Sonic Robo Blast 2 (3D Sonic fangame in development for 20+ years) releases huge new update. [New July 2020 update.]

Unknownlight · May 4, 2020

Some new unofficial ports have been released. RetroPie now supports 2.2, and there's now an Android port as well. The Switch port is also fully up to date with the latest patch (which is an improvement over the official Mac and Linux builds, which are now two versions behind).

Releases · Lactozilla/SRB2

Contribute to Lactozilla/SRB2 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Tailzo · May 4, 2020

Unknownlight said:
Some new unofficial ports have been released. RetroPie now supports 2.2, and there's now an Android port as well. The Switch port is also fully up to date with the latest patch (which is an improvement over the official Mac and Linux builds, which are now two versions behind).

Oh, I loved playing the old Switch version. If my Switch was still hacked I would jump on that :)

WillyFive · May 9, 2020

Greenflower Zone has been ported to Sonic 06:

Solid SOAP · May 9, 2020

WillyFive said:
Greenflower Zone has been ported to Sonic 06:

Really shows how awful the Sonic 06 controls and engine are compared not only to SRB2, but like every other 3D Sonic game. He moves so sluggishly!

I remember the original demos for the game looking decent and Sonic had more moves and interesting animations. What happened?

Syril · May 9, 2020

Solid SOAP said:
Really shows how awful the Sonic 06 controls and engine are compared not only to SRB2, but like every other 3D Sonic game. He moves so sluggishly!

I remember the original demos for the game looking decent and Sonic had more moves and interesting animations. What happened?

"Release this for the holidays, even if you have to use an old build."

Solid SOAP · May 9, 2020

Syril said:
"Release this for the holidays, even if you have to use an old build."

I cant think of any other excuse than this. Like... E3 demos seemed more complete than the final game. The pre-release demo had more interest animations and controls. Idk man! Crazy.

At least SRB2 is a thing. Literally best 3D Sonic game imo.

Unknownlight · May 9, 2020

WillyFive said:
Greenflower Zone has been ported to Sonic 06:

That part at 2:05 is the funniest shit. They had to put a speed ramp at the bottom of the slope to kinda-sorta replicate the setpiece because Sonic 06 has no physics.

"Ya-hoo..."

Jon God · May 9, 2020

Man. Still waiting on the 2.2.2 version for Mac. Blah.

[PS Thank you to anyone that takes their time to do Multiplatform builds, even if people complain, you folks are awesome]

Solid SOAP · May 9, 2020

Unknownlight said:
That part at 2:05 is the funniest shit. They had to put a speed ramp at the bottom of the slope to kinda-sorta replicate the setpiece because Sonic 06 has no physics.

"Ya-hoo..."

What were they thinking of removing physics from controlling Sonic!? Even as linear as SA2 was, if you ran down a hill, you went faster. Crazy.

Syril · May 9, 2020

Solid SOAP said:
I cant think of any other excuse than this. Like... E3 demos seemed more complete than the final game. The pre-release demo had more interest animations and controls. Idk man! Crazy.

At least SRB2 is a thing. Literally best 3D Sonic game imo.

It's really blatant that they moved to an old build shortly before release because it's own manual refers to things that don't exist.

Solid SOAP · May 9, 2020

Syril said:
It's really blatant that they moved to an old build shortly before release because it's own manual refers to things that don't exist.

Fucking crazy. I wonder why they would even need to do that in the first place?

Unknownlight · May 9, 2020

Solid SOAP said:
Fucking crazy. I wonder why they would even need to do that in the first place?

It's like, "We need to send the final game to the disc production/packaging facility tomorrow. Find the last version where the game doesn't randomly crash sometimes and export it. Nothing else matters anymore."

As an aside, people say that Sonic 06 would've been a good game with an extra year of development time, but I'm not convinced. It would've been a better game, but it still would've been a bad game. The glitches are fun to laugh at, but the true issues with the game are far more fundamental.

BlazeHedgehog · May 10, 2020

Syril said:
It's really blatant that they moved to an old build shortly before release because it's own manual refers to things that don't exist.

That doesn't actually mean anything, though. Manuals probably have to be submitted for printing weeks or even months before release, and there are more than a few game manuals out there that reference things that aren't quite how they actually work in the final game (and/or use pre-release screenshots). For example, consider this screenshot from the Sonic 2 manual:

Even if you were to take a screenshot from Metropolis Zone in Sonic 2 and convert it to gray scale, the Slicer enemy is never that color, suggesting this was taken from a strange build of the game with an incorrect palette.

