So i was giving this mod a go and reached Marble Zone and i gotta say...

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This is kinda unfair (if you use Sonic and SONIC ALONE this level will sometimes be unbeatable since some emerald shards are way high up)
 

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Huh that's new, the emerald shards aren't supposed to be that high up
 
Emerald Hunt is broken in 2.2, of course there's issues with it. Wait until 2.2.1 comes out before giving them another shot.
 
Marble Zone 1 is a complete mess of extremely dull corridors that all look the same with zero hints. It's actually funnily enough exemplary of many of the problems that plagued the actual SA2 emerald hunts.


Marble 2 is SO haphazardly laid out that at first I thought that it was an emerald hunt too and the radar just wasn't showing up until I found a starpost. I died later and learned that if you respawn at said starpost, Sonic is stuck and he can't get out. Moving gets you nowhere, spindashing keeps you locked in place, and jumping kills you (I've attached a gif of said problem).
 

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I'm going through this right now and my thoughts so far are:
  • The Emerald Hunt acts are too big for their own good, I found myself spending at least 10 minutes in each running around similar-looking corridors with not much going, I got stuck in the first Ice level Emerald Hunt because I didn't know I had to enter the houses, and the emerald radar didn't help matters because it kept leading me to dead ends.
  • All of Marble Zone's acts have several texture misalignments and texture transitions that don't look natural and stick out in a weird way, not so visually appealing.
  • Nightlight Gully Zone SIGSEGV's in both acts in different areas, I don't know if you can fix this but I figured it's worth pointing out since it's a progression-breaking bug.
 
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Then there's nothing i can do about the sigsev's since that is entirely a problem with the 64 bit version itself.
 
I've reached Hidden Palace, the sky barriers look kind of odd and make it a bit confusing to figure out where the ends of platforms are, you should probably indicate that by some sort of middle-textures in front of them instead of just impassable sky thok barriers, a small change but will go a long way in making it less confusing to navigate.
 
I've started playing this pack myself and a part of me misses seeing the motobugs in Green Hill. Now I don't remember giving you permission to use them nor do I recall making them re-useable yet.

One thing I want to know though. Was it you who edited the motobug sprites?
 
No, one of my friends volunteered to make some slightly different sprites a while ago.
 
Speaking of Green Hill, when you make your next update can you make the trees either intangible (scenery objects) or reduce the width of their hitbox (radius)? If nothing else you could scale the sprites up to make them match their radius more visually. Maybe you've seen my attempts to speedrun GHZ1 on Discord but if you haven't, they plague me at every turn because I don't expect them to be so thicc. They are the worst thing about a map I very much enjoy otherwise. I understand why they're tangible, it wouldn't make much sense for a tree to be intangible when it's a solid trunk of wood, but they look a lot thinner than they are.
 
This pack is very lengthy, and it seems you have even more zones planned...(?) It feels like quantity was prioritized over quality, but some of the zones are really fun to play through.
 
After watching a friend of mine play through this levelpack from beginning to end, I have some thoughts on it myself.

  • Firstly, it's way too long. He played through it for over two-and-a-half hours, which is frankly insane in terms of SRB2. I would suggest cutting on the zones, especially those that are more or less theme clones (way too many grass stages) and the nostalgia zones (Green Hill has enough representation in Sonic games as is).
  • Marble Zone is kind of... awful. Hate to be this harsh but the zone drags on for too long, has confusing pathways, hallways that tend to look the same and some cheap hazards (like some of the spiked crushers tend to hurt you even when you land on the 'platform' side). There's also another fire-themed zone in the mod already which is currently bossless, so you can use the Sub there.
  • Next the occasional Emerald hunt stage. They are rather bizarre to see in normal gameplay like that, and they're probably the stages that drag the longest, since some of the shards have really cheap placement. My friend spent about 20 minutes in Chilly Peaks before we realized he can actually enter the houses, where the last shard was located. If you want to insist on keeping them in, I'd suggest not using teleports in them, because they can massively screw with the radar.
  • This is my massively personal gripe, but is the Robo-Hood boss necessary? That thing in cheap personified and after losing 5 lives to it in the Boss rush .wad I was hoping I would never have to see it again in my life. Sorry Zipper, this really isn't your finest work.

Those are my most major points of criticism I have for this mod. It was otherwise an alright experience. I enjoyed the idea of journeying through snippets of the original rotation in the final zone, and never considered how difficult the ERZ concept boss could be without its gravity flip mechanic to help you.

Either way a solid mod, albeit too long.
 
File has been updated! Here are the changes:


  • Green Hill, Bridge, Marble & Hidden Palace Zone are no longer in the level rotation, (though you can still pick them from the level select.)

  • Marble Zone's enemy count has been reduce by a tiny amount.

  • The first checkpoint in Marble 2 has also been moved forward a bit, so you shouldn't get stuck in the doorway anymore.

  • Most of the "Leaps of faith" have removed and replaced with something less confusing.

  • A very small amount of decorative details added to a few of the levels.

  • Some minor texture changes to Shoal Coast.
 
Zeno when you say reduced enemies by a tiny amount im worried, because Marble clearly should have half of the enemies it did. The level *could* be described as Robo-Hood spam, of course this comment is outdated, as its talking about a previous version.
Nice pack tho Zeno
 
I reached Dark Woods Boss act, it's...not very good, it's unclear when to attack him, took me 2 lives to figure out it was just a waiting game for him to stop attacking and turn grey before I hit him. Not the most mechanically involved or interesting boss fight. This wouldn't be much of a bother if he didn't take so long to become vulnerable.
 
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The Magma level's boss currently softlocks with Silver, as he doesn't have access to anything that can deal damage more than once. I have a couple solutions in mind.

1. If Silver is ever updated to deal damage with Psycho Boost, the problem goes away altogether.

2. Replace the Armageddon Shield with an Elemental Shield. Not only will it benefit everyone with lava resistance, it gives Silver projectiles to use. You just have to not get hit.

3. The level actually has 50 rings available. You can likely defeat the boss by turning Super. With that in mind, is there a guide for Emerald Token locations?

4. Add some kind of objects that Silver can use as projectiles. For Castle Eggman, it was the Egg Robos.
 
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