Circuit Returns - The Cooler Edition (costarring the Stat Adjuster)

[TehRealSalt]

Circuit Returns, and it's okay. Originally a pet project/experiment meant to be kept for myself, but it turned out good enough for me to both work on it for months on end and release it. It also brought it's cousin, the Stat Adjuster. You can ditch him by setting "statadjuster off" in the console, but he's actually a nice guy once you get to know him. He normally doesn't interact with custom characters, but you can force him to by setting "statadjuster override". If you don't happen to like Circuit, he also has a standalone version.

Also, since I was unable to get all names of everyone involved with the maps, please contact me so I can properly credit you~

Spoiler: Balancing your custom character and you!

These are the collection of tests I did for testing Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles; documented here for anyone hoping to balance their own characters! NOTE: If you want the stat adjuster to adjust your character, then set "player.statadjust" to "true" for them.

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BEFORE TESTING: If you think my times for Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are a bit too low for your standards, then for the purposes of your tests, do three runs on all the maps in the tests below, one for Sonic, Tails and Knuckles each, and take the median of their times. Add 2 seconds to this median, and this is the maximum allowed time. Then, subtract 2 seconds from the median, and this will be the minimum allowed time. Don't worry about doing this, however. I'm saying how to do this for anyone who doesn't want to try to balance it around my times.

Also, as a general rule of thumb: the higher top speed, the less acceleration and vertical mobility. Sonic has the highest speed, so low accel and his thok is completely horizontal, but while Tails has the lowest speed, he has the highest accel (with statadjuster on at least :Y) and his ability is, uh, fly.


TEST 1: With the stat adjuster on, ensure your character can beat ERZ3. There is no specific time to aim for, just make sure they can beat it. If not, then something definitely needs changed.


TEST 2: Complete GFZ1 with the stat adjuster on, and without abilities or spindash. Only running and jumping to the goal through the quickest path. This is to test to make sure that the player's speed is balanced. If it goes under/over the time listed, then something should be done there. It's possible for the ability to even out the balancing of the character's speed, but it's simply easier to balance if top speed and acceleration are good.

Greenflower 1 (no spindash or ability run): 0:18-0:22
S: 0:19
T: 0:21
K: 0:20


TEST 3: The Circuit maps themselves. Get as many as possible close to the bounds specified, but do realize that some of the maps themselves need improvements and/or are balanced more for the main three and not custom characters. Just do your best~

Race Alley: 1:32-1:36
S: 1:34
T: 1:33
K: 1:34

Emerald Coast: 1:00-1:04
S: 1:02
T: 1:00
K: 1:02

Endless Woods: 1:25-1:29
S: 1:27
T: 1:27
K: 1:28

Burning Sands: 1:14-1:18 (the worst balanced map)
S: 1:15
T: 1:17
K: 1:25

Corrupt Shrine: 1:04-1:08
S: 1:06
T: 1:06
K: 1:05

Molten Citadel: 1:28-1:32
S: 1:29
T: 1:31
K: 1:31

Metallic Corridor: 1:22-1:26
S: 1:24
T: 1:24
K: 1:23

Heavenly Pass: 1:09-1:13
S: 1:10
T: 1:11
K: 1:11

Dread Valley: 1:30-1:34
S: 1:30
T: 1:31
K: 1:34

Egg Hall: 1:45-1:49
S: 1:48
T: 1:47
K: 1:46

Cyan Caves: 1:22-1:26
S: 1:23
T: 1:24
K: 1:26

Thunder Factory: 2:39-2:43
S: 2:40
T: 2:42
K: 2:41

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Below are a handful of characters I tried out myself (with statadjuster set to override). I also try giving some advice on balancing them better; I'll leave it up to the creators themselves if they want to do it though, as doing it myself is beyond the scope of the project.

Best for Circuit:
Shadow - While my times technically go above the 'maximum' that I usually allow, I think he's balanced by that he's tough to master. The only change I would suggest would be removing his higher jumpfactor, since he's strong enough without it. (Too good at Metallic Corridor, Dread Valley. Bad at Emerald Coast and Egg Hall.)

Jasper - Overall balanced and fun to play. His speed and vertical mobility combined, however, makes him a bit too good at some maps. (Too good at Race Alley, Heavenly Pass, and Dread Valley. Bad at Emerald Coast, Metallic Corridor, and Egg Hall.)

Rosy - Poor performance on some maps, and there's not really any maps that she is exceptional at. But it's just fun to bounce around the maps and slam-dive into springs, so who cares~ (Bad at Emerald Coast, Metallic Corridor, Egg Hall, and Thunder Factory.)

