SRB2 Battle! Multiplayer Gameplay Mod (V8.6)

SRB2 Battle!
Also known as "BattleMod"

SRB2 Battle is a gameplay modification which radically transforms multiplayer versus into an all-out brawl!

Spoiler: Previews

Featuring:

• New mechanics for PvP game modes
• Ring-consuming special abilities for each character
• Arena, a deathmatch game mode focused around small stages and close combat
• Survival, to see who can be the last person standing!
• Control Point, where players compete for dominance on one of several capture zones on the stage
• Diamond in the Rough, a mad rush to steal a single diamond on the map
• Battle CTF, a version of CTF that utilizes the new battle mechanics
• Twelve maps, all designed with Arena and Survival gameplay in mind
• User config included, allowing players to customize their buttons for Battle-specific abilities.
• Modder accessibility, allowing scripters to create their own special abilities and interact with Battle's melee system

Download V8.6 (11/15/2020)

Gameplay and Console Manual

Mapper's Manual

Scripter's Manual

Spoiler: Special thanks

Many of the folks in SRB2 Discord #scripting for advice and troubleshooting support throughout Battle's development
Everyone on the Master Server who helped to test this and provide feedback while it was in beta
Krabs, for his tireless work on the Arena map visuals and design
FlareBlade93, for contributing his excellent Pumpkin Peak stage to the Arena rotation
Kays, for beta testing and helping to provide screenshots for the gameplay manual
SMSAlfredo, for his "guard" script which served as the foundation for parrying
Everyone here, for playing and supporting the mod with their creative content

REUSE DISCLAIMER
Please receive permission and give credit to the below users before reusing the following content:
DirkTheHusky: Instashield graphics (from Insta Shield)
SMS Alfredo: Sonic Battle "shield" graphics, guard scripting: Sonic Battle Collection
Flame: 2D Dynamic Camera (from Smash Cam)
TehRealSalt: Fang targeting and shooting systems (from Simple character rebalancing)
Kaysakado: Respawning Objects and Bustable FOFs

• Any lua scripting not listed above may be freely reused.
• All music included with BattleMod may be freely reused.
• HUD graphical assets not listed above may be freely reused.

Full Credits


Patch Notes

[CobaltBW]

Version 1.1 released
- Added team-colored bombs and elemental fire, to improve game readability
- Fixed Egg Robo death animation not displaying the limb/gun sprites
- Fixed Fang being unable to throw a bomb at exactly 10 rings
- Fixed HUD error when an unlocked Score Panel is made invalid

[Chuckles troll]

This is a really fun mods I recommend it for people that don't like the vanilla ringslinger or some people that are tired of the same thing and It was really fun

[RalphJeremy65]

And i thought the Fang Gang was the worst, but NOPE, the Amy Squad are the real menaces in this mod...

Pretty intresting take on the minigames, though.

[Krabs]

Amy definitely feels strong right now, mostly because she doesn't need rings to function. Sonic's like that too, but his thok is hard to aim and his special ability is weak.

I'm having by far the most fun with metal. He's really fun with autoaim off and using right mouse button to toggle firstperson, and there's nothing more satisfying than ramming into people with boost mode. I was definitely wrong about his max charged shot not being worth the charge time, too. There's a big problem with him though - if metal has his back to a wall or is touching a wall in any way, charge shots will instantly disappear.

Fang's gotten kind of annoying to deal with since he can shoot anyone who attacks him as soon as he exits the hurt animation. If amy hammers him, she's getting shot almost every time due to the landing animation on hammer.

Knuckles's dig is the most annoying though. Once he gets enough rings to comfortably camp underground, his defense of a panel is insanely hard to get past without eating rocks.

[Zanda_Sama]

Originally Posted by Krabs

Amy definitely feels strong right now, mostly because she doesn't need rings to function. Sonic's like that too, but his thok is hard to aim and his special ability is weak.

I'm having by far the most fun with metal. He's really fun with autoaim off and using right mouse button to toggle firstperson, and there's nothing more satisfying than ramming into people with boost mode. I was definitely wrong about his max charged shot not being worth the charge time, too. There's a big problem with him though - if metal has his back to a wall or is touching a wall in any way, charge shots will instantly disappear.

Fang's gotten kind of annoying to deal with since he can shoot anyone who attacks him as soon as he exits the hurt animation. If amy hammers him, she's getting shot almost every time due to the landing animation on hammer.

Knuckles's dig is the most annoying though. Once he gets enough rings to comfortably camp underground, his defense of a panel is insanely hard to get past without eating rocks.

