[Open Assets] Swapped Amy Aerials / Spring Frames allow hammer 1.0

[clairebun]

This script contains three changes to Amy (or any character that uses CA_TWINSPIN and CA2_MELEE simultaneously):

• Amy's spring/fall frames always convert to "jump" frames, allowing her to hammer after using a spring
• The SPIN key always makes Amy use her hammer, even in the air
• The JUMP key always makes Amy use her shield ability. If Amy has no shield, the JUMP key does nothing in the air.

 

[Prime 2.0]

Welcome to Releases!


Just a note, but there seems to be a side effect: Using this, Amy can now use shield abilities off of springs.

 

[clairebun]

I noticed this, but since she can already use hammer off of springs, I decided to leave it in for the sake of intuitive consistency.

 

[pastel]

Bug: Amy has to user her spin key to jump off chains with this loaded.

 

[Zanda_Sama]

I'd prefer her always use hammer by pressing jump, and her shield ability is always spin. Why should she use a different button for shield abilities than the other 5 vanilla characters. It makes sense that her hammer would be jump in midair, since sonic's thok is jump in midair, tails flight is jump in midair, knuckles glide is jump in midair as well. It genuinely makes more sense to me. I guess the reason why in this lua hammer in midair is spin because hammer on the ground is spin, but that's a bullshit reason to be completely honest. Nobody's gonna "forget twinspin is jump in midair", probably why it's both jump and spin in the actual game. People say they forget what button is for Amy's hammer and what button does the whirlwind shield, but I don't have any inclination to believe them. To me it's blasphemous to forget what button does what. It's very simple, just press buttons. Again SRB2's controls aren't hard to learn its literally WASD and arrow keys for hecks sake :)

 

[time gear]

I'd prefer her always use hammer by pressing jump, and her shield ability is always spin. Why should she use a different button for shield abilities than the other 5 vanilla characters. It makes sense that her hammer would be jump in midair, since sonic's thok is jump in midair, tails flight is jump in midair, knuckles glide is jump in midair as well. It genuinely makes more sense to me. I guess the reason why in this lua hammer in midair is spin because hammer on the ground is spin, but that's a bullshit reason to be completely honest. Nobody's gonna "forget twinspin is jump in midair", probably why it's both jump and spin in the actual game. People say they forget what button is for Amy's hammer and what button does the whirlwind shield, but I don't have any inclination to believe them. To me it's blasphemous to forget what button does what. It's very simple, just press buttons. Again SRB2's controls aren't hard to learn its literally WASD and arrow keys for hecks sake :)

Many of the players who are playing SRB2 now are newcomers, many among them are children. While most children aren't as stupid as TV movies and shows would have us believe, keeping things simple and intuitive such as having the same button always be used for the same action makes sense from a design standpoint as it can quickly register for the younger playerbase while also being easy to memorize for a veteran returning from a long break.

I feel it's much more important for each character to follow their own internal intuitive logic rather than try to remain entirely consistent with each other. Shared abilities such as jump should remain mapped to the same button between characters, but when it comes to something like a character specific weapon it actually does make a lot of sense to give the weapon it's own button instead of just treating it like an "ability". This might cause the button you use to activate shield abilities to be different, but that's just a matter of getting used to using the character, and is a simple detail that goes a long way to make a character feel different. As such, I'm much less adverse to the change.

 

[Crappy Blue]

I'm no newcomer, and it seriously bugs me that Amy's hammer is split between two buttons in vanilla SRB2. It's not that it doesn't make any logical sense, it's that it makes no physical sense to my fingers and they can't fully adjust to the idea. Amy should have a consistent Hammer Button. That said, this problem extends to this mod moving her shield abilities to Jump.

 

[time gear]

I'm no newcomer, and it seriously bugs me that Amy's hammer is split between two buttons in vanilla SRB2. It's not that it doesn't make any logical sense, it's that it makes no physical sense to my fingers and they can't fully adjust to the idea. Amy should have a consistent Hammer Button. That said, this problem extends to this mod moving her shield abilities to Jump.

Unfortunately, as long as the characters are only using movement, jump, and spin for controls you can't have it both ways. You are either going to have the character specific weapon mapped to spin, which moves shield abilities to jump, or you are going to have shield abilities on spin which moves the weapon to jump while in the air.

