The Mystic Realm Community Edition! [MRCE]

[Open Assets] The Mystic Realm Community Edition! [MRCE] v0.6.1

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What permissions do you give others to modify and/or maintain your submission?
Modify: YES - Maintain: YES - I give permission for my entire submission to be modified by others or used in their own work. I give permission for my entire submission to be maintained by others as well.
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Presenting a classic SRB2 adventure like you never seen it before! A total reimagining of a legacy of history, MRCE takes you through 8 crazy zones and 35+ stages with many sights, colors, and dangers! Chase after Dr. Eggman and thwart his latest evil plan, find the Chaos Emeralds, and travel to another world!
Now featuring a totally unique special stage gameflow, new bosses, new abilities, new friends and foes alike, it's a journey you won't want to miss!

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MRCE is a public community project, fully reusable and open to playtesters and contributors all over. Anyone may contribute to the project if they like, and we can always use more hand on deck. Making a total game conversion is a lot of work it turns out, and we've been short on contributors for a while now. If you would like to participate in this project, and would like to contribute anything at all; sprites, art, music, maps, general code, anything you're skilled with; join the discord today or contact @Xian

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This addon is currently still unfinished, Any and all content seen here may be subject to change, and a few levels seen here are still fairly early in development.

This addon currently requires v2.2.15. Android is unsupported, though it should at least be playable somewhat.
The Fire key is used for some abilities, in place of the now-removed shield button. Unfortunate. This includes, but is not limited to, tapping while charging a spindash to rev faster.
The game only saves once at the start of each zone, and continues are used. Keep a sharp eye out for special collectibles to increase your continue count, as you'll need them. Keep in mind that quitting out early will set you back to act 1.
Within each zone hides a secret shrine that will take you to that zone's special stage. You'll need all 7 Chaos Emeralds to access the 8th and final zone, and to fully beat the game. However, do not worry if you miss any along the way, you will be able to return after the 7th zone to continue the search.

Something special may occur if you score well on all 7 special stages....

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MRCE features a fully custom achievements and emblem system! To view the custom menus, hold down your scores key and press your menu key. By default on keyboard, this is Tab+Esc. Currently, this will not work in online and controller support is limited.
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A detailed list of emblems within the current map, a list of all emblems across the whole mod, and additional settings may all be found here. Hints for important map secrets like emerald shrines can be found in the Achievement Hints screen, if the current map has any.
Splats crash the game if viewed at resolutions 1920x1200 or higher. Play the game at a lower resolution please. This is a vanilla bug and unrelated to mrce, it is just more likely to occur in mrce due to larger usage of splats

Due to a bug with vanilla v2.2.15, saving and record attack modes may not work for you if mrce is loaded after srb2 boots, such as with addfile or the ingame addons menu. This issue is user inconsistent, but if it occurs to you, you can get around it by loading mrce alongside srb2 via a game launcher or the -filecommand line parameter.

Amy, Fang, and some custom characters have strange, sluggish physics in water. We aren't sure why yet but we're looking into it.

MR Menu resyncs in multiplayer, still looking into making it work
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Reactions: Useott, Dark94, kriby and 25 others
Author
Team Prismatic
Downloads
3,464
Views
4,606
Extension type
pk3
File size
144.4 MB
MD5 Hash
6a5b5e115d7e1b074017ceceacb766fd
First release
Last update
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Latest updates

  1. v0.6.1 - A better and more stable experience

    A minor update tonight to bring a cleaner, less buggy experience. Fix lives overflowing in...

  2. v0.6b - major fixes, tweaks, and improvements

    A lot of feedback from many people helps a lot, and that's why we sought to release v0.6...

  3. Approval Update

    Minor fixes that we made while the addon waited for approval
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Latest reviews

Mapingua
I created an account just for this. This one, right here, is really good.
The levels have some interesting design and lots of secrets to discover. Visually, very beautiful as well.

I'm not much of a critic, but I did have some issues. Gladly, there are only two.
First, some levels are way too dark for no reason. I’m not sure if it was my settings or not, but a few were very difficult to see, especially in Sunken Plant Zone.
Speaking of that, Sunken Plant Act 2 was a very difficult level for me. It was so weird, and I had no clue where I needed to go. Definitely intriguing level design, but that might just be a skill issue on my end.

Either way, this mod is very cool and has a lot going on. 100% recommend giving it a try!
Upvote 0
GustavoHtGamer20XX[OFC]
Amazing To Remake The First SRB2's Level Pack To a Outstanding Thing! But, i Think Flame Rift Act 2, Aerial Garden Act 1, 2 & 4, And Midnight Freeze Is Very Incomplete, But Otherwise It Was Amazing! Great Job!
Upvote 0
NDVGamer07
I am amazed at how far this mod has soared in quality even compared to some of my most beloved mods. The level design is beautiful and the levels seem to flow fluidly if you learn to navigate them. Before I say anything else, I made it to @Er!## G@r###, censored poorly for spoiler reasons, and these are my notes. Spoilers for a good bit of the game if you need to stop reading.