To add to this, we gotta increase the cooldown on fang's gun, hes annoying.

[Crum]

Amy can beat a Fang without getting hit if she gets some speed going and tries to hit him with the hearts of the swing rather than knocking into him. It's safer that way. He has an even harder time dealing with Sonic or Tails, although the latter tends to be more passive and hard to hit than genuinely threatening.

Knuckles' dig should probably consume rings faster the longer you're hiding in there. It's pretty easy to stack a ton of rings in CTF and then just camp in your own base for a while until someone comes to get your flag and I don't really see what the counterplay is supposed to be.

I think the thok should have less hitstun if you nail someone with it and they don't take damage. It pretty much guarantees you'll get hit by someone after and it feels terrible when you thought jumping would be enough to protect you assuming you don't have the speed to dodge. In one case I've seen it give Sonic enough time to straight up miss a thok and try again before the other person could respond. And earlier today I was trapped in a corner by two Sonics just thokking at me nonstop after I already got hit.

I still hope no one genuinely starts complaining about (vanilla) characters being OP though. This mod isn't supposed to be that serious.

[Krabs]

Here I am posting for a 4th time in this thread for a mod of a mod of a mod because I accidentally became obsessed. Whoops. Anyway, I was thinking it might be nice to have ring counters above each character's head so you can see when they have the ability to unload tons of attacks or not. And I also think the emeralds are pretty worthless right now, so perhaps something could be changed about them.

Originally Posted by Crum

I think the thok should have less hitstun if you nail someone with it and they don't take damage. It pretty much guarantees you'll get hit by someone after and it feels terrible when you thought jumping would be enough to protect you assuming you don't have the speed to dodge. In one case I've seen it give Sonic enough time to straight up miss a thok and try again before the other person could respond. And earlier today I was trapped in a corner by two Sonics just thokking at me nonstop after I already got hit.

As fun as it is to pull off a combo with Sonic's thok, I have to agree. Generally, I don't think stuns and other forms of crowd control are very fun.

Originally Posted by Crum

I still hope no one genuinely starts complaining about (vanilla) characters being OP though. This mod isn't supposed to be that serious.

For sure. Either way, I'm actually really happy with the current balance of the 6 characters right now, and nobody stands out as weak right now except *maybe* tails because of how easy it is to dodge his buzz.

[TehRealSalt]

Spoiler:

I got to try this out with a group of friends last night, generally think it's far better than Ringslinger ever was. A few of my opening thoughts:

