Suggestions

Really, we could solve a lot of balance issues on the thok by just giving Sonic a double jump instead.

But the thok is the most fun ability in the game. I'd be okay with it being (for example) an unlockable ability, or Metal Sonic's ability, but I'd raise hell if Sonic's current moveset were removed from the game entirely.
 
But the thok is the most fun ability in the game. I'd be okay with it being (for example) an unlockable ability, or Metal Sonic's ability, but I'd raise hell if Sonic's current moveset were removed from the game entirely.

I'd argue we should shift the thok onto Metal Sonic and give Sonic the double jump for several reasons.

Thok is an advanced ability and generally leaves the user at a platforming disadvantage. Giving Sonic the double jump means that all three starting characters are relatively accessible and all of the unlockable characters are reserved for experienced players. I think this is better for the game's marketability to an outside audience, and particularly to less experienced players who still want to play as Sonic if only for the mere aesthetic.

But I think by far the most important reason to do this is the following: designing levels with the thok in mind simply means that levels are completable with the thok, not that they are well designed for all characters. This constitutes a design challenge for the campaign, because levels which are intended to be moderately difficult for thok are rendered pointless by characters with decent vertical mobility. Making Sonic's double jump the level design "standard" makes the challenge disparity less dramatic between Sonic and Knuckles/Tails. Moreover, though, the fact that the thok would be placed onto Metal Sonic means we can use his bash-through-spikes trait to create specific side routes for the thok rather than ensuring that the thok can reasonably complete a route meant for characters with better vertical mobility.

And honestly, if we're planning on adding momentum preservation anyway, Metal's dash gimmick is going to become pretty redundant really quickly. It makes more sense to retool Metal as the speed demon, keeping his spike-smashing trait so that we can design level segments specifically catered to the thok, while Sonic becomes the bread and butter platforming character with a generally useful and accessible double jump ability, to serve as the metric which other characters can be compared to.
 
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Following this up to say that momentum should also be gained when running down slopes. Characters that can't spin are unsatisfying to play because they have no beneficial interactions with slopes, all they do is slow them down when they have to go up them. Running down slopes feels both unnatural and extremely unsatisfying:
srb20137.gif


Furhtermore, I feel like any momentum earned from sideways springs (or ANY OTHER SOURCE, for that matter) should also be kept on the ground, in the above gif, I used Amy's hammer on the springs, and the tiny bit of speed I originally gained from it was instantly deleted by the ground friction which will INSTANTLY DELETE any speed above your normalspeed when running. It makes the physics feel extremely stiff, whereas if momentum could be kept and gained down slopes, Amy in particular would be way more fun to play as, seeing as her ability hardly has any use at all when interacting with springs:

srb20138.gif


As for Sonic, he could finally be moving fast through the usage of a single thok without needing to be constantly mashing the jump key like a braindead idiot:
srb20141.gif


tldr: the only limit normalspeed should have is how much you can accelerate, not how fast you can actually move
So basically just remove the speedcap. i second this, i hate having to roll and lose 90% of my control just so i can accelerate. if the creators are going to make SRB2 like classic 2d sonic, at least try to replicate the classic physics. (not saying they haven't done a good job tho)
Also, here's a suggestion of my own
Please, for the love of god, get an animator to animate the intro. The new art is nice, but just imagine how great it would look if the intro was actually a video
 
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Thok is an advanced ability and generally leaves the user at a platforming disadvantage. Giving Sonic the double jump means that all three starting characters are relatively accessible and all of the unlockable characters are reserved for experienced players. I think this is better for the game's marketability to an outside audience, and particularly to less experienced players who still want to play as Sonic if only for the mere aesthetic.

But I think by far the most important reason to do this is the following: designing levels with the thok in mind simply means that levels are completable with the thok, not that they are well designed for all characters. This constitutes a design challenge for the campaign, because levels which are intended to be moderately difficult for thok are rendered pointless by characters with decent vertical mobility. Making Sonic's double jump the level design "standard" makes the challenge disparity less dramatic between Sonic and Knuckles/Tails. Moreover, though, the fact that the thok would be placed onto Metal Sonic means we can use his bash-through-spikes trait to create specific side routes for the thok rather than ensuring that the thok can reasonably complete a route meant for characters with better vertical mobility.

Honestly if Sonic's ability did have to be changed from thok, I would still rather give him a drop dash than double jump for a few reasons:

First of all, Sonic is generally built around being the most height handicapped character between the three main protagonists, if not all the playables in general. He's a character focused on horizontal movement, not vertical movement. Giving him a double jump would go against this mentality.

