Wow. Well, I've been following this topic for a few days now and it's been great to see some more in-depth views of this mod. Now I'd like to express a few of mine!
Virtually everything SpiritCrusher said has hit the nail on the head. SRB2CS was made to be an alternative to SRB2's standard netcode; more importantly though, it was meant to be a
fair alternative (so, to a degree, it was intended to be an overall improvement). My original motivation to make it came from the fact that, being a European player, it's very hard to come across as competent amongst the American community, even with five years' playing experience. Playing SRB2 can be a challenge that never satisfies: if you're the host, you're playing unfairly against a weaker competition and feel bad about it; if you're a client, you're not annoying anyone with your advantage, but you are forced to look bad. Also, winning is more fun than losing IMO. =(
It was also meant as an opportunity to allow communities in remote areas to grow. Europe isn't the worst place; I feel bad for anyone in Australia who wants to play competitively online. I can bet that there are 0 competitive Australian players at the moment, and that it'll stay that way: whenever one comes along, they will have nobody to have a good game against!
Blue Warrior said:
Well hell, I'll be the first to admit it isn't stable, but at least it's a start.
Thankyou!
Well, I'll mention this now in brutal honesty. When development on SRB2CS really took off, that was the goal I had in mind: to make a start. The fact is, as a unofficial second-hand mod I believed (and still do) that SRB2CS wouldn't be worth much unless it had support from the official dev team. SRB2CS was
always meant to be a proof-of-concept as far as I was concerned, and, to be honest, I was trying to impress the dev team with it. I was hoping you guys would pick it up as an alternative in-game option, and make it 'official': official enough for it to get more than just a few players. It was never in my own intentions to finish it completely - being a concept so ambitious, I couldn't stand working on it as an unofficial mod.
Spazzo said:
In either case, this is certainly very exciting work. I wasn't able to say this before, but I will now: LXShadow, this is nothing short of incredible. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with you, for however short a time. :)
Thanks Spazzo- it's good to see you're still alive! It was great fun working together, even if I acted more than a little pessimistic about it at the time. =P
And the same goes to the all the other doofs! =P I won't write any names - just in case - but you know who you are!
EternallyAries Red X said:
I kinda find it funny that I was never credited in this at all. I was even the very first beta tester to this and I still don't got my name up there.
You totally deserve credit Aries! I tried to cover that in the first post, but it's really hard. To be honest, there was indeed quite a few other people who I tested privately with, and I didn't want to mention any names for the sake of avoiding missing someone out.
That, I'm afraid, includes anyone who knew about the 1.09.4 alpha-beta-beta-alpha version. Because that was a long time ago!
You were a big help though and it was a lot of fun; thank you!
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It's hard to say this, but as for the future of this mod: I'm out. I'm sorry, it's not that I don't care about the people who have offered so much support - probably more than I ever realised - for this mod, it's just that my dedication to SRB2 has long since waned. I don't think it's uncommon, for people my age, to realise they could be moving on to something new. That's what I'm doing... sorry =/
It would be great if development on SRB2CS could be picked up by others, but I don't expect that to happen, nor will I ask for it.
With that, I'd like to thank everyone who played and supported this mod.
It was great fun!
As for me, well, I think my code will do better elsewhere. I'll still be watching the forums for a while though- I'm not gone just yet! =D