Orb - Purge the Viruses!

Spoiler: Backstory

The year is 20XX. SEGA has finally admitted that they have no idea how to put Classic Sonic in a 3D game anymore and urged their employees to put something good on their resumes by working for Sonic Team Junior. However, despite many former SEGA programmers joining the SRB2 development team, 2.2 remains incomplete. Rumor has it that Aaron Webber accidentally deleted the 2.2 files when transferring his Twitter memes onto Mystic's hard drive.

The developers, preoccupied with restoring the 2.2 files, failed to notice that Webber's pirated copy of Big's Big Fishing Adventure 3 also overwrote much of 2.1's source code. Somehow, part of the messed-up code uncommented a large portion of the programming for what used to be the famous SRB2 supervirus, which JTE had left included for no apparent reason at all (gosh darn it). When SRB2 was patched to version 2.1.23, players began to report strange red visual effects leaking through the walls in many of the zones. The developers promptly removed the supervirus code in 2.1.24, yet remnants of its existence still lingered on the Master Server, where it rapidly spread and infected countless monitors, robots, and all other mechanical objects it could find. Objects that were infected became known simply as Viruses.

It was possible to destroy the Viruses using Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles—but the characters were unable to freely traverse the zones fast enough to outpace their spread. Slowly, the Viruses began to render many users' copies of SRB2 unplayable on Windows computers. It was up to SRB2's only known active Mac OSX Lua coder to design and program a character who could fend them off...

Introducing the first (to my knowledge) alternate-objective character for SRB2: Orb!



Orb is different from every other character in the game in that it cannot complete most levels by reaching the goal post.



Instead, you must use its incredibly versatile Roam ability to explore each of the zones in search of mechanical objects that have been infected by Viruses. To locate a Virus, refer to the handy arrow displayed on the HUD, which will point in its general direction in relation to Orb. As you get closer to the Virus, Orb will start to flash different colors, which get warmer and more rapid the more you approach your target.



The majority of levels will automatically end after Orb has destroyed 5 Viruses. Most enemies and monitors can be destroyed simply by hurling yourself into them, but watch out! Spikes, projectiles, crushers, and explosives can still harm or kill Orb. Orb also has the disadvantage of not being able to use shields. It can breathe infinitely both underwater and in space, however.



Special care has been taken to make Orb function in multiplayer as well. In co-op, all Orb players are assigned different Viruses to seek out, but other players can help out by destroying another player's Virus! Orb should also be compatible with most level packs and gametypes. For instance, try to destroy your Viruses before your rivals in race mode on a Subarashii map! (Splitscreen is also supported!)



To make things even more interesting, Orb also has a custom gameplay style in match and CTF! Instead of firing projectiles, Orb will use its body in various ways to attack opponents. See what kinds of creative things you can do with each of the weapon rings! This requires Orb to get up-close and personal with its enemies, which in turn gives them a fair chance at scoring a hit. Try to take advantage of Orb's superior speed and mobility to catch opponents off-guard!



As a bonus, if FSonic.wad is added, Orb uses a custom NiGHTS skin!



If you use an MD2 pack that features a model for thok/spin trails, Orb will use that model! Here's how it looks with Jeck Jims' Saturn-inspired MD2s. (Orb spawns a lot of thok objects every tic so this feature is not recommended for those with slower computers.)



When testing this wad, I found a lot of hidden secrets and alternate routes I never even knew existed in SRB2's levels. I highly recommend grinding out a couple of playthroughs; you never know what you might find!



Known Issues:

Spoiler:

• Occasionally, the RNG will pick an object that requires Orb to backtrack to a location that can no longer be reached (e.g. if you destroy the extra life monitor at the end of THZ2, you can't go back down the elevator to destroy subsequent Viruses). If this happens, use the console command orbrestart to teleport to the previous checkpoint (single player) or the beginning of the level (multiplayer) at the cost of one life and all your rings.
• Normally, Orb's trails are removed in first-person view to allow for an obstruction-free viewpoint. This is disabled in splitscreen due to its incompatibility.
• Certain shields spawn brief overlays on Orb before the code removes them.
• The "Viruses Left" counter does not constantly refresh and thus may not accurately display how many Viruses the player has left to destroy if that number is greater than the remaining number of objects on the map. This issue is purely cosmetic; if there are no more available objects to infect, Orb players should, to my knowledge, exit the level properly.
• If Orb is added to the game mid-level, players who switch their skin to Orb will immediately exit the level.
• The custom Orb NiGHTS skin spams the spin sound when entering the Ideya Capture due to me messing with sprites and stuff. It's not really worth freeslotting a silent sound effect to fix (and it's actually kind of cool so)
• If you name yourself after our good old echidna friend, you might experience some "unintended" side effects...

[Inazuma]

Man Lach... How the heck are you so creative with these things!?! The wad is visually stunning despite being a literal orb. The playstyle is so unique and fun. The lore is also hilarious :P

Great work man. Very great work.

Welcome to Release!

[DirkTH]

Oh boy, I can wait to go on a virus treasure hunt. This is pretty dang cool Lach! Good work!

[Raze C]

I'm still thinking how these things are possible by only Lua...
Anyway, good... AWESOME work.

[RomioTheBadass]

This is Goddamn creative.

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

Originally Posted by Lach

- Known issues: - The custom Orb NiGHTS skin spams the spin sound when entering the Ideya Capture due to me messing with sprites and stuff. It's not really worth freeslotting a silent sound effect to fix (and it's actually kind of cool so) -

You don't really have to freeslot anything for that, I think. sfx_none (or sfx_None with a capital N?) should be a null/empty/"non-existent" sound. (Though with that said, I'm not sure how telling something to play a "non-existent" sound would work out...)

