Do you think Aerial Garden and Azure Temple are still salvageable?

honestly i just hope the music from AGZ sticks around. its one of my favorite 2.2 themes.


though, considering its FOR agz..... i do fear it may be removed as well, but i guess i gotta accept it.
hmm... could there be a way to make it stick around without needing AGZ.... ?
 
honestly i just hope the music from AGZ sticks around. its one of my favorite 2.2 themes.


though, considering its FOR agz..... i do fear it may be removed as well, but i guess i gotta accept it.
hmm... could there be a way to make it stick around without needing AGZ.... ?
I don't see why not! Music has been repurposed in SRB2 quite a few times before. For example, in 2.1, most of the special stages used music from the Mystic Realm, and Black Hole Zone in 2.2 still does. Similarly, the tutorial music is a remix of a song intended for I think it was Mine Maze Zone (one of the two predecessors to Arid Canyon Zone), and Orbital Hangar Zone uses a remix of music originally meant for "Doomship Zone" (the former name of the planned Grand Eggship Zone).
 
The tutorial uses a remix of Rocky Mountain.
i mean yeah, im aware, but rocky mountain wasnt a mystic creation, was it? (also the repurposing of rocky mountain brings me hope that one day mine maze will return)
my worry here is that AGZ's theme was originally a mystic creation. i guess you can separate a stage theme from its original author, but people are already talking about either redesigning AGZ from scratch or removing it altogether.



this game's ost means a lot to me, it seems..
 
Nah, not really.
My opinion may come from slight bias due to me having to complete these two levels in order to 100% the game, but bias aside, still no. I agree with most of the points made in this thread.
 
i mean yeah, im aware, but rocky mountain wasnt a mystic creation, was it? (also the repurposing of rocky mountain brings me hope that one day mine maze will return)
my worry here is that AGZ's theme was originally a mystic creation. i guess you can separate a stage theme from its original author, but people are already talking about either redesigning AGZ from scratch or removing it altogether.



this game's ost means a lot to me, it seems..
Mystic didn't compose the music to Mystic Realm. It was RedXVI and Arrow if I remember correctly, and the updated soundtrack in version 5.0 was by CobaltBW.
 
my worry here is that AGZ's theme was originally a mystic creation.

RedXVI originally composed the AGZ music. I don't think who made what should really be a factor here though. Whatever is best for the game (and whatever the level designers are inspired to work on) is what matters.
 
I would probably suggest to even ditch out every bonus stages from the vanilla game to incentive people to use mod for the game.


I mean SRB1 remake didn't make in the 2.2.
 
...platforming challenges where death is the punishment for failure. This is antithetical to the level design that makes classic Sonic what it is, where platforming and alternate paths are intrinsicly linked -- which not only allows for more dynamic and fairer difficulty, but it's also more compelling level design and flows better.
I think that "you failed the segment, go retry it" is a fair model for hard platforming challenges. Making the level progessively easier as you fall to lower routes is fine, but I don't want to force all the stages in the game to conform to this philosophy. At some point, the final stage has to test your skill somehow.

(However, I greatly dislike the lives system. The teleport-on-failure section of Haunted Heights was really freshing to me, because I could mash the same section until I passed it, without worrying about a game over.)
 
The teleport-on-failure section of Haunted Heights was really refreshing to me, because I could mash the same section until I passed it, without worrying about a game over
This was my favourite thing about that zone.
 
I would probably suggest to even ditch out every bonus stages from the vanilla game to incentive people to use mod for the game.


I mean SRB1 remake didn't make in the 2.2.
Plenty of bonus levels have been added to and removed from the game through the years. Bonus content is typically removed if it's no longer considered interesting or worthwhile enough to be in the game, which is what happened to many old unlockables from 1.09.4 to 2.0, and to the SRB1 remake from 2.1 to 2.2. Given what devs have said in this thread and others, many bonus levels will probably be removed, reworked, or replaced in the next major version.
 
I think that "you failed the segment, go retry it" is a fair model for hard platforming challenges. Making the level progessively easier as you fall to lower routes is fine, but I don't want to force all the stages in the game to conform to this philosophy. At some point, the final stage has to test your skill somehow.

While I don't disagree with this, my main issue with it is that it forces paths to be linear, since you cannot stuff lower paths into an area of the map that is intended to kill you. Another problem is that it tends to cause the levels to bias strongly in favor of characters with aerial mobility.

I feel that Sonic 2 demonstrates how this type of level design is valuable in moderation, with Wing Fortress being a treacherous, mostly linear obstacle course leading up to the final battle. I'd simply submit for consideration that we do not need five Wing Fortresses.
 
I don't see why not! Music has been repurposed in SRB2 quite a few times before. For example, in 2.1, most of the special stages used music from the Mystic Realm, and Black Hole Zone in 2.2 still does. Similarly, the tutorial music is a remix of a song intended for I think it was Mine Maze Zone (one of the two predecessors to Arid Canyon Zone), and Orbital Hangar Zone uses a remix of music originally meant for "Doomship Zone" (the former name of the planned Grand Eggship Zone).
First, still kinda wish SPEC8 was used for Black Hole. It's a good song, and one written for the level.
Second, While you were wrong that the tutorial uses Mine Maze, there is a remix of that song in the files.
 