Cream - Holdfly is both better and worse than normal flight, so well-balanced. (Too good at Race Alley. Bad at Molten Citadel.)

Tails CD - Tails, but with better flight. The different flight mechanics also balances him slightly better than normal Tails. I actually wanted to ask permission to replace normal flight with Tails CD's, but the flight code is a bit too large for what I wanted to stay a bite-sized Lua file and the normal flight doesn't exactly ruin balance or anything, so I decided against it.

The "potential" crew:
Metal Sonic - His speed is already incredible, but his jump boost ability AND higher jumpfactor lets him take shortcuts that he shouldn't be able to. Maybe if his jump boost was gone and/or his jumpfactor was back to normal he'd be fine...?

Mighty - He's okay. He's about as fast as Knuckles (because of how pathetically low his acceleration is, his slightly higher top speed barely means anything), but he can't get to all of his shortcuts, so he lags behind the rest on nearly every map. If only he had just a bit more speed to him, he'd be able to keep up.

Blaze - Can't really keep up. Her speed is close to Tails, but she doesn't have nearly as much vertical mobility as him, so same problem as Mighty. Same creator as Mighty, too...

Jet - He can use his boost during the starting countdown. Was going to test him, since his ability seems like a perfect fit for Circuit, but it's not worth doing if that never gets fixed.

Spoiler: Changelog

Version 1.0.1:

• Took Wolfy's suggestion; the stat adjuster no longer adjusts custom characters by default. You can force all characters to use it by setting it to "override".
• Corrupt Shrine Zone's checkpoint no longer traps you if you die in the proceeding area.
• Extremely small tweaks to floor heights in various levels. They should be so minor that they do not affect records very much.
• Inuyasha gave me more information on who made what back in 2.0; the credits in the MAINCFG have been updated accordingly.

Version 1.0.0:

• Initial release.

 

[wolfs]

First things first, every map in this pack played just fine. No Lua errors or anything either, even on a Git build. Sweet! From looking at the code though, I would advise using strict restrictions by skin to avoid screwing over most custom characters designed with their own balance set. Not all of them are going to know to disable your stat adjust with that variable, and it's probably safer to handle things the other way, as in, only enabling stat adjust for characters that do have the variable set.

(The following is entirely my opinion. Nothing wrong with the work you did, this is just how I feel about it.)

Circuit seems to have had a weird history with SRB2, and this pack gives me all sorts of those vibes from before. Despite me not noticing, I've been reminded that you have indeed modified some of the maps. Now I'm not all TOO familiar with the originals, so I can't really tell how much of a difference the changes make for balancing. I don't see any problems with them aside from a few encouraging thokfests.

The real meat of this pack seems to be the nifty stat adjuster you've included here. After seeing your times on IRC, I was really interested in just what kind of modifications could make that sort of balance possible. So, I finally got my hands on it, and to be honest, I was a little disappointed. In my own trials at least, Sonic trumps the other two most of the time, even with his weakened thok. The changes in acceleration done to Tails are pretty sweet, while Knuckles pretty much just felt the same as before. I like the changes to spindash at least. Not too powerful, nor too weak. I will say that I think Tails and Knuckles do need buffs to their primary abilities, as using them makes them way too slow to catch up to Sonic most of the time, even while following all the correct shortcuts. I can see you tried something for Knuckles, but messing with Tails' flying is a little weird. The game force-sets Tails' flight speed to his normalspeed while he's not gaining height. If you wanted to change that, you'd need to up his normalspeed when he flies. I think your raw stat adjustments are all fine, but when you factor in abilities, things start falling apart.

Still, I think it's great that you actually attempted to balance this horribly broken gamemode. While I don't really see the balance as all too effective, I'm sure there's more that could be done. I can see that you put a lot of effort into this, but it's really just not something I can call fully balanced.


With that being said, nice work, and welcome to releases.

 

[TehRealSalt]

(i somehow knew i'd regret showing it off in irc; might've buildt up some peoples' expectations too much :s)

In all honesty, I can't actually recall the changes in this pack that I made that encourage thokfests. (Unless if you're talking about Molten Citadel (formally known as Hazard Citadel in my old horrible Skybase Circuit pack that I really regret, and before that Toxic Citadel) since that version had a bunch of spikes added everywhere. I reverted that since I placed them haphazardly; I might consider trying those again.) If you could expand upon that, I'd appreciate it~

Other than though, I absolutely agree with what you had to say. Circuit's fundamentally broken, and while I am proud of the start I made, it definitely isn't enough. Knuckles technically has a slightly higher than average accelstart as an attempt to make up for his low jump and the dumb glide slide, but it's hardly noticeable. Although it is possible to overtake Sonic with Tails or Knux (I can in most maps, it's tough to tell what is the optimal route, ex. the "shortcut" at the start of Thunder Factory is only worth taking if you want the item in there; it actually wastes time most of the time), Sonic's clearly the go-to since he doesn't need any effort to really use.

