Wow, so much has changed!

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Scarbo the Black Sheep

Scarbo the Black Sheep

Furry Composer
So far today I've just gotten through Techno Hill Zone for the first time in many many years. You have slopes now, haha! That actually really does help. SRB2 originally convinced me you don't need slopes to make a good Sonic game, but hey, it does help! And the levels are so much longer and prettier, too. Great purple goo gimmick.

I'll play through more later to see what else has changed, but yeah, this is pretty cool. The SRB2MB has gotten an upgrade, I see, and I also see very few familiar names here.

For those of you don't know me, I used to be named SonicMaster and was a maintainer of the SRB2 Wiki. I had originally left years ago, and I thought it would be nice to come back. So yeah, cool to see the new changes. It's been a long time since version 1.09.4.
 
You might have also noticed the massive leaps in the ability to mod the game (with a sizable Lua API allowing for highly complex assets) and the increasingly robust nature of the game's development in general (with the future 2.2.11 release bringing two rather big features as well as an overhaul in the tooling for contributors, which I do not know if it ever happened before, at least not since I have been here). For mappers meanwhile, Zone Builder has received some very useful upgrades that make the increasingly complex maps easier to make. In terms of maps, the OLDC is now becoming a pretty reliable staple and getting many entries per event.

SRB2's future, in my opinion, is looking pretty bright and is on its way of joining 0 AD and Super Tux Kart in being a showpiece for the FOSS gaming scene.
 
Zone Builder, huh? I remember when the tool to use was SRB2 Doom Builder. I have not looked at modding since I came back, but I very much enjoyed submitting to the OLDC.
 
Welcome to the future,Scarbo!
I hope you managed to get all way to Black Core Zone,because there are gonna be 2 familliar faces there!
 
Welcome back! I used to go by Blue Warrior, if that rings a bell. I believe we both moderated the SRB2 Wiki back in the day.
 
Welcome back to the community! I've definitely never known you, but it's nice to see people who are somewhat cultured on the history of the game in one way or another.
 
Welcome back! While we've before, I definitely recognize your name from the occasional historic browse through old wiki articles and forum posts, so it's for sure pleasant to see someone from so long ago return. I only joined the wider community in 2019, but I'll do my best to point you around...

Regarding SRB2 itself, it's received 3 major updates since v1.09.4 - v2.0, v2.1, and v2.2, with the former two adding all sorts of new modding features as well as many new zones to the campaign and the latter coming out in late 2019 and giving the game the professional polish you've noticed. It's an understatement to say v2.2 was a huge leap in quality for the game and community.

Speaking of community, the most major shift happened around 2017-2018 when the IRC chatroom declined in popularity and moved to a Discord server, which is where most community members reside today. If you're looking to reconnect with any potential old pals, the best option would be to poke around there if you haven't already. Besides that, there's active daily discussion of the game itself and all the modding that goes on. OLDCs are still held regularly, with many entries from both experienced and inexperienced authors. The game is also partially developed through the public GitLab, which allows community source code contributions for minor patches.

And modding! For sure, it's received a huge overhaul from the days of Final Demo. The Lua scripting language is now supported as of v2.1 (2014), which has led to incredibly complex game-changing scripts being developed over the years. Lua scripting and general mod editing takes place in the advanced lump editor SLADE now, rather than... I believe XWE? SLADE is overall much more stable than XWE and supports many modding features (such as Lua syntax and .pk3 file formats).

Regarding mapping, many new features have been added to SRB2 itself such as slopes, PolyObjects (moving geometry), flat alignment, and flats/textures being interchangeable now. SRB2 Doom Builder has also long been dethroned as "the SRB2 mapping tool" - since 2016, a fork of the much more developed GZDoom Builder (aptly titled Zone Builder, as I'm sure you heard earlier in the thread) has been the go-to mapping program, with support for all of SRB2's features (such as slopes, flat alignment, custom objects, and Lua scripting in-editor just to name a few).

Generally, a lot as changed since Final Demo so I suggest you take a look around. Once you finish the main game, I highly recommend you take a look around the Addons forums and play around with what the community has to offer. Sorry for the textwall, but this should be everything you need to know about how things go around here nowadays!


edit: silly me, didn't realize this thread is almost two months old when posting this. All of this information is still relevant, however, if you haven't looked into it since then.
 
Woah, that's wild! Welcome back! I think you fell out of the community right around when I first got involved (2010) but you're a familiar name all the same.
 
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