Plenty of bonus levels have been added to and removed from the game through the years. Bonus content is typically removed if it's no longer considered interesting or worthwhile enough to be in the game, which is what happened to many old unlockables from 1.09.4 to 2.0, and to the SRB1 remake from 2.1 to 2.2. Given what devs have said in this thread and others, many bonus levels will probably be removed, reworked, or replaced in the next major version.
I would be fine if SRB2 2.3 would ditch bonus level to focus only on the main campaign (while telling about mods and other stuff) to keep things as simple as possible.


PS: I wanna know who was the Maniac who had the idea for Fang's emblem in AGZ.


PPS: I still think that Techno Legacy is a major disappointment for the 100th emblem competition.
 
(However, I greatly dislike the lives system. The teleport-on-failure section of Haunted Heights was really freshing to me, because I could mash the same section until I passed it, without worrying about a game over.)

Eh, I don't want to stray too far from the topic but I'll be honest - I didn't really like that. To me, a "death pit" teleporting the player instead of killing them feels like a way of saying "I know this section is kind of janky, so I'll just give you a handicap for it rather than adjusting the actual content." It also messes with the visual language of the game - if the warp at least didn't *look* like a death pit it would be more acceptable imo.

That said, lives do feel incredibly outdated in the year 2020. The continue screen is so good though! Maybe game overs should still exist but really just act more like regular deaths, sending you to the starpost instead of the level start (still resetting score to 0, though)
 
wait holy crap the AGZ theme wasnt composed by mystic?
okay ignoring how dumb and uneducated i am YES YES YES YES. THERE IS HOPE. AGZ'S THEME CAN STAY. ALSO WHERE THE HELL IS MINE MAZE [explodes]
 
... To me, a "death pit" teleporting the player instead of killing them feels like a way of saying "I know this section is kind of janky, so I'll just give you a handicap for it rather than adjusting the actual content." It also messes with the visual language of the game - if the warp at least didn't *look* like a death pit it would be more acceptable imo.

That said, lives do feel incredibly outdated in the year 2020. ...

Regarding the issue of consistency in player communication: My personal position is that the lives system should be eliminated completely and players should be allowed an unlimited number of retries at a segment. I want this everywhere, for every game, forever.

SRB2's lives system basically creates this resource/economy game where you have to grab as many lives as you can, knowing that the last stage in the game will be very hard and you will die a lot. I personally spend a lot of time in GFZ trying to grab lives, so that I can head into THZ with ~15 lives (and I don't worry about life collection after that point).

In comparison, games like N++ and Super Meat Boy give you infinite retries, and they have "checkpoints" often (actually just short levels), and they make you mash a hard segment over and over again.

Because of SRB2's lives system, you can't make the player mash a hard segment, because it'll game over them. From a level design standpoint, this creates a really odd question for me: Is a difficult section supposed to test a player's competence at that immediate challenge; or is it supposed to create an risk of death that compounds into a risk of game over?

Granted, after mashing Haunted Heights, I was a lot more proficient with the disappearing-platforms gimmick when I returned to the stage. I think that refining a micro-level proficiency (passes platforming challenges) created a macro-level proficiency (low risk of game over).

Granted, removing lives would create a lot of new work for the level designers, because right now lives are one of the main rewards for exploration. I don't think it's right for me to demand work from other people, so I'll stay satisfied with the game we have.
 
ATZ is dreadful. Absolutely miserable. I have no problem with a brutal bonus level--hell I love the concept--but it feels like a level made for an entirely different game and character. Not one iota of it feels like a Sonic level. Haunted Heights is a far far better example of a very difficult level (though those disappearing platform puzzles are pure ass--I knew even the designers knew they were just dickpunching me when they made the pit below them teleport you instead of kill you) that still feels like a Sonic level.
 
In comparison, games like N++ and Super Meat Boy give you infinite retries, and they have "checkpoints" often (actually just short levels), and they make you mash a hard segment over and over again.

You know, I think the frequent checkpoints are actually a weakness of these two games! Super Meat Boy, for example - The End levels are on the whole easier than the levels earlier in the game, but they are just significantly longer. When the majority of the game's levels involve getting through one or two difficult sections, the average player is going to beat most levels by getting lucky once, rather than developing a skillset that they can consistently rely on.

I do agree that infinite retries absolutely makes sense - but there is something to be said for encouraging a player to be able to overcome several tasks in succession rather than isolating each difficult segment as its own thing to be grinded out.
 
Let's remind that Super Mario 64, the game that defined the entire 3D platformer genre, never had any precise platforming sections at all because Nintendo knew that 3D wasn't suited for that kind of thing.


This is why I think that the Null Space mod is also bad because it's not suited for SRB2.
 

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