Working on SRB2 mods kickstarted my computer science career about twenty years ago. It's a really good game and, incidentally enough, an amazing learning tool for springboarding level into level design and practical C/C++ knowledge.
And don't forget its sequel, Dr. Robotnik Ring Racers! Since I discovered it became one of my favorite video games, it's pretty technical and hard to dominate, but it's so exciting each time that I play it that I can't stop recommending it to everyone.
I absolutely love SRB2K but I think they overcooked Ring Racers. It's bloated with so many mechanics that the tutorial for how to play the game is literally almost an hour long. The controls are also harsher than the previous game, especially when it comes to slopes.
Version 2.4 which is almost out doubles down on it being a high skill racing game with even more mechanics... Gaining "amps" when dealing damage, going into overdrive, "ring bail" which is dropping all your coins for a boost and can cancel spinning out, "neutral drift" where you lose less speed when drifting without steering...
I don't know what's going on at this point. I just want to hold forward and drift.
To me, Ring Racers feels like some bizarro version of a "what if we made a kart racer that plays like what normies think a fighting game plays like" future (complimentary, not derogatory). It's fascinating to get a glimpse. It's like those weird extinct animals who take over a tiny ecological niche but wouldn't survive in a more diverse climate, like channichthyidae or galapogos finches.
The result isn't quite a kart racer and isn't quite a fighting game, it's...some mix in between, where the difference between coming in first and being in fourth requires knowing that (say) directional influence is reversed while you're teching banana peel spinouts, or how your boost frames are preserved if you cancel your sliptide wavedash around a tight corner, etc etc. The skill ceiling is ridiculously high. For online play, so is the skill floor.
In all honesty I don't think it quite "works" for mass consumption...but it's not meant to! This corner of design space is built by those who love the genre they've made, so to hell with mass consumability anyway. I personally find the experiment fascinating and rewarding to learn. Certainly do check it out.
It's incredible that this project is still alive and kicking. I love that they have a whole archive of old builds and descriptions. Based on the descriptions I must have played this around March 2001 (a few months before the release of Sonic Adventure 2!)--my memory exactly matches up with the description of Demo 2. I doubt at the time that I thought it would even make it to a Demo 3! Kudos to everyone involved.
SRB2 is easily my favorite 3D Sonic game, and judging by the recent ports to stuff like the Sega 32x, it makes me wonder the “what if?” Universe where Sega had made a competent 3D Sonic game to compete with Mario 64.
The fact that the next-console's Sonic Adventure 1 still felt like an also-ran Mario 64 makes me think that it probably wouldn't have made a difference.
Much ink has been spilled and fingers pointed over the failures of Sonic Xtreme and other attempts to make a fully-3D Sonic game on the Sega Saturn, but I think it fundamentally comes down to the fact that the creators didn't know how to translate the core gameplay loop into 3D.
Well that’s what I am saying though; clearly the 32x (and probably the Saturn) were capable of running something cool like SRB2 as evidenced by the tech demos, and I feel like SRB2 really does feel like a proper translation of the 2D games to 3D.
But I broadly agree; it wasn’t a hardware thing, it was a “we don’t know how to do it” thing; SRB2 came like a full decade after the 32x’s relevance.
Looks interesting, but I can't pass the camera control tutorial level. As I move the mouse to control the camera, eventually, the mouse moves outside the browser window, and the camera direction gradually aligns with Sonic's POV before I can move the cursor around the window to re-enter the opposite side to continue moving. Continuous mouse movement seems necessary to keep the camera aligned differently from Sonic's movement direction.
I play on dvorak. All keybinds are adjustable in the menu, even in this web version.
If you care to compile from source, I have a patch that makes SDL input by scancode which lets you type in dvorak in the chat box etc, lmk if you'd like a link.
I found the game & it's spin-off "Robo Blast Kart" like 6 years ago? The Kart game is SUPER fun & honestly better than official Mario Kart games. I didn't know the original game is 25 years old?? Incredible
- it is very nearly perfect, but has some minor issues especially in regards to the strength of frontrunning (early leads tend to become unbeatable)
- the development team has mostly abandoned it in favor of the sequel, which completely abandons the brilliant simplicity of SRB2K
- the development team kind of take a rude approach to the GPL. They don't really accept PRs from the community, and work in secrecy rather than out in the open. They still publish their work, so they comply with the license, but it's a bit lame
- The modding community is super weird about reusing other people's code and will pitch a fit if you get caught reusing someone's lua script without their permission.
It's not rude to the GPL, it's just not collaborative in a way you want them to be?
The four freedoms allow you to share your enhancements with the community, they don't say the original author has to accept them. They pursue their own vision for the software, they give you all the sources and license you need to pursue a different direction.
Stallman has also talked about how "works of art" (pictures, stories, music) are different from "functional" works (software, recipes, typefaces, etc.). He thinks that nonfree "functional" works are unethical, but is ok with a modest copyright time limit before being permitted to remix/modify art:
> But eventually I realized that modifying a work of art can be a contribution to art, but it's not desperately urgent in most cases. If you had to wait ten years for the copyright to expire, you could wait that long
With that in mind, he'd want game code to be published under a free software license, but would be ok if the "art" of the game remained briefly copyrighted. Probably not what modders want to hear!
