StephChars v3 - Bold & Brash Update v3

4 words: Best. Character. Mod. Ever.
I love playing as Jana because you can cheese almost every platforming section.

best mod ever me and my brother love this mod!

Extremely nice mod. This feels like one of the very few mods that are simple and easy enough for noobs like me to have fun with, and at the same time lots of fun for the more experienced players, i just wish it was possible to turn jana's wall jump on and off with a command like janawalljump (on/off) because on some map packs (like Roger's level packs) that dont have alot of open space in most levels, i either accidentally grab on a wall and have to wait a huge while to fall down (happens mostly in egg fleet 3.5 and its impossible to avoid it) or i can safely jump off but then go pretty far back, another solution to both of those situations would be able to do an air dash with c1 exclusively after you walljump. Idk if thats possible tho.
Other than those little nitpicks (is that how its spelt?), This mod is the best character mod i played in my entire life.

when i first saw this mod i thought to my self this looks promising and i downloaded it when i started playing as jana i felt like this in the video https://youtube.com/shorts/3jLgpJM5SzI?feature=share its a amazing mod

My two favorite characters of all time, I like Skip just a bit more than Jana though (cough cough hat in time bias)
Also, I love the new sprites for Skip. That freaking grounded slide animation is so gosh dang sick.

A really fun duo! Skip feels bouncy and Jana feels very smooth. Both of the characters are quite simple and aren't the hardest to master. Plus Skip's sprite revamp made him x10 more cute. I'll a comment with some cool things I did as them.

Really great mod, when playing Jana I really thought when I saw MMZ wall jump it was similar to MMX, maybe add a command to replicate to same wall jump for those types of players :V. Really great mod tho.

Jana is easily one of the best mods I've ever played. She's fun, requires a good amount of skill + stage knowledge, and is very rewarding to get good at. Only minor gripe is no real way to spin things such as the wheel things in Deep Sea, but it's not the worst thing ever. Sprites are fantastic, everything is just top notch. Fantastic stuff!

Great mod! Skip's platforming prowess is really fun and charming, and Jana's intense speed is a lot of style, but there's also a lot of substance to be found. Only one question though,

are you ever going to update any of your mods?

A great pack of character! The review here is mostly aimed towards Jana as she's the new release, but having never given my thoughts about Skip I figured I should do it as well;

Skip overall is an amazing character, the sprites look stunning and quite adorable if you ask me, on the gameplay side, he's extremely responsive and the dive attack is incredibly versatile just like the one from Odyssey you inspired it from, if I'm not mistaken.
The scrap / monitor mechanic seemed a bit flow-breaking at first, but with experience, it's perfectly possible to collect scrap as you plow through levels by diving onto enemies in the way and then use em up on monitors you need to further better your time and flow on some levels. This mechanic overall is greatly helped by how the dive interacts with shields, and in the worst case scenario, this mechanic can be ignored and is completely harmless!
I'd call Skip essentially perfect for how simple and efficient his gameplay is, being easy to learn, having some intricacies and high skill ceiling thanks to the scrap mechanic which will give you the necessary edge when used correctly and also acts as a safety net for newer players.


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Jana is a character I had a bit more problems with; her sprites are amazing and super cute just like Skip, my gripes come more from the gameplay side.
You here have a character that has an emphasis on mobility, and her wall jump ability shows that. It's quite frankly a bit busted but who cares, it's SUPER FUN to use, it can cancel basically any state making it very lenient which means I was never scared about risking my life above death pits! Coupled with her dash ability to make it even stronger, and you got yourself a speed demon that's super fun to use!

...The thing is, this completely overshadows her other abilities being the cut and the slam. Generally speaking, abilities strictly designed for combat in SRB2 don't work, at least in my opinion. SRB2 enemies are too passive to bother wasting time on them, as a result, I found myself only ever using the cut against bosses and the slam only ever had use in DSZ2, and otherwise actually caused me to plummet to my death because I pressed jump too early when wanting to walljump. I understand the intent of these abilities and see that quite a lot of effort went into the visuals (props for the slashing animations, they look really good!), but unfortunately I feel like they only add clutter and don't often serve purpose.

If I was to suggest anything, I'd move her dash ability to spin on ground, and her slash on mid-air spin (while also adding the projectile to the air slash to make it more versatile), and maybe the slam to tapping spin again after slashing if you want to keep it, otherwise the dash could destroy floors by just skimming over them.
Reasoning behind all that being that I'm a bit on edge about using custom buttons on characters that have otherwise simple movesets that could easily fit on 2 buttons, and the doubletap caused so many accidental near-deaths in my playthrough I had to disable it and remap my custom button to somewhere more comfortable where it still felt awkward to use instead of spin given how often you use the dash in actual gameplay.
She doesn't really NEED ways to defend herself on the ground since she can pretty much avoid any enemy encounter, and I don't think jumping before tapping spin would be too much of a stretch in boss fights since the enemies are usually airborne there, especially if you'd have a projectile to act as leniency on the timing.