Never mind that Sonic 2's manual also shows the wrong title screen.

It could 100% be that whoever wrote the Sonic 06 manual asked for a list of features 3-5 weeks ahead of release and they made an estimate of "Well, this is what we plan on finishing before the deadline" only to miss that mark. Doesn't mean they swapped for an older, more broken build at all, it just means the game wasn't finished. Which, like... yeah. Obviously.

stan423321 · May 10, 2020

Incidentally, I wasn't big on the whole "they must have reverted builds theory", but there is one rumor/theory/thing that would convince me if confirmed: the game's infamous loading times being influenced by it discarding all assets before most loading screens.

Back on SRB2, uhhh, how does this thing relate to Doom source ports? Does it run ZScript?

Unknownlight · May 10, 2020

stan423321 said:
Back on SRB2, uhhh, how does this thing relate to Doom source ports? Does it run ZScript?

Back in 1998 when SRB2 first began development, it was a mod of Doom Legacy (which was a fork of DOSDoom, the first Doom source port). I think it continued to be ported to new versions of Doom Legacy until... 2002-ish? After that, the game forked off and became its own development branch of the Doom engine.

It doesn't run ZScript because that has to do with ZDoom. SRB2 is an entirely separate branch of history (it does support Lua though).

stan423321 · May 10, 2020

I may need to go check out their APIs then. The differences should be interesting.

Unknownlight · May 11, 2020

2.2.3 patch release
News item and download link.

As a reminder, you install patches by just downloading the zip file and dragging-and-dropping the files into the root folder of your SRB2 installation (and select "Replace" for identically-named files).

SRB2.org said:
Hey all
We've just added 2.2.3 as a patch update. Find it on the downloads page!

Highlights are:

The console can now be used during menus

The emblem hints and radar can now be used in Record Attack

Continues can now be used infinitely in the vanilla game while using a save file; collecting tokens after obtaining all the emeralds rewards extra lives instead

Added new laser effects for the Greenflower Zone 3 boss

Many more features and fixes for modding purposes. See the full changelog here.

Linux users, binaries are available where they usually are. You can find that on the downloads page, they'll be updated within moments of the post.

Mac users, we have a stable environment to make Mac builds in, we're hoping to have a 2.2.3 build ready for you guys soon. Hold tight.

Windows users, you'll notice that we don't have a 64 bit build again. This is deliberate. The 64 bit build does not provide errorlogs, and those are becoming increasingly more important. The more people we have using those instead of 32 bit builds creates issues for getting reliable bug reports. And since there's no benefit whatsoever to having a 64 bit build since Windows runs 32 bit applications perfectly fine, we're not going to provide 64 bit builds until we can figure out what's going on that is preventing errorlogs from being generated. As such, you will need a fresh 2.2.1 install of the 32-bit build to patch 2.2.3 over, the new patch will not work with the resource files that 64 bit builds required.

Not mentioned in the highlights above, the MIDI soundtrack has been significantly updated... for people who like the MIDI version of the soundtrack I guess. Is this a popular thing? I'm honestly not sure why the MIDI version exists.

By the way, they're not joking about the new laser effects for Greenflower 3. It's absurd. It's actually way over the top in my opinion. It looks the type of crazy death ray that I'd expect from the last boss of the game, not the first. By doing this they've made every further boss in the game comparatively less flashy and seemingly less threatening.

TheCongressman · May 11, 2020

Unknownlight said:
By the way, they're not joking about the new laser effects for Greenflower 3. It's absurd. It's actually way over the top in my opinion. It looks the type of crazy death ray that I'd expect from the last boss of the game, not the first. By doing this they've made every further boss in the game comparatively less flashy and seemingly less threatening.

The effect looks so much better, but I agree, this way too much for the first boss. lol

BlazeHedgehog · May 11, 2020

Yeah, wow, that's super over the top.

I assume the MIDI playback is for systems trying to save resources. The soundtrack is like 100mb+. If you're playing this on a homebrew system with limited storage or whatever, MIDI playback is like a tenth of that. Probably requires less CPU than OGG decoding, too.

Unknownlight · May 11, 2020

BlazeHedgehog said:
I assume the MIDI playback is for systems trying to save resources. The soundtrack is like 100mb+. If you're playing this on a homebrew system with limited storage or whatever, MIDI playback is like a tenth of that. Probably requires less CPU than OGG decoding, too.

