Version 2.1 Release

Played through most of it just now. Wasn't able to beat the Metal Sonic race, unfortunately. Upside down platforming on a time limit? That seems more than a bit unfair to me. :(

Overall, the changes to the game blew me away in the most positive way. Act 2 of Zone 2 in particular is such a step up that I can't imagine the original version being in the game anymore.

The only changes I'm not happy with involve Egg Rock Zone. Act 2 was already a mess of uneven difficulty when compared to the rest of the game, and instead of balancing it out, there's now a bunch of snails everywhere. There are even snails during the Mega Man disappearing block segment! They aren't much more than an annoyance, though, and I wouldn't be bothered by them if more had been done to make the act more manageable. But, credit where credit is due, putting an elemental shield in the first space section of the level was a good move, and so was getting rid of the flying enemy that was at the start of the disappearing block segment.

The final boss is ridiculously anti-climatic. Honestly. The original was about a million times better; the boss PRIOR to it is actually about a million times harder. Then you get a tiny little Brak Eggman that spazzes around and you can simply thok into him when his little barrier is down. There's no feeling of panic, or feeling like you're outmatched. The original, giant Brak Eggman that you had to FIGURE OUT with a brain was so much better in my opinion. The difficulty spike from the semi-final boss to the final boss is UP... and then down. Even if you kept the original that would still be the case; the semi-final boss is quite the challenge. Brak Eggman gets boring, sure, but the downgrade he got? It's laughable.

Remember how the original Techno Hill Zone Act 2 had two paths out of the very first room? Maybe just to not go harsh on the newcomers an alternative path through the first part of the level could be installed, and the purple slime could be made so you can go under the wall without having to jump from a higher structure.

Jeez, guys, some of you could really be a bit more considerate with your spoilers.

Just finished the game. All emeralds, Sonic alone, the last special stage kicked my ass and then some. Mostly liked what I saw, though I think THZ2 is waaaaay too long and complicated for where it is in the level order. The "secret" level was a nice surprise; though it's been part of TUDD since time immemorial, I wasn't expecting for it to suddenly spring out from nowhere.

The final boss was actually fun, though a bit on the easy side. After playing through ERZ in its current incarnation, I think we could do without the guard fence, or at least it could be done away with sooner, and I wonder if something could be done about the rings, so you can't just pick them up one at a time and trivialize everything by abusing temp invincibility.

That being said,

Burning-Fox said:

The final boss is ridiculously anti-climatic. Honestly. The original was about a million times better;

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Wow. How can you even say such things. Sometimes I feel like we don't deserve any of the amazing stuff we've got, since it seems everyone was just fine with 1.08 and SPMoves or something.

EDIT: So who drew the sprites? Them's some mighty fine poses and they're notably on-model for the most part, which is something easier said than done.

Burning-Fox said:

The final boss is ridiculously anti-climatic. Honestly. The original was about a million times better; the boss PRIOR to it is actually about a million times harder. Then you get a tiny little Brak Eggman that spazzes around and you can simply thok into him when his little barrier is down. There's no feeling of panic, or feeling like you're outmatched. The original, giant Brak Eggman that you had to FIGURE OUT with a brain was so much better in my opinion. The difficulty spike from the semi-final boss to the final boss is UP... and then down. Even if you kept the original that would still be the case; the semi-final boss is quite the challenge. Brak Eggman gets boring, sure, but the downgrade he got? It's laughable.

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Brak Eggman may be easier than he was before, but he's also far less cheap. There was absolutely no indication of how you were supposed to damage the 2.0 version, and thus the only way to "figure him out" was to read the wiki or ask another player, which is not at all how a boss should be designed. If the player were given three rings instead of five or something like that, I'd say the current Brak Eggman would fit in perfectly smoothly with the game's difficulty curve.

Metal Sonic, on the other hand, is considerably harder than he should be if you ask me. The race with him is more or less fine, but there are a few too many conveyor belts in the first large room, and it's kind of stupid how you have to wait for him to catch up to you in the spike blockade area. The actual boss battle, however, suffers from 2.0 Brak Eggman syndrome: figuring out how to damage him is way too difficult, but the fight is almost easy once you know how. I would recommend making his default movement pattern a little bit slower, slow enough so that a thok or spindash-jump is sufficent to send him flying, and making it so the player bounces off of him and he plays a 'lighter' hit sound when he spins out, to make it clear to the player that the spinning is due to them hitting Metal and he didn't just decide to do it by himself.

