Silver The Hedgehog - 4.1

Nope, you're not dreaming, this one here is not a joke, it's the true and real Silver we've all been waiting for!



So, Silver is as fast as Tails, jumps higher, but cannot damage enemies by jumping on them. But don't worry, he has a bunch of abilities to make up for this!

Most of Silver's abilities require Psy Energy. You can see how much Psy Energy you have under your Rings HUD, in a little blue bar. It is consumed by most of them, it won't refill by itself, you'll have to collect Rings or use PsyCharge (see below in ABILITIES). Some abilities cannot be used if you have less than a fifth of your gauge. It will flash red to indicate you this fact.

Spoiler: Abilities!

Float
Silver can float if you hold jump after using your double jump ability. Nothing too special. It slowly depletes your Psy energy. You are vulnerable while using it, so be careful.

Psycho Boost
While floating, press Spin with more than a fifth of your gauge to enter in Psycho Boost mode! From there, you do not have to hold forward to advance or spin to keep using it. Press forward or backwards to go up and down. Let go the jump button to cancel it. You can start floating again afterwards if you still have Psy Energy. You can hurt enemies and bosses if you touch them during the Boost. Be careful though, it drains Psy Energy a lot faster! You can also destroy breakable walls while using it.

Telekinesis
Telekinesis went through a lot of changes in the latest version, but has never been more effective and easy to use!

All nearby Telekinesis targets have a little blue cross drawn around them, if you press Fire Ring or Fire Normal, up to 4 objects highlighted will be picked up. They will follow you around.
Be aware that for each object you pick up, you will lose a fifth of your Psy Energy.
You can select what object to interact with thanks to the new fancy HUD by using the Match Weapon selection buttons.
Nearby targets you can throw objects on will also have a blue cross on them, just press Fire Ring again to throw the object(s) automatically on the target(s), or throw them where YOU want by using the Fire Normal button instead, use the 3rd person aiming reticle to your advantage, it can be of great help sometimes.
Do remember that getting hurt will make you drop every object you were holding.
You can also press TOSS FLAG to drop any currently held object.
Throwing objects does not cost any Psy Energy.

Also do do note that in Co-Op, players holding TOSS FLAG can be picked up and thrown by Silver.

Psycho Charge

Hold down Spin while standing still to use this ability;
it will refill your Psy Energy, or overcharge it into a burst of energy that knocks every enemy away when you let go off Spin if it was already full. This ability also allows Silver to use Spin activated Platforms, and gives him his Spin height, allowing him to fit through tight spaces.

Slide

Silver can Slide if you run and hit the Spin button. Useful to go under tight spaces. If you slide down a steep enough slope, Silver may gather enough speed to start spinning instead!

Match

Silver cannot make use of any of the weapon rings in RingSlinger gametypes! Instead, he has to make use of his Telekinesis to throw players on walls a-la Sonic 06, or to use his RingSlinger-only ability, Psycho Cut!
Which can be selected with Match Weapon Selection buttons when you are not using Telekinesis. The projectile thrown goes through players and solid objects while still damaging them. You can throw a vertical slice instead of a horizontal one if you press Fire Normal instead of Fire Ring. Do note that these cost Psy Energy, so use them wisely!


MATCH/TAG/CTF/whatever TIPS

AS SILVER

If you are playing as Silver in match, it's generally useless to rush at players who already have seen you from afar, try instead grabbing monitors and ambushing players in tight spaces where they have no chance of escaping them. Grabbing players is generally a double edged sword as they can shoot back at you to free themselves really easily, you can however still use the level geometry to your advantage when grabbing a player to protect yourself from their shots. Keep in mind that only walls will damage players, it's useless to aim the ground or the ceiling, throwing them in any damaging sector / death pit will however award you points. Mind that it is also possible to use players as projectiles against other players.
Be careful of areas with a lot of items scattered around as it may cause you to lose more Psy Energy than intended.

While you do have the ability to Psycho Boost at any time, you should keep it only to escape or access safe areas, as its energy consumption will most likely be your downfall in a fight.