What could work is if vanilla characters made use Custom 1 for their weapons. This would free up spin for shield abilities to remain consistent among all characters while still allowing characters with their own special weapons to have it mapped to one consistent button. The main potential drawback to this is that it increases the number of buttons in use, therefore slightly increasing complexity and potentially confusing players who aren't expecting it.

 

[Zanda_Sama]

I can see where you're coming from, but I still think you're completely wrong. There's no reason to classify hammer as "a weapon". Her twinspin is still an "midair ability". There's no reason to have weapons mapped to their own button.

 

[clairebun]

Amy's "midair ability" is fundamentally different from anyone else's because it is not primarily a mobility tool. It sets her attack state, and unlike other characters, pulling out her hammer is the only method she has of attacking in the air most of the time.

Her midair and ground abilities have near-identical purposes and she is fully reliant on them for dealing damage. Mapping these two things together simplifies the button context and prevents the player from activating a shield ability at the wrong moment. This is how Amy works in her other games, and it's how just about every other action platformer works, so there is plenty of precedent for it.


The one issue with this script is that shield abilities on the jump button is non-standard, so it trades one issue for the other. The alternative would have been to simply not allow Amy to use active shield abilities, which isn't exactly ideal either.

 

[Dabir]

The way I see it, there's two ways to resolve this in a way that makes Amy's inputs consistent with both herself and with other characters.

The first would be to put character-specific weapons on a different button from spin. Sure, it increases the number of inputs even further beyond what you're used to from classic Sonic, but Amy's ability set kind of is pulled from beyond classic Sonic. Correct me if I'm wrong, but she didn't get the hammer until Adventure, right? The other character this would affect is Fang, who I don't think has ever been playable outside weird spinoffs.

The second would be to move shield abilities to their own button as a whole. While this affects every character and complicates things a bit for people who were using gamepads, it also opens up spin-in-air as a meaningful input for custom characters or abilities (like Cobalt's Sonic dropdash) without the character's creator having to find a new home for shields.

I guess the question is, do you see the spin button as the "character-specific attack" button, or as the "ground-based mobility" button?

 

[time gear]

I guess the question is, do you see the spin button as the "character-specific attack" button, or as the "ground-based mobility" button?

I feel like I should reiterate my point that I feel like characters should follow their own internal consistent logic rather than try to be entirely consistent with each other.

Sonic and Metal already somewhat follow this logic. Super Sonic is capable of hovering across huge distances as long as he maintains his speed by holding spin in midair. Metal has this same action all the time, but his is mapped to double jump. This works, because for Sonic it's a secondary ability that he can pair with his thok and for Metal it's his main ability that he can't pair with anything else due to not having a secondary midair ability, but makes up for with his hover being slightly better. For both characters, controlling their moveset feels incredibly natural.

Fang is also consistent in the logic of keeping the weapon button and the air ability button separate. He presses spin to shoot while on the ground, and holds double jump to activate spring mode while in the air. Amy is the only vanilla character that has the same action mapped to more than one button and isn't maintaining self-intuitive button logic. Something such as her moveset forcing shield abilities to be moved to another button might sound less than ideal on the surface, but it's that kind of thing that would add to the uniqueness of the character. It's a small detail, but goes a long way to say "This character isn't like the others, she has her own way of doing things." which doesn't have to be a bad thing. As long as it feels satisfying to control, being a little different is acceptable.

 

[Dabir]

I appreciate your point, but I think it's important to keep the buttons conceptually the same across all characters, and it's precisely because they are characters, not entirely different gameplay types like the characters in something like Adventure. They're slightly different approaches to the same levels in the same game. I don't think the goal of only using two buttons gives enough benefit to be worth the confusion of those buttons switching jobs around for one or two specific characters when gamepad users have four face buttons and kb/m users have, well, the entire keyboard and who knows how many mouse buttons available.

E: Also, I think there's an important difference between the hover, an action that the two most secret unlockable characters share but with different stats, and shield actions, something that's identical across literally every character in the game. You wouldn't put jumping on the spin button for one specific character. Having an extra button to use her hammer would be just as unique as, and much less confusing than, moving an ability every character has away from its normal button and onto a button combo that normally does something else.