Ah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

As for the super-death-ray, my guess is that these kinds of effects are planned to be applied to all bosses at some point. There are honestly quite a few bosses in this game with small projectiles that are hard to see, with the worst probably being Fang's popgun and Brak's grenades. I suppose the idea is that making things over-the-top makes the hitboxes more clear while also making the battles more fun and flashy. I guess.

Unknownlight · May 11, 2020

Welp, that was quick.

2.2.4 patch release
News item and download link

It's just an emergency bugfix. The tutorial was impossible to complete if you used the Simple camera.

By the way, each patch release includes all previous patches, so you don't have to apply them sequentially. If you haven't downloaded the 2.2.3 patch yet, it's totally fine to skip straight to downloading 2.2.4.

Unknownlight · May 11, 2020

Oh jeez, triple post. Sorry about this.

Moose the Fattest Cat The Mac build has been updated to 2.2.4 as well, the first update to the Mac version since last December. You can finally enable the 3D models and try out the Simple control scheme.

TheCongressman · May 11, 2020

Unknownlight said:
As for the super-death-ray, my guess is that these kinds of effects are planned to be applied to all bosses at some point. There are honestly quite a few bosses in this game with small projectiles that are hard to see, with the worst probably being Fang's popgun and Brak's grenades. I suppose the idea is that making things over-the-top makes the hitboxes more clear while also making the battles more fun and flashy. I guess.

If so, I'm all for that. Deep Sea boss' projectiles are especially annoying to me.

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Unknownlight said:
Oh jeez, triple post. Sorry about this.

Moose the Fattest Cat The Mac build has been updated to 2.2.4 as well, the first update to the Mac version since last December. You can finally enable the 3D models and try out the Simple control scheme.

Holy moly!!!

(full Pacino) Just when I thought I was out.... THEY PULL ME BACK IN!

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

How do you use OpenGL mode? More than the controls, SRB2 needs a tutorial for the menus.

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
How do you use OpenGL mode?

Options -> Video options -> Renderer.

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Unknownlight said:
Options -> Video options -> Renderer.

When I try to enter it says "You must be in Open GL mode to access this menu. Press any key to exit"

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
When I try to enter it says "You must be in Open GL mode to access this menu. Press any key to exit"

Ah, sorry, I see how that's confusing. I meant the actual option "Renderer", not the category. It's fourth from the top, in the category "Screen".

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Unknownlight said:
Ah, sorry, I see how that's confusing. I meant the actual option "Renderer", not the category. It's fourth from the top, in the category "Screen".

Oh! Gotcha! Okay. Open GL successfully on. Models set on. 32 instead of 16. Matches JimJecks OP screen in the release forum. And yet!!

What am I missing? I open, save file or new, no mods, still nothing. Try tilde gr_models on, nothing. Closed SRB2, reopened. Check options again. Seems to match. Open. Nada.

Huh!

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Also - in my limited amount of testing Simple vs Legacy vs Standard, I definitely do not prefer Simple. Might be my controller settings, was trying to play with PS4 instead of Switch but seemed like Simple had NO camera control? Didn't spend much time experimenting yet, just been trying to get the models to work :/

One thing that seems to jump out as the biggest difference in 2.2.4 on Mac is just the program seems to run / look a lot smoother / faster. I wonder if the disappearing platforms in CEZ were addressed.

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
Oh! Gotcha! Okay. Open GL successfully on. Models set on. 32 instead of 16. Matches JimJecks OP screen in the release forum. And yet!!

What am I missing? I open, save file or new, no mods, still nothing. Try tilde gr_models on, nothing. Closed SRB2, reopened. Check options again. Seems to match. Open. Nada.

Huh!

I'm not 100% sure where the models folder and models.dat are supposed to be placed on Mac. On Windows it goes in the root directory. I think on Mac it goes in the folder users/yourusername/srb2 rather than the SRB2 folder within Applications.

I don't know where your add-on folder is, but it doesn't go in there, unlike every other mod.

MaLDo · May 12, 2020

Is it possible to play it at 60fps?

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

MaLDo said:
Is it possible to play it at 60fps?

No, its game logic is locked to 35fps, like the original Doom. There's an unstable 70fps build floating around somewhere, but I don't remember where. I'm sure you can find it on Google.

