Least Favorite Things in SRB2

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NeonSonik15

NeonSonik15

TheRetroRenegade
(Excluding Egg Rock, because I'm sure everyone has things they don't like in Egg Rock)
I don't really have anything to say here, but I'm sure you guys do.
 
Co-operative multiplayer making players respawn with 0 rings (rather than 5 or something), while all rings in front of them may or may not have been taken by other people or even themselves in a past life, potentially giving them no security against enemies after respawning.
(Unless item respawning is enabled, which players can abuse far more easily, by just backtracking to past rings if they've taken damage or just staying in place to collect the same ring over and over to get enough to go Super and/or get more extra lives, making item respawning not be quite flawless.)

Also a lack of an "infinite lives" option, at least for co-operative multiplayer sessions. (In the case of co-operative multiplayer sessions, you can set the default extra lives upon joining to be 99... but it's still not exactly infinite.)
Considering that a lives system doesn't reward skill, only punish a lack of it, I would disable the lives system if I could (especially when playing with a friend of mine less experienced with the game than myself).
 
There's a few things:
  • Holding spin while landing doesn't automatically make you roll when you hit the ground.
  • You have to be in the air to retain any sort of momentum, in this way the game sort of feels like Sonic 1 with its rediculously low speedcap.
  • Analog doesn't have proper support, it's lacking things such as the camera being able to be manipulated by a linedef and tagged object, you are unable to properly pan the camera without fifty billion AWAYVIEW whatevers otherwise, you can't modify the camera directly via Lua, etc.
  • Tails' AI sucks, it doesn't follow you around consistently and it doesn't jump. If it were based more on a basic input and position recording from Sonic, like how Sonic 2 pulled it off, then it would work better.
  • Thok is OP, requires level designers to design around it's overpoweredness instead of designing around a unique ability or how far you can go with it, plus it discourages people from playing the other two characters in the game.
  • The camera (currently) doesn't take slopes into account; If you go down a slope the camera gets shoved up Sonic's ass, if you run up a slope the camera makes no effort to follow you. This is Sonic Robo Blast 2, not Sonic's Ass Game.
  • GFZ1 feels very unfocused in how its paths interweave and intertwine, it's cool for exploration but not good for beginners trying to get a feel for how the game will try to lead them. GFZ2 ironically is more focused (to the point of complete linearity) which is better at guiding the player on where they will go. I'm not saying the entire game should be made to have as linear level design as GFZ2, but not having every path seemingly connect to itself would be better.
  • Slopes do nothing to affect the player's speed outside of going up unless you're rolling (in which case you can hardly control your movement), this gives levels a more vertical orientation which is nice but no reason to bring the level back down unless you use a really straight path. I think Sonic should feel like a roller coaster that you control yourself in some regard.
  • You can not currently use models in software. I know the fear was that simply adding them would degrade the framerate so much that it would slow to a crawl on basic stages, but it seems to work fine as long as the draw distance is toned down to 4096.
I don't know if these will ever get fixed for vanilla but I can only hope...
 
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I'm not gonna bother talking about the netcode.
>SSNTails' Sonic doesn't have a tail.
>SRB2 levels tend to lack a lot of "flow". When I say "flow" I mean feeling like you're manipulating the character's momentum to go where you want to go, without losing any speed in the process. Whether this is due to engine limitations, the physics, etc. I don't know.
>SRB2 doesn't have a great hosting scene, probably because everyone's gone to kart. The only servers that are regularly populated are a hangout server, and a couple of servers that repack wads to hell and back. But I suppose this is more a problem with the community than SRB2 itself...
>Rumia already said this, but slopes barely influence your momentum at all. They're basically stairs 2.
>I actually find myself using first person a lot outside of ringslinger. Maybe that's because the third person camera feels too attached to the character, maybe it's because the stages are just cramped in general. Who knows?


