[1.2] SRB2 Persona DEMO

Join the SRB2P Discord!
As per Discord TOS, anyone blatantly under 13 (That means acting like a child) will be banned without further regards.
The SRB2P modding doc!

SRB2Persona is a mod I've been working on with the help of a few friends every now and then for about 4 years now. The entire point was to recreate Persona's general gameplay into SRB2. Yeah, it doesn't get any stupider than that! It started off as a barely playable weird tech demo that would error about everytime we tried playing it. Honestly I was unsure whether or not it was going to ever be something playable or stay as a fever dream.
Yet here we are, today. After 3 entire rewrites and countless hours of testing over the course of 4 years, I have no idea how my motivation lasted me this long, but I'm happy to release the first SRB2Persona demo!

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Spoiler: If you ask any question that's answered here in this spoiler I will come to your house with a briefcase full of material and a bat. The bat is just for show.

Play the tutorial
I cannot stress this enough, even if you've played a Persona game before, I recommend you check it out.

5029 UDP.
That's the port you need to forward for people to join your hosted games. The method to portforward varies between ISPs so this one is on you to figure out, chief.

Netgame issues
It's nothing new that SRB2's netgames were never the most stable.
There is no guarantee that netgames with more than 8 players (or any amount for that matter, but bigger playercounts amplify the problems) stay stable forever depending on each individual player's connection.
Joining mid-game (after parties have been made) also frequently causes problems, so it's much better to make sure your lobby's all filled up with all the friends you wanted before confirming the parties. I have tried to the best of my ability to limit this issue to the maximum, but it still frequently occurs.
To limit mid-game joinings and the myriad of issues that come with them, there is no Master Server support, only LAN is supported for now. In other words, you need the host's IP to join

Singleplayer?
Outside of the tutorial, this demo of SRB2Persona offers absolutely no entierely singleplayer content (yet??), but you are free to play the Tartarus exploration & challenge battles by yourself however which recreates the intended feeling!

Modding?
There is modding support and custom characters can be added. Modding documentation for the mod will come at a later date. ...Or is it already out somewhere?

So, what's in the package?

Frantic turn based battles
Experience the flashy aesthetic of the Persona battle system, with a hint of Shin Megami Tensei buff system topping to add some flavour, alongside literally hundreds of available Persona skills and a varied selection of characters!
Find out and exploit your enemies' weaknesses to knock them down and get additional turns! Manage to knock them all down, and you can unleash the powerful All-Out Attack to deal massive damage and maybe just end the battle in a flash!
If you either finish a battle with an All-Out Attack, or within a single turn, you may even get a chance to get some more mileage out of it!


Dungeon crawling with up to 4... 8...? wait, 16 players!?
Crawl within the mazes of Tartarus. Ambush the Shadows impeding your way, earn EXP to get stronger and make your way up to and destroy the floor guardians with a party of 4... Or up to 4 parties of 4! (Nope there's no guarantee the netgame will even stay stable, do that at your own risk!)
...Just be careful not to spend too much time on a single floor, or bad luck awaits...


Fight it out in a 4V4 PvP duke out!
Experience the many intricacies of how stupidly unbalanced the battle system is by unleashing your most devious strategies on each other!


Test your skills on Challenge Battles!
Take on timed boss rematches and endless battles with up to 3 other players to set the best times and scores! Serves as a good training session to know what to expect from the many dangers of Tartarus!



FULL DOWNLOAD (v1.2):
An existing install of vanilla SRB2 2.2.8 or above is necessary for SRB2Persona to run. Put them in the same dedicated folder.


Windows
SRB2P files
SRB2P files (MIRROR)
Patch (v1.x -> v1.2)

MacOS
SRB2P files (MACOS)
Courtesy of Lach, please contact him if you encounter issues with the MacOS installation process.

Linux
No direct download available as of now, but Linux users have reported being able to compile and play SRB2P.
You can compile yourself from the source code.

Android
Unsupported. You are free to fork the source code and try making it yourself, but I do not intend to add or maintain an Android support myself.

Spoiler: Changelogs

• V1.0
  
  • Initial Release
    
  
  
• V1.1
  
  • Gameplay
    
    • Amy no longer has Recarm in PvP.
      