While I love the level design, it is not perfect, I'll admit it. Sections that I think need a little polish include the "Lava Puzzle" with being punishing if you are too far from the fire shield, the Ice region having a particularly hard and disorienting turn in the second act where my controls are "Stricter" (location being filled with pits and some wall springs with harder turns to perform. I apologize if I'm being too vague, but I'm trying to keep this as spoiler free as I can), and the water level being, well, TOO DARK, but I still enjoy these levels as far as general quality goes. I also seem to be having trouble with the in-game 1eVe1 5e1e[t. It says if i want to continue, but no matter what I press it doesn't let me do anything.

I'll admit that I still need to "git gud" at playing this, but this has become one of my favorite level packs already, with all the little tweaks and even the REBOUND DASH. I also love using character mods, but I'm waiting to finish the main campain at least once to do so. I think that speaks to how good it feels to play it with just the vanilla cast. If you're still reading this and haven't played it yet, stop reading this like an avenger's movie credits scene and go play it as soon as you can.

Summary: This has become a favorite level pack of mine and, while not perfect, I think this is becoming a necessary level pack for anyone that plays SRB2.

P.S.- YOU'RE TELLING ME THIS ISN'T EVEN FINISHED YET?!
Upvote 0
GamerOfDays
Edited to patch a few mistakes I didn't intend to add
So after playing like, half the campaign I thought I would do a review on the pack so far

Level Design:
The stages are remade almost entirely, it even suits the physics well, however there's a couple of issues here and there and I felt like it should've taken a bit more time to fix up those issues beforehand, but I'll give it a 7/10

Gameplay:
The rebound dash is something interesting. There's even a- okay well I'm not gonna spoil it since Idk if many people heard about it, but the new physics are somewhat interesting in a way. I'll give it a 8/10. Not the best physics mod but it's something.

Special Stages:
Similar to the way og version does it, the special stage is like a new level where you have to go get the chaos emerald to complete the stage. There's a new combo system. Each of the diamond collectible looking things increase the combo and getting hit will divide it by 2. However bots getting damaged doesn't count. (although it used to in versions before this review update) I'll give it a 8/10
Final Verdict:
Despite a few issues in level design here and there, there's still some good stuff in there. My final rating is 8/10. Not the best mod in srb2 history but still good.
Upvote 0
Mr Beagle
Now that this has officially dropped, I can say that this is an impressively ambitious pack and there is definitely a lot to like. There are a lot of changes compared to vanilla SRB2 and could almost be its own game actually.

However, the pack at the moment appears to show all of the symptoms of what happens when the developers are trying to tackle too many things at once. The approach of working on every level concurrently while introducing more and more special mechanics has led to things like the level design and the texture work feel a bit messier than it should be (ie. too many things to keep track of and follow upon at once).

Jade Coast for instance saw the rapid introduction of new texture work that feels inconsistent at the moment, while Tempest Valley feels very inconsistent in the level of detail and level of polish in each room. It looks like things could've been checked over more thoroughly such as hunting down floating midtextures and making sure the starposts have been set in proper order. Then you have a rail mechanic being introduced quite recently as well.

In hindsight, getting the revamped maps to a somewhat completed state should've been the initial priority with the special mechanics introduced and debugged step by step, and then would come extras like custom UI work. It appears as if things got to where there was too much being baked at once with not enough chefs to monitor everything, because while the pack does in fact excel in places rivaling the best of SRB2, it feels underbaked in others and I do believe there could've been more time to comb through what was already done and check the smaller things before everything was uploaded.

Overall, though, I find the pack pretty engaging myself, it just needs to stop adding major new things for a while and instead see a lot of polishing passes so the potential can match the hype it has received over the past few years.
Upvote 0
bennascar
I can certainly see the effort put in here, and everything is overall fairly impressive from a technical and visual standpoint. That said, I just don't really vibe with the current direction much of the game's level design has.