It was actually kinda hard to come up with this list. Maybe I like SRB2 too much :p
 
About the Tails bot AI:

[18:59] Kitoko (kitofox): honestly @CobaltBW the fact that the bot code is so limited in itself ruins the motive to want to script proper AI for it, it makes me instead want to go through the effort to script my own object with the same properties of a player and then control that instead
[19:02] Kitoko (kitofox): without a proper bot to code AI, theres no ability to code the AI, and without the ability to code AI, there's no way to jusify a highly functional bot, this being eternally stuck in a catch-22 limbo
Click to expand...

Basically, the Tails bot in Single Player is almost (before someone jumps at me saying you can use him to fly yourself with 2P controls) completely useless. If we're gonna have actual programmable player AI in the game it has no reasons to be purposefully locked as a purely aesthetic trinket.

Rumia1 said:
[*]Analog doesn't have proper support
Click to expand...

I don't think it is supposed to have support in the first place, given that it's being hidden from 2.2 on because (quoting multiple devs) SRB2 isn't optimally played with an analog camera like other Sonic games.
 
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Oh boy, let me make a list:

  • GIF Recording that assumes a framerate of 35fps: Like, how hard is it really to change the speed of a frame?
  • GIF Recording that doesn't handle Flashpals: /Please/ use local palettes for frames in GIFs.
  • Lua that can't save data: Alright, this one is nitpicking, and this should be fixed as soon as I/O gets implemented in a vanilla version. Aaaaany month now.
  • Single Player only Emblems: Okay, look. Topdown had a good thing here. At least consider this as an option for map packs, okay? Please?
  • Threads that essentially become secondary suggestion threads: ...Yep.
  • The fact that the suggestion thread hasn't been sorted through, and split into multiple threads, such as Implemented suggestions, Gameplay Suggestions, Suggestions possible in Lua, Considered Suggestions, Rejected Suggestions, and New Suggestions, where people will now post.

Though, as an actual thing ingame that I dislike, I'd have to say... the absurd knockback on particular weapon rings.
 
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PencilVoid said:
>SRB2 levels tend to lack a lot of "flow". When I say "flow" I mean feeling like you're manipulating the character's momentum to go where you want to go, without losing any speed in the process. Whether this is due to engine limitations, the physics, etc. I don't know.
Click to expand...
I actually think the game does a pretty good job at maintaining a good "flow" in most levels even with the way the engine works. Being familiar with the layouts and using the strafe keys properly lets you run through stages like GFZ, ACZ, RVZ and even ERZ1 without much stopping. As long as there are no super sharp turns or overly cramped spaces, playing through a familiar level is a smooth enough experience.
 
Eh, I may as well put in my two cents.

  • Knuckles can't turn Super in Single Player (Honestly, Super Knuckles works really well in Single Player and possibly a good choice for players who want to practice using a Super Character)
  • You can't thok with Sonic if you have 50 Rings and 7 Chaos Emeralds, trying to do so will trigger Super Sonic
  • Egg Rock Zone Act 2's laser section at the end (like in Flying Battery Zone Act 2) is so buggy and slow and either needs to be improved or removed entirely (in OpenGL, it disappears when it moves and sometimes glides across when it fires its beam, making it impossible to dodge)
  • The multicrusher section in Egg Rock Zone Act 1 is a royal pain in the ass due to the crushers blocking the camera and ultimately making you bump into walls and getting you killed. This problem is even worse sometimes with Super Sonic, even though he's fast enough to outrun these crushers, there is little room to move around, and with the camera issue as previously mentioned, it's just a fustercluck of issues. I always resort to going around by using Tails' route, but I feel like a cheater when I do that.
Yes, I know the OP said excluding Egg Rock, but I've been holding in these gripes for too long and I need to say these now or I'll never get the chance.
 
Yes, I know the OP said excluding Egg Rock, but I've been holding in these gripes for too long and I need to say these now or I'll never get the chance.
Click to expand...