    
    
  • Quality of Life
    
    • Added OpenGL menu options under Display settings
      
    • Added 'Return to Lobby' options in multiplayer escape menu
      
    • Custom battle music is now previewed in a prompt before being added in your list
      
    • When leveling up, you can now see the skill descriptions of your new skill and the skill you are about to forget
      
    
    
  • Fixes...
    
    • Improved mid-game joining stability.
      
      • This is done by temporarily pausing the game to resynchronize the RNG which seems to be the cause of the issue.
        
      • I still don't recommend mid-game joining as I can't guarantee its stability.
        
    • Fixed Analysis being repellable by Makarakarn
      
    • Fixed duplicate Emerald Skills
      
    • Fixed being able to sustain critical hits during the tutorial, potentially softlocking it.
      
    • Fixed Succubus having an invalid skill.
      
    • Fixed enemies not disappearing if they had died from a repelled auto attack of theirs.
      
    • Fixed the Rampage Drive targetting dead players still.
      
    • Fixed the lives count displaying outside of Tartarus exploration mode if a session had been played beforehand
      
    • Fixed being able to create parties outside of Tartarus exploration
      
    • Fixed the complete inability to make custom challenge battles.
      
    
    
    
  
  
• V1.2
  
  • Gameplay
    
    • You now have 1/3 Max SP in PvP instead of 1/2.
      
    
    
  • Fixes
    
    • Fixed being able to access the Sub-Persona menu with no Sub-Personas via the shortcut in Skills, resulting in errors.
      
    • Fixed invalid frames when reviving Knuckles or Shadow
      
    • Fixed Brainwash constantly resulting in the fallback 'dummy' Skill being used in 1.1
      
    • Fixed the camera jittering in some occasions, it should look a lot more fluid now.
      
    • Fixed a specific Challenge Battle not saving completion.
      
    • You can no longer set Enter as any of your keys in the menu and get softlocked.
      
    • Fixed status condition effects not playing sounds when they should.
      
    • Fixed Baton Pass' screen overlay not going away until the next turn started.
      
    
    

CREDITS

Spoiler: Credits

Sonic Robo Blast 2: Persona
Mod by Lat'

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Additional Mod credits:

Snu: General programming & graphics assistance
SoapSurfin: Titlescreen Sonic art
DylanNeyaz: Cut-ins
Q.T.D.: All-Out-Attack artwork
DaveLite: Evoker poses

LJ Sonik: PRNG library

Inazuma: Shadow The Hedgehog sprites
DrStephen: Dr. Eggman sprites
.Luke: Blaze The Cat sprites
(All permissions / re-usable content status check out)

Amicitia Comm: Persona 3/4 modding tools

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sonic Robo Blast 2 belongs to Sonic Team Jr.

LEGAL STUFF:
Sonic The Hedgehog is property of SEGA
Shin Megami Tensei / Persona is property of ATLUS / SEGA
No copyright infringement intended, this is a fan project meant as a love letter to some of my favourite game franchises ever.

THIS GAME SHOULD NOT BE SOLD!
This is a non-profit project! (In fact, I lose money!)

It's kind of surreal for me to finally release something like that after working on it for so long. Although there isn't exactly a ton of content to speak of, I'm still incredibly proud of myself for managing to pull that out and eternally thankful to those who have helped me make it this far, be it by their supportive words, their contributions to the mod, or their everlasting ability to break the shit out of the game to help me find and crush bugs.

[SilverVortex]

Originally Posted by Reemruss077

What Persona game does this mod get it's music from?

this mod actually features music from every persona game, except for megami ibunroku persona and persona 2: eternal punishment, but a majority of the music + the theming of the game is largely based on persona 3.

[DededeCultist]

This is it. We have reached peak SRB2 modding, everyone go home.

This is genuinely the best mod. I have few tiny nitpicks, though. Baton Passes don't work on a character that's already used their turn which makes no sense at all, and seeing Classic Sonic with Adventure Sonic's face is extremely cursed, but other than that, this is the perfect mod for me. Good job!

[SilverVortex]

Originally Posted by DededeCultist

Baton Passes don't work on a character that's already used their turn which makes no sense at all,!

this problem is actually kinda big to be honest; baton passes quickly lose all of their worth when you're just guarding until you can get to the only person who can exploit a weakness. i understand that it's there because of online play, but i feel like you should allow the player to baton pass to whoever they please if they're exploring on their own.

[Junny]

How do you switch the battle mode to 2v2?

