During December 2019, I was imagining what it would be like to include elements from the Kingdom Hearts games into SRB2. And now, seven months on, I have finally finished things to the point where I am content to publicly release this mod in its current Release Candidate state. This... is Kingdom Hearts Blast.
Current Version: RC1.5.5
Kingdom Hearts Blast, or KHBlast for short, is a modification for SRB2 which makes things more combat-focused.
Enemies which normally just take a single hit to defeat will (with a few exceptions) no longer take just one hit to be dealt with, but by gaining score (which is KHBlast's XP system) and levelling up, you can deal more damage with each hit. But this goes both ways, as Sonic and company now have their own health which allows them to take more hits than they'd otherwise be able to take.
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There are 6 difficulties in KHBlast, of which you can choose one at the start of a new game through the Station of Awakening. Each one modifies the damage you take, the max HP you have and/or the HP of your foes. You start with just Beginner, Standard and Proud, but on clearing the game you can try out Critical or even the (in)famous EXP Zero difficulty. And using the Ultimate Mode cheat allows you to access the hidden Ultimate Difficulty.
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You don't just gain stats by levelling up, however. By defeating bosses and collecting Chaos Emeralds, you can improve your HP and/or RP so that you can take more hits or use more Magic.
Speaking of Magic, KHBlast has a command menu system. You can use PageUp or PageDown to scroll up or down the command list, Custom 2 to switch between Magic and Items, and Custom 1 to use the selected Item or Magic spell.
As of RC1, KHBlast has the following spells:
- Fire - Fires a fireball which deals decent magical damage
- Thunder - Unleashes a lighting bolt which hits all targets within a given distance
- Cure - Uses between 2 and 10 RP to heal you and nearby allies
- Aero - Creates a Whirlwind Shield, or upgrades an Electric Shield to a Thundercoin Shield
- Haste - Grants Super Sneakers to the user
- Revive - Uses 6RP to revive nearby downed allies, or 20RP to grant an additional Auto-Life as well as reviving nearby allies
Special Stages remain the same in KHBlast, but you will be notified whenever you pick up a Special Stage Token (which becomes a Drive Token once you get all 7 emeralds) just like you would when getting an Item dropped from a foe.
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Finally, if you manage to make it to the final battle with all 7 Emeralds, Black Eggman will be stronger than normal, taking more hits to defeat... but in return, you start off with 7 units of Drive Charge. And with Drive Charge and all the Emeralds, you can access the Drive Form - which is basically the Super Transformation, with a full unit of charge being equal to 50 Rings.
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KHBlast also changes up the character select menu, giving details about the character's starting stats and their Drive Form, as well as a little tip. Due to this, if a custom character wants to have their starting stats shown in the character select screen, I would recommend an alternative version (with kh at the end of the prefix, so it would be like CLkh_Buttnick-v1.pk3) with the altered PlayerText. This would also allow them to add their profile sprite to the game, akin to the Sonic ones which I have attached as examples by adding them to the khheadpatch table, which will eventually allow for faces to be displayed based on the current state of the player: Normal, Low Health, KOed, Super or Special. (Right now, only Normal and Low Health are coded in to work)
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Thanks to everyone who had helped out with it, both past and present. I might not remember everyone who did so, but if I do, I'll make sure to put you down as a contributor towards this.
Also, maybe consider joining the SonicD Discord server for future updates for KHBlast?
