Can someone give me a hand?

[Dragonic]

First off, little story cuz I'm extremely (enphasis on extremely) stressed/pissed and I just want to throw that away:

Like a week ago I felt like playing this gem again cuz I played alot when I was a lil' kid (goofing around at Act 1/2 or with ObjectPlace). Now that I'm not dumb enought to not be able to get past the first boss I felt like actually playing the game, but then I recalled that I always dreamed about playing SRB2 with custom chars but as a dumb/regular 7-8 years old I didn't manage to do so. Then I installed the Shadow.wad and OMFG I wasn't dissapointed! It was sooo great and fun til' I figured that I couldn't save/collect stuff because I don't even know why is that a thing (I've read that devs said that you're not supposed to play the game with op chars, but still, idk). Fast forward 1 week of trying to compile the modified source code using the Wiki as a guide, which doesn't work because god-knows-why and then another 2 hours today of trying to register here because of that "random question" part of the registration that is just dumb cuz it doesn't tell you what to do, it's just a random phrase. 2 hours of furious google search and irl rage til it came to my mind that it wasnt simply saying the asnwer, instead I had to rewrite it correctly. *rage scream*

Ok, way better now.
Back to the point: Can someone help me with compiling? I tried the Makefiles method (the only one with a walk-throught), I have MinGW and NASM, but on the Command Line part, when I put the compiling code, I get an error message. Can't copy paste it because it's not in english but it's something along the lines of: "mingw32-make isn't recognized as an internal or external command"

......I just want to play SRB2 as Shadow
......Please help.​

 

[742mph]

SRB2 modifications can instruct the game to save data in a file that's separate from the one used by the unmodified game. If you want to save the game as Shadow, get yourself a WAD editor (preferably SLADE), open up Shadow.wad, and modify the MAINCFG lump to use a custom save file. Information on how to do that can be found here. If your Shadow.wad is different from everyone else's, you won't be able to play online multiplayer with it, but you can always just save the modified file with a different name.

 

[Dragonic]

SRB2 modifications can instruct the game to save data in a file that's separate from the one used by the unmodified game.

But if I ever remove Shadow's wad or add another, the save will go with it. Also I can't get collectables... So it's no good.

 

[742mph]

Custom save files allow you to get collectibles, and they don't disappear if you restart the game or add another WAD. If you add your modified Shadow.wad, start playing through the game as Shadow, close the game, start the game again, and add the modified Shadow.wad again, you can pick up right where you left off. You'd be doing the same thing that a level pack WAD like Mystic Realm does, except without actually adding any levels.

 

[Dragonic]

You'd be doing the same thing that a level pack WAD like Mystic Realm does, except without actually adding any levels.

Hm... I can try that later. Rn I'm really tired.
But even then, I'd like to know how to compile the source code, for future reference.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and if I edit the wad, with it loaded if I play with the vanilla characters, will it save too? Bummer if I have to unload it every time I want to play with others...

 

[742mph]

You can still save with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles using a custom save file, yes, but it won't transfer over to the vanilla game's save file. After you load your modified Shadow WAD, it's as if you're playing "SRB2 except Shadow's in it" rather than SRB2 itself.

 

[Dragonic]

Thanks, I'll try.
...but still want to learn how to compile.

Gotta go now

 

[amperbee]

While you still want to learn how to compile, I'd say it's far easier to make the WAD save in a different file than touching the source code just to remove the "don't save on modified game" flag, if that is the only thing you want to modify in the game.

The only disadvantage with it is that you can't use the modified Shadow WAD for multiplayer, but you can rename it to something related to singleplayer like "ShadowSP" or similar, while having the normal Shadow WAD for multiplayer next to it with its original filename.

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

From what I can understand, Dragonic wants to be able to load Shadow and other character WADs, play with them, and save singleplayer game saves and emblem collection with them, then maybe have a different set-up of custom characters or even none at all and still play with the same set of saves (as in not having separate save data in general for vanilla and custom stuff), not specifically "only with Shadow loaded and always with Shadow loaded".

To this I say... be aware Sonic Robo Blast 2 will crash if you even just "hover over" a save file in singleplayer that was made with a skin number besides the loaded ones (like 0/1 for Sonic, 1/2 for Tails, 2/3 for Knuckles, 3/4 for the first custom character to be loaded, 4/5 for the next, etcetera, depending on whether you start counting at 0 or 1, meaning if you'd load Shadow and Silver, save games with them, and then load Silver and Shadow the next time, their saves will have the characters swapped, or if you'd hover a save with skin 3/4 without having 4 characters in the game, Sonic Robo Blast 2 will crash when trying to draw the life icon).

I also say you should start off playing the singleplayer campaign completely vanilla-y, doing it with Tails first, then Knuckles, then Sonic (or Sonic + Tails), with no custom things loaded, and then once a few secrets and such have been unlocked, one could start playing with custom things, but if sticking to the vanilla campaign, without being able to save stuff and such.

The game... well, sure, it's made with custom characters in mind and supports them, but it's not made for custom characters. Custom characters are made for the game, not the other way around, and change the game a lot (Shadow does this extremely much), of course to the point that save data shouldn't be saved, even if one wants to.

 

[amperbee]

If you still want to compile your own SRB2 exe file despite some of the problems presented here and the alternative I gave, well, you need mingw32-make. That's why you get that error in CMD.
Here's a link for instructions to install it:
http://www.mingw.org/wiki/getting_started

Sorry if I can't get more in depth. Mobile sucks.

 

[Dragonic]

you need mingw32-make. That's why you get that error in CMD.

I do have MinGw, but it doesn't install anything, it just created a file on the directory without space in the name. I also installed NASM thing that the wiki says is required...