[Flame]

Originally Posted by SilverVortex

this problem is actually kinda big to be honest; baton passes quickly lose all of their worth when you're just guarding until you can get to the only person who can exploit a weakness. i understand that it's there because of online play, but i feel like you should allow the player to baton pass to whoever they please if they're exploring on their own.

This is actually something that is present in the official SMT/Persona titles and makes perfect sense. This is not an issue.

This is in place for a sense of balance.

If you can baton pass after a character has taken their turn, whether it be by guarding or attacking, this would be an incredibly powerful (if not broken) 'feature'.

[PSI Pikachu]

I actually made it through "Bullshit" and I gotta say: It feels like I'm playing an actual Persona game again. I almost forgot that I was playing an SRB2 mod. This is definitely worth the hours of play and the years of work put into it!

[RainbowTH]

I dunno about you guys, but looking at the Player Setup...

Where's Rosy? It's legit not there.
Custom Skincolors don't seem to work either.

Oh, and the code says the maxskincolors is 68, which includes Rosy... Weird......

[Pyrakid Wolfo]

i do sorta agree about the baton passing tho
im saying it'd be NICE to be able to baton pass to chars that have already acted and would make logical sense
but maybe it is unbalanced

alot of other things are odd and unwelcome/welcome

if you hit at least one enemy with a skill that hits multiple enemies you will still get "one more"
strong enemies cannot be knocked down even with their weakness (includes bosses)... kinda miss that from p3 but you're the boss
reaper pls leave me alone aaaaaaa
enemies that are knocked down don't "get up" when attacked again

things that i ACTUALLY dont understand
enemies (and you) can act on the same turn you "get up". I guess that's "recovering from x status on the same turn you get said status and attacking right after syndrome" from persona 3.
ive somehow knocked down bosses when they have literally 1 HP... what's the point of that... im pretty sure that's a "coded in thing", theres no way i just got extremely lucky there.
haha reaper go brrr (starting to think the reaper isn't that bad buuuuuut holy shit ive been running away from one for 5 minutes why is tartarus so hard to navigate even with a map, this never was a problem in p3)

things i'd *maybe* like to see - weapons
sure, everyone having bash attacks and tails having the most garbage attack (misses all the time) is nice, but I think it'd be really cool to have like swords. Amy could have hammer upgrades, other characters could have swords (black knight) possibly
and speaking of weapons, tiers on the shuffle game, something seems missing from the shuffle game but it is necesarry for personas
and speaking of personas
no fusing atm, this is early stage so its fine obviously, might be nice to-
wait is sub personas a canon thing? back in p3 you had to change your entire persona, but certain personas have immunities... so does using sub personas change immunities and resistances?

using weaknesses on bosses doesn't seem that powerful but i guess spamming weaknesses and hyper mode is an easy enough way to win so i cant really complain

ive typed way too much to double check it so im posting it anyway

[DededeCultist]

Okay, the excitement I have for this mod has died down a bit.

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

if you hit at least one enemy with a skill that hits multiple enemies you will still get "one more"

This is how it works.

wait is sub personas a canon thing?

They were in Persona Q games, basically the Wild Cards ended up sort of sharing their Wild Card power with the other persona users and were stuck with their starting personas (until they evolved).

Originally Posted by Flame

This is actually something that is present in the official SMT/Persona titles and makes perfect sense. This is not an issue.

Yes, this IS an issue. I don't know if Baton Passes make some sort of appearance in other SMT games because I'm a filthy Persona casual, but Baton Passes DO NOT work like that in Persona 5. The only time you cannot Baton Pass to someone else is when they've already done one. Even if they work like that in other SMT games, and even if its a 'broken' feature, it's an OFFICIAL feature, and it should work like Persona since, you know, this is SRB2 Persona.
Also, the reaper. It's definitely VERY quick to appear, and I can only get like 3 or 4 battles in before it appears, but it kind of makes sense, since this is still Sonic and you have to go fast.
All in all, I still believe this is the best mod for SRB2 so far, but it's still far from perfect.

[Lat']

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

i do sorta agree about the baton passing tho
im saying it'd be NICE to be able to baton pass to chars that have already acted and would make logical sense
but maybe it is unbalanced

Baton Pass used to work the way it did in Persona 5 but it honestly made the game way too easy. (...Much like Persona 5 itself), especially considering you get a free Tarukaja/Makakaja on top of whatever you already had for every subsequent Baton Pass. So it's been changed to only work on party members who haven't had their turn yet.

