SRB2 Revive?

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Naxio

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I'm sure you all know SRB2 is pretty empty or in other words dead. Is there even a way to make SRB2 fun again, where it had a lot of people? If there was a way, would you even bother doing it? This goes to the devs too.
 
What do you mean by "dead" exactly? We still have an active community creating content, and the game is still slowly being worked on.
 
What do you mean by "dead" exactly? We still have an active community creating content, and the game is still slowly being worked on.

Well that's kinda true but what i mean is mostly gameplay. I'm sure you always see only few people playing sometimes or all the time. I remember in 1.09.4 and 2.0 there were always a lot of people playing, a lot of servers you know? But It's mainly because they got bored of playing it or they just grew out of it.
I just want to play against or play with more people. (I'm a match/CTF player)
 
I always see some people playing online, I don't play a lot of online games because of the missing wads or the input lag. anyways, there is a lot you can do in vanilla single player
 
I keep seeing people go on about how the game is dead or dying, and it's the most surreal thing to me, because I'm consistently feeling like we're on the verge of a hitting a renaissance period- I guess that's just what happens when you're actively involved and creating the content you want to see. The stuff that I'm seeing and hearing on a bi-monthly basis excites the hell out of me.

It won't visibly unfuck the netcode in a timely manner, a problem if that's really what you're looking for in this game, but the best way to keep SRB2 alive is to install Zone Builder and make some maps. Use the features the coders are investing so much effort into and you'll hold their interest and prolong the development of the game. Your work will capture and inspire new players, and we'll survive another generational cycle until this decrepit engine can't go any further.
 
The master server community is less popular than it used to be because the netcode is less stable than it's ever been (and a lot of popular Lua scripts exacerbate the issues by exposing some funky edge cases and using sync-unsafe functionality carelessly). The modding community isn't quite as alive as it gets shortly after a major release, but it still sees some activity here and there, especially now that people are using recent features like slopes. It's a natural lull in activity; when 2.2 finally comes out (whenever that is), we'll see a big surge in activity on all fronts for a while until people get tired of the game again.

Quite frankly, the master server would have more people on it if the netcode was actually improved, and there was a push inside the core dev team to replace it with a much better implementation a while back, but that's stalled right now because the person handling it got busy (and the rest of us haven't sat down to figure out how the new branch works yet). I wouldn't expect anything for 2.2 on that front.
 
Even if the netcode did get fixed, it will never be as popular as online modern video games since SRB2 is a doom source port and doom source ports are not super popular, but they are still pretty popular.
 
I mean like I'd help with the netcode and all if I knew what i was doing but I'm pretty much useless. SRB2 is as fun online game fun as your modern online game in my opinion at least... to me srb2 was just like any other online game to me to be honest.
 
I keep seeing people go on about how the game is dead or dying, and it's the most surreal thing to me, because I'm consistently feeling like we're on the verge of a hitting a renaissance period- I guess that's just what happens when you're actively involved and creating the content you want to see. The stuff that I'm seeing and hearing on a bi-monthly basis excites the hell out of me.

It won't visibly unfuck the netcode in a timely manner, a problem if that's really what you're looking for in this game, but the best way to keep SRB2 alive is to install Zone Builder and make some maps. Use the features the coders are investing so much effort into and you'll hold their interest and prolong the development of the game. Your work will capture and inspire new players, and we'll survive another generational cycle until this decrepit engine can't go any further.

This is pretty much how I feel about it down to the letter. We have slopes now, and a lot of people are making a lot of really cool things and showing them off on IRC! If all people see is the SRB2MB's infrequently updated topics (the death of the OLDC doesn't help on that front) and the master server, then it looks a lot more grim than it is. IRC is where the coolest things happen, although it seems a little bit more impenetrable for newcomers than the MB. I'm going to echo Ritz and say that the best thing you as a player and participant in the community can do is to grab Zone Builder and experiment with making your own custom levels. Levels are the bread and butter of the game and give it a lot of its longevity and replayability.
 
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I have no idea how to make maps, I'm just one of those guys who knows how to play but useless when it comes to helping out the community. Also why post SRB2 on other sites?
 
I have no idea how to make maps, I'm just one of those guys who knows how to play but useless when it comes to helping out the community. Also why post SRB2 on other sites?
Start by doing some wiki tutorials, and making shitty maps that you keep to yourself or a few close friends; don't even bother with polish at first, you don't necessarily know where your time is best spent to improve a particular map yet, just make stuff and get a feel for what's fun. Try making a reproduction of some level from a game you like (everyone used to do peach's castle, as an example), just to expose yourself to the challenges and steps involved in making something not based on what you already know how to do. Read more stuff on the wiki, do experiments, make more levels, and eventually your maps will stop being shitty and you can start sharing them with a broader audience.

Mystic's first level was Arena Zone, an incredibly glitchy and hastily done modification of meadow match whose main gimmick was having 15 GFZ3 eggmobiles. Today, he's our senior level designer.

You have to practice to get good, and nobody starts good. That's just how it is.
 
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Start by doing some wiki tutorials, and making shitty maps that you keep to yourself or a few close friends; don't even bother with polish at first, you don't necessarily know where your time is best spent to improve a particular map yet, just make stuff and get a feel for what's fun. Try making a reproduction of some level from a game you like (everyone used to do peach's castle, as an example), just to expose yourself to the challenges and steps involved in making something not based on what you already know how to do. Read more stuff on the wiki, do experiments, make more levels, and eventually your maps will stop being shitty and you can start sharing them with a broader audience.

Mystic's first level was Arena Zone, an incredibly glitchy and hastily done modification of meadow match whose main gimmick was having 15 GFZ3 eggmobiles. Today, he's our senior level designer.

You have to practice to get good, and nobody starts good. That's just how it is.
I also can highly agree to this statement about making levels and practicing. I just recently finished my first level to make a release here, but I still have at least a dozen other maps that will never see the light of day due to the lack of polish among other things. Just to support the main point, toy with the program, read the wiki, get a friend or two to do with along side you if you can, and just have fun with it.
 
I have no idea how to make maps ... also why post SRB2 on other sites?

That's the point of learning through experimentation! Zone Builder is pretty dang easy to pick up and try out.

If you're referring to the IRC by "other sites", it isn't a website. It's referring to our live chatroom on EsperNet that's been running in parallel to the SRB2MB for well over a decade. You need an IRC client to connect to #srb2fun (Hexchat is free and a good option) and it's basically the place where all the game modification experts hang out and talk about whatever. Not a good place to find netgames unless you're testing levels you made, but if you feel like talking about random stuff like hobbies, music, anime etc. there are usually over 50 people in there.
 
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