[Lach]

Originally Posted by Zwip-Zwap Zapony

You don't really have to freeslot anything for that, I think. sfx_none (or sfx_None with a capital N?) should be a null/empty/"non-existent" sound. (Though with that said, I'm not sure how telling something to play a "non-existent" sound would work out...)

Setting the spin sound effect to 0 in the S_SKIN results in Orb spamming the thok sound upon entering the Ideya Capture—presumably because the game won't play a null sound when toaster's NiGHTS script tells it to play the spin sound effect? Spamming the spin sound makes more sense than spamming the thok sound, so I just left it alone.

[Rapid]

This wad is certainly interesting.Where do all these ideas come from Lach?

[Goldenhog]

What's the point of orbrestart? If you can't go back to a previous area and have hit a checkpoint after it, then the only thing it does is take a life from you and your rings and laugh at you and that's it. Shouldn't it also reshuffle the virus so it's in a place you can reach or something? Or maybe it does that, but the 10 orb restarts I did in CEZ2 after having hit a checkpoint that was after that one dumb button and after dying once (thus resetting the button) proved otherwise. And normal restarts wouldn't work either because there's a good chance at least one of the virus would end up behind the locked wall anyway! Kinda got left up shit creek without a paddle there.

Maybe orbrestart should always place you back at the start of the level (still costing a life and rings). Other than that, this was fun.

[Lach]

Originally Posted by Goldenhog

What's the point of orbrestart? If you can't go back to a previous area and have hit a checkpoint after it, then the only thing it does is take a life from you and your rings and laugh at you and that's it. Shouldn't it also reshuffle the virus so it's in a place you can reach or something? Or maybe it does that, but the 10 orb restarts I did in CEZ2 after having hit a checkpoint that was after that one dumb button and after dying once (thus resetting the button) proved otherwise. And normal restarts wouldn't work either because there's a good chance at least one of the virus would end up behind the locked wall anyway! Kinda got left up shit creek without a paddle there.

Maybe orbrestart should always place you back at the start of the level (still costing a life and rings). Other than that, this was fun.

I didn't want to reshuffle the Virus because then players have the ability to just spam the command at their spawn point until they get a Virus that's close by, do that 5 times, and beat the entire game that way.

The intention was to have the player respawn at the beginning of the level every time, but in single player the entire map is reloaded upon death, so the respawn point unfortunately gets relocated. I previously tried using actual player spawn mapthings as orbrestart locations but those yielded extremely inconsistent results and even killed the player in some instances.

In any case I have a potential fix in mind so if I ever need to update the wad, I'll try it out. Thankfully not many of the vanilla maps really need the command anyway. (Not dying also works. :P)

[MrMcLime]

Just gave this a try, and I gotta say, I had a lot of fun...

...until I hit DSZ2. Then the whole hunting mechanic became a tedious slog. Trying to backtrack through that zone is an effing nightmare. Also, in DSZ1, the virus spawned on an object that, to my knowledge, is completely inaccessible. My best guess is that it's underground, but I don't know if there's actually anything there. It was somewhere in the spiky tunnel with the bridge near the beginning of the act. The one you can fall into from the hall on the top route with the collapsing floors? I don't know how to look to see if there is something in the floor there, so I can't say for sure.

Anyway, other than that, this is a pretty cool wad.

[Lach]

Originally Posted by MrMcLime

Just gave this a try, and I gotta say, I had a lot of fun...

...until I hit DSZ2. Then the whole hunting mechanic became a tedious slog. Trying to backtrack through that zone is an effing nightmare. Also, in DSZ1, the virus spawned on an object that, to my knowledge, is completely inaccessible. My best guess is that it's underground, but I don't know if there's actually anything there. It was somewhere in the spiky tunnel with the bridge near the beginning of the act. The one you can fall into from the hall on the top route with the collapsing floors? I don't know how to look to see if there is something in the floor there, so I can't say for sure.

Anyway, other than that, this is a pretty cool wad.

Yeah, the gameplay style isn't perfect. A lot of it is luck based; sometimes the game picks super easy and concurrent objects for you to hunt, and sometimes it picks the ones right at the opposite ends of the stage five times in a row. This wad is honestly a proof of concept more than anything, but I did my best to make sure that the game is as completable as possible—Orb actually has special momentum mechanics when in DSZ's water slides, for instance, and his control scheme is built in a way that makes traversing the stages feel majestic so that there's something to keep the player interested when crossing a large portion of the stage. The match gameplay is also worth checking out, but gathering enough people who are interested in playing with it is probably a rare feat. I actually have no idea how balanced it is because nobody ever wanted to test it, which is completely understandable.

I've also gotten stuck in that spiky tunnel once when testing the wad. I don't know where the object is either, and I apologize that it happened to you too. I don't really know how to fix it either since I wasn't debugging objects when I ran into it and it's the only one in the game that I found to be 100% inaccessible, so it's a pretty rare pick. It might be possible to eliminate it with an update but given the lack of reception this wad's gotten I'm not particularly motivated to push one out.

[Biielz]

Finally a creative character that isn't a recolor

QUOTE QUOTE

[rocklight124]

Originally Posted by Biielz

Finally a creative character that isn't a recolor

I know right. I love the sprites.

[LonelyFoxz]

Yep Still Great

[NAR the Fox]

Ah, a creative character with a different playstyle! Oh, what's this? Seems as if I found a Virus stuck inside of a wall... Might want to get that fixed.


Edit: Never mind, it was not stuck, I was just dumb enough to forget that there is a Knuckles path...