E2: As point in favour of putting shields on a separate button, holding spin in air already does something for characters that spin, it makes them roll when they hit the ground. If you have a shield, you can't do that mid-jump without using your shield ability unless you hold spin before you jump and don't let go until you land, and a lot of shield abilities mess with your jump in a way you might not have wanted.

 

[time gear]

I appreciate your point, but I think it's important to keep the buttons conceptually the same across all characters, and it's precisely because they are characters, not entirely different gameplay types like the characters in something like Adventure. They're slightly different approaches to the same levels in the same game. I don't think the goal of only using two buttons gives enough benefit to be worth the confusion of those buttons switching jobs around for one or two specific characters when gamepad users have four face buttons and kb/m users have, well, the entire keyboard and who knows how many mouse buttons available.

E: Also, I think there's an important difference between the hover, an action that the two most secret unlockable characters share but with different stats, and shield actions, something that's identical across literally every character in the game. You wouldn't put jumping on the spin button for one specific character. Having an extra button to use her hammer would be just as unique as, and much less confusing than, moving an ability every character has away from its normal button and onto a button combo that normally does something else.

E2: As point in favour of putting shields on a separate button, holding spin in air already does something for characters that spin, it makes them roll when they hit the ground. If you have a shield, you can't do that mid-jump without using your shield ability unless you hold spin before you jump and don't let go until you land, and a lot of shield abilities mess with your jump in a way you might not have wanted.

My actual stance on the issue is that the best fix would simply be to map hammer to Custom 1. Many custom characters make use of the custom buttons anyway, so expecting players to familiarize themselves with these buttons isn't that big of an ask. Changing the number of action buttons from two (jump and spin) to three (jump, spin, and weapon) isn't that drastic of a change, and is even employed in other platforming games.

For example, in the Mega Man Zero series, you have four primary actions aside from basic movement: Jump, Dash, Primary Weapon, Secondary Weapon. Depending on your control setup, these are divided among four different buttons, yet the gameplay feels incredibly natural and self-intuitive.

If we take this example and apply it to SRB2 logic, Zero would obviously have jump mapped to the jump button. Dash would probably be spin, then Primary and Secondary Weapons would likely be Custom 1 and 2.

This would be consistent with other characters in that equivalent actions would be used by the same buttons. It wouldn't make sense to apply his primary weapon to jump, but only while already in the air. It's not simply an "in air ability", but specifically a weapon. His in air ability would probably be double jump.

Freedom Planet is another example that plays more similarly to Sonic. Simply double jumping doesn't always count as an attack, your attack actions are generally mapped to a specific button.

 

[Zanda_Sama]

You still haven't told me why we're even categorizing weapons. Keeping everything to 2 buttons makes things simpler. Why should only one character use 3 buttons. In that case Spin for Fang would do nothing, and custom1 would be the popgun. I doubt making this change would do shit.
It's Jump, Spin, and Midair Ability (Jump in Midair). There's none of this weapon bullshit. Do you think the devs behind this game are wrong for doing it this way? I mean I completely disagree with your weapon shenanigans, but I can't seem to put out an efficient counterargument to convince you that you're incorrect.

 

[time gear]

You still haven't told me why we're even categorizing weapons. Keeping everything to 2 buttons makes things simpler. Why should only one character use 3 buttons. In that case Spin for Fang would do nothing, and custom1 would be the popgun. I doubt making this change would do shit.
It's Jump, Spin, and Midair Ability (Jump in Midair). There's none of this weapon bullshit. Do you think the devs behind this game are wrong for doing it this way? I mean I completely disagree with your weapon shenanigans, but I can't seem to put out an efficient counterargument to convince you that you're incorrect.

The reason it works for Fang and not for Amy is because Fang doesn't use his popgun in the air. It's only ever used on the ground, while he's standing still. He then proceeds to still not spin, so the "spin" button simply works as his "weapon" button and there's no conflictions that arise from it. Amy on the other hand can use her hammer in a variety of situations from standing still to running to most importantly while in the air.

Trying to keep things simple isn't a bad thing, but sometimes it's possible to be TOO simple, because you have too many actions to compress into too small of a button set. This isn't immediately apparent in SRB2, as most characters don't have a weapon or alternative method of attack, and just use their mobility abilities AS their attack. Fang as mentioned makes it work by sacrificing certain moves outright, replacing the spindash with his popgun entirely.