• King of the Panel would probably be the my favorite mode, since I actually prefer free for all over teams, and I love the KotH format. But with teams or without, it feels like the tactic is to ram your face into the panel repeatedly until you happen to get it at the end of the timer. I think it's just far too easy to regrab it after you lose it, even with players unable to grab it while flashing. There's not really a way to properly defend it, because of the ring loss system. The Pity Shield system tends to kick in a *lot* during these fights, further ruining potential defenses. Admittedly, it is true that when people are face-tanking the panel, you can get the most points out of the fight by just using the points given when hitting players. However, that doesn't really feel like a satisfying way to come out on top in these fights, compared to successfully capturing the panel.
• I think there's multiple approaches to making KotP work; part of the problem is that rings are often placed directly next to the panel in Match maps, so you just get free respawning rings there. There might be a way to remove those rings that are too close to a panel on map load, or even just manually modify the maps. Additionally, I think there should be a cooldown when someone touches the panel, where no one else can get it. You could even roll with the signpost motif and make it spin when untouchable, then slow down and stop spinning when touchable again. Further rolling with that idea, maybe the panel could also bounce in the air and start moving when it's touched, ala Sonic 3's signpost. But as it stands, KotP is frustratingly close to being a fantastic mode, and I really want to say it's my favorite mode, but it falls just short.
• CTF is probably my favorite mode, since throwing yourself at the flag has repercussions (as the other team can instantly bring their flag back if it drops), and there's some loose team coordination to get it back to base safely. Just has lots of strategy without making it too complicated.
• Eggrobo Tag is really fun, gives Tag some much needed love and addresses problems like some taggers being unable to go for characters with certain abilities. Not much to say, it's not my favorite mode since the player special abilities don't get to shine as much here, but it's still good.
• I didn't try out Hide & Seek... uhhhh, is that even changed in this? Legitimately curious, I forget H&S even exists most of the time. :V
• I think most of the characters are either perfect or just need a bit of buffing. Sonic, Tails, Metal, and Fang all feel pretty reasonable in balance.
• Knuckles' Dig move is infuriating to play against, specifically in King of the Panel and CTF. It does drain rings, but I felt like I saw people specifically saving up all of their rings just to camp the panel and nab it at the very last second, and it doesn't really feel like there's a counter to that tactic. He's probably the only character I think should get a nerf, but I'm not sure how so. Making it drain more rings would just increase the requirements of the cheese without getting rid of it. Making it drain more rings over time wouldn't address the issue of specifically cheesing it at the end of the panel's timer. In theory it'd be fair to play against if there were no objectives, but that's silly. It might just be a flawed idea and need rethinking, but I do like a lot of aspects about it so it'd be a bit of a shame to throw it out.
• I'm generally happy with Metal's strength, but I kinda wish that his autoaim would try to shoot where your target's going, instead of directly at their current position. I would think this is meant to be a balance measure, but since there's an option to disable the autoaim, this just makes it feel like a huge disadvantage to use it. Doesn't feel intentional in the same way that, say, Eggrobo's bad autoaim is, since it's a spammable move for him, and you can't disable it on him.
• I'm gonna talk about Eggrobo's design in Battle here too, since you're the author of him, and also I just love Eggman (or Eggman-related) characters so I couldn't resist playing as him a lot :p. I love his ability to endlessly fly and his spammable but clunky gun. His flight is a tad OP in CTF, since he's the only character that can fly with the flag; maybe it should drain rings to hold jump while carrying the flag? I'm also a little underwhelmed that he just has bombs as a special ability, though. Because the bombs explode on hitting floors, I just kind of felt it was better to save my rings for survivability instead of waste them on an attack that rarely hits. It could be more fun if they bounced like Fang's, but also might be too similar. Maybe they could drop straight down, and explode on a timer instead? Maybe even a remote bomb that you can detonate by pressing the Ring Toss button after you deploy it? Dunno, just a bit disappointed with the current behavior.
• Also, I am shocked how... buggy the separate Eggrobo character is. His jet-pack & gun would stop/start working based on people spectating/joining. I am extremely confused why on earth that would ever happen, but it was a frequent issue at the start of every game. I figured he'd be the safest bet for SRB2 Battle extra characters since you're also the author of them, but...??? :V (for transparency, Silver was also added, so he might've contributed to any Lua issues we had.)

These are just my first impressions, of course, and may not be totally thought-out. I definitely see this holding up for far longer than Ringslinger because it feels more geared towards having an hour or so of dumb fun with friends, which is a step in the right direction IMO! Excited to see what happens from here.

[CobaltBW]

Originally Posted by Krabs

Here I am posting for a 4th time in this thread for a mod of a mod of a mod because I accidentally became obsessed. Whoops. Anyway, I was thinking it might be nice to have ring counters above each character's head so you can see when they have the ability to unload tons of attacks or not. And I also think the emeralds are pretty worthless right now, so perhaps something could be changed about them.

I might have to either fundamentally change what they do or nix them entirely, if only because the "toss emerald" function conflicts with some future plans I have in mind. I can't say for sure until I get farther into my next update.

As fun as it is to pull off a combo with Sonic's thok, I have to agree. Generally, I don't think stuns and other forms of crowd control are very fun.

The stun mechanic is momentum dependent, so you could be stunned up to two seconds if someone runs into you at full speed with power sneakers. I agree that this is a bit excessive, so I will set a hard cap on this in the next update so that the mechanic isn't overly dispruptive.

For sure. Either way, I'm actually really happy with the current balance of the 6 characters right now, and nobody stands out as weak right now except *maybe* tails because of how easy it is to dodge his buzz.

On the one hand, Tails' ability is very economical because he doesn't necessarily lose it when attacking with the sentry or when taking damage. Since he can only have one buzz out at a time, though, his presence is fairly limited whereas other characters can dig into their reserves to fire a barrage of attacks.

Another design challenge is that Tails is able to outmaneuver most characters with his flight; I intentionally designed his current ability to capitalize on this, effectively making his playstyle that of a harasser. But if Tails is allowed too much precision or forces too much pressure onto his opponents, the character may start to feel oppressive due to him often being out of reach. So it's important to balance Tails' lethality with his safety and ease of use.

That all being said, while I don't think Tails' situation is particularly bleak, I'm currently exploring ways to expand on Tails' ability so that his scaling more closely matches the rest of the cast. Details at this point are extremely tentative, but I expect him to receive the most significant changes.

[Puppyfaic]

Doubling on what Salt said about Egg Robo's ability, I think he probably just needs a new one altogether, as the bomb is just too similar to Fang. Maybe something to do with his foam finger home-run attack in CEZ3?

