2.1 Talk

[Othius]

I have to preface this, because I know it's hard to convey tone in text. This post isn't meant to be angry or accusatory, as it might come off as. This is just out of sheer curiosity. Swearing is just a part of my normal mannerisms, although I removed most of it after writing this original post.

Now that 2.2 has released and we have a taste of what 5 years of development time can do to a game, I have to ask....

What the hell happened with 2.1's development?

I never really questioned this before, but now it has occurred to me that a relatively minor, seemingly quality of life update has taken the same amount of time as a complete restructuring of the game (2.2), and far longer than an earlier restructuring of the game (2.0). Now that's not to say that 2.1 didn't add much. I would have stopped playing the game long ago if not for the changes it brought (Lua, improved control, new Brak, improved controller support and stability) But it just doesn't feel like much compared to what 2.0 and 2.2 brought to the game. How much scrapped content was there for 2.1? I thought the deep sea zone remake was almost fully completed by 2.1's release (EDIT: I was wrong). What led to such a relatively small update taking so much damn time?

After writing this it occurred to me that it could be chalked up to dev's focusing on their personal life instead of the game (Good on you! I'm ok with this! Please, don't pull a Chris Senn and sacrifice your personal health for the game!), or drama within STjr at the time.

Also, I'm talking about 2.1's initial release, as slopes were not added until a few years later and were not intended for 2.1 at first.

 

[Unknownlight]

You asked this on Discord and toaster already answered.

* Ambition. 2.1 was only meant to update CEZ2 and add CEZ3 compared to 2.0; nothing else was planned as essential. 2.2 didn't have MUCH else at the time, but it had "unlockable characters" as a component pretty early on, which meant the task was already to get more done.
* Roadblocks. CEZ3's first version - not "the version in 2.1", but "the version in the 2.1 concepts", was straight up unplayable, and it took a very long time to turn into the one in 2.1 because it was demoralising to work on. I think CEZ2 was done pretty early, but CEZ3 going back to the drawing board basically set everything back.
* Lua made prototyping major changes SIGNIFICANTLY easier, which meant non-coders could make hacky proof-of-concepts for new and upgraded enemies. This only came along fairly late in 2.1's development, so 2.2 was able to take full advantage.
* Parallelisation. Eventually having so much on the plate for 2.2 meant different people could work on different things at different times. In 2.1's development, the only way someone could refresh themselves would be to work on something that didn't help towards release at all, leading to stagnation.

 

[Othius]

Thanks for the info! I must have missed his answer, or have forgotten it by now. I remember asking this on the discord and the only answer I recall being Spazzo drama. Figured I would copy paste my question, touch up a few things and add a few things and see if I could get more info.

---------- Post added at 04:34 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:31 AM ----------

Oh shit yea he @ me about that in the discord, I'm not sure how I missed it - sorry about that! This thread feels pointless now.

 

[Unknownlight]

Au contraire! I wish people would use the forums more often so that we'd have more searchable, permanent info and discussion. Discord is just an endless gaping hole where everything that enters is lost forever.

 

[Larz T]

My memory might be a bit off but wasn't the netcode and online multiplayer functionality for 2.1 really buggy throughout development? I remember that being the talk of the town for a little bit in #srb2fun, the MB, and various Skype groups I was in.

 

[MascaraSnake]

I know the deep sea zone remake was almost fully completed by 2.1's release.

That's not correct. Work on the DSZ remake was started during 2.1 development, but it only got as far as (some of?) the textures and one incomplete act. Parts of that act were later cannibalized for what is now DSZ2, but the rest was made after 2.1's release.

My memory might be a bit off but wasn't the netcode and online multiplayer functionality for 2.1 really buggy throughout development? I remember that being the talk of the town for a little bit in #srb2fun, the MB, and various Skype groups I was in.

Yes. It was still very buggy in 2.1.0 and only fully fixed in one of the later patches. I don't think this affected the progress of 2.1 development that much since 2.1 was mostly focused on single player, but it did hold up the release for a bit at the end there.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

A little burnout from releasing 2.0 itself may also have been involved. Honestly, it's hard to pin down the exact factors that lead to 2.1 itself taking so long, there are probably a lot of them!

 

[toaster]

It's also worth noting that a lot of 2.0's development time was hidden through being concurrent with the 1.09 series of code updates. The plan at that time was to keep the public game a "demo" with upgraded features and the likes, while all the level development would be handled privately. This didn't quite work out, but I know that Deep Sea's (and potentially other 2.0 stages as well) level layouts were started before 1.09.4's release, much like Red Volcano appearing out of nowhere fully formed through the RedXVI secret in that version.

Also I'm a girl, jsyk.

 

[Othius]

That's not correct. Work on the DSZ remake was started during 2.1 development, but it only got as far as (some of?) the textures and one incomplete act. Parts of that act were later cannibalized for what is now DSZ2, but the rest was made after 2.1's release.

Gah! Assumptions getting the best of me again! I read some stuff on the discord that lead me to think dsz1 was on course to be rolled out with 2.1. My bad.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Gah! Assumptions getting the best of me again! I read some stuff on the discord that lead me to think dsz1 was on course to be rolled out with 2.1. My bad.

To be fair, had it been prioritized something along those lines might have made it in, but at the time the thinking was that with the "primary" new content (a CEZ that's actually complete and polished, silly as that may be in retrospect) still waiting to be completed the effort should go there instead.

Turned out trying to stop work on something you're excited for right now in favor of focusing on todo list items often causes productivity to plummet, however. Improvements to workflow and an expansion of STJr's production staff were a huge part of 2.2's superior output, to be sure, but simply having a better internal understanding of how to go with the flow of individual developers' enthusiasm was a pretty big deal too.


Looking back on 2.1 as a release more generally however, I'd absolutely call it the groundwork that 2.2 depended on. We paid off a lot of technical debt in the source code that cycle, so to speak, and between that and the deeper bench of talented developers the modding workflow improvements (lua, TEXTURES/ANIMDEFS, SOC enumerations) eventually earned us, it really enabled a more rapid pace of development overall.

Even if that development was most often on "anything except finishing ACZ2, the milestone we planned 2.2's release around", lol.

 

[SchrodingerBoy]

Wasn't this version the one in which they remade Techno Hill? Like, I don't think 2.1 was that small, it changed a lot of levels and added secret ones (5 years is still a lot, but it wasn't just bug fixes and CEZ).

 

[Mario A. Roach]

For me, that version brought a lot of technical help which lead to making 2.2 a better version as a whole; 2.2 broke a lot of things and support which 2.1 didn't, such as performance and OGL compatibility. It makes me think that the next version will bring less content and more technical improvements!

 

[Monster Iestyn]

2.1's original planned milestone was actually supposed to be about finishing Castle Eggman Zone, and much like 2.2 with Arid Canyon Zone we did anything but work on said Castle Eggman Zone for a long time. :D

 

[Unknownlight]

If history is any indication, 2.3's goal will be to finish Red Volcano Zone, and the whole game will be ported to the Quake engine before that happens.

 

[time gear]

If history is any indication, 2.3's goal will be to finish Red Volcano Zone, and the whole game will be ported to the Quake engine before that happens.

Maybe sometime in the next five decades we will get a GoldSrc port of SRB2.

 

[Goldenhog]

Heheh, I always thought GoldSrc (and/or its modern offshoot, Xash3D) would have been the perfect engine to port Sonic Adventure into.

Not sure how well SRB2 would work in it unless everything was a 3D model though.