Pikachu v2.1.2

A change that I felt needed to get out quickly instead of waiting for enough stuff for a major update. Also a fun change and a change that may or may not even exist.

• Pikachu can now parry the Spectator Egg Robos in CEZ3
• Re-added an advanced technique that was inadvertently removed in v2.1.1
• One of Metal Sonic's attack patterns may or may not have been impossible to parry for no apparent reason? I could swear this happened, but I could also swear I fixed it by just cracking the files open, commenting out 2 lines, and then putting them back in as they already were. This change makes me feel like I'm going insane, but to my knowledge, it didn't work before, and it works now.

Don't let the negligible increase in version number fool you, this one's big. Really big. So big it might as well be Pikachu v3.

I found the jump sound. It's over. The mod is done. I've righted my past wrongs. The specter of failure that has tormented me from the rodent's publication hath been quelled. We can stop making SRB2 mods because this one is perfect now that the jump sound is from Gen 5 instead of Gen 3.

Oh and I guess I also removed frame perfect jumping to do a Volt Tackle because it's janky and happens way more often on accident which I meant to do in v2.1 but then I forgot. But who cares about that when there's a new jump sound!!

• Both bosses in Black Core Zone can be parried in more ways
  • Metal Sonic can be parried at all, both his laser balls and his pinball attack
  • Brak Eggman's flames can now be parried
  • Brak's attacks can be parried while his shield is up; this won't do anything to him
• Double Team's parry now pierces through boss invulnerability
• Ring attraction from electric attacks now attracts blue spheres
• Bug fixes
  • Fixed a bug where Pikachu would retain a life when falling into a pit
  • Fixed a bug where Thunder's vertical hitbox was way too small
  • Fixed an exploit where Pikachu could hit the Egg Colosseum through the bars
    • Worry not; you can still hit him from the top of the cage, if you feel like being cool
  • Fixed a bug where Victory Lies Before You! would still play with the pikamusic console variable off
  • The pikareduceparticles console variable is now netgame synchronized, since SRB2 doesn't like it very much when you do or don't spawn an object locally
  • Fixed a bug where attracted rings that have been collected would vibrate wildly around Pikachu

This one's a doozy - perhaps my biggest doozy thus far, in fact, as it's the first update I've made to anything that I've felt has warranted an increase in the most significant version number! I've been posting about it in the WIP thread for as long as I've been working on it, but I've been light on the details of pretty much everything but the sprites. Hopefully, this hefty round of patch notes clear things up!

Spoiler: NEW SPRITES!

• Every sprite in the mod has been re-rendered and polished to fit right in with the rest of SRB2's sprites. Pikachu might not look so unique anymore, but this resprite has taken him from my ugliest mod to my best-looking, in my opinion!
• As well, several animations - such as waiting, edge teetering, death, and more - have been completely redone, refining the personality and quality of the character

Spoiler: Moveset Changes

• Volt Tackle is now momentum-based, taking a bit to accelerate to full speed and keeping any speed you bring into it over and above the move's usual top speed
• Volt Tackle's vertical speed is now capped, which nerfed some tech that could get you some serious height in previous versions; worry not, though, as a myriad of new advanced techniques have come in its place - more on that later
• Iron Tail now takes a little bit longer to launch
• Using Double Team in midair no longer stops you from moving
• Several enemies - namely Crustaceans, Lance-a-Bots, Uniduses/Unidi/Unidae, and Hive Elementals - can be parried when they previously couldn't
  • By parrying Hive Elementals, I of course mean parrying Bumblebores to hurt the Hive Elemental that spawned them. This doesn't make much sense and is largely impractical, but nobody likes Hive Elementals and I think it's funny
• Double Team can now go through Egg Guard shields

Spoiler: Secret Techniques

• Added a whole bunch of new ways for advanced Pikachu players to get around; I encourage you to try and find these on your own, but if you want, the Overview tab has a list of all of them, nearly all of which were added in this update