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Unknownlight said:
I'm not 100% sure where the models folder and models.dat are supposed to be placed on Mac. On Windows it goes in the root directory. I think on Mac it goes in the folder users/yourusername/srb2 rather than the SRB2 folder within Applications.

I don't know where your add-on folder is, but it doesn't go in there, unlike every other mod.

Aha yes it's working! I forgot I had futzed with trying to get it to work before. Dumped the old model file/folders, replaced and now it works! So excited! Hell yes

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
Aha yes it's working! I forgot I had futzed with trying to get it to work before. Dumped the old model file/folders, replaced and now it works! So excited! Hell yes

At long last!

Now you finally get to see how weird some levels look in OpenGL mode where most of the visual effects don't work. Deep Sea looks completely different. I don't like it.

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Unknownlight said:
At long last!

Now you finally get to see how weird some levels look in OpenGL mode where most of the visual effects don't work. Deep Sea looks completely different. I don't like it.

Now a new mystery — any idea why are the characters suddenly moving much heavier like they're in molasses? Whether I move in or out of openGL, but I swear this wasn't happening before...

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
Now a new mystery — any idea why are the characters suddenly moving much heavier like they're in molasses? Whether I move in or out of openGL, but I swear this wasn't happening before...

If you mean that the 3D models make the characters feel heavier, that's the magic subtle art of game design. Slightly different animations can make something feel different even if nothing has changed.

If you mean that the game feels different with the new update whether you're in OpenGL mode or not, there's two possibilities I can think of. One, you've set Auto-Brake to the opposite of what you set it before (either on or off). Two, you've encountered some weird glitch I've never heard of before.

You can check Record Attack replays to see if it's in your imagination or not. Replays only save your inputs, so if you get significant* desync then something's wrong.

*Replays are weirdly poor at accounting for everything that's not the player, such as random enemy movement, and the desync warning is extremely sensitive. If an enemy is an inch out of line you'll get a desync warning even if the replay plays totally fine.

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

At first I would agree, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me but something is off. Autobrake is the same.

Is there a way to just wipe/default everything? There's some... gravity... something going on. I'm almost tempted to dump every file (except the saves somehow?) and redownload everything fresh?

I'm too tired to troubleshoot it, there's some explanation. But even with this new weird kink to work out, ahhh the 3D models are so cool looking. Now if only it played like I remembered playing a few weeks ago... it might be all user input error. We'll see.

Most importantly again - the 32 bit models. glorious.

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
At first I would agree, I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me but something is off. Autobrake is the same.

Is there a way to just wipe/default everything? There's some... gravity... something going on. I'm almost tempted to dump every file (except the saves somehow?) and redownload everything fresh?

I'm too tired to troubleshoot it, there's some explanation. But even with this new weird kink to work out, ahhh the 3D models are so cool looking. Now if only it played like I remembered playing a few weeks ago... it might be all user input error. We'll see.

Most importantly again - the 32 bit models. glorious.

Deleting the config.cfg file will reset all settings to default, but keeps your save data.

Moose the Fattest Cat · May 12, 2020

Unknownlight said:
Deleting the config.cfg file will reset all settings to default, but keeps your save data.

That's good to know. That did reset the settings. But still the character struggles to make it up a small slope (beginning of CEZ) and Metal Sonic race proved it. It's as though the gravity has been tripled? I guess maybe I will try un/reinstalling ?

Magnemania · May 12, 2020

I'm a big fan of the Character Randomizer mod that came out recently.

(Dirk, Advance Sonic, and Fang)
Load up as many characters as you'd like, turn the randomizer on, and you swap to a random character every 30 seconds. You can customize the frequency of character swapping and add/remove characters as you'd like with console commands.

I find it most fun with 7 second swaps. 30 seconds just encourages you to come to a stop before switching characters, 10 seconds doesn't feel quite dynamic enough, and 5 seconds doesn't give you enough time to get full use out of a character's ability. 7 feels like the best compromise between "have enough time to figure out who you got and how you can use their ability" and "switch characters mid-section".

Solid SOAP · May 12, 2020

Magnemania said:
I'm a big fan of the Character Randomizer mod that came out recently.

(Dirk, Advance Sonic, and Fang)
Load up as many characters as you'd like, turn the randomizer on, and you swap to a random character every 30 seconds. You can customize the frequency of character swapping and add/remove characters as you'd like with console commands.