One of the things I did later on in the projects life was I threw out most of the Sonic changes since I felt like changing the character that most people go to straight away in any gamemode would alienate some people. I'm think next version I should just twist peoples' hands (least, those who'd care) and go on with changing him anyways.

What I really want to do is get rid of all the shortcuts in every single map, balance it as much as i can without those shortcuts, and then only add in ones that are truly necessary, but I was worried that would be a huge undertaking... maybe I should start pushing myself to do that eventually, but I need a little break from Circuit first. :v

Anyways, thank you for your well thought-out opinion! Main reason I released this while there were still untied ends was simply that I can't just balance it for myself. Getting feedback from other than myself and my own time trials is very important!

 

[MK.exe]

Best thing to be retrieved from 2.0 imo.

I tried all the maps but the one I seemed to be slightly discoraged about is the use of the acid texture for Corrupted shrine.

Couldn't you just used the original toxic purple water? Because the thought of acid as an instant kill mechanic. Nonetheless the idea of circuit race maps are great!

 

[K.S.]

Even if we go back to using acid in the main game, it's going to be damaging and not instant-kill. I don't think a single person on the dev team past present or future likes or has ever liked that "gimmick".

I'm not so sure if it works well in that stage though, but that's probably just my rose-tinted glasses or something.

 

[Spectorious]

It's nice to see these old maps again, and many of the issues with the original maps have been addressed here, good job! :3

 

[sluggard]

Nice work, it's nice to get them back, and even better with all needed changes and Balance improvements (Yes, balance is all you guys needed to modify, not remove the levels completely :( ) .

 

[Prime 2.0]

Even if we go back to using acid in the main game, it's going to be damaging and not instant-kill. I don't think a single person on the dev team past present or future likes or has ever liked that "gimmick".

Honestly, with rare exception I just thought of it as a different coat of paint on a regular death pit. 90% of the time it functions that way - the only time it's any different is if you put in some vertical motion, in which case it's usually an instant death guillotine hazard. The ability to do a sandopolis 2-esque rising death segment was probably the most exciting thing about it, but that's been done better in other ways since

It's not intrinsically bad or anything, it's just nothing special. That's not good enough to break an informal rule of the game over, though.

 

[NotablyPrettyCrazy]

I think i found a bug.

Atleast one of the checkpoints in Corrupt Shrine causes you to spawn under the intended map.

 

[TehRealSalt]

Already known, was holding off to see if anyone reported anything else, or if I finished my changes for the next version... it's been a while though, so whatever its uploaded.

Spoiler: v1.0.1 Changelog

• Took Wolfy's suggestion; the stat adjuster no longer adjusts custom characters by default. You can force all characters to use it by setting it to "override".
• Corrupt Shrine Zone's checkpoint no longer traps you if you die in the proceeding area.
• Extremely small tweaks to floor heights in various levels. They should be so minor that they do not affect records very much.

 

[GLide KS]

How i can use stat adjuster?

 

[TehRealSalt]

Depends on what you're asking. If you want it in Circuit, then just add "r_circuitreturns_v1-0-1.wad"; it's enabled in there by default.

If you want it in other modes, add only the standalone "statadjuster_v1-0-1.lua". It's the same thing, but without the Circuit parts.

If you're asking how to make custom characters also be affected by it, then add either file and put "statadjuster override" in the console.

 

[Gamerdude]

I used to love the circuit maps back when I was new to SRB2 and I still kind of do, but I kind of wish more people would make them heck I love the concept of racing on foot in a Sonic game in general.

 

[Elyos03]

This needs to come back in 2.2

 

[Blast98]

This is a good level pack. I really enjoyed it and loved the new details added to some of the old levels. However, you could perhaps restore Frozen Night Zone.

 

[Sapheros]

I should've reported this sooner, but Dread Valley automatically crashes the game. I don't know what causes it, but it's so easily reproduce-able.

 

[VentureSonic]

I was gonna do this but I'm too late. Do you think Sonic Circuit will also be ported over?

 

[SD2C Akapera]

Ok just realized that I didn't see that the .rar had version 1.0.1 in it.

 

[sluggard]

Dread Valley Zone is crashing, It simply freezes right near start section.

 

[MK.exe]

Dread Valley Zone is crashing, It simply freezes right near start section.

Yeah i directly reported this to Salt.