Alright, I'll let it slide.
 
Looks like someone already mentioned it but I might aswell mention it again, DSZ Boss. I genuinely think this is the hardest boss in the game, even harder than the Final Boss.

I can't find stuff to complain about personally, guess I really like SRB2 lol.
 
Tangents


No Super Sonic button - Fault carried over from the classics for no reason.

Framerate - I don't mean the 35FPS cap(though 60+ would be great), I mean it's easy for the game to stutter with skyboxes or slightly large/detailed enviroments. OpenGL usually fixes this, buuuuut.....

OpenGL barely supported - We can emulate Software's "retro" style, yet for some reason we still main Software when OpenGL has more possibilities. It's got better performance on today's hardware, and when there's more options on what you can render on-screen, there's more creativity for developers, both for vanilla SRB2 and mods.

CEZ3 Boss - Boring fight where you wait out the boss for eons. Plus, Tails/Knux can cheese it altogether by waiting on the outter ring.

Metal Sonic Boss - Awkward stumble where you "fight" Metal as slowly as possible to avoid bouncing into the electricity or death pit. Then you wait eons for him to invincibly spaz around. It drags on.

Character Balance - We balance Match/CTF stages to have exclusive sections for Tails and Knux, and we even threw out Circuit for them. Yet in Single Player, they make the campaign easier than even Super Sonic. So here's my suggestion: if we accept Tails and Knuckles will make the campaign easier no matter what, we can focus on buffing these characters into ACTUALLY being equal to Sonic in competitions, where balance matters.

We COULD just nerf Sonic, but then we have a slow unfun game that only lets us go fast when the stage is specially designed for it. It'd be similar to forceskinning Knuckles in the old Circuit maps. Or watching a marathon starring the elderly in wheelchairs. Or like droplets of paint on the wall racing to dry the fastest. The thok's the only way to sneak speed into ANY level no matter the design. And I don't see why Tails or Knuckles have to be so excruciatingly slow. Ideally we give every vanilla character an FSonic speedboost mechanic, and leave Sonic's thok exactly as it is. Everyone will be fast and thus fun to play, but Sonic can go fast instantly while the others can fly.

With everyone pretty fast, I'd suggest to increase the size of the attacks in Match/CTF to compensate. A bigger bombring explosion, a growing bounce ring, an autoring firing 2 rings side-by-side at the same ring-cost, a larger red ring, and the rail ring can get more ammo.


 
Sonic's RVZ route. The Orbinaut placement there is just awful, especially before the springs when it gets back to the main path.
 
There is no "sonic RVZ route." Learn how to thok across, kek.

Let's see... my personal least favorite part of the game is the way ringslinger currently works. Panel hell.
 
I MAY have a few things wrong

Sonic and Tails' sprites are incredibly flawed.
The animations that Sonic has are incredibly awkward and unnatural.
Tails, less so, but the awkwardness is still there.

SRB2's palette sucks. It's the opposite of vibrant and colorful. The color choices are incredibly limiting, Hue Shifting be damned. The individual colorramps have either too much highlights and not enough shadows, or the exact inverse of said problem.

SRB2 makes a lot of choices editing-wise, that make no sense and are obtuse. If a ZDOOM mapper/modder wanted to map/make a mod for this game, they would have to jump through numerous hurdles that probably shouldn't even be there otherwise. (Granted, this point will soon be moot as once 2.2 comes out, and when UDMF gets added into SRB2, most of these issues will become irrelevant)


Both software and OGL have their own problems, but neither is better than the other; They're both terrible.

Software's problems come down to dependence on the already terrible palette, which makes dark areas unnecessarily hard to navigate and can ruin visual fidelity once transparency comes onto the scene.

OGL's defiance of the palette makes Software's issues disappear, but makes some new ones in the process. A bunch of effects SRB2 has are instantly ruined by OGL's different rendering techniques, and none of the fog options are any good.
 
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