Kart Krew accepts patches from outsiders. I've found the community to be quite collaborative.
I'm an outsider and I've gotten a few patches accepted to Ring Racers, like this small screenshot bugfix[1], or this more complicated rework of camera momentum to make "look behind you" work better[2].
One dev gave an initial cursory review of [2] within 36h, and the project leader chose to merge my change within a couple of months. By OSS standards, this is shockingly fast. (I suspect I got lucky - the project usually moves much slower.)
Kart Krew is more secretive when it comes to the non-public "in-development" branch, but I think this is because the core team is more tight-knit and wants to keep a smaller audience for their more invasive gameplay vision/experiments. (I don't have access to this branch, but most PRs don't need it)
I don't blame any project that does work in private and doesn't accept community PRs.
Being open to the community isn't unilateral upside. It comes with huge trade-offs especially the more toxic and opinionated and bikesheddy and entitled the community is. Sometimes you have a vision you want to execute without dealing with egos and emotions in PR comments and without people who have entitled themself some sort of weird ownership of the project because it's small.
Elm's creator has some talks on this. But it's also an experience I have in any project that has traction.
For anyone interested in this debate about working in 'secrecy' vs 'out in the open', this is the subject of the 1997 essay (and later book) "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond, comparing the classic free software development models vs the model used by the Linux kernel.
Interesting really, I was never really in the community that much it was mostly me & my siblings playing the game for fun! But that's unfortunate to hear .. never heard of the sequel as well will check it out soon.
I do find it odd how modders have such a different culture about programming than regular developers. Like I know mods for Skyrim or whatever are always involved in crazy feuds about even things like modlists (some people are very opposed to something that would automatically install mods for example).
I wonder if it's just an age thing or something else?
It's not, the same thing happened even in the 1980s and 1990s. Think of it like "stolen valour".
Let's say you enjoy Skyrim. All the people are like "Yay Bethesda!". Bethesda gets the warm fuzzies (and lots of money)
Then PERSON X introduces the HORSE ARMOUR mod. All the people are like "Yay PERSON X!". PERSON X gets the warm fuzzies, and this keeps them going. To get the mod, you have to go to PERSON X's page on nexus, read their spiel, download their file, read their README, install it just right, and so on. That's a lot of time the masses are spending with PERSON X because... they changed a piece of Bethesda's game.
Now PERSON Y introduces the PERSON Y's MEGAPACK mod, which combines multiple mods and makes sure they work together. PERSON X's HORSE ARMOUR mod is just a single bulletpoint on the list, along with hundreds of others. They are mere datapoints, what's important is PERSON Y, because PERSON Y made sure all these other modders' stuff worked together, and used their taste and discernment to decide what was worth including or not. All praise now goes to PERSON Y. PERSON Y gets the warm fuzzies while PERSON X gets the cold pricklies. Boo!
Now do you see why PERSON X doesn't like PERSON Y's modlists.... for Bethesda's game?
A side piece about who's "stealing" from who in the 1990s demo and piracy scene, which cracks games and makes painstakingly pixellated copies of famous artworks: https://www.datagubbe.se/scenecop/
I didn't know about these Sonic games, but as a Doom fan, I have to say that the use of the Doom engine for Sonic makes good sense. The way it feels to move around in "3D" space in Doom is one of the best parts of the game, IMO; there's a weight and sense of momentum to the player that I found lacking in full 3D games like Quake. I could see this working very well in a platforming/kart racing context.
I've still got burned CDs of some of the Bid For Power alphas downloaded from KaZaA (I think?).
My memory was that despite the enormous time-sink required to get it working, it actually wasn't very good. Like once you get over that initial thrill of being able to levitate in 3D space and blast a crude Kamehameha at people, the rest of the experience was pretty clunky.
Crazy imagining the alternate history is they'd figured out the Doom engine would be a good match for this back in the day. Although I'd never have believed it if I hadn't seen it.
This looks fantastic, but I can’t help but wonder how long before SEGA or the owners of the Sonic intellectual property take legal action against the game.
I’m not saying it could never happen, but SEGA appears to be much more tolerant of fangames than Nintendo. A cease and desist is a given for any Mario fangame of renown, but Sonic games appear to attract no attention from SEGA. Also, it’s been 25 years..
Sonic Mania is great, but fewer people seem to know the team also went on to create Penny's Big Breakaway independently of SEGA, and I actually liked that game even more!
Yes, there are other examples like the recent Sonic Unleashed recomp. I never heard of a SEGA/Sonic game receiving a cease-and-desist letter or anything similar.
I played this back when it first released. SEGA has absolutely known about it for the entirety of its existence; the Sonic fangame/modding/etc community has a long and storied history behind it.
They've taken action against things in the past, but they're not Nintendo. I'd be shocked if they did much about this particular effort.
This project has been going on for over 25 years. It used a Sonic Doom wad I made in the 90s as a starting point. If Sega really objected to it, they would have dropped the hammer by now.
