effectively the DOOM engine was not easy! The sheer size of CEZ2 has to be seen to be believed. Actually, my computer chugs a bit during the really open parts of that level and when right up next to flowing water in DSZ, lol. EDIT: OK the CEZ boss is just absolutely bullshit hard for the wrong reason.
My only criticism is that DSZ2 and beyond marks "these levels are too damn long." Checkpoints end up getting placed pretty far apart considering how many tasks/alternate routes you're able to take to where my mental mapping gets tested beyond its limits. Gets hard to remember where you are or where you're supposed to be. Or maybe I'm getting dementia at 25 Either way CEZ2 got me playing up to the 11 minute mark. That's... a bit much. Impressive, for sure, especially since there's so much in the zone I *didn't play,* but... still. Another issue is I found myself *having* to use Tails to help get me out of trouble because... what the hell is Sonic supposed to do, in some situations? Specifically in Arid Canyon 1 where some TNT explodes and blocks off the area you were just facing. Maybe I'm just a fool but I couldn't figure out where to go, except get Tails to fly me to the top of the grey structure. Maybe I was supposed to go behind the TNT, but if I just stopped and waited for it to blow up, it was like I was softlocked if I couldn't fly. Again maybe I just missed something, but that ambiguity--if it wasn't just on me--feels like these levels end up biting off way more than they can chew. Everything else is fantastic though. World design is the best it's ever been, art direction actually feels like something unique and special, and especially in the first few levels I found myself going "Oh they changed this part!!" which was a bizarre bit of... "fanservice?" I spose so. Music is also super good, glad a lot of tunes that felt particularly weak got an excellent rearrangement. And Arid Canyon has 2 acts now!! ...Even though both acts feel super long. Hooopefully a few quality of life tweaks get added to the game at some point to maybe break up the long stretches of level with some more checkpoints, at least? And considering each ACT is so HUGE now, being able to quit out and re-enter the Act 2 of a zone you've got up to would probably be nice. I had to take a break from playing Arid Canyon 2, so I quit out, went to do some tasks, and when I got back to try it I was sent to Act 1. Not really in the mood to go through Arid Canyon 1 AGAIN today, so that's enough SRB2 for now. AAAAAAAAANYWAY this is definitely something i'm gonna come back to and enjoy. Just wish it didn't grind my patience to a halt so soon, but I'm still excited to see how the rest of the game changed
I've been following this game since 2005 or 2006 so I'm extremely psyched to see it continue to be upgraded. And wow what an upgrade! Overhauling the campaign was an excellent idea as in 2.1 it was clear when certain elements were made (RVZ 1 was very basic, ERZ 2 was long, and THZ 2 was so polished) so now everything feels cohesive. The levels are lengthy but I never felt as if they were too long. I'm looking forward to the eventual remake of EggRock Zone because that section really stuck out as the worst part of the game, especially some of the precise garbage required in Act 2. Although some of the levels had some weird moments, like springs launching the player in pits (there's a nasty one at the start of Arid Canyon Act 1 which looks like a slope spring but then just laucnes the player into a pit) and the ping pong springs not really serving a purpose other than to disorientate the player. (What makes sense in 2D doesn't in 3D) After the first remix that was released on their YouTube page I was worried for the soundtrack... but for 99% of it I loved it. The only tracks that felt weak were the EggRock Zone tracks which lacked a real strong melodic hook like the tasty Guitar solo in 2.1. Overall though the new music works really well, RVZ and DSZ definitely stood out as some of the best tracks in the game. The new boss in Arid Canyon Zone was great too, very unexpected but I'm curious to see if they have more plans for the character in that boss as it feels a bit random. It is incredible how far it has come since the SRB2 Christmas days and I am excited to see where it goes from here. Deep Sea Zone's boss was miles more enjoyable and Castle Eggman's boss was difficult but i never felt too thrown off. Fantastic work everyone involved and I can't wait to see what comes next
I just finished the main single-player campaign and I must say I had a really good time with it. I ended up playing through the whole thing with my new Steam controller of all things actually. First thing I'd like to say is that I am so beyond happy they finally streamlined the controls a bit and added a proper control tutorial. The game really and I mean really needed one. The biggest improvement is definitely the new autobraking, which makes characters try to stop instead of slipping around when they're on their feet. They also improved things for gamepads, they ditched the old "analog control" mode now in favor of the standard controls but kept in the nice visual features that analog mode offered, and allowed mapping axis to functions like jump/spin and the camera. While I still think playing SRB2 with a traditional dual analog stick gamepad is still a total pain, it's at least not impossible now. I greatly enjoyed the