Do remember that you also have Psycho Cut as self defense if you are to be grabbed by another Silver or ever find yourself in a situation where objects are inaccessible and that there are no openings to grab players, they are also extremely useful in cluttered spaces as they go through players, and thus can damage more than one in a single throw.


Finally, keep in mind that your Psy Energy is really limited, you WILL have to back up to find Rings or hide to use PsyCharge safely and recharge it quite often. It's a good idea to use Ring monitors as weapons as they will be able to refill more than what you used to throw them if they land.

AGAINST SILVER

If you are to play against Silver, keep in mind that he cannot do a whole lot to you for as long as you stay outside of his grab range, he will be forced to either back away or to get closer to you by using his abilities, which will leave him without any psy energy to fight you once he reaches up close.
Silver can grab your weapon rings if you're not careful, but cannot protect himself from an endless stream of them, automatics and regular red rings are very effective against him from afar in a constant stream.

Avoid cluttered areas when you know there are Silver players as you will be helpless against any ambush unless you had already anticipated it.

If a Silver player picks you up, you only have approximatively one second to react and hit Silver with any sort of weapon to not get hit yourself or hope he gets hit by anything else. Keep in mind Telekinesis will always move you in front of Silver. Scatter, Grenades and Bomb Rings are extremely effective to break free.

Be aware however that Silver players throw monitors around, and thus, change their position, you will have to adapt to these changes whenever you need to find a power up for yourself. It's a good idea to go pop monitors here and here at the start of a round to force Silver players to resort to their Psycho Cut or easily counter-able Player telekinesis to get an easy upper hand on them

Spoiler: Command Help

COMMAND HELP
Don't forget to actually make use of the commands to your liking;
'locksound' may quickly get annoying in SinglePlayer with the amount of targets and you may want to disable it.
'aimcross' isn't always precise and if you think it might as well not be here, then be it, disable it.
'telekinesistext' displays once telekinesis has picked you up in ringslinger, while helpful it can also be kind of intrusive to certain people, in that case, disable it.
silvervoice I don't know why would you play with this your madman.

All of those commands are saved into config.cfg so you don't have to reinput them each time.

Silver also has a Super Form he can use in Single Player, which negates all Psy Energy cost mentionned in the spoiler above.

I hope you will have as much fun playing it than I had making it

Special Thanks
Speedwagon for the char select and end-of-level sign sprites
STCPhoton for the sliding sprites
Snow for online testing and help with sprites
MotorRoach for testing, advices and fixing the character select pic
Wolfy for the original slide script.
LJ Sonik, Monster Iestyn, toaster, JTE and Inuyasha for a lot of help with the Lua, dumb scripter I am! :)
A good chunk of the Discord Chats I sent the WAD to to get error reports.

All of those who supported me while I was making this. Thank you, I love you all!

[DirkTH]

Originally Posted by Puppyfaic

So, does Silver have no way of breaking bustable walls? If he can't, he's can't get past Checker Mountain 1 in Top Down.

I think using psycho-boost is the only solution for breaking breakable walls.

["Lat'"]

Originally Posted by Puppyfaic

So, does Silver have no way of breaking bustable walls? If he can't, he's can't get past Checker Mountain 1 in Top Down.

he probably cant

[DirkTH]

Originally Posted by "Lat'"

he probably cant

Turns out, Silver can break that wall and can complete Checkered Mountain.
Either way, Silver looks pretty nice! Great job Lat'!

[FuriousFox]

So, messing around with this just now, I'm wondering... Is it actually possible for Silver to kill an Egg Guard? I tried to run around behind the shield and slide into him, but it doesn't seem to be working.

[Majro]

Well, this update is a pleasant surprise. The controls now make much more sense, with the psychokenisis being moved to the mouse, and I love the changes you've done to the Psycho Boost, it feels so much better now and is quite fun to attack with as well.

I don't really understand why Silver can't hurt enemies with his jump, though. He can still break monitors with it, and you can avoid most enemies or just use any other attack anyway. It seems like an odd choice.