It was just Sonic music, SFX, and some sprites in a WAD. I was just messing around, no real goals in mind. I think SRB2 is a phenomenal project that's really pushed the limits of what the Doom engine and Sonic community can do and showcases, better than Sega has ever done until fairly recently, how well the classic Sonic formula can work in 3D.
One of the key factors in the history of Sonic that I didn't know until recently was that he was a total flop in Japan. In fact the Mega Drive struggled to gain traction there. That's why they kept trying to reinvent the formula into the 2000s and beyond; from Sega (of Japan)'s perspective, unlike Mario, they hadn't established a gameplay template that they knew would be a worldwide hit, only a character they knew was popular in the USA and Europe.
But the SRB developers got it. They knew what made classic Sonic work, and sought to replicate that with the strengths—and limitations—of the Doom engine and produced an absolute banger of a project.
Working on SRB2 mods kickstarted my computer science career about twenty years ago. It's a really good game and, incidentally enough, an amazing learning tool for springboarding level into level design and practical C/C++ knowledge.
I owe my career to this community.
I LOVE Sonic Robo Blast 2. Please also check out the amazing kart racer spinoff, SRB2Kart! It is one of my favorite kart racers.
https://hyuu.cc/
https://wiki.srb2.org/wiki/SRB2Kart
And don't forget its sequel, Dr. Robotnik Ring Racers! Since I discovered it became one of my favorite video games, it's pretty technical and hard to dominate, but it's so exciting each time that I play it that I can't stop recommending it to everyone.
https://kartkrew.org/
I absolutely love SRB2K but I think they overcooked Ring Racers. It's bloated with so many mechanics that the tutorial for how to play the game is literally almost an hour long. The controls are also harsher than the previous game, especially when it comes to slopes.
Version 2.4 which is almost out doubles down on it being a high skill racing game with even more mechanics... Gaining "amps" when dealing damage, going into overdrive, "ring bail" which is dropping all your coins for a boost and can cancel spinning out, "neutral drift" where you lose less speed when drifting without steering...
I don't know what's going on at this point. I just want to hold forward and drift.
To me, Ring Racers feels like some bizarro version of a "what if we made a kart racer that plays like what normies think a fighting game plays like" future (complimentary, not derogatory). It's fascinating to get a glimpse. It's like those weird extinct animals who take over a tiny ecological niche but wouldn't survive in a more diverse climate, like channichthyidae or galapogos finches.
The result isn't quite a kart racer and isn't quite a fighting game, it's...some mix in between, where the difference between coming in first and being in fourth requires knowing that (say) directional influence is reversed while you're teching banana peel spinouts, or how your boost frames are preserved if you cancel your sliptide wavedash around a tight corner, etc etc. The skill ceiling is ridiculously high. For online play, so is the skill floor.
In all honesty I don't think it quite "works" for mass consumption...but it's not meant to! This corner of design space is built by those who love the genre they've made, so to hell with mass consumability anyway. I personally find the experiment fascinating and rewarding to learn. Certainly do check it out.
Glad I'm not the only one that feels like this, I love SRB2K but I can't bother anyone to learn to play Ring Racers
I feel like I want to coin a new internet law: "All fan mods eventually become kart racers."
See: Nightmare Kart, etc. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Kart
To be fair Nightmare Kart is NOT a mod of Bloodborne
The gameplay video on that page which is shot like an old 90's Saturday morning cartoon slot is really charming.
It's incredible that this project is still alive and kicking. I love that they have a whole archive of old builds and descriptions. Based on the descriptions I must have played this around March 2001 (a few months before the release of Sonic Adventure 2!)--my memory exactly matches up with the description of Demo 2. I doubt at the time that I thought it would even make it to a Demo 3! Kudos to everyone involved.
SRB2 is easily my favorite 3D Sonic game, and judging by the recent ports to stuff like the Sega 32x, it makes me wonder the “what if?” Universe where Sega had made a competent 3D Sonic game to compete with Mario 64.
The fact that the next-console's Sonic Adventure 1 still felt like an also-ran Mario 64 makes me think that it probably wouldn't have made a difference.
Much ink has been spilled and fingers pointed over the failures of Sonic Xtreme and other attempts to make a fully-3D Sonic game on the Sega Saturn, but I think it fundamentally comes down to the fact that the creators didn't know how to translate the core gameplay loop into 3D.
Well that’s what I am saying though; clearly the 32x (and probably the Saturn) were capable of running something cool like SRB2 as evidenced by the tech demos, and I feel like SRB2 really does feel like a proper translation of the 2D games to 3D.
But I broadly agree; it wasn’t a hardware thing, it was a “we don’t know how to do it” thing; SRB2 came like a full decade after the 32x’s relevance.
Playable in browser here: https://vinmannie.github.io/srb2web/
Looks interesting, but I can't pass the camera control tutorial level. As I move the mouse to control the camera, eventually, the mouse moves outside the browser window, and the camera direction gradually aligns with Sonic's POV before I can move the cursor around the window to re-enter the opposite side to continue moving. Continuous mouse movement seems necessary to keep the camera aligned differently from Sonic's movement