Yep. A set of more frames would allow you to make more things, visually. However, that hanging frame you so despise does the job just fine for most things, and the more extreme things you've pointed out that it doesn't work for aren't things we're planning on doing anyways. (Personally, I really don't want to see people mounting Knuckles, especially when the entire cast of this game is male)
On the other hand, the shield sprites I keep pointing out have serious, gameplay use and enhance our already existent game. Since our game extensively uses colormaps, having all our shields be recolors of the same sprite causes serious issues, since you can't tell the difference between several shields under even moderate colormap. Hell, I even exploited this quirk back in Mystic Realm, putting a trap shield under the painful water in MFZ1 because people aren't able to see the color on the monitor because of the water colormap. Giving them all separate sprites fixes this long-standing issue in the game.
There are also many more far more serious spriting needs to our game than extra player frames, which I will note are probably the most time-consuming thing to sprite in the game. Currently, Eggscalibur looks like an Egg Mobile, for example. I don't think any of us want that to be the case, but it still is. The priorities are such that the effort spent making new, narrowly-useful player sprites would be far better spent on things that are important across the board, like new boss sprites or fixing serious issues in the shield sprites.
If you want to be taken seriously with an unpopular opinion, you should think the ramifications of what you're saying through before you post. You should also plan ahead and think about a response to the arguments you're likely to get against you. I don't think I can count the number of times you've posted some unpopular opinion, and then when asked to back it up, you come up blank entirely. Of course the channel is going to eat you alive in that situation.
On the other hand, the shield sprites I keep pointing out have serious, gameplay use and enhance our already existent game. Since our game extensively uses colormaps, having all our shields be recolors of the same sprite causes serious issues, since you can't tell the difference between several shields under even moderate colormap. Hell, I even exploited this quirk back in Mystic Realm, putting a trap shield under the painful water in MFZ1 because people aren't able to see the color on the monitor because of the water colormap. Giving them all separate sprites fixes this long-standing issue in the game.
There are also many more far more serious spriting needs to our game than extra player frames, which I will note are probably the most time-consuming thing to sprite in the game. Currently, Eggscalibur looks like an Egg Mobile, for example. I don't think any of us want that to be the case, but it still is. The priorities are such that the effort spent making new, narrowly-useful player sprites would be far better spent on things that are important across the board, like new boss sprites or fixing serious issues in the shield sprites.
New textures are generally added to the game as we need them. There are more textures in 2.1, mostly textures made to suit our current needs.In any case, will 2.1 ever get new textures? It doesn't even matter if it's from the Asset Pack or original, but people without spriting knowledge have no means to make levels that look visually distinctive anymore; and IIRC that's quite a huge chunk of this place.
You DO realize that if you're going to play devil's advocate and champion an unpopular opinion, you had better be prepared with an argument strong enough to go against popular opinion. Instead, you tend to just post shit as it comes to your mind, unfiltered and unchecked by the rest of your brain, and then proceed to have the entire channel curbstomp your obvious logical holes into oblivion. This is not shit-posting or trolling; it's just losing an argument, and no amount of moderation would change that.I'd say this in IRC but the lack of adequate moderation in there leads to constant shit-posting, trolling, and complete torture of anyone who has an opposing opinion before they can even get their point across coherently. I bet my post is quickly being linked and mocked right now!
If you want to be taken seriously with an unpopular opinion, you should think the ramifications of what you're saying through before you post. You should also plan ahead and think about a response to the arguments you're likely to get against you. I don't think I can count the number of times you've posted some unpopular opinion, and then when asked to back it up, you come up blank entirely. Of course the channel is going to eat you alive in that situation.