[ChrisHedge]

Originally Posted by CobaltBW

I might have to either fundamentally change what they do or nix them entirely, if only because the "toss emerald" function conflicts with some future plans I have in mind. I can't say for sure until I get farther into my next update.



The stun mechanic is momentum dependent, so you could be stunned up to two seconds if someone runs into you at full speed with power sneakers. I agree that this is a bit excessive, so I will set a hard cap on this in the next update so that the mechanic isn't overly dispruptive.



On the one hand, Tails' ability is very economical because he doesn't necessarily lose it when attacking with the sentry or when taking damage. Since he can only have one buzz out at a time, though, his presence is fairly limited whereas other characters can dig into their reserves to fire a barrage of attacks.

Another design challenge is that Tails is able to outmaneuver most characters with his flight; I intentionally designed his current ability to capitalize on this, effectively making his playstyle that of a harasser. But if Tails is allowed too much precision or forces too much pressure onto his opponents, the character may start to feel oppressive due to him often being out of reach. So it's important to balance Tails' lethality with his safety and ease of use.

That all being said, while I don't think Tails' situation is particularly bleak, I'm currently exploring ways to expand on Tails' ability so that his scaling more closely matches the rest of the cast. Details at this point are extremely tentative, but I expect him to receive the most significant changes.

Maybe Tails could get a separate ground ability like Sonic. He could place mines or something similar making him less precision based and more bait and trap based. Of course these mines would have to be very easy to read and Tails would have to have one at a time active at once, but considering how easily beaten out by everyone he feels at the moment he could use something like that I feel.

[CobaltBW]

Version 2.0 is out! You can find the download link on the first page.



Features:

• Official split from ringslinger into distinct game modes (Battle, Team Battle, etc.)
• Control Point and Team Control Point modes
• Tails can spawn three buzz sentries at a time, and launch them with the firenormal or tossflag key
• Improved support for Simple controls
• More expansive game mode customization through the console
• Several bug fixes and balance tweaks

Click the spoiler for a full changelog:

Spoiler:

2020-2-23
Version 2.0 release

Features
- Battle, Team Battle, Egg Robo Tag, and Battle CTF are now recognized as unique gametypes in the multiplayer level select
- Added Control Point, Team Control Point to the gametype options
- Removed King of the Panel mode

Control Point / Team Control Point
- Weapon panels and the infinity ring are valid spawn points for CP objects

Maintenance
- player.disableringslinger is now "off" by default
- The player character's sprite angle will now reflect the player's movements in Battle gametypes
- Fixed compass direction for Simple controls
- Camera reposition/lock-on now works in Battle mode for Simple controls
- Improvements to Battle-related HUD
- Modified action scripts to accommodate secondary action commands
- Fixed Fang's bomb not consuming rings if it immediately explodes
- Fixed Egg Robo death animation not displaying the limb/gun sprites (for real this time)

Console
- Removed "battlehelp"
- Added "battleversioninfo" (replaces "battlehelp versioninfo")
- Added console variable "collision" (toggles collision for non-battle gametypes)
- Added console variable "slipstream" (toggles the backdraft/slipstream mechanic)
- Added console variable "battleactions" (toggles battle actions in all non-ringslinger gametypes)
- Collision damage can now be toggled universally with the "friendlyfire" variable (in tandem with the "collision" variable)
- Added console variables for Control Point: "cpmeter","cpwait","cpradius","cpheight","cpbonus"
- Removed console variables related to King of the Panel

Game Balance
- Enforced a hard cap on the amount of time a player will skid on the ground from a PvP bump-collision (-> 1s)
- Limited vertical aim amount while auto-aiming (-> +- 60deg)

Sonic
- Increased the radius of Sonic's ground pound attack by roughly 50%
- Added a cooldown after using groundpound (-> 0.5s)

Tails
- Tails can now spawn up to three buzz sentries at a time
- Spawn cost raised (10 -> 12)
- Sentry attack command moved to the TossFlag key

Knuckles
- Reduced dig cost (10 -> 8)
- Burrowing: added a 1 second delay before rings begin to drain
- Ring drain rate doubled while stationary (1rps -> 2rps)
- Ring drain rate no longer increases while moving (2rps -> 2rps)
- Increased movespeed while burrowing (25% -> 33% normalspeed)
- Increased dig cooldown after resurfacing (1s -> 2.5s)
- "Resurface" relabeled "Rock Blast"
- Added a ring cost to using the rock blast attack (-> 6)
- Knuckles can now Resurface with the ringtoss key, without using rock blast or spending rings