The best way to describe it is that it feels confused. It wants to lean into more momentum heavy level design and explorative, nonlinear level design, but it also doesn't feel like it commits or does it very particularly well. Despite being big, it doesn't quite feel like something like the vanilla game or even some mods I've seen, where there's clear marks between higher and lower/faster or slower routes or even pathways that lead to totally different portions of the stage. If anything, it's they can feel rather directionless. I've found myself getting lost at points in even the first few levels because things don't feel signposted very well, and there's sections which just have a bunch of stuff in it to distract you from the one hidden part tucked away you actually need to go into to proceed. Stages like Tempest Valley and Verdant Forest are especially bad with this, with some of the level design feels like it's made more to look pretty and intricate as architecture over being actual fun levels. As a result, you'll get things such as the villages at the end of Verdant Forest Act 2, which make an already extremely dark and hard to see stage even more annoying as you fumble your way and try to find the exit. This can also mean that since a lot of areas just feel open with no particular reason beyond to waste your time, the stages themselves can still feel quite linear in places. It's hard to put into words, but the best way to describe it is that some levels such as the ones I listed above look massive, but actually feel way smaller and the greater size just makes them more of a chore to play if anything.

Some of this wouldn't be as much of an issue either if the level design just didn't feel so boring. As said before, the game clearly wants to emphasize greater usage of physics and momentum in the level design, and levels themselves have been scaled up to accommodate. The problem is I don't really think it plays into this sorta level design much at all. There's slopes, sure, but ramps and steep inclines or general things that could be used to feed into this sort of level design feel few and far between except for specific key sections. A lot of things can still just feel flat terrain wise, yet since the levels are still designed to be so big, there's wide stretches where there's just nothing interesting going on.

Sonic stages like these work best when they feel really dense; never really having too much totally flat ground unless you're intended to be in a state where you can really go fast through it all, or there's some interesting platforming going on. SRB2 vanilla does this pretty well I think, with many stages feeling compact with a lot going on, even if it doesn't really focus on the momentum aspect as much currently. I don't really feel like the stages in Mystic Realm really do that, and as a result you can just find yourself trekking through these big, wide portions of stage with nothing of note.

Not that the momentum portions really feel like they work too well to begin with. I'll often find myself struggling to get up ramps even with a fully charged spindash because the speed loss going uphill feels just so strong. The fact that SRB2's insanely rigid rolling steering haven't been adjusted at all either can make a lot of sections which feel like they were made for you to roll down outright not even work. (The big hill incline at one point in Flame Rift Act 1 comes to mind)

Probably the weirdest thing about all this is that the Special Stages don't actually have as many of these issues. They feel more challenging, more compact, and generally just more interesting to go through. Sure, the additional incentive to keep your score up does add to that, but even on their own they generally just seem to have less fat to them. (Though there's definitely still portions where the lack of direction can become a problem, for example the start of Rainstorm Keep)

I think Flame Rift Act 1 is overall the best stage of the main Zones because it feels like the stage's size actually makes more sense due to the heavy usage of momentum and slopes the level has; not to mention the more organic split pathways it feels it has. It's not perfect, but it's definitely the level which feels the most interesting honestly and not boring to outright annoying to get through.

Overall, while I can see the mod has had a lot of talent put into it, I can't help but feel like in the current state it's in, it's just not a very engaging time. Considering it's not done though, I hope the team can see this as a means to improving things going forward.
Upvote 8
Garrean
okay just finished a casual run of the main game and man was i surprised at just how MUCH there was in it, and i don't mean in like a "wow you guys actually made the whole pack" kind of fashion (though that is part of it) but in a "holy shit everything here is so fucking meaty" way. like honestly i think some of this level design is on par with fucking mania in how intertwining and multilayered it is, which is funny because it is fundamentally just final demo design underneath, but there's a lot more added to it that pushes it way past being just that. like honestly every part of this pack was just one surprise after the next, the visual design was absolutely stunning, the setpieces kept blowing me way, the gimmicks and enemies were really creative and the music was just chef's kiss, and it just kept on going and going and i wasn't bored for a second.

now, if i am being honest, there is A LOT of red tape i could take to this when it comes to the level/gimmick/visual/enemy etc. design, there were definitely a lot of headscratcher moments where i kept running into jank on all fronts of these. but even though it was frustrating at times, honestly i didn't actually find it to be the biggest issue. in the face of all the raw ambition dripping down from every corner of this pack, i genuinely think it's perfectly fine to not have everything working like a well-oiled machine, the raw "holy shit" factor is more than enough to make up for it, and with just a little bit of adaptability on the player's end, it absolutely does not drag down the experience.

like unironically, i was thinking to myself when playing to this that this could just be 2.3 and i would be more than satisfied, that's how much fun i was having. great fucking work.
Upvote 3
PerfectSystemDX
how afraid are you of fucking up agz? because this agz1 has been in the build so long that i'm starting to think it will stay that way and that worries me.
the special stages are incredible, the base game is mindless and quite frankly i don't want to play it to get to the special stages
rebound dash is boring as a momentum ability and makes me not want to go with sonic, playing anyone from a more interesting mod would be about cracking open the level design and not having an interesting and well-designed challenge
ultimately i think it's really *impressive* what's been done here but i'm not having fun. i'm just not having fun
Upvote 6
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