EDIT: Also, Neo Chaotikal is right; THZ2 is definitely on the long side considering it's only the fourth real level.

LOL. What was up with that opening animation. Playing through it at the moment, but I won't be able to finish it tonight. Having a blast so far. On DSZ.

The original, giant Brak Eggman that you had to FIGURE OUT with a brain was so much better in my opinion.

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No no no no no. The original Brak Eggman was essentially impossible to figure out without a guide, and then the fight became extremely dull once you knew what to do.

The new final boss is actually fun. I had a blast fighting it. I suppose you could reduce the number of rings in the stage if you want to make it more difficult, but I honestly don't think it's necessary.

For Metal Sonic, I think playing some sort of "clink" sound effect when you make him spin out would make it more obvious what's going on. Also, I think the final hallway in the race is a tad too long. It's piece of cake for Sonic to thok through, but it was kind of hellish trying to beat it as Tails.

742mph said:

and it's kind of stupid how you have to wait for him to catch up to you in the spike blockade area.

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...But you don't. There are some platforms that take you to a pathway to skip the spike blockade. Though, if he's right behind you, then having him break the spikes would be faster.

Bug in 2.1.1: I flew up the shaft above the special stage gem in GFZ1 as Tails, as my character started to fall back down everything went distorted and then the game crashed. Windows 7 x64, Phenom II quad @ 3.4GHz, nVidia 9500, 4GB DDR3 1600 RAM. Not sure if this was a one time thing or not, I'll start the game again and see if I can duplicate the crash.

Edit: Doesn't seem to be reproducible.

When I count the empty emblem spaces on the stats screen, there's 130 emblems. However, the total count at the top of the screen says there's 160.

...Where are those extra 30 emblems hiding?

The statistics screen only displays stages you've actually entered, so clearly there are enough hidden levels you haven't accessed to store another thirty emblems =P

Duh, I'm an idiot. I forgot that stages like Aerial Garden and Azure Temple and the Mario stage would also have 8 emblems each. For some strange reason I was counting them as "get an emblem for completing the stage".

I really like eggscalibur. I liked how "big" the boss was.
On another note, I think all the next major update should be is a finished ACZ and RVZ. Oh and a netcode that doesn't suck.

You're talking about the next update already?! XD

Unknownlight said:

You're talking about the next update already?! XD

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Just saying. =P

Anyway, I just finished the game. I was blown away by the changes (and there were a lot of them). The new THZ2, the changes to CEZ and the new boss in the zone, the Lua implementation, the new special stages, etc. were all awesome. This is one of the biggest changes to SRB2 in quality and polish ever. You done good, STJr, you done good.
but damn you mystic for removing the circuit stages

Am I the only one who noticed that there aren't the race maps that were in the multiplayer pack wad?

Good job on the special stages. They were way better than I was expecting them to be.

The liquid gimmick for THZ completely reinvented it for the better. I don't think that the second act is that long, but it could do with a little bit of condensing.

CEZ2 still sucks, partly because it's even longer now. The best part of the level is really the part that was completely ripped from Mystic Realm's second temple's fortress interior.

CEZ3 first phase is too easy. In contrast, the pinch mode is bullshit.

Final battle is cool. I like the emblems.

Any chance of a Linux build coming soon? I tried the game with WINE on Ubuntu, and while it's working perfectly, the audio starts crackling badly and going out of sync after so long. (The worst part is I don't know why.) It should be noted that I have PulseAudio turned off, and other games or applications under WINE have normal sound, so it alarmed me when this happened.

It's honestly very unlikely to be soon. Your best bet would probably be to set up a dual boot into Windows or install Windows on an old box and just natively run it.

Ouch, but I have a lot of art projects keeping me busy anyway, I can wait until an Ubuntu release is available. Maybe I'll figure out why the game's crackling so badly well before then.

As for Windows, I do still have Windows 7, but it's on another hard drive boxed away in my desk, and I don't have my desktop PC with me either. This is the one and only thing that sucks about having a Linux-dedicated system, when PC games don't like WINE.