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

if you hit at least one enemy with a skill that hits multiple enemies you will still get "one more"
enemies that are knocked down don't "get up" when attacked again

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

enemies (and you) can act on the same turn you "get up". I guess that's "recovering from x status on the same turn you get said status and attacking right after syndrome" from persona 3.

Although the mod itself is based off of Persona 3 in its theming, the battle system takes cues from Persona 4 and 5, as such, multi target attacks will give 1Mores so long as they knock at least one enemy down, and downed enemies don't waste their turn getting back up, nor do they get back up when attacked. This mechanic in particular gave rise to very lame cheese strategies such as the Thunder Reign tactic against the Reaper in vanilla Persona 3 which I didn't want here.

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

strong enemies cannot be knocked down even with their weakness (includes bosses)... kinda miss that from p3 but you're the boss

I still wanted to have weaknesses on bosses without making them easily cheesable. The point of hitting weaknesses here is mostly to fill the Emerald Power gauge as it doubles the gain.

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

reaper pls leave me alone aaaaaaa

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

haha reaper go brrr (starting to think the reaper isn't that bad buuuuuut holy shit ive been running away from one for 5 minutes why is tartarus so hard to navigate even with a map, this never was a problem in p3)

The Reaper appears to make sure you don't spend your entire time grinding on 1 floor and forces you to move along. This prevents the game from lasting longer than it should (and god knows it's already long to finish an entire block).
The minimap IMO should provide plenty of indication of where to go granted you just eye it from time to time. Due to SRB2's lower hud resolution, I couldn't really do anything better than squares to represent the floors, and the Reaper moves slow enough that getting to the spring, especially if you're playing alone, should never be a problem.

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

ive somehow knocked down bosses when they have literally 1 HP... what's the point of that... im pretty sure that's a "coded in thing", theres no way i just got extremely lucky there.

Yes this is a scripted sequence. Block final boss will always get knocked down on the last hit to be finished off by an All-Out Attack.

Originally Posted by Pyrakid Wolfo

things i'd *maybe* like to see - weapons
sure, everyone having bash attacks and tails having the most garbage attack (misses all the time) is nice, but I think it'd be really cool to have like swords. Amy could have hammer upgrades, other characters could have swords (black knight) possibly
and speaking of weapons, tiers on the shuffle game, something seems missing from the shuffle game but it is necesarry for personas
and speaking of personas
no fusing atm, this is early stage so its fine obviously, might be nice to-
wait is sub personas a canon thing? back in p3 you had to change your entire persona, but certain personas have immunities... so does using sub personas change immunities and resistances?

The Persona Q Sub-Personas are a mechanic in SRB2P because it allows every character to have dynamic movesets without diverting them from their main purposes, and also because I couldn't get every Persona's sprite exported without getting crippling depression.
Sub-Persona fusion & weapons/armours alike are planned for the Single Player campaign, but won't ever appear in Quickplay simply because the point isn't to force the players to scramble for equipment seeing as managing base Sub-Personas and Skill Cards is hard enough with the time constraints imposed by Quickplay.

[Pyrakid Wolfo]

ah, persona 3 is the only persona game i've played besides a little bit of p1 "revelations persona" idc, im like halfway into p3 i think

[Entropy]

This is, by far, the most comprehensive and enjoyable mod I have ever played. It's an absolute blast, even from someone who's never played a Persona game. The effects are incredibly satisfying, it looks and sounds beautiful, and it's just a legitimately fantastic RPG experience.

It's also nearly unplayable when played as intended.

I have spent hours, over multiple servers, trying to play this with others. I have made it past a boss as a team exactly once.
It's not because we failed. We did pretty well, actually. The problem is that it's just so, so buggy. I don't know if it's an outdated netcode thing or a mod thing, but it feels like this game's multiplayer is held together by chewing gum and string. The majority of the multiplayer experience is basically "get in game, restart within 2 floors because something went wrong, repeat."
I still don't know what happens if all the teams die- a run never once ended that way, it was always because something bugged and we needed to restart.

There's the really base issues, like how basically anyone dropping for any reason and attempting to join back immediately is liable to ruin the whole game. Sometimes people spawn in as Sonic instead of whoever they selected, for multiple attempts in a row. Very often, teams straight up don't initialize correctly at all, and fail to correctly enter battle. The PVP mode I'd describe as having a "can get into the game" rate of somewhere around 30-50%. (one time we fell through the arena and got into massive HoM, that was fun.)

