Mr Beagle's adventures in Zone Builder.

[Mr Beagle]

I have not posted anything in over a year, now to summarize the state of the pack at the start of 2026.

First off, WIP shots that have been posted to the Discord before, but placed here for archival purposes. Showcasing some instances of new work that is not in a released version.

Euclideon Madness Zone is close to completion. The portal-based mechanics and the tank army set piece with Snoopy helping you destroy them is operating as they should. You can actually stand back at the set piece until most of the tanks are destroyed actually, if you are not trying to set time records that is.

QFZ in general received a bit of new texture work as well (a unique texture for ceilings as you can see in the screenshot).

EWZ Act 2 is progressing, some texture edits have been done, but most of the work has been applied to the layout. EWZ Act 1 received a minor refactor to the more powerful 'workbenches' as the old FoF-based springing was replaced with a Lua linedef action (tested meticulously to ensure the bounce power was as close as possible to before).

The discovery that the mobnum value for custom assets in UDMF can go to 64K now means that all projectiles, debris, VFX, and special objects from this point forward will be in the 5000 range (so as to not feel like I am constrained in a bid to keep everything working and not override something I should not). I believe knowing this will be important for pack making going forward so as to avoid cases where things like the addition of custom characters by other people and any objects added to SRB2 itself will not cause bugs, I know I can do this now but there are a lot of custom assets that will need the search and replace treatment, so it will need to be done carefully.

Overall, no major difficulties I can think of outside of what I already have had to encounter before. With Quantic Funhouse and Electric Workbench having fully functional bosses and fully functional NiGHTS stages, it is only EWZ2 and Workbench Wackiness that need completion yet before everything before Mindian Mazen feels solid.

 

[Mr Beagle]

Pondering once again whether to just wait until the new SRB2 release (since it appears pretty clear now that there will be one more before 2.3).

In the meantime, work on EWZ2 is ongoing and is where most of the work is other than reworked texturing throughout the zones to allow for the use of texture scaling. There are more advanced applications of Lua actions coming to create scenarios such as these.

Unless you are lucky enough to have kept an attraction shield from much earlier in the act, finding the buttons so you can turn the floors off will be important. The basement of doom concept in the second shot is also slated to be seen more in Workbench Wackiness once progress resumes there.

EMZ meanwhile is about done, or very close to being done, but my preference is that everything before Mindian Mazen is going to be complete before releasing again.

 

[Mr Beagle]

Progress is going smoothly and EWZ2 has come far.

I am far closer now to its final layout than even a month ago. WWZ will then be the only major thing before the campaign can be seen as complete before Mindian Mazen, barring revisits to earlier zones for farther improvements or layout changes.

 

[Mr Beagle]

Soon. The major additions are about done, and it is now about polish, optimization, and testing.

Yes, Lawn World got a bit of attention amid retexturing with texture scaling in mind, finding a collection of longstanding oversights and smaller issues that were fixed along the way (allowing the marble for instance to get a lot closer to the cream color I wanted without the mistake of trying to force it into the palette). The outdoor stone paths went through the same treatment, creating a bit more color even though the render engine of focus continues to be Software due to the dependance on features exclusive to it). Lawn World also saw a notable layout change where the roundabout path at the start now leads directly to the alternative path added soon after UDMF came into SRB2, eliminating the possibility of being turned around since the return to the main path no longer exists.

The entire pack up to Mindian Mazen Act 1 is very complete now (with the exception of perhaps 1 major zone that may be yet to come and a few bonus maps). Considering the possible proximity to SRB2 2.3, any new pack is very unlikely to be started in favor of continuing to expand this one (Creative Worlds is enough work as far as maintaining goes since mapping is not the only thing I do).

 

[Mr Beagle]

Okay, playtesting the complete Electric Workbench Act 2, Euclidean Madness and Workbench Wackiness zones is showing that everything works good enough to complete them.

Also fixed a couple more oversights and issues in EWZ 2, EMZ, and even Lawn World relating to things like the new textures and linedef executors having issues with setup that do not show up in isolation.

I am almost to the point where I am ready to duck and hope the launch of the new version goes well (providing I suddenly do not add new todo items), if I was not cautious, then I would've released it by now. The pack is not at all a small upload anymore and I want to be courteous for the bandwidth here.

 

[Mr Beagle]

Mindian Mazen Act 1 is out of the early preview stage. In addition, texture scaling is being used more in older zones, and many custom assets are being moved to the slots that are only possible in UDMF (for the purpose of reducing and/or eliminating possible conflicts with things like character mods for starters).

Considering how it is becoming easier to extend zone layouts, I have been doing a little work extending Lawn World Act 1 at least (not in a huge way yet, just making sure the house at the end gives more of an impression of going to it rather than it being right there). This also meant a slight extension to Amy and Fang's route nearby as well.

Screens.

As mentioned before, no new zone types for now, with refactoring, polish, and updates for what is there being the priority until Mindian Mazen is finished. It can be tricky enough to keep everything organized and functional as is.

 

[Mr Beagle]

Mindian Mazen Act1 is seeing progress, but got sidetracked with sprucing up and modernizing the designs of Broadside Cliffs and Broadside Ascent to fully utilize the latest features.

An extended ending to Act1 to better justify the last starpost's existence (just like with Lawn World Act 1).

What appeared to be an inaccessible path is now part of the left route (to improve directioning), you now turn to go through a cave and come into view going through what used to be just impassible decoration. Yes, I did fix the horizon rendering for the skybox.

New texturing in spots to reduce sameness in the base areas.

Texture scaling is being employed here as well, as well as fixing every glitch and oversight that I stumble across as well (which is very much a given due to how complex these maps are for how early on they were). Like with Lawn World, there has also been optimization in FoF stacking which leads to no visual changes except better framerates).

In addition, the emblem inside the outhouse is a little trickier to get to and a bit more out of the way, the player detection loop in Lua (that activates the massive brute crawla in Broadside Ascent) has also been replaced by a simpler Lua linedef action as an optimization (that map can use every optimization that can be thrown at it still, and knowing where is a major reason why I tend to play at a significantly higher screen resolution than the default).

Mindian Mazen also finally brings in the red version of the custom buzz as well (because I needed something more for the dry areas than just the plant spike shooter).

 

[Mr Beagle]

MMZ1 is making progress, I now have a layout that can potentially be regarded as final or close to it.

Again, increasingly complex zone design, and it looks to me like the default action for buzzes appear to be a little glitchy when combined with sprite scaling (I checked the sprite orientations and they are correct). This can be remedied with custom logic if no other solution comes up. A lot of potential for polish yet, and combined with other changes in other zones mean I can't just release quickly.

The companion NiGHTS level is going fine as well, finally breaking out of the template shared by all of the others at one point (though the layout is very far from final).

My time at the moment has been split with other interests (perhaps on the hopes that 2.2.16 with all of its bugfixes and quality improvements so far will end up being on the verge of release, though the pack has not been made dependent on it so far).

 

[Mr Beagle]

Started on polish and fixes for MMZ 1. The issue with the red buzzes was simply a matter of forgetting to switch one of the mentions of the sprite for the yellow buzz (the code was copied from that badnik). False alarm for any actual bug here.

Though in the spirit of doing new effects and layout tricks with Software, this was one area that required investigation regarding what resembled slime trails in reverse (due to being below the horizon for the water FoF causing it, making the trail go up instead of down).

After some false leads in trying to solve it, it was ultimately done by just reducing precision in vertex placement where possible and adding more detail to try to get the sectors to subdivide differently. As the moment, all of the major issues I can think of in this zone are about solved now (though more might come up in testing since more work needs to be done yet in areas such as shadowing).