Second of all, a drop dash could be useful for changing directions on a dime like the thok, the difference would be Sonic would have to touch the ground for it to work. This compliments Sonic's speedy, horizontal movement based design.

Third of all, it would compliment momentum preservation on slopes much better to also introduce it with the drop dash, as the drop dash would be much more powerful for Sonic to transfer from one slope ramp to another with, keeping up great speed in the process that the other characters would have a little bit of a harder time with. This point is especially true if the speed of the drop dash depends on how much momentum Sonic is carrying. If the level design absolutely demanded for Sonic to gain vertical height, it would be much more satisfying for him to earn it by launching off a ramp rather than just pressing jump a second time.

Finally, it would make the Sonic and Tails combo as well as the wind shield a lot more pointless. Both of these things allow for Sonic to gain extra vertical mobility to reach platforms he couldn't otherwise reach. If Sonic could just double jump up to them anyway, Tails might be viewed as an obsolete partner as waiting for him to be ready to fly the player up would be slow and tedious compared to just jumping up with the double jump. The wind shield likewise would basically just be a pity shield while playing as Sonic.

If someone absolutely needed to have a double jump, it would probably be more fitting to give it to Tails or Knuckles as an optional alternative move (by pressing spin while jumping) since they are more designed around vertical mobility than Sonic. Sonic champions horizontal mobility instead, by design.
 
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And honestly, if we're planning on adding momentum preservation anyway, Metal's dash gimmick is going to become pretty redundant really quickly. It makes more sense to retool Metal as the speed demon, keeping his spike-smashing trait so that we can design level segments specifically catered to the thok, while Sonic becomes the bread and butter platforming character with a generally useful and accessible double jump ability, to serve as the metric which other characters can be compared to.
Yeah but the general gist of the game is to be a COMPLETE retranslation of the sonic games into 3d. If we're going by Mania/3 here, that means adding momentum preservation, since those games had those, even if they were faster.
Plus, Metal is an unlockable. You can just give him the Peelout, drop dash and thok altogether alongside faster speed if you want him to be considered a speed demon.
 
First of all, Sonic is generally built around being the most height handicapped character between the three main protagonists, if not all the playables in general. He's a character focused on horizontal movement, not vertical movement. Giving him a double jump would go against this mentality.

This isn't really a point, it's just restating the issue. The fact that Sonic doesn't have anything to aid in verticality is exactly why there is such a campaign disparity between Sonic and most other characters. Attempting to balance the character with this in mind is exactly what's causing these issues in level design and campaign progression for new players.

For that matter, double jump doesn't intrinsically go against the idea of Sonic moving horizontally. With momentum being preserved, Sonic no longer would rely on the thok to obtain super high speeds -- more importantly, the double jump is excellent at allowing Sonic to cross tight gaps without losing any of that momentum. The focus isn't to make Sonic less fast, but to make him more balanced.

Second of all, a drop dash could be useful for changing directions on a dime like the thok, the difference would be Sonic would have to touch the ground for it to work. This compliments Sonic's speedy, horizontal movement based design.

Third of all, it would compliment momentum preservation on slopes much better to also introduce it with the drop dash, as the drop dash would be much more powerful for Sonic to transfer from one slope ramp to another with, keeping up great speed in the process that the other characters would have a little bit of a harder time with. This point is especially true if the speed of the drop dash depends on how much momentum Sonic is carrying. If the level design absolutely demanded for Sonic to gain vertical height, it would be much more satisfying for him to earn it by launching off a ramp rather than just pressing jump a second time.
A dropdash has all of the same issues I stated for the thok, but it's even worse because it can only be used on the ground.

I'm not seeing how the thok is prevented from preserving momentum on slopes, as Sonic can always spin right after thokking to roll up a slope at high speeds. The supposed exceptionality of the dropdash for this purpose is something I'd need to see a demonstration of.

Finally, it would make the Sonic and Tails combo as well as the wind shield a lot more pointless. Both of these things allow for Sonic to gain extra vertical mobility to reach platforms he couldn't otherwise reach. If Sonic could just double jump up to them anyway, Tails might be viewed as an obsolete partner as waiting for him to be ready to fly the player up would be slow and tedious compared to just jumping up with the double jump. The wind shield likewise would basically just be a pity shield while playing as Sonic.