It ends up turning the game, even if you've got a good game going, into one of "when is the game going to end up breaking next, making us restart."

It's a shame, honestly, because I'd absolutely love to play this with friends, but I know it'll probably end up being roughly 90% restarting and 10% playing the game, and that's not really fun for anyone.

I do really want to see this grow and become one of the, like, great projects of this community like Kart, though, because it has the potential to be absolutely fantastic. Keep up the amazing work!

(also Amy is way too strong in PVP, I'd recommend getting rid of her Recarm so she's not quite as pivotal.)

[Pyrakid Wolfo]

Amy is basically Yukari, even having the same base persona, i suppose Lat could make Recarm a sub persona or a skill card only move though

[Lat']

Originally Posted by Entropy

It's also nearly unplayable when played as intended.

[...] (Post is quite long so I won't quote it all to keep things tidy*)

I'm extremely sorry that things went like that for you, especially when I just saw people go on an allmost flawless 8 players 2h30 Tartarus exploration yesterday in a Discord screenshare.
As I stated in the OP, it's pivotal that you get every player to join before the game starts, joining mid-game is still completely broken for reasons beyond my understanding. While this issue is due to my own incompetence, I don't think I can do anything if you're still getting synching issues in spite of respecting this one basic rule as this would be more of a Vanilla SRB2 issue. I've tested enough netgames (Hear: Hundreds of hours) to the point where I'm confident that everything is stable so long as no one joins mid-game.

Also, very fair assertion about PvP, I'll be sure to remove Recarm from Amy there.

Thanks a ton for the feedback either way, I'll try my best to eventually hammer this into a bug free experience!
I don't think this will ever grow to be even remotely a fourth of how big Kart has gotten, and especially not with the current amount of content, but I'm still very happy with the current results nonetheless!

[blacc]

As a degenerate who's never played any persona game before, this is pretty good.


Also what's the menu's theme?

[antonretrojr]

I have a couple of things I'd like to see in the game when it's finished.

• Multiple rooms, based on the gametype the server is most commonly playing, if this gets its own MS. Basically like SRB2's own MS, but for SRB2P.

Speaking of gametypes,

• Default gametypes for servers. Selecting a gametype there will automatically redirect the server to the gametype's corresponding room.
• Being able to cancel out of the party you selected to join. We really wanted this to be a thing when Spectrum was hosting this the other day.
• Different colors = different immunities/abilities. Don't apply the bonuses the color gives if it's the character's default color. For example, Flame could give the Makagi skill and immunity to fire damage, but make you weak to water and wind damage.
• Different EXP gain for each team member, depending on how well they fought in the encounter.

Also, in the same session I just mentioned when talking about when we were playing with Spectrum,

We really wanted this to be a thing when Spectrum was hosting this the other day.

We discovered a bug.
Shadow can literally no-clip using his Chaos Control. Perhaps you could do something similar to what the creator of Shadow (the mod) to prevent the Chaos Control from warping Shadow through walls?

[tropluckyfr]

i think that the lobby aint really correctly made as if a character (somehow) manage to spin with high speed he can litterally go oob of the lobby (cman who is not a default character is usefull to test it) i think you should try to make the lobby walls a bit more T I C C

[antonretrojr]

Originally Posted by tropluckyfr

i think that the lobby aint really correctly made as if a character (somehow) manage to spin with high speed he can litterally go oob of the lobby (cman who is not a default character is usefull to test it)

See, the same happens with Shadow just chaos-controlling out of the lobby's walls.

[tropluckyfr]

ye this demo bit broken at least we both seen the same glitches

[Pyrakid Wolfo]

Originally Posted by Lat'

I don't think this will ever grow to be even remotely a fourth of how big Kart has gotten, and especially not with the current amount of content, but I'm still very happy with the current results nonetheless!

I hope this does become as big as kart, I don't know how or why kart got so well received, as more and more content is added i think it'd be better subjectively. I'm biased towards persona :P
oh and i never got into kart

---------- Post added at 04:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:52 PM ----------

I just only now realized how Blaze learns ice skills even though she has an afilliation with fire. Nothing wrong with the decision, just noticed irony... if it is irony