2.2 Preview - With Slopes!

Status
Not open for further replies.
how usable would quarter pipes be?
Like I said earlier, you'll usually just get stopped on any slope steeper than 45-~60 degrees, so quarter-pipes are non-functional.

To bring the topic back towards slopes and away from Kilometers, are chi.miru's Open GL slopes going to be included in 2.2? The lack of shadows in software just bugs me for some reason and is pretty much the one reason I use GL.
The only reason they haven't been merged in already is because there are still visual issues to work out with them, mostly concerning midtextures and light blocks.

I hope this at least goes into 2.2 though. http://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=40157
Me too
 
Last edited:
Since first thing players would want to do after finishing Singleplayer levels is playing on Multiplayer servers .
I would like to point out for everyone that thinks this that this is simply not the case. The numbers don't add up.

While I haven't seen the bandwidth statistics for srb2.org in quite a while, the last time I checked we go through about half a terabyte of bandwidth in a normal month, with spikes upwards to a terabyte or so when we release a significant new version. Even with conservative estimates, this leads to downloads in the hundreds of thousands per year. If even half of our users did what you're saying and went online after playing single player for a while, the master server would be absolutely crushed under the traffic. We'd have literally hundreds of servers online at a time. A quick glance shows us having five servers right now with a grand total of 10 players online. By my estimate I'd guess that significantly more than 90% of our users never touch the multiplayer at all.

Now, you might think "that can't be right! Look at all the people here!", but there's a serious fault in that logic: the people who would register for a forum are the most invested players. Hence, the people who you find on this forum who talk about the game are the people most likely to have tried multiplayer. People you find on the master server will obviously have a 100% rate of playing the game in multiplayer. Don't think that the rate people play this game in multiplayer is higher just because all the people you've ever played this game with played in multiplayer. That's kinda true by definition.

We do not think multiplayer should be ignored, as it is a significant part of this game's staying power for some of our fans, but the single player game is by FAR more popular and experienced by a much larger group of people, so it's a more efficient use of our time to work primarily on the single player game.
 
Last edited:
Can confirm. I've been playing this game for eight years now, and I've gone on multiplayer...maybe three of four times. I don't really find it fun.

(That's nothing against the game, I just don't like FPSs in general. I like games like Metroid Prime, but that doesn't count.)
 
I've gone on multiplayer...maybe three of four times. I don't really find it fun.

I do agree. The playablity reduces the fun especialy on the FPS gamemodes such as match and ctf.

Co-op on the other hand is good but ony with singleplayer aimed WADs.
 
I feel like the multiplayer community would be a lot larger if servers didn't lag and crash so much after around six people join. Not to mention it's almost impossible to include add-ons in your sever since they usually cause so many synch failures or outright crash; and if you add anything that's not allowed here on the message board, then good luck obtaining any joiners. So since wads are either unobtainable or don't function well with multiplayer, the main replayability point of the game is out the door. So basically you're stuck re-playing the campaign or an old map pack with a minimal amount of people, or playing a competitive gametype with a minimal amount of people (which isn't very fun and isn't exactly how it's supposed to work, especially with most of the maps being large). v2.1 amplified all of these issues with the more advanced lua coding or whatever in add-ons, and in vanilla itself, that cause multiplayer servers to be less tolerant of lag and an abundance of joiners, or at least I assume so. It is also harder to obtain wads now that aren't on the message board. All of the well established add-ons like that back in v2.0 were reposted so many times they were easy to find, but now they are obsolete; and since the v2.1 wads are newer they're virtually impossible to find with Google search because it hasn't been a long enough time for them to be reposted a lot. I think that pretty much sums up why online multiplayer is dead for SRB2 outside of obligatory 24/7 servers and private RP servers run by kids with a bunch of wads added you most likely don't have and won't find without a direct link.

The point is, the multiplayer isn't very welcoming or appealing, especially to newer players. I bet you most people saw all the shitty servers and couldn't even join half of them, and whenever they did manage to join something they kept getting lag spiked. Then they got tired of that crap and stopped trying.
 
I feel like the multiplayer community would be a lot larger if servers didn't lag and crash so much after around six people join. Not to mention it's almost impossible to include add-ons in your sever since they usually cause so many synch failures or outright crash; and if you add anything that's not allowed here on the message board, then good luck obtaining any joiners. So since wads are either unobtainable or don't function well with multiplayer, the main replayability point of the game is out the door. So basically you're stuck re-playing the campaign or an old map pack with a minimal amount of people, or playing a competitive gametype with a minimal amount of people (which isn't very fun and isn't exactly how it's supposed to work, especially with most of the maps being large). v2.1 amplified all of these issues with the more advanced lua coding or whatever in add-ons, and in vanilla itself, that cause multiplayer servers to be less tolerant of lag and an abundance of joiners, or at least I assume so. It is also harder to obtain wads now that aren't on the message board. All of the well established add-ons like that back in v2.0 were reposted so many times they were easy to find, but now they are obsolete; and since the v2.1 wads are newer they're virtually impossible to find with Google search because it hasn't been a long enough time for them to be reposted a lot. I think that pretty much sums up why online multiplayer is dead for SRB2 outside of obligatory 24/7 servers and private RP servers run by kids with a bunch of wads added you most likely don't have and won't find without a direct link.