Overall, this is excellent work and are some of my favourites characters to use and I'd recommend just about everyone to give them a go for a fresh experience, so keep it up!

Technically...perfect. Really fits to the mechanic of old Rockman Zero controls. Really awesome in most case possible.

However There's just one seriously annoying factor with this particular character. The double tap dash, which is totally unnecessary, makes me dash down to pits to my death if I dare to tap the same directional key too often. It's terrible and disturbing.

The reason it's just 3 stars and not 5 is that this one little double tap dash problem. I know, I know Zero has it in his own games, but for the love of god creator pls remove it cause using C1 for dash is wholesomely enough and a way more predictable button to use to do the job properly without rendering myself dashing into the pit every single time just because the controls to it is too sensitive.

Just remove the double tap dash function and it's 5 stars, thank you.

[This review is mostly aimed towards Jana. Might make a new or updated review for Skip later.]

Jana plays incredibly well and has quite the unique play style that both breaks, and compliments the game.

Utilizing her sword attacks to clear enemies and obstacles, the dash and wall jump mechanic from Megaman Zero. This character truly feels like a well made passion project, as both an outlier, and perfect fit for the vanilla stages.

However, as of this review, theres a few bugs with Jana at the moment. here's some I found.

You can cancel ANY animation state with her wall jump state. this includes damage frames, which allow for instant damage boost wall jumps, and last second saves from getting hit into a pit.

You can't double jump after springs like Skip. (could be intentional design, but I don't know for sure)

[glitches involving easter eggs/netgames]

using both the rock guitar and drip easter eggs in netgames can cancel the music of each respective easter egg, in some cases reverting back to the stages normal music.

using the drip easter egg as your rings run out from super causes an instant crash. No violation sign, no stalls for the user, just an instant quit to desktop when that happens. (could relate to other mods that allow players to remove the super music)

Besides these small problems that mostly affect netgames, the new character is incredibly fun to play. My only personal nitpick besides certain glitches is that its much harder to aim her charge beam when using angle attacks. Aside from that, near perfection!

Skip and Jana are simple to learn, but hard to master characters who can really blast through stages!! Both of them look absolutely adorable and cool respectively, and each bring a lot to the table. They also have really amazing sprites and animation, and their easter eggs are small but get a smile out of me every time.

Skip is really fun to control given his collect-a-thon style and you'll be skipping across levels really easily with his dives and monitor abilities! He's more hard to master than Jana but easier to learn IMO, as his dives will *smack* into walls- but if you get his dives down perfect, you can gain really high speeds and heights that can easily speed through even Aerial Garden. I really adore his monitor crafting, and how mechanical parts spill out of busted badniks and monitors in the zone already. The shields you get from crafting and each zone buff Skip really well, making combat easier as well as platforming. That's my only issue with Skip really... I haven't gotten used to dealing with enemies as him as you can only beat enemies while falling or by diving, and I often miss my dives in Simple controls, which I'm more used to (and also makes him play closely to his inspirations). Bosses aren't as hard thankfully, given their large hitboxes!
Also, the flashlight is a really nice tool even though you don't see it used often. Hopefully levels with dark, secret-filled areas get made so he can take advantage!

Jana on the other hand, is a dream of mine realized. She brings the fast pace and insane mobility of Zero to SRB2 almost flawlessly!! Jana has not only a really fun dash which can be jumped out of for mobility, but the wall jump shenanigans she can pull off make hard levels quiver in fear, and with her saber, put them out of that miserable fear! Her slashes are quick and rarely dampen the pace unlike Amy and her hammer, and the charge slash can get tricky airborne enemies!
Jana's wall detection for wall jumps is also nigh perfect, though at times I can wall jump only to cling to it a second time without height, but given a second jump I hop off perfectly. (Also, a part of me deep down wants her jacket to flap more in the wind when she moves, blame Zero's successor Gunvolt for that. Jana doesn't *really* need it though as she already looks so cool, haha!)

TL;DR, both Skip and Jana bring fun abilities that you'll be figuring out cool tricks with every time you play, while looking awesome doing so.

5 Stars bud (I just wanted to write a that)

(This review is mostly about Jana because she's new, Skip was fun though and I like him)

As somebody who played through MMZ1 and was halfway through MMZ2, Jana's pretty fun, has that nice flow from the Zero games I remember all under a pretty nice looking set of sprites. The walljump being absolutely overpowered is stupid fun to use, not to mention the dash just adding a bit more spice to it.

On the other hand, the saber has some issues. It doesn't last as long as a dash leaving you open as you're flying at some pretty high speeds through the level and the charged attack is pretty much pointless. I also feel like the hitbox is a taaad to small but that may just be me

But more importantly, I feel like she's due for some customization, mainly for the controls because you have no idea how many times I try to reposition myself and go flying from a dash or try to walljump and end up falling like a rock toward the floor. The C2 and C3 buttons are still available, so an option to disable or change these moves to different buttons would be nice


Other than that, good job! Really enjoying her so far.