Sonic and Tails is something I vyed for in order to make it easier for Sonic players to complete the campaign, but it's more of a bandaid than a justification for Sonic's current design. The fact that there's such a giant disparity in the ease of use between S&T and Sonic solo highlights the issues that Sonic has as a character. And giving Sonic a double jump would hardly render Tails "obsolete" in this regard, as there would still be areas that can only be reached by Tails. A double jump allows Sonic to aim higher, but that doesn't make it analogous to flight.

Wind shield is actually very easy to solve: Make it so that the wind shield stacks with the double jump. For that matter, this never came across to me as a serious issue, since the wind shield has always been pretty superfluous for Tails and Knuckles, and even Metal a lot of the time. It's okay for some characters to benefit more from certain shields than others.

If someone absolutely needed to have a double jump, it would probably be more fitting to give it to Tails or Knuckles as an optional alternative move (by pressing spin while jumping) since they are more designed around vertical mobility than Sonic. Sonic champions horizontal mobility instead, by design.
I believe that there is an important distinction between making a character unique and making a character polarizing in nature. I'd like to take this moment to remind everybody that Sonic and Tails (and situationally Fang and Metal) are far and away the dominant speedrunners so far in this patch. Sonic is never used in coop, Tails is overused in coop, and no one but Sonic is used in match. Knuckles in Tag and H&S is stupid, while Knuckles in time attack is usually just a worse Tails. I don't think I need to remind everybody what happened to Circuit.

At the surface level, it may seem like this is a desirable state of affairs since every character is being used for some specific niche, but what it really does is reduce the meta of each mode to centering around one or two specific characters, leaving the rest forgotten. This is the problem with designing characters in a vacuum and without taking into consideration their relations with other characters, maps, and game modes. It's why a lot of people hate what happened with Knuckles' crouch and why people are constantly asking for mobility options as Amy. Hell, it's one of the reasons to push through preserved momentum physics. I'll be one of the first people to champion playstyle diversity, but I think it would be a mistake to focus solely on this at the expense of game balance.
 
Yeah but the general gist of the game is to be a COMPLETE retranslation of the sonic games into 3d. If we're going by Mania/3 here, that means adding momentum preservation, since those games had those, even if they were faster.
Plus, Metal is an unlockable. You can just give him the Peelout, drop dash and thok altogether alongside faster speed if you want him to be considered a speed demon.


No it isn't. Not totally at least. That's a big part of the game's design philosophy, but SRB2 already breaks heavily from Classic Sonic in many ways. It's filled with extremely tight platforming that's way harder than anything in the classic games (something like ERZ's yoku blocks would never have ever appeared in the classics, at least not as punishingly difficult), exploiting slope physics isn't emphasized as much...Amy and Fang are playable which is already quite different, but it goes even farther by giving the former the ability to break floors and spikes (the first of which wouldn't be a thing until Mania, literally over two decades after 3&K) and the latter has a completely novel ability for ANY Sonic game, 2D or 3D...


SRB2's greatest strength is that it isn't a slavish imitation of the genesis games but confidently does its own thing. Though yes, I do agree that the speed cap is kinda silly.
 
This isn't really a point, it's just restating the issue. The fact that Sonic doesn't have anything to aid in verticality is exactly why there is such a campaign disparity between Sonic and most other characters. Attempting to balance the character with this in mind is exactly what's causing these issues in level design and campaign progression for new players.

For that matter, double jump doesn't intrinsically go against the idea of Sonic moving horizontally. With momentum being preserved, Sonic no longer would rely on the thok to obtain super high speeds -- more importantly, the double jump is excellent at allowing Sonic to cross tight gaps without losing any of that momentum. The focus isn't to make Sonic less fast, but to make him more balanced.


A dropdash has all of the same issues I stated for the thok, but it's even worse because it can only be used on the ground.

I'm not seeing how the thok is prevented from preserving momentum on slopes, as Sonic can always spin right after thokking to roll up a slope at high speeds. The supposed exceptionality of the dropdash for this purpose is something I'd need to see a demonstration of.



Sonic and Tails is something I vyed for in order to make it easier for Sonic players to complete the campaign, but it's more of a bandaid than a justification for Sonic's current design. The fact that there's such a giant disparity in the ease of use between S&T and Sonic solo highlights the issues that Sonic has as a character. And giving Sonic a double jump would hardly render Tails "obsolete" in this regard, as there would still be areas that can only be reached by Tails. A double jump allows Sonic to aim higher, but that doesn't make it analogous to flight.