The point is, the multiplayer isn't very welcoming or appealing, especially to newer players. I bet you most people saw all the shitty servers and couldn't even join half of them, and whenever they did manage to join something they kept getting lag spiked. Then they got tired of that crap and stopped trying.
We get it. The netcode sucks. It's a problem and we want it fixed. But we're not going out of our way to do it, we have a game to finish. Let us do our thing, and if someone along the way shows up with a functional rewrite, we'll gladly include it.
 
We get it. The netcode sucks. It's a problem and we want it fixed. But we're not going out of our way to do it, we have a game to finish. Let us do our thing, and if someone along the way shows up with a functional rewrite, we'll gladly include it.
I already understand that the actual game needs to be completed first and that the netcode isn't a focus right now. I was just elaborating on why the multiplayer community pretty much doesn't exist.
 
I already understand that the actual game needs to be completed first and that the netcode isn't a focus right now. I was just elaborating on why the multiplayer community pretty much doesn't exist.
See, I'd argue even THAT isn't the reason for the small multiplayer turnout. Now, don't get me wrong, our multiplayer code right now is atrocious, but even back in the Final Demo days, when the netcode was less painful and the single player was way worse, the number of players who played it compared to our single player was tiny. For the sake of explanation, let's split this up into three categories:

1. Players who play multiplayer for a significant period of time.
2. Players who play multiplayer a couple times, decide it isn't fun, and stop.
3. Players who never even try multiplayer.

Back when the netcode wasn't as bad, there was a larger percentage of group 1 than group 2. This makes utter sense as people who aren't having fun because of technical difficulties aren't going to continue playing. However, for group 3, the group that never even tries it, the quality of the multiplayer has nothing to do with the reason they didn't even try it. There has to be a different reason. Turns out, group 3 is by far the largest percentage, even back in 1.X.

While I have no hard statistics on this one, I'd personally wager the reason most players never even bother with multiplayer is that classic Sonic was never about multiplayer to begin with. While Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 had explicit multiplayer modes, they were very limited and I actually played multiplayer in classic Sonic more often with Sonic and Tails mode, alternating who got to be Sonic. The game was just a single player game at heart. While our game does feature multiplayer more prominently than the classics, it's not entirely surprising that someone who comes here to try out our classic-themed Sonic game plays it the same way they played the originals: alone.
 
Are we doing a vote ?

And how did you know. What if those players actually don't publish their servers on the MS .
 
@Mystic
That's a very likely reason. Back when I first played Final Demo, I just never even noticed the multiplayer at all. So another reason is probably people not even noticing it, or not even bothering to check it out because they assume it is split screen like Sonic 2 or something.
 
Back when I first played Final Demo, I just never even noticed the multiplayer at all. So another reason is probably people not even noticing it, or not even bothering to check it out because they assume it is split screen like Sonic 2 or something.
Don't forget simply not being interested at all!

I think a lot of people make this mistake, assuming that because they're interested in multiplayer play that everyone else is and would play it if they knew about it. This is very much not the case. Different people like different things.
 
While a lot of what Mystic saying sounds like it makes sense, I recall some of my first experiences of SRB2 was in splitscreen with my brother. Hate to be the devil's advocate, but doesn't that count as multiplayer too? =P

Though otherwise yes, I tend to play SRB2 on my own most of the time. (my brother has since lost interest in the game anyway) I don't even touch the SRB2MS unless it's to play on a server that people on #srb2fun have organised.
 
While a lot of what Mystic saying sounds like it makes sense, I recall some of my first experiences of SRB2 was in splitscreen with my brother. Hate to be the devil's advocate, but doesn't that count as multiplayer too? =P
Of course, but it's not like we have hard statistics on this. Why do you think I'm saying things like "hundreds of thousands" instead of providing an exact number? =P

I'm just estimating based on the information I do have, and while I'm sure those figures aren't perfect, they're more than enough to make generalizations like "most of our players never even touch multiplayer". Even if say, 10% of our players played splitscreen or LAN play (which I'm pretty damn sure is way over the actual number) my generalizations still hold.
 
nFzAhH1.png


this version of the well to produce a waterfall crazy now!
this version will improve a lot, so I looked in the editor
 
H-huh? W-what?

Hmm, interesting to know about SRB2's statistics with players not doing multiplayer. Shame, because I only ever play SRB2 for multiplayer. I guess I'm weird like that.
 
Goodness! I must say, GFZ looks beautiful, and that sky texture looks like it came from a PS2 game, which is a good thing! Those slopes look wonderful, and this is looking more and more like a Sonic game with each update, congrats!

I suppose you'll be doing a THZ act 2 to, CEZ act 1? Using some of the previous elements of the scraped act but rebuilding it and making it much better? In that case, good. I kinda hated the old CEZ act 1, it was too hard and even confusing at times. I will not be sad to see it go to the record books.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top