Also, in the short amount of time playing him, I've noticed a few bugs. I kind of feel sorry, really, knowing how many bugs you've had to fix with Silver so far.

Spoiler:

1. Using any ability while dying makes Silver float continuously upward.

We have liftoff!

2. Sliding on moving platforms propels Silver forward or backward

Backwards when it's going up, forward when going down.

3. Holding a charge, getting pushed away by an Egg Guard and moving puts you into a permanent spin

Seems to be only a visual bug

[Sketch]

At first I was skeptical about this update, but it's better than before! Silver's sliding, and object grab work ALOT better than before. Especially the psy grabbing, which is not only more convenient, but also works a MILLION times better than before. Allowing you to lock on to targets to throw is a GREAT idea compared to the way you did it before, where it wouldn't always even work. The new ability is cool, but I still need to find some practical uses for it. The major gameplay revamp aside, other minor improvements, like the teetering sprites, and the nights sprites, are nice, but the teetering looks very weird on some sides. But once again, this Silver is amazing. Keep up the good work, and let's hope soon Blaze can get the same treatment as the white hedgehog.

[Blaze The Cat]

Boxes can be hoarded and popped all at once. Not a bug, but silly to look at. Oh, getting hit with the Psycho Cut makes the hit message say you hit yourself. Guess Silver really is that Naive.


Want to hit whoever is holding you? Good luck.


Killing your friend's ears is as simple as holding them against a spring and making them butt-hurt.


You can also hold the other team hostage, and capture flags yourself, or keep them in a confined corner where they can only shoot one another.


And this bug finally makes its reappearance, in threesome form.


Have fun with these while they last!

[Luma]

It's a really nice character, I love this wad.

[XFlame]

Hey Lat', i like your wads a LOT. But this one isn't good. It is...
MAGNIFICENT
Also, you should make the psynarchy command return. ;)

[Qwer_Troll]

The wad is good

[Razgriz]

I'm in love with this character, especially with it's unique gameplay. You've did a great job, GG.

["Lat'"]

N-NANI!? SILVERO UPDATO!?

This one comes out of the blue for some people, but here comes Silver version 4.0!

For this update, the goal was to actually make Silver fair and balanced and more fun to play as and against in """"competitive"""" gametypes such as CTF and Match. The changes are listed below as well as why they were made to begin with:

Spoiler: List of changes

*GENERAL CHANGES
- Psy Energy no longer recharges alone, you have to collect Rings or use Psy Charge (Spin while idle) to recharge it! This change was made to prevent Silver from camping too easily certain spots (death pits)

- The HUD has been updated to now display properly under any software resolution and even splitscreen (outside of ringslinger)

- The commands 'locksound' (default on) and 'aimcross' (default on) are now Consvars and are now saved in config.cfg

- Added the command 'silvervoice' (default off) which allows you to hear his annoying voice at will (this is clientsided and can be used even in netgames)

- Added the command 'telekinesistext' (default on) which, when on, displays a warning on your screen whenever you are being held via enemy telekinesis

- Added stuff I probably shouldn't have brought back.

- Top Down support has been dropped for now. It will be added back if Top Down is to come alive again, for now, that means less script maintenance.

*TELEKINESIS CHANGES
- Telekinesis range has been cut in half. This nerf speaks for itself, Silver's grab range was Marth from melee, literally.

- Failing Telekinesis no longer results in a loss of Psy Energy but still initiates a cooldown. With the Psy Energy regeneration nerf and the smaller hitbox, it's mandatory not to punish Silver as much for failing his Telekinesis.

- IT, super or invulnerable players can no longer be grabbed / aimed at.

- Grabbing Players now result into a 1 second cooldown before being able to throw (from 2 seconds)

- Grabbed Players are way less affected by the momentum inflicted to them from Silver looking around after picking them up, easing their aim onto Silver in order to break free from him.