Wind shield is actually very easy to solve: Make it so that the wind shield stacks with the double jump. For that matter, this never came across to me as a serious issue, since the wind shield has always been pretty superfluous for Tails and Knuckles, and even Metal a lot of the time. It's okay for some characters to benefit more from certain shields than others.


I believe that there is an important distinction between making a character unique and making a character polarizing in nature. I'd like to take this moment to remind everybody that Sonic and Tails (and situationally Fang and Metal) are far and away the dominant speedrunners so far in this patch. Sonic is never used in coop, Tails is overused in coop, and no one but Sonic is used in match. Knuckles in Tag and H&S is stupid, while Knuckles in time attack is usually just a worse Tails. I don't think I need to remind everybody what happened to Circuit.

At the surface level, it may seem like this is a desirable state of affairs since every character is being used for some specific niche, but what it really does is reduce the meta of each mode to centering around one or two specific characters, leaving the rest forgotten. This is the problem with designing characters in a vacuum and without taking into consideration their relations with other characters, maps, and game modes. It's why a lot of people hate what happened with Knuckles' crouch and why people are constantly asking for mobility options as Amy. Hell, it's one of the reasons to push through preserved momentum physics. I'll be one of the first people to champion playstyle diversity, but I think it would be a mistake to focus solely on this at the expense of game balance.

Great point you made because if Sonic uses double jump instead of the thok, then he’d probably also be balanced in Race maps as well because he’s at least not too overpowered in Race maps if he’s been balanced.
 
Sonic and Tails is something I vyed for in order to make it easier for Sonic players to complete the campaign, but it's more of a bandaid than a justification for Sonic's current design. The fact that there's such a giant disparity in the ease of use between S&T and Sonic solo highlights the issues that Sonic has as a character. And giving Sonic a double jump would hardly render Tails "obsolete" in this regard, as there would still be areas that can only be reached by Tails. A double jump allows Sonic to aim higher, but that doesn't make it analogous to flight.

At this point though, you might as well just be playing as Tails. Single tapping into flight would reach pretty much anything that Sonic could with a double jump, and full control over the flight would be more convenient than getting Tails lined up to carry Sonic. If anything, this would just render Sonic obsolete.

As it is right now, Tails can fly Sonic up to a high place, then he can jump out of the flight and thok to gain a lot of speed. This allows Sonic to cover a huge area in a short amount of time, though at the cost of taking the time to set the whole thing up. This is primarily the reason to even have Tails as a partner, it gives Sonic all the vertical mobility a player could ever want without taking away his speed. Replace the thok with a double jump and you are now going to be faster if you just play as tails and fly somewhere yourself.

Wind shield is actually very easy to solve: Make it so that the wind shield stacks with the double jump. For that matter, this never came across to me as a serious issue, since the wind shield has always been pretty superfluous for Tails and Knuckles, and even Metal a lot of the time. It's okay for some characters to benefit more from certain shields than others.

I don't really see how this would solve the issue or even incentivise anyone to play Sonic. The triple jump of the wind shield would be very situational, and wouldn't allow you to reach anywhere you couldn't reach as Tails or Knuckles. At this point, Sonic would have a lot of what makes him speedy shifted instead into a focus on vertical mobility, but he would be still be worse at it than Tails and Knuckles. People who gravitate towards him for the speed of the thok currently would play Metal Sonic instead, and those who want to reach high places would just play as Tails and Knuckles, or even Fang for his bouncing. Sonic having a double and situational triple jump would also render Amy's higher jump pretty useless since now she would be the second worst character at vertical mobility in the game, if not situationally tied for worst with Metal.

I believe that there is an important distinction between making a character unique and making a character polarizing in nature. I'd like to take this moment to remind everybody that Sonic and Tails (and situationally Fang and Metal) are far and away the dominant speedrunners so far in this patch. Sonic is never used in coop, Tails is overused in coop, and no one but Sonic is used in match. Knuckles in Tag and H&S is stupid, while Knuckles in time attack is usually just a worse Tails. I don't think I need to remind everybody what happened to Circuit.

At the surface level, it may seem like this is a desirable state of affairs since every character is being used for some specific niche, but what it really does is reduce the meta of each mode to centering around one or two specific characters, leaving the rest forgotten. This is the problem with designing characters in a vacuum and without taking into consideration their relations with other characters, maps, and game modes. It's why a lot of people hate what happened with Knuckles' crouch and why people are constantly asking for mobility options as Amy. Hell, it's one of the reasons to push through preserved momentum physics. I'll be one of the first people to champion playstyle diversity, but I think it would be a mistake to focus solely on this at the expense of game balance.