(Skip portion originally written June 17, 2021)
One of the original GOAT (greatest of all time) character mods in my opinion, Skip is one of my favorite characters ever made for 2.2

Right off the bat, Skip's ENTIRE playstyle and kit are unique and fresh among a good bit of the characters here on the message board. His movement is ludicrously fun, and very simple to understand if you give it enough of a shot. Monitor crafting/the scrap mechanic is very interesting and makes Skip all the more unique. Being able to harvest scrap from enemies to be able to precisely plan for future situations by making yourself the according shield/power up is very satisfying, and is a good way to incentivize badnik hunting for Skip.

Some of the other small details/easter eggs are also pretty cool.

Vanilla game beaten, 7 emeralds in tow. Go play him. :)
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Originally not expecting much, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Jana plays.

For starters, as a GIANT fan of the Megaman X series, this ticked all the boxes of why I like how those games play (for Zero, anyway.) At first glance I thought the double-tap method for dashing would feel odd and unnatural in a 3D space like SRB2's, but it feels ridiculously fun and makes Jana a lot more mechanically interesting. Her saber feels implemented in a pretty solid way, not even being required to beat the game if you wish not to use it. Cutting things in half feels fun, and the action itself is quick and satisfying (it's also not a hard commitment.) While her double jump feels pretty standard, having Rekkouha attached to it made it much more interesting to use in certain situations (especially high up ledges/platforming.) The wall jump feels pretty good, and allows the player to stay away from the ground for essentially however long they want. It's also a very nice way to hold on to your dash from a dash jump.

The easter eggs and several small details also help the experience stand out just a little more than it already does.

Vanilla game beaten, 7 emeralds collected while dashing all over the place. Go play her. :)

So uhh, yeah, time to review this beauty.

Skip: He's fast, he's cute, his abilities are awesome.
Can't say anything else, i have played with him since he released and i had a lot of fun skipping the entire level just literally "run > jump > dive > double jump > dive", also, i love so much the spritework, awesome job steph.

Jana: Ooooohhhh boy, i just played with her and loved it instantly, i am a fan of megaman zero games, and looking at how she has gameplay of that game, made me know exactly how to control her without practice, also just like skip, her spritework is beautiful, again, awesome job steph.

Just like with most new character mods in SRB2 I did a full playthrough with Jana and I have a few things to say about the character.

I'll start with the good about this character, As a Megaman and Megaman Zero fan this character really interested me the moment i saw it and i must say this character does bring me vibes from Megaman Zero with the saber and the mobility of the character the idea of playing a game that's just like Megaman Zero but in a 3D environment really excited me and from the showcase in this thread i was really hyped to play with the character.

Now while I enjoyed playing with this character I do have a few issues where I think the character could be improved further on.

For starters the saber feels like a complete afterthought, if it wasn’t for the fact that it's the only way for Jana to break objects/hit enemies i would never use the saber, this isn’t because of the fact that the character doesn’t spin but if this character had a spin i don’t see much reason for the saber to be used at all.

There’s not much reason to use the saber other than it looking cool for the 3 slashes but the charged up slash feels pretty pointless, i've noticed that the charged slash projectile can go through multiple badniks but because of how fast the 3 slash combo is i see no point in this other than to have a projectile alongside the slash in mid air.

Shield abilities are practically nullified if it wasn’t for the fact that there are a few shield functions like the dash leaving elemental fire trails. Which saddens me seeing how the shields interact in comparison to Skip, This isn’t a problem i just hoped shields would have affected something like the slashes.

Moving around with Jana is fun the double jump and the wall jump are really fun to move around with, the dash also gives me that same type of joy with movement however after the double jump accidentally doing a Rekkouha while trying to wall jump over a bottomless pit is a fair bit annoying whether this is a personal problem or not i'm not sure but in my opinion having another way to use Rekkouha over triple tapping the jump button would of been a better option.

I really like the design of the character but the color scheme is a bit weird.

Other than these slight issues I think overall this character is really great and fun to play with. I just think there are some things that could be improved over.

Jana alone is worth 5 stars. Her design is awesome, full of personality. Her gameplay is incredible; I love her walljump and dash; you can gain lots of height really easily, but in a way that's actually fun, unlike e.g. Tails. My only complaint about Jana is that it's too easy to accidentally do the ground stomp; it's annoying when I'm trying to double-jump, not realizing I can't, and end up falling to the ground instead.

I do have a feature suggestion that I think would work really well for Jana, and I don't imagine would be very difficult to add. That is to allow the player to change the color of her attacking/dashing effects to a custom one, like what Silver has. Maybe it could also apply to her super aura. It's a small thing, but I think it would add a lot of customization value. (If you like the idea but are busy with other things, I'd be happy to code it for you!)

As for Skip, he's a pretty cool character too. Like Jana, he has a lot of personality, and crafting monitors is a really cool mechanic. I understand why you removed the golden monitors, but I think it should be added back, as it would still work really well in co-op. Besides, you can craft Eggman monitors, and unless I'm missing something, that's even more situational.

These characters are amazing, and I'm glad you decided to make another character!