Kart Krew's Smart Tether

Kart Krew's Smart Tether 4.0

TehRealSalt

(σᴥσ)
Sonic Team Junior
Kart Krew™️

Ties everyone together with a sparkling band, so everyone has to complete the level together! Take advantage of funny momentum jank to complete the level faster! Recommended for 2-6 players, but it's totally doable with 8-10 players. (Anything above that I don't recommend but you can try for laughs anyway. :p)

The original script is by fickleheart, tons of credit goes to them for the skeleton! Original script is here: https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=39545

Changes from the 2.1 version include:
  • Slingshot momentum: In old combi, if two players were moving in the same direction, the faster player would be pulled back, and the slower player pulled in. This version instead pulls the slower player in, and leaves the faster player alone. This allows for fun sling-shot momentum shenanigans, gaining you extra speed with cooperation! Players going in opposite directions still works the same way.
  • Ability anchoring: Using your abilities gives you a little more priority over players who aren't. This gives everyone the same kind of agency and let's you influence the rest of the group in a certain direction, and helps bring everyone to the same level as Knuckles in 2.1's Combi. Players using springs or swing gimmicks are also given some priority as well.
  • HOLD!: You can HOLD! to stand in place and increase your pull. This is possible in 2.1's Combi, but now non-spin characters can also do it by holding Spin in place -- there's a big goofy HOLD! icon when you're doing it successfully.
  • Teleporting: Holding Ring Toss will let you bubble to another random player, bringing you slowly to them, but at the cost of losing your team's rings. If you continue to hold Ring Toss when you're at your destination, you'll continue to follow them. You also teleported on respawn, adding a bit of a respawn timer based on how far you are from the last checkpoint, increasing tension. You're also forced to teleport to a single player when they're using certain gimmicks, like minecarts, zoom tubes, and teleporters.
  • Power-up sharing: Collected rings, shields, Super form, and other power-ups are shared across the group. No more fighting over getting rings! Getting hurt will lose rings for everyone, so be careful!
  • Team lives: Everyone has the same life counter. If one person dies, you can respawn infinitely. However, if everyone dies at the same time, then a life will be lost!

Out of the box, Combi-ring will usually work perfectly fine with custom characters, but if you want to make your custom abilities anchor players, there's multiple options.

  • It will automatically anchor players with player.panim set to PA_ABILITY and PA_ABILITY2, so if you have custom ability states, making sure the panim is the right value during them will automatically anchor the player by default.
  • If you want to set priority when using your ability once, and then reset it when you hit the ground, you can set player.mo.combi.usingability to true, then the rest will be done by combi automatically.
  • If you want extreme fine control over the anchoring and even be able to override the default anchor priority value regardless of what it normally is, set player.mo.combi.priority to either true or false. This gets reset to nil every tic, which uses the default behavior instead.

Additionally, you may want to make sure your character doesn't show extra particles/effects when they have player.mo.flags2 & MF2_DONTDRAW so they don't appear while teleporting. Same goes for abilities, but for player.pflags & PF_STASIS|PF_JUMPSTASIS. If either of these are not reasonable however, then you can also manually check for player.mo.combi.teleporting being set.

Lastly, as a fun bonus, you can also give your character custom sprites for HOLD! Just add sprites called HOLD in your character WAD and the game will use them!

I poured a lot of effort in trying to make Combi-ring something that I didn't want to play Coop mode without anymore, and I think I succeeded -- it's probably the most fun I've had with SRB2's Coop in a long time. It keeps everyone together, so you can experience the level with your friends, but it has a lot more agency than before. If you previously just thought of it as a total meme, or slow and unfun, I highly encourage trying my changes out; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
 
Last edited:


I really think there should be a way to get the single player bots the ability to use HOLD! without you needing to spin yourself. I know this is more of a co-op mod, but this would b a huge boon for single player.
 
You should allow it so if people want to, they can choose who they want to be combi-buddies with, or make it random. Maybe like a command
 
Ah yes, Combiring. The hell script. Well, nice knowing everyone. Oh yeah, I have shenanigans with combiring already.
srb20281.gif
 
So i gave this a whirl.

Took me and my mates 3 hours to complete the full campaign (yes we even got all emeralds... some how). Usually takes us about under 30 mins! Hardest level we did was Haunted Heights - 20mins. We've yet to complete Azure temple.

Also to touch on the special stages. The 2.0 "DONT MOVE OR KICK" was especially present in SS6 and 7.