I don't know about anyone else, but I actually do enjoy playing as Sonic in coop from time to time. His lack of vertical options on the surface might turn some people off, but there's nothing quite like jumping off a cliff, destroying a badnik, steering yourself in the direction you want to go, doing a well timed thok at the highest point you reach, and soaring across the level. Nobody else can do this. The closest thing to it would be Knuckles with his glide, but that's a lot slower when used for the same purpose.

Overall I'm just really not of a fan of the idea of giving Sonic a double jump. Not only would it take away from the sense of speed (Sure a double jump could maintain momentum, but you need to actually have that momentum to begin with and most of the time Sonic would be limited to his base running speed or the speed of a spindash.) but it would kill pretty much all reason to even play as Sonic over Tails, and why would you ever want to have a Tails bot help you reach higher places when you can't do anything speedy once you are in said high place?

I don't really see how this balances Sonic, it just makes him overall worse and more useless. His horizontal dominance would be gone (Or more accurately shifted onto Metal), and his vertical ability would be obsolete. I wouldn't at all be surprised if this rendered Sonic extinct in all game modes. Super Sonic would be the only real incentive to use him anymore, and even then the only thing worth using with him would be hovering over a large pit and then using your second jump to reach a platform on the other side. I'm not sure if anyone would bother collecting the emeralds just for the ability to do that when they could be using Tails' and Knuckles' abilities from the start.
 
It looks like we're delving pretty deep into theory at this point, so it may be better if I created a proof of concept script to demonstrate my point. I'll note that this discussion implicates the balance of Tails and Metal as well, and I'm of the opinion that Tails and the rest of the crew are in need of balance modifications and not just Sonic.
 
What if the game ran at 60 frames a seconds than 35 because the game freezes when I'm playing and maybe that or a 64 bit version of the game would be nice.
 
Something I thought of that might be a cool idea to take into consideration is this: Levels with multiple goal signs. Not every level would need to have them, and not every level that does have them would need to have every goal sign reachable by every character.

There's a number of neat things you could potentially do with this idea. For example, say you reach a character specific goal sign at the end of Act 1. When you start out Act 2, you start out in an alternative beginning area. Alternatively, it could be used to place hidden levels along the campaign similar to the old Red XVI warps to RVZ and AGZ. Some of these hidden levels could even be designed entirely around playing them with a specific character. For example, a knuckles only level. Or, they could be designed around specific stage gimmicks, such as an entire level where you are in control of a mine cart.
 
The collapsing bridge section in CEZ1 takes forever to start in Co-op when new joiners keep coming, would have been better if the level ended right before that section in Co-op at least.
 
To follow onto the above, the trigger for the bridge section in CEZ1 might not be immediately obvious that all players have to be there, especially if a new player is playing in co-op and doesn't understand the significance of that alcove. While the floating arrow in co-op helps, I think something to hammer home "more players need to come here" would remove all possibility of confusion.


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https://gitlab.com/fickleheart/srb2-mods/commit/d5ef59ed7caed8aeffb8cc4d59146541c74e7e8b


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Also, after seeing the custom gametype work in next, I'm wondering if we could get a gametype rule that disables SEENAMES, at least for "it" players? Someone I know is working on a mod that would really benefit from this.
 
"Weapon" panel pickups in Ringsliner game-types (Match, Team Match, Capture the Flag) appear as pre-rendered rotating flat panels. Now that "paper-sprites" are in the game, why not change them from pre-rendered rotating flat panels into single-texture actual rotating paper-sprite panels?
Besides just plain visual differences, it might help make them more perspective-correct when viewed from above, from below, and from up really close.
 
It would be pretty cool IMO if the elemental shield (and unused flame shield for that matter) melted the thick snow of Frozen Hillside, allowing you to run straight through it and jump normally while in it. Just hide it a little more for a neat bonus for skilled players.
 
[...] unused flame [...]
The flame shield isn't unusued. It's barely used, but I've picked it up in at least one of the bonus levels.

It would be pretty cool IMO if the elemental shield (and unused flame shield for that matter) melted the thick snow of Frozen Hillside, allowing you to run straight through it and jump normally while in it. [...]
That's not going to be something easy to do. All map geometry is stored as sectors (drawn shapes), and you can't make any "sub-sector" changes to get rid of snow in certain areas of a sector only.
So you'd have to split large singular sectors into lots of tiny sectors, for snow to be separately-meltable in each of those tiny sectors, and for as large as a SRB2 level is, that's not going to end well in practice.
 

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