Amy is where things get complicated. She can't spin aside from when forced to by certain stage gimmicks. Her hammer is her only method of attack, and can only be used by the player telling her to use it. If it was only usable in the air, there would be no confliction in just having it be double jump. If it were only usable on the ground, there would be no confliction in having it be spin. However, because it's usable in both situations, an odd situation occurs that none of the other characters face: She doesn't have enough buttons to keep all of her actions without making sacrifices.

This is why giving her a "Weapon" button isn't such a terrible idea. Increasing from two buttons to three might make things slightly less simple, but it doesn't make it not simple. There are platformers that make use of even more buttons as I have given examples for, and they aren't too much for a player to keep track of. This isn't a "bullshit" method of doing things, but rather a necessity that many games recognize when trying to cram something into a small number of buttons simply isn't very practical and simply including another button allows you to avoid making unwanted compromises.

 

[clairebun]

I think a third button would feel pretty awful in its own way, especially if the other characters don't even make any use of it.

 

[Zanda_Sama]

I think a third button would feel pretty awful in its own way, especially if the other characters don't even make any use of it.

Agreed (to Cobalt's post), plus if you wanna get technical Fang's popgun is a weapon, since you're like "oooh consistency is super important." (not directed towards you, Cobalt.)

 

[time gear]

Agreed (to Cobalt's post), plus if you wanna get technical Fang's popgun is a weapon, since you're like "oooh consistency is super important." (not directed towards you, Cobalt.)

The point I have been making for multiple posts over now now is that I feel it's more important that characters are self-consistent rather than consistent with each other. Certain actions obviously should be consistent between characters when they are shared, such as jumping, but that doesn't mean that everything needs to be consistent between all characters at the expense of game feel for one character, especially when that expense is in regards to shoving a lot of movements into a small amount of inputs.

I think a third button would feel pretty awful in its own way, especially if the other characters don't even make any use of it.

I don't really see how it would feel awful at all. The third button would allow Amy to use her hammer on one consistent button without shield abilities needing to be moved to jump while in the air. If anything, it would open up the potential for spin to be used for something else while Amy is grounded.

As for other characters not making any use of it, there's actually quite a bit that could be done about that. Perhaps Sonic could be given the Drop Dash or Instashield as a secondary air ability mapped to Custom 1. Fang could use Custom 1 to choose which nearby badnik he wants to prioritize for his next shot like a sort of selective targeting system that rotates between nearby targets based on distance, Knuckles could be given his dig ability from the Adventure games with a chance to find bonus rings and power ups (But not emerald shards of course), etc. There's not really any reason why the main cast shouldn't make use of a third button if the decision to move forward with it in regards to Amy were to be made. It could only serve to make the individual characters even more unique, even if the new third input isn't always as widely useful on some characters as opposed to others.

 

[Zanda_Sama]

The point I have been making for multiple posts over now now is that I feel it's more important that characters are self-consistent rather than consistent with each other. Certain actions obviously should be consistent between characters when they are shared, such as jumping, but that doesn't mean that everything needs to be consistent between all characters at the expense of game feel for one character, especially when that expense is in regards to shoving a lot of movements into a small amount of inputs.



I don't really see how it would feel awful at all. The third button would allow Amy to use her hammer on one consistent button without shield abilities needing to be moved to jump while in the air. If anything, it would open up the potential for spin to be used for something else while Amy is grounded.

As for other characters not making any use of it, there's actually quite a bit that could be done about that. Perhaps Sonic could be given the Drop Dash or Instashield as a secondary air ability mapped to Custom 1. Fang could use Custom 1 to choose which nearby badnik he wants to prioritize for his next shot like a sort of selective targeting system that rotates between nearby targets based on distance, Knuckles could be given his dig ability from the Adventure games with a chance to find bonus rings and power ups (But not emerald shards of course), etc. There's not really any reason why the main cast shouldn't make use of a third button if the decision to move forward with it in regards to Amy were to be made. It could only serve to make the individual characters even more unique, even if the new third input isn't always as widely useful on some characters as opposed to others.

I think characters abilities being consistent with each-other makes an equal amount of, if not more sense.
There's no need for every character to have extra abilities the game isn't designed for, there's LUA for Sonic Lost World Bounce, which I like.
Again I think it'd make sense for Shield Abilities to *always* be Spin, and Jump Abilities to *always* be Jump. It's just as consistent.