reworked Greenflower, Techno Hill, and especially Deep Sea, as I never really was fond of that one in 2.0 and 2.1. I didn't really like Castle Eggman very much, but it definitely seems better designed than it was before- though I kept noticing issues with rendering in it. Mostly on moving platforms. The new Arid Canyon is fantastic, super well done and I love the wile coyote gags and the new minecart section. The only sore spot was the boss fight which in the latter half, can be a bit cheap- sometimes instantly killing you by blindsiding you while you're in the air, knocking you out of bounds. The reward for defeating that boss makes it worth the hassle though. (Being as vague as possible here on purpose.) Red Volcano Zone 1 is short, challenging and fun and as I understand it, it was a fairly inconsequential addition that wasn't initially even planned for 2.2, only making it in since it was finished in time while other people were working on other parts of the game. Not a bad send-off before the game goes to Egg Rock Zone. Egg Rock Zone was pretty much the only really sour-note of a stage for me, overall, since it received very few if any changes from 2.1, however, the new auto-braking feature does help with precision platforming a lot and overall it was tolerable, but not ideal. Instead of Egg Rock Act 3, it now leads into Black Core Zone, which starts off with the old Metal Sonic Race. Act 2 is the Metal Sonic boss fight, and then you fight the final boss the final zone. I'm looking forward to future updates to SRB2 now more than ever, as this update really was fantastic. One thing I didn't mention to avoid spoiling anything is the addition of some really cool unlockables that add significant replay value. I had a lovely time. PS. I can't stress this enough too, make sure you collect 5 emblems and beat the first unlockable bonus stage for a really cool reward. Edit: Here is my steam controller profile in case anyone wants it steam://controllerconfig/sonic%20robo%20blast%202/1931461903 To use it you have to add SRB2 to Steam and rename the shortcut to "Sonic Robo Blast 2" under the properties menu for the shortcut, and then open that url somewhere to get steam to pull up the profile for you.
I played through the whole thing plus some extras as well. I guess I'mma just bullet points some stuff here. The presentation. My god. Every sprite is so full of life and color, and the soundtrack has graduated from "above-average MIDI" to "genuinely fucking great". I can't get Arid Canyon act 2 out of my head, and it feels like a lot of tracks are taking some Mania/Sonic CD JP influence. I actually finished the game and got all the emeralds. I don't know if anything was changed about the special stages, but I had a way easier time. Egg Rock is an actual fucking disaster of a level and has been since 2.0, but it is thankfully mitigated by A. splitting the bosses off into their own stage so you don't get kicked back to act 1 and B. the "Sonic and Tails" combo letting you utilize Tails's flight as Sonic. Egg Rock in general feels more like a protracted sequence of miniature torture chambers that goes on for like an hour than an actual Sonic stage, so anything they can allow me to do to skip over it until it's a better level is welcomed. That said, the time limit on Special Stage 7 is too short, though. I feel like a lot of this wouldn't be intuitive to people that don't know how NiGHTS works, and I just barely scraped by. The level design for everywhere else feels a lot better, too. I'm not sure I actually like Castle Eggman 2 as much as the 2.1 version, but the visuals and music more than make up for it. Also, Techno Hill 1 seems a lot less navigable, it's kind of a maze. All of the bosses are looking snazzy as hell. Deep Sea's boss finally isn't a fucking mess, Castle Eggman is a challenge but one I feel actually is fair, the surprise of the Arid Canyon boss is great, the only misgiving I have is that Red Volcano apparently doesn't have a boss. It goes straight to the rocket up to Egg Rock. So no act 2 either? I suppose that's fine, since RV is a pretty long level anyway. Honestly just give me an option to have infinite lives. I have totally lost my patience for lives systems in games and I want them to go away forever. I played some of the extra levels too. The snow level was okay but the reward was what I really loved. The Halloween level was kind of annoying, I couldn't exactly see where I was going a lot of the time. The Underwater Temple was really really bad. I think Deep Sea really managed to restrain itself from the tropes of all the worst Sonic water levels, but this one is entirely underwater with some of the strictest platforming I've seen, it's incredibly long and forces you to constantly navigate tight spaces while being attacked and/or drowning. The Mario level might be unchanged from before? I dunno, I never unlocked it legitimately until now. It's kind of bland and there's a lot of repeating textures, so I'm gonna say probably the same. Aerial Garden is Aerial Garden. It's got some new enemies, I think? It's still a monster of a level constructed entirely out of hard angles and hatred. The last thing I unlocked was the NiGHTS level you get for beating the game with all the emeralds. It's okay I guess. My god, the amount of more stuff you have to customize in the multiplayer between unlocks and new colors is almost double what the last build had.
