Sophia the Crawla Commando v1.2

Sophia began like any other Red Crawla. All her life, to her knowledge, she existed to search for Chaos Emeralds and destroy all enemies of the Eggman Empire. However, everything changed on the fateful day that she encountered Sonic the Hedgehog in Greenflower Zone.

Sonic was tearing across the zone, paying more mind to the hills and valleys he was traversing than the Badniks that were trying to stop him. Most robots were passed over, while a few stood a bit too close to Sonic's path, and were destroyed, freeing the animals within them. Sophia, however, was a special case - a near miss knocked off her antenna, disconnecting her from Eggman and his forces.

Now free to think for herself separate from the control of Eggman, Sophia came to realize just what was going on here. She realized that her bretheren were powered by innocent animals that deserved to roam free. She realized that Sonic and his friends were in the right, and that Eggman needed to be stopped. And most of all, she realized that she had the power to right these wrongs, to bring peace back to Greenflower Mountain. And so, donning a snazzy pair of shades and a powerful will, Sophia the Crawla Commando set out to scrap some metal and crack some eggs!

As you navigate levels, Sophia's head will automatically face towards nearby enemies, monitors, and other damageable objects. If you hold Spin while Sophia locks on to an enemy, Sophia will use the turret on her face and start shooting her target! While you won't destroy them instantly, you'll start racking up fractional damage, which you can see in the top right of your screen. Once enough of this fractional damage adds up, you'll hurt or destroy your target, usually getting a ring in the process.

Repeatedly pressing Spin won't make Sophia shoot any faster. It's better to hold the button, both for speed and to save yourself the fatigue of mashing a button constantly. Speaking of fatigue, Lock On usually requires the player to continually hold Spin in order to fire, but holding Spin constantly can sometimes get tiring. That's why you can use the console variable sph_togglefire to use Spin to toggle continuous firing on and off instead. More info in the Console Variables section below.

There are some things that Sophia shouldn't shoot, such as Eggman Monitors. When you shoot something like that, an alarm sound will play - if you hear that sound, ease off the Spin button, make sure you're not targeting something harmful (which you can see in the top right of your screen), and if you are, put some distance between yourself and that target before firing again.

When first starting, you may notice that Sophia moves slow, jumps low, and struggles to get moving. This will be the case at the start of a stage, but as you collect rings, Sophia's stats will get better and better, up until 80 rings, at which point you reach the highest level of this effect. You can keep track of this by the HUD in the top right of your screen.

Your Gear Shift will affect your top speed, jump height, acceleration, and the rate at which you'll shoot enemies with Lock On. Be careful not to get hit, though! If you take damage without a shield, Sophia will drop all of her rings, just like anyone else, setting her back to Gear 0 until she gets enough rings to climb the ranks again.

Sophia can glide through the air and climb up walls just like Knuckles. However, she does not lose control and slow down for as long after landing.

While Crawlas may look small, they're packed with heavy machinery. Sophia can break walls, floors, and spikes just by touching them. When moving at top speed at Gear Max, she can even run over enemies like they aren't even there!

sph_togglefire: Accepts "On" or "Off." Defaults to Off. When On, changes the mechanics of the Lock On ability slightly. A new element will be added to your HUD that reads "AF: OFF" or "AF: ON." Pressing Spin will toggle Autofire on or off; when it's on, Sophia will shoot anything she sees, and when it's off, she won't shoot anything.

sph_beamresolution: Accepts floats (numbers with decimal points) between 0 and 1. The higher this number is, the more objects will be used to draw the beam for Sophia's Lock On ability. Most players can leave this to the default of 0.25, but if you're experiencing lag when firing, you could try turning it down.

Scripting: PikaJade
Art: Sonic Team Jr., PikaJade
SFX: Sunsoft

When I shared a prototype for this mod a while ago, it was for Sophia III from Blaster Master. While that was the original intention, I eventually decided to make it an original character instead, both for ease of spriting (allowing me to edit sprites already in the game, rather than having to draw entirely new ones), and because the mechanics I wanted to program gradually drifted further and further away from that source material. However, sounds from Blaster Master are still used in honor of that initial inspiration.