- Thrown items that locked onto targets now chase them for 1 second before giving up chase, making thrown items an ideal choice to deal against players without risking a revenge hit from them while still having to get into close range to be effective

- Thrown items now leave a nice teal trail after being thrown. It makes it easier to identify thrown items and also looks better.

- Throwing players into damaging sectors / death pits now awards points.

- Improved wall collision detection again.

- Fixed throwing items on players in match actually not working at all.

- Fixed hurtmessages

*PSYCHO CUT CHANGES
- Psycho Cut now actually works (for real this time)

- Psycho Cut now only costs 1/2 bar rather than 1

- Psycho Cut is now much faster by default, the goal here being to make Psycho Cut a viable weapon for when Silver cannot find any monitor or opening to grab a player.

- Fixed hurtmessages

*KNOWN GLITCHES, oh no!

- It may still occur that validity errors pop out every now and then, these do in no way break the script and should be ignored gameplay-wise. Feel free however to report those you see.

- Hurt messages may sometimes not display and instead be replaced by generic hurt messages ("x hit y", "x's tagging hand hit y"...). This does in no way change gameplay as points will still be awarded normally.

- Chasing thrown items may sometimes end up spazzing inside their target and deal no damage until they fly off to another dimension when the chase wears off, I have no idea why this happens or if it still happens as this issue is pretty rare in general.

EDIT: COMMAND HELP
Don't forget to actually make use of the commands to your liking;
'locksound' may quickly get annoying in SinglePlayer with the amount of targets and you may want to disable it.
'aimcross' isn't always precise and if you think it might as well not be here, then be it, disable it.
'telekinesistext' displays once telekinesis has picked you up in ringslinger, while helpful it can also be kind of intrusive to certain people, in that case, disable it.
silvervoice I don't know why would you play with this your madman.

All of those commands are saved into config.cfg so you don't have to reinput them each time.

As always, the original post containing abilities and tips has been updated, and this time even includes a few tips for RingSlinger. Please read it before asking me how to break walls with Silver ;(

[Potatosack]

Originally Posted by "Lat'"

- Added stuff I probably shouldn't have brought back.

"It's no use!"

I wonder what the netgames will be like now... Probably the same old deal of 'sonic is here to shove rails into your anus' lol

[742mph]

The beeping noise that the telekinesis target makes every time it auto-locks onto a new enemy gets annoying pretty quickly, and it doesn't even tell you which enemy has been targeted the way the visual crosshair does. Do you think you could remove the noise, or at least add a console command to turn it off?

["Lat'"]

Originally Posted by 742mph

The beeping noise that the telekinesis target makes every time it auto-locks onto a new enemy gets annoying pretty quickly, and it doesn't even tell you which enemy has been targeted the way the visual crosshair does. Do you think you could remove the noise, or at least add a console command to turn it off?

locksound off. Pretty sure I already explained it was in.

[742mph]

Originally Posted by "Lat'"

locksound off. Pretty sure I already explained it was in.

Sorry, I didn't notice that. Thank you.

[Simon_T]

Eh... Lat... Why Silver no longer regains energy LIKE IN SONIC '06?

[MotorRoach]

Because it made him overpowered and now he can only regain it through either rings or recharging it by holding spin. Seems pretty balanced for me.

Plus, don't even bring up his 06 gameplay. If anything, that's the last example you should bring up for anything regarding good game design.

[CancerChris]

Hmm. There's only one transgression with this nerf. I don't know if there's anything I can do when I have an enemy in my grasp but I can't throw them because I had an odd amount of energy. So I either have to get hit, or run around with the enemy in my grasp until I get enough rings to throw them, which depending on what I'm playing can take a while.

So instead of just remove Silver's regen entirely, what I think should've been done, was limit his regen to only 1 bar, and you have to charge for the rest. OR allow Silver to charge with an enemy in his grasp.

It seems a bit nitpicky, but it's happened to me way more often than I'd like it to.

[MK.exe]

I mean. Its nice and balanced so silver doesnt spam the tek.... i also find it annoying but its for the best