Level design is fantastic, probably some of the best in the series, fan made or not! And the updated visuals and music are the best it's ever been. Menus look fantastic too. Autobraking was also a great addition that makes platforming tighter. S'a good game, and a testament to the team's dedication and craft. But. Removing analog mode was a mistake. The current controls with the gamepad pretty much require you to put jump and spin on bumpers/triggers since you're constantly having to reconfigure your camera when making turns; ALL of which makes the game horrendously awkward to play if you're wanting to play a 3D platformer and not a third person shooter.. It doesn't help that the game desperately wants to make you feel bad for using a gamepad instead of mouse/keyboard, let alone play it like a traditional Sonic title.. despite that being the point, you'd imagine.. And I know why they say it was removed, of course. The argument for it's removal has been that it 'severely handicapped players', but the only way I see how is because camera control is so limited in that mode; in which case, why not just allow players to recenter / rotate the camera in that mode with the right stick? It doesn't make sense why those are disabled in that mode, thus making said 'handicap' always just seem like an excuse to remove it more than a legit problem that can't be fixed. I don't know, I brought it up on the SRB2 forums but they overall ignored what I was saying. You can still use analog mode (without any improvements the newer modes have) by typing in a console command for it, but the fact that it's even hidden is beyond me. Why make a game that deserves people playing and celebrating it be that much more esoteric to outsiders? I can tolerate it at best, but getting anyone not already in the know on it (or not classic DOOM fans) is a veeery hard sell. You're not gonna find many wanting to play a platformer with a keyboard/mouse, and I definitely don't prefer it myself. Bleh. Can't wait for mods. Game could still use a homing attack, too.
I want to meet the SRB2 dev team so I can ask them: -whose idea it was to make those horrid bird enemies that catch you instantly and drop you over bottomless pits in Red Volcano if you stand still for more than 1 frame near them -whose idea was it to give them the same sound effect as those awful hand-things from Eversion
Ooooohhh so THAT's why it took a while to figure out what the hell was going on with Knuckles. I got used to it eventually by mapping the camera turn buttons to the left and right shoulder buttons, but it was still a tad awkward. That being said though, great improvements all around. Amazing seeing where this game has come in all this time. Some levels are a bit tooo open for their own good though. I've absolutely gotten lost in some levels because they're just so vast that at least twice I reset to the last checkpoint just to find my bearings. Also that Castle Eggman boss fight can right fuck off. But besides that, the slopes are a great addition and the overall presentation has just improved soooo much. There's no longer that level of early 2000s crust that was holding the game back and all the sprites look great (except for the Black Core final boss, that Metal Robotnik is still using the exact same crusty render from ages ago). Spoiler I also love the new characters! Amy, Metal Sonic, and Fang are excellent and welcomed additions. Metal Sonic's hover is fun to use and while I haven't tried Fang yet I just love that he's there. Amy's fun to play as as well, but she does have a downside. Unless I'm mistaken she can't crouch or crawl. Normally this isn't a problem as I know Amy's not supposed to roll, but this also means she can't get under those small gaps. I only really played as her on that Haunted Castle bonus level but I wasn't able to finish it as her because at one point my progression was blocked.
I thought the entire design philosophy behind this game was to be disorienting and punish you for it.
One of my favorite things about this update is that we did it. We finally did it. The Sonic community has finally created an example of what a 3D Sonic level built on the same principles of the Genesis games should look like, now that we have slopes. All we're missing is loops, but they're really a minor part of the equation now. Sonic Utopia got "well, it's only one test level with unfocused level design". Older versions of SRB2 got "well, there's no slopes". Other 3D fangames/fan-engines got "well, they're not finished and there's no real levels, just gameplay". But no, here we have 11 levels, all with their own unique gimmicks and gameplay feel, that use slopes and alternate pathways and all the good stuff 2D Sonic used. Finally, we have a rebuttal to that "well, Sonic just doesn't work in 3D" bullshit that people have been saying for a damn decade at this point. Here's eleven fucking levels of it working, and not merely working, but simultaneously being extremely fun and utterly unlike any other 3D platformer out there. Props to Sonic Team Jr. And the game isn't even fully finished yet.
Doom engine is so legendary that it competes with any game in existance in the hands of talented, interested developers! That's no sarcasm, it's a fact. I haven't played 2.2 but judging by the reviews here, it's awesome and I'll give it a whirl sometime this month!