Good fun. Screw knuckles gliders though :)
 
I find this is just as fun and wacky to play with as it was in 2.1, and the upgrades are a welcome addition too! I would be interested in seeing some of the stuff from the Kart version being ported over to this as well for use in normal race/competition, such as the two-players-per-team mechanic and maybe the signalling, but I doubt you'd do that since this is more of a co-op focused script and people don't generally like to mess with the race/competition formula too much.
The new graphics look really nice and the smooth transition of coloring makes it much more aesthetically pleasing than both the old ring sparkle graphic and the blue spheres graphic.
I would also be interested in seeing HOLD recieve its own button, such as tossflag since it's practically useless in co-op. I'd also like to see some way to pick up and throw other players but that might be more of a hastle than it's worth.

Overall very neat and I shall try this out in a server with a bunch of people later!
 
Shadow: Behold the Ultimate Power! *Fart sound* SRB2 Chaotix Haahaa? Knuckles: lol u noob. Shadow: *his meme face from the comics*
 
You should allow it so if people want to, they can choose who they want to be combi-buddies with, or make it random. Maybe like a command

I second this. As it is now Combi-Ring really isn't striking me as the "permanent addition" you envisioned it being. It is extremely difficult to get even 3 people to work together on basic platforming, and what ends up happening is that one player who's lagging behind and being pulled will resist and try to go in the other direction in an attempt to slow down, and everyone else feels the consequences of that and finds it very difficult to actually progress forward. I think a two-partner system at least as an option would make it much more manageable and enjoyable
 
Last edited:
I finally got to play the new Combiring and about a week later got to review it. Overall I absolutely love the new Combiring, it is much more colorful, balanced, buyoant and thought through than the original.

I like how the chain now has a central docking point to which all players connect to, allowing for every player to affect everyone directly instead of only being able to affect some players indirectly by affecting another player.

I also like the increased bouncyness of the chain allowing for even crazier shenanigans and making recoveries a little easier. Having the ability to warp back to another player at the cost of getting hurt is a welcome adition and makes things like suicide obsolete when getting stuck.

It feels great that Knuckles no longer dominates with his glide ability and that other characters got more power to influence the chain. Sonic is no longer the useless and helpless character he used to be (that'll be Amy and maybe Metal, we only got Metal like 3 times with character diceroll unfortunately).

Sharing lives, power ups and rings is a very nice addition and no longer causes fighting over said resources although I'd like to see a bloodbound mode as a toggleable option where if one player dies all players die making the game a bit more difficult (and sometimes impossible, hence it being a toggleable option).

But there is one thing I DON'T like about the new Combiring: respawning and teleporting. I don't like the fact that I am respawning at the last checkpoint and sometimes need to wait ages until I finally catch up to the other players not to mention the sometimes bizzare and epilepsy inducing camera when zooming through the void. The same goes for teleporting. I'd much rather respawn directly at another player but being stuck in a sphere for about 3 to 5 seconds before I can fully respawn. As for teleporting: just teleport all the other players to the same place as the one who triggered the teleporter. It is annoying to wait that long until I can start playing again.

And one minor nitpick: I don't like how spheres just stick to the body of the player they are going to respawn at, it would look much neater if the spheres were to circle AROUND the player once they caught up much like when you are about to turn yourself into a sphere.

Regarding my respawn suggestion: the increasing size of the sphere can also be used uppon respawn to visualize the time spent as a sphere and how much is left until you can fully respawn.

But other than that I had an absolute blast playing through all the vanilla 2.2 levels with this, including all special, bonus and challenge stages (and breaking the game sometimes). This is a big step up from the original Combiring and, asside from the respawning and teleporting thing, heavily improves on the original concept.
 
Last edited:
Combi-ring is no more.

This add-on has been rewritten from total scratch to improve everything about it, to the point of sharing practically no code from the original.
To signal the massive difference it's been rebranded to "Smart Tether"!

Get the new version HERE: https://mb.srb2.org/addons/kart-krews-smart-tether.1243/

Many new features include:
  • Improved & much looser pull from the band, as a result of the rewrite.
  • You can now set how many players you are attached to, with "tether_players".
  • Being dragged into a wall lets you wall-kick off of it.
  • Releasing HOLD! lets you slingshot.
  • Non-spin characters can be pulled through non-spin gaps.
  • More things are shared with your team (dash mode, air bubbles).
 
Second part to the stream showcase (There were technical difficulties the other night)!
JaggedWaterloggedHoneycreeper-max-1mb.gif
 
Lol arid canyon with 3 players is almost unbeatable
44:48
 
fun fact, Every character can grab people by pressing hold if you're right next to someone, and throw them forward (forward direction), downward (downward direction in air), upward (upward direction), or in an arc (neutral direction) giving them momentum
*IN KNUCKLES CHAOTIX*
 
Last edited:

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top