Voting Thread

Pipeline Panic Zone by RoyKirbs - great use of a simple idea. I really like how the bubbles come out of the pipe, and the center is really fun to control+to mess around with the water current. I think you could stand to have another type of shield coming out of the center rather than just the Bubble shield, to keep things fresh, especially as the Bubble shield doesn't have any particularly interesting uses. I appreciate that the outer walls are intangible to camera - would be better if they were only textured on the inside so that the camera can still see in while it's out of bounds.

Mountainous Saloon Zone by InferNOr - there's great aesthetics in this stage, at the cost of making it kind of awkward to move around. It feels like the player or the camera are always getting caught on little bits of geometry.

Grassy Clearing by Apollyon - I have some interest in 2D Battle maps (having made the first public release of one back in v6.1) but there's some inherent issues with the gamemode. It's incredibly difficult to play defensively in 2D, especially against area of effect attacks. This is exaggerated in smaller maps, and in arena/survival as the sole focus is going to be on combat. With how tiny this map is, it quickly becomes an Amy/Knuckles spamfest. In future 2D maps, I'd like to see more vertical variation, more space to move around, and probably moving away from the combat-heavy gamemodes and more into something like CTF or Diamond.

SSN's Picnic by Zolton - the CPs here are really well designed and lead to some good, varied combat strats. I just wish there was a little more going on in between the points of interest to keep the entire map exciting.

Peach Castle Zone by ACStriker - this port, for the most part, works much better than I expected for SRB2. However, there's a lot of little map glitches, especially in the underwater areas, and some of the steepest slopes don't play well with SRB2's physics. This is already a pretty fun map with lots of movement options, but with a bit of polish to iron those issues out, this would be even better.

Serene Shore Zone by Krabs - The outside area is really well-designed, I love all the different options for moving through it. The entrance to the base is really nice as well, a good balance between offensive and defensive options. I think the paths in the cave area could be widened up a little bit, and probably the entrance should be a bit more obvious.

NO DEATH PIT HERE

Jagged Creek Zone by RoyKirbs - Overall a solid map, but the entire center area just feels a bit... empty. Team rings seem to extend a little further from the bases than they usually do, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It certainly makes it easier to defend, which is important in this map, since it's really easy for enemies to get to your base.

Big Arch by Kwiin - Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get any proper play on this map despite my best efforts. Online, I get sub 5 FPS (and usually get a server timeout within a couple of seconds), and even offline I'm getting around 15-20. There's some interesting ideas here, but it needs some heavy optimization.

Crystalline Heights Zone by Revan - this is a great map, wish I got to play it in a bigger match to really get a good sense of it. The weapon ring ammo placement felt a little muddy but it didn't necessarily bother me or anything.

Spiral Cavern Zone by Su_per - okay so I can imagine this would not work well (due to its small size) in a substantial netgame for sure, but it was actually really fun in our 1v1. It's a super simple concept but it forces a lot of interesting interactions between the players. Just by virtue of not having much horizontal space to work with, you end up getting a lot more vertical combat scenarios than you usually would, which is kind of novel. If I'm not mistaken, there's no rail panel in this map - which, sure, it doesn't really need it - but there is rail ammo, so that may be an oversight?

Disco Town Zone by Trege - whoa, this is a massive map with a lot to explore. I don't think it works for match, though. A lot of the geometry either gets in the way or just isn't interesting for combat. I might think differently if I was in a more crowded netgame, who knows? I do think this would make for a great RP map, and maybe would work well in tag/H&S? I don't play any of those gamestyles, personally, though. I'm kind of curious about the use of the golden monitor, the gravflip monitor, and the sus egg guard statues - all three are kind of novel but didn't really contribute positively to the gameplay I think.

HydroWing Zone by JABSphere94 - okay, a lot of cool stuff going on here, but I didn't fully "get" the changes to the map over time and how exactly they're supposed to work. It may be that I would just need to spend more time with the level. The platforms that move up right after you first go outside are way too punishing to nonflight characters, imo - they can get stuck on the ceiling and take a very long time to come back down. There's also, right after that section, a spot where the way forward looks like going against a fan that's blowing against you, until you realize you have to make a turn and go back up into the ship - the way forward could be made more clear there as well.

Haptic Caverns Zone by PencilVoid - good map, kinda wacky but it all works (though Redux definitely gave me some erroneous wrong ways). A few hazards felt a little too punishing - one in particular is the bouncy floor at the end, which I remember getting stunlocked in.

Greenflower Canyon Zone by Kwiin & Frostiikin - this is pretty fun, and the scale of the structure is really nice. The modified physics feel a bit strange and artificial sometimes - not that SRB2's default physics are anything resembling "natural," but y'know. Falling off the track feels like something that just isn't meant to happen, rather than an obstacle that you get appropriately punished for, if that makes sense? So maybe there's a way to handle that better without compromising the verticality of the map.