Amy
- Increased action ring cost (10 -> 12)
- Raised charm beam speed (16 -> 20)
- Reworked "charmed" mechanic; instead of being shrunk and invulnerable, players simply act as if they had picked up a CTF flag (i.e. cannot use abilities)
- Enemy players will now bounce off of love hearts without taking damage if they are in spin/spinjump state

Fang
- Removed certain firing hacks in Fang's action script
- Enforced a firing delay after taking damage (-> 0.5)
- Forward bomb throws and dropped bombs are now mapped to the ringtoss and tossflag keys respectively
- Reduced bomb autoaim (60 -> 45)
- Slightly lowered z-angle floor of auto-aimed bomb throws
- Bombs will automatically explode on contact with enemies, bosses, and monitors
- Bombs will automatically explode against walls and ceilings/floors respectively if their horizontal or vertical momentum is higher than 10 fracunits

Metal
- Charging an energy blast out of a dash will automatically store one level of charge
- Scaled down the dimensions of energy blast projectiles by 50%, making it less likely to clip against surfaces when firing
- Reduced autoaim (60 -> 45)
- Increased the autoaim search range for non-player objects (128 -> 256)
- Reduced recoil after firing (12 -> 4)
- Reduced the spread of charged blasts (5 -> 3)
- Player can hover after firing blast
- Player can cancel an energy blast by pressing tossflag while charging

[Flame]

You work fast! I swear the first release of this was about two weeks ago. Kudos.
I'll be expecting version three next week.

[Zanda_Sama]

Nerf metal's float and give him fixed collision because this match has been going on for 20 minutes, this man just floats and sonic cant hit him D:<
Fix the collision.

[Krabs]

oh my lord this is an incredible patch

EDIT: The amy heart nerf seems to be bugged. Even when the sfx_s3k7b sound effect plays, signifying that the defender was in a spinning state, they still take damage.

[Tatsuru]

Do you think you could manage a way to let other gametypes use the Battle mechanics via a function, or perhaps make them togglable outside of the predetermined ones? I'd really appreciate it.

Nevermind, I found the new cvars. Can't wait to toy with this. I still think the Battle framework could be released separately from each gametype, if possible.

[Apollyon Woman]

Pretty dope, easily superior to Ringslinger in practically every way.

In terms of suggestions, maybe add a wanted mechanic like in Kart's Battle Mode, where one of the players with the highest score is highlighted, giving a huge points boost to whoever manages to kill them

[HitCoder]

Dude this is really cool wtf


I'm glad to see something that's actually much more functional than Physattk in 2.1. it annoyed me whenever people would mention it to me towards late 2.1 because I ended up hating it so much. This is actually much more interesting and looks REALLY fun to play. I'll definitely be downloading this to host some netgames.



Good job dude!

[CobaltBW]

So, a disclaimer on the current update: in order to get the mod up to speed with the new custom gametypes, I had to rewrite bits and pieces of the code to get it to function properly. Mainly, I was relying on the "ringslinger" variable in Version 1 to automate a lot of the damage handling for me, as SRB2 by default does not allow players or player projectiles to deal damage to each other unless either ringslinger or friendlyfire is enabled. This ended up being something of a logistical nightmare on my end, and the fact that there are a few outstanding bugs with the current custom gametypes on their own already hasn't helped matters.

Because of this, there will be some new bugs here and there, particularly when it comes to the damage handling aspect. So, if you see a bug (or something that looks like it might be a bug), please report it in this thread so that I can make a note to fix it.



I'm also anticipating that I may have shot myself in the foot with the recent Tails update; I had concerns earlier on that the buzz sentries could perhaps be the result of certain mass desynchs, and these seem to be a little bit more frequent in the new update. I cannot confirm whether these two things are correlated, but if it's possible for someone else to run tests and see if their findings match my own suspicions, then that would be greatly appreciated.

Originally Posted by Ikkarou Tatsuru

Do you think you could manage a way to let other gametypes use the Battle mechanics via a function, or perhaps make them togglable outside of the predetermined ones? I'd really appreciate it.

Nevermind, I found the new cvars. Can't wait to toy with this. I still think the Battle framework could be released separately from each gametype, if possible.

I didn't think of the gametype thing in retrospect, but I will definitely push it into my next update. Also I have future plans to restructure the melee collision aspect to make the "priority" system open to modders.

[Seaballer]

Been enjoying this mod for a while now. It's a really refrshing take on the PvP gametype and I'd take this over ringslinger any day.

Small thing though (don't know if this is a bug): Hitting players with Tails's Buzz sentry doesn't grant you points. It makes the ability kinda obnoxious.