I'm unsure if this is Sonic exclusive in the way that some other mods are where you'll be able to enter the stage if you're playing as a Sonic, like X Sonic or any other char with Sonic in their name but nonetheless I really hope (if it's even possible) for a update to the mod to come where you can play the stage at the end of any modded campaign as long as you have all seven Chaos Emeralds because a stage like this would be a great cap stone to a lot of campaigns with the main one that comes to my mind being Emerald Quest.
I was reminded of this mod recently, so I just wanted to share a few thoughts.
I don't intend to add major content to Final Brak in any future updates. It's everything I need it to be. I'm alright with it not being a perfect finale. In fact, that's the point.
I know it's a little anticlimactic. I know there's not a lot going on. I know it doesn't feel much like a fight. I know the music is a bit of a poor fit for the action - I chose Undefeatable because I like it as a song, not because a song about rising to meet a seemingly insurmountable and actively menacing threat was a good fit for chasing down a wounded and fleeing opponent.
Final Brak was never meant to be a perfection of the concept. Notice the tagline doesn't say it's the Super Sonic final boss, it's a Super Sonic Final Boss. It's a proof of concept. It's meant to show that this is possible, and to get you to think about what else could be. I made it Open Assets for a reason. If you like it, build on it. If you want more, make more.
I don't want this mod to be an endpoint. I want it to be a blueprint. The epilogue idea people have been discussing in this is super cool! The thing is, if people ask me to make it and I do, we get one cool mod for people to play with. If you all take that inspiration for yourself, build on what I've made, and end up with something derivative but still your own, we get a community of creators in artistic conversation with each other.
It doesn't have to be original. It doesn't have to be good. Hell, it doesn't even have to be done. If Final Brak inspires even one person to try out modding for themselves, that means more to me than 4,000 downloads ever could. By all means, make Final Brak but better. Make Final Brak but worse. Make Final Brak but yours. All I ask is that you make something.
The SRB2 community means the world to me. I want to do more for it than just adding on more content. I want to start a conversation. I'm happy that I made something that people like, and even happer that I made something people want more out of.
If you're not happy with it? Do something about it. Make something about it.
Your move.
I'd say Undefeatable works pretty well enough, it's
not about rising to meet a seemingly insurmountable threat. That's one of the things I like about the song, and Frontiers in general: Sonic's used to this stuff by now. The whole song is Sonic bragging about how undefeatable
he is, and how (while it's a bit early for one), even a Super Sonic Finale is nothing new to him. "Think I'm on 11, but I'm on a 9. Guess you don't really know me." That works well enough for chasing Eggman down at the end of a game, maybe not the
best song choice, but whenever you think SRB2 happens, it's far from the first time Sonic has done this.
As for the mod itself, well, you sure did succeed in leaving me wanting to mess with it, doubt I'd ever personally change it enough to be able to share, though. Actually, if you want this mod to inspire people to change it or even make their own stuff, maybe you could update it with more comments, to serve as a bit of an "example" of sorts?
could you make it compatible with characters other than vanilla sonic?
edit: oh crud this violates rule 15.
Many of the other ideas here are entirely separate mods (that I would love to see), but THIS suggestion is a fairly easy fix, though, even with my limited skill level, and you can probably do it too. Just open up the PK3 file, on Windows people usually use Slade, on Android I don't know what tools are available, but worst case scenario a PK3 is actually just a renamed Zip, so if you change the extension you can open it in your file browser. Open up the folder labeled "lua," and within that folder "superfinal.lua." Slade will handle this automatically, if you're using a file browser you might need to tell it to use your text editor.
There are two "if" statements where it checks for Sonic by name. Find those, and comment them out. (either /* and */ before and after them, or just // in front of every line. Or you can delete them, I'm always uncomfortable doing so when I'm messing with other people's code.)
This will allow you to
be other characters in the stage. There is one more bit to get other characters to
go to the stage that threw me for a bit of a loop, so I'll just give you the answer here instead of a hint where to look: Line 252, "and players[0].skin == 0" seems to be a check that player 1 (which I think is player 0 internally?) is character number 0, which is Sonic, I'm pretty sure. (I have some rusty programming experience, and aside from some recent attempts at SRB2 modding none of it is in lua.) Comment that one out too. (And then also don't load up Silverhorn, Silverhorn seems to force you to the ending here anyway? Not sure why, but Whisper had to shot Brak with rockets a few extra times over that.)
Also, if you go into the SOC folder, open SOC_Level.txt, and add the line "LevelSelect = 1" that will add the level to the level select.
Now for the changes
I'd like to see besides that, I have idea how hard a lot of them are. I was thinking this would be way better with less asteroids and Brak running away much faster, but the whole thing actually seems to be a bit of an optical illusion with Brak being almost still? I've figured out lowering Brak's max hp, I think I've figured out less asteroids, but changing Brak's speed seems to just make him dodge left and right faster. And of course Brak should be smoking the whole time, I should look into that bit real quick it occurs to me that I just assumed I had no clue there but it's probably just a change to a state. I was also leaning towards making asteroids drop rings after I brought Amy, who is on my whitelist for the enemies drop rings lua, and it seemed right, but then I brought Kou and Whisper (also on that whitelist) to the level and it seemed like maybe a bit much.
Also fair warning, bringing the wrong characters in here can get a bit jank. Attacking asteroids or Brak knock you back even if it's a ranged attack. Still, pretty cool to see, some nice spectacle if nothing else. (ignore the Silverhorn ending at the end of the gif, this was from loading Whisper in with level select, and I don't know how to edit gifs)