Some questions for the SRB2 staff/devs

[time gear]

Some of these questions might have been asked and answered before, and I apologize if that's the case, but there's a few things I am curious about that I am hoping you guys could find the time to answer. If not, it's not really a big deal. I also don't consider it important that every single question be answered. With that out of the way, my questions are as follows:

• How long prior to 2.2 was it planned to have unlockable playable characters, and what did the decision making process look like for choosing who those characters would be?
• Was it a difficult decision to make when you reached the point that you committed to re-doing most of the level design entirely for the 2.2 update?
• What sort of design mentality goes into developing new, original badniks?
• What is the design philosophy that is used to make each Zone unique and interesting?
• What sort of mentality is followed when structuring the difficulty curve of the main campaign?
• Sonic's Thok has become iconic over the past few decades in association with the game. Are there any plans to change it, remove it, or give it to a different character instead of Sonic? If so, why?
• Circuit is no longer available in the vanilla version of the game. Is there any chance of SRB2 Kart being implemented into the final version of SRB2 as a replacement? Or would you rather keep the two things separate?

 

[Jaco4126]

here is some questions I have as well.
Why did you use the doom engine?
Why did you want to make the special stages like the game Nights?
Was the creator of srb1 ever involved with the project?
When the game started development, it used the sprites from sonic Xtreme, even today, it looks like some of sonics sprites take inspiration from the canceled game, is there any specific reason for this?

 

[toaster]

Former dev here.

• The ancient TUDD from 1998 had Eggman as an unlockable character, so it was from the start. However, this didn't evolve into its current form or get serious until 2.1 was released and the decision was make to make Fang a miniboss in ACZ2 (later moved to act 3 for sanity reasons) was locked in (mid/early 2014). Metal Sonic was an obvious choice after Fang was selected, and abilities were developed from the characters, rather than abilities built and assigned. When more than one unlockable character was picked, the decision was made to go for three; there was no obvious third option so both Espio and Mighty were considered before Amy was settled on for having a pre-existing, reasonable quality spriteset and for acting as a gender counterbalance.
• Deep level revamps were mostly a consequence of slopes in 2015, or were happening anyways thanks to Nev3r. No level was decided on for a revamp just because of the characters.
• The enemies need to serve different roles and put competing pressures on you. CEZ is a good example of this; Robo Hoods and Sir Lanceabot punish staying still and pressure you to move, while maces and Egg Guards deny you opportunities of escape or movement without putting yourself in danger or pushing you back. RVZ is the only other zone designed with these principles in mind, and it shows - the Pterabytes being a beacon of fear to everyone who thinks of them, and the Pyre Flies slowly closing in to ruin your life alongside the guillotine lava fall hazards.
• Pass, wouldn't be able to give a good answer.
• CEZ being more intense than the start of ACZ is intentional. GFZ being piss easy is intentional. Brambles as a non-death pit floor hazard were picked for CEZ just so it wouldn't be so death pit reliant, since ACZ is meant to be the start of that en vogue. RVZ's lava killing your rings is delightfully devilish. Otherwise I dunno what to say for this.
• Metal Sonic was considered to have the thok at one point, but ultimately inertia is what keeps Sonic's moveset from changing.
• No, It's been floated, but the Krew want to remain independent, and the entire engine's been hacked to pieces and wouldn't be directly cross -compatible for a merger.

I'll leave the second post's questions for SSNTails or Mystic or some other oldbie :P

 

[time gear]

Thank you, your answers are generally quite detailed and informative.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Was the creator of srb1 ever involved with the project?

Yes, he was involved at the very beginning so I believe. He's still listed in SRB2's credits today as one of the game's designers, as "Sonikku". Not sure when he retired though, but it was long before I became a member of this community so I'm aware.

That said, Sonikku still pops in occasionally to see how we're doing, especially recently on Discord.