I find it most fun with 7 second swaps. 30 seconds just encourages you to come to a stop before switching characters, 10 seconds doesn't feel quite dynamic enough, and 5 seconds doesn't give you enough time to get full use out of a character's ability. 7 feels like the best compromise between "have enough time to figure out who you got and how you can use their ability" and "switch characters mid-section".

Yea this seems like a blast! It reminds me of encore mode from Mania but with a bit more unpredictability. Definitely will try it more at some point!

Unknownlight · May 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
That's good to know. That did reset the settings. But still the character struggles to make it up a small slope (beginning of CEZ) and Metal Sonic race proved it. It's as though the gravity has been tripled? I guess maybe I will try un/reinstalling ?

Weird. I guess try opening a bug report on the forums.

Syril · May 12, 2020

Oh my god, I can't believe someone modded this chucklehead in here

[Open Assets] - Jet the Hawk - V1.1 - now slightly less broken

Jet the Hawk is here and he's ready to Race! Unfortunately Circuit is dead and SRB2 is more of a precision platformer, so he's not really equipped for the right job. As long as Jet has air he'll ride his Extreme Gear. In this state he's incredibly fast and hovers over some obstacles, but...

mb.srb2.org

Magnemania · May 12, 2020

I've given the Jet mod a few tries and I'm just not enjoying it. It's one of the more complicated mods and appears to have taken some effort to make, but his controls are a bit awkward and unnatural compared to SRB2's traditional control scheme. There's a lot of little subtle differences:

Whereas SRB2 normally has the traditional platformer "hold the jump button to jump higher" input, Jet always jumps the same height regardless of how long the button is held. And it turns out that one's meant to tap the button, as...
Jet can perform tricks to get his Air back (allowing him to stay on the board), and it's the only means he has of recovering Air without coming to a complete stop and slowly getting it back with a foot pump. In order to perform Tricks, Jet has to let go of both the jump button and all directional inputs, then hold directional inputs to do the Tricks. It's completely unlike how any other character controls, custom or otherwise. Once he's in 'trick mode', he can no longer air-strafe like normal, so he can only change his direction with Tricks and Drifts.
Unlike most of the characters that appear to float, Jet genuinely floats above the ground while on the board. This has cute interactions with hazard floors and conveyor belts, but it also means that Jet doesn't stick to slopes at all. He detaches from downslopes and can't ascend upslopes. He also can't push buttons or activate elevators without dismounting.
Depending on whether Jet is on the board and has Air, tapping Spin will either make him come to a complete stop or give him a boost of speed. These actions are completely opposed and feel very unintuitive on the wrong button. There's a lot of points where I starting running, jumped, and pressed the spin button to boost, only to discover that Jet hadn't been running long enough to get on his board.

There is a genuinely interesting challenge character there that drifts through the levels on ice physics while doing tricks to maintain his boarded state, but it's buried under jank.

Syril · May 12, 2020

Yeah he's pretty weird, he might work better without the air meter and more normal jumping.

Unknownlight · May 24, 2020

I won't lie—half the time I used this topic as my own personal bookmarking system for cool SRB2 stuff. Here's an in-progress recreation of Green Forest from SA2.

Tailzo · May 24, 2020

Unknownlight said:
I won't lie—half the time I used this topic as my own personal bookmarking system for cool SRB2 stuff. Here's an in-progress recreation of Green Forest from SA2.

Please continue doing so. This is awesome.

Moose the Fattest Cat · Jun 11, 2020

Unknownlight said:
I won't lie—half the time I used this topic as my own personal bookmarking system for cool SRB2 stuff. Here's an in-progress recreation of Green Forest from SA2.

Wow! Is that released in the Levels mod subforum, or not yet? (I can just go check myself but this is also an excuse to bump it because WOW)

Unknownlight · Jun 12, 2020

Moose the Fattest Cat said:
Wow! Is that released in the Levels mod subforum, or not yet? (I can just go check myself but this is also an excuse to bump it because WOW)

Unfortunately, no. I wouldn't have even known it existed if I hadn't randomly checked the SRB2 Discord at the right time.

By the way, Mystic was banned, so feel free to make whatever threads you want on the MB.

Sonic Robo Blast 2 (3D Sonic fangame in development for 20+ years) releases huge new update. [New July 2020 update.]

One Winged Slayer

Fallen Guardian

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

One Winged Slayer

Fallen Guardian

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account

One Winged Slayer