Spoiler: Aesthetic Changes

• New music replacements!
  • Anticipation (CEZ1) -> The Pokémon Child, N
  • Victory Lies Before you as a new boss pinch theme, courtesy of Zippy_Zolton's old open assets script
• Volt Tackle's vixual effects have been overhauled into something much more impactful-looking to bring it a bit closer to its origin
• Pikachu's death animation is a bit slower and no longer messes with the camera
• New custom animation for falling into pits
• All of Pikachu's music replacements I could manage now have MIDI equivalents, largely from VGMusic
• When standing in a short gap, Pikachu will now stay on all fours instead of forcing his head into the ceiling
• Iron Tail's whooshing sound is now separate from the twinkling sound, and also now audible enough that you can learn that Iron Tail even has a whooshing sound from playing the game rather than reading this patch note
• Made the drowning theme more accurate to the source material
• Added good ending sprites

Spoiler: Bug Fixes

• Thunder can now cause Metal Sonic to spin out
• Parrying the Egg Slimer to death will no longer cause him to fly away and softlock you
• Parrying Fang's tail bounce will no longer skip his hurt animation, which could skip the second phase roof collapse and, more distressingly, turn Fang into an unkillable zombie
• Parrying the Eggmobile's laser will no longer cause his next laser to come out already fully extended
• Thunder's downward launch will no longer continue if Pikachu is bounced up
• Pikachu's ring attraction now applies to coins as well as rings
• Thunder will no longer interrupt springs or the victory animation
• Pikachu now scales correctly
• Pikachu's type resistance no longer brings your rings down into the negatives

Spoiler: Other Changes

• Added console variable pikaracenerf for servers that would rather not deal with the craziness that is high-level Pikachu play
• Increased the compression on all of the digital music, which wound up cutting the file size in half

• Made some changes to Pikachu's ring attraction
  • Regular rings will no longer fail to attract to Pikachu if he's moving too fast, and will instead behave like team rings
  • Rings will now use velocity-based attraction behavior like the classic Sonic games in order to keep up with Pikachu
  • Since the attraction radius no longer needs to compensate for rings falling out of attraction, the radius has been decreased again
  • Fixed a bug where team rings (whose logic has been extended to regular rings) would be attracted to Pikachu if they were in the same blockmap chunk, regardless of if they actually fell within the attraction radius
• Fixed a bug where some Pikachu voice clips could be heard by all players across the map - make sure to copy-paste your own code responsibly, folks
• Fixed a bug where Pikachu would be forced into his victory animation while waiting for other players to finish the level

Thought I was done fixing bugs, but then I saw a video someone made showcasing this mod, and I realized how foolhardy, how naïve I truly was. It is not a programmer's place to be "done."

• Autobrake no longer interrupts Double Team
• Attracted rings no longer fly off into the skybox forever - instead, regular rings will gain gravity, and team rings will keep following Pikachu until he collects them
• Pikachu's ring attraction radius has been decreased to match the attack radius of Thunder (a radius of 150 FU)
• Doubled the amount of invulnerability gained from parrying with Double Team from 1 second to 2 seconds

• Pikachu's Electric-type moves (Volt Tackle and Thunder) now attract rings
  • This doesn't work during invulnerability frames, so that the player is still forced to recollect dropped rings manually
• When Pikachu faints, he now turns white and shrinks away, to better reflect the Pokémon games
• Added console variable pikareduceparticles, in case the amount of particles from Volt Tackle and Thunder causes lag or other issues
• Pikachu's sounds are now captioned!
  • Currently, his voice lines all display a blank caption, since I don't know if it's possible to play a sound without showing a caption
• Pikachu will now say hello when adding the mod, as was originally intended
• Fixed some parts of the code referring to Volt Tackle as Wild Charge, including the character select entry
• Fixed a bug where Thunder's bounce would override the first part of the death animation
• Adjusted a few sound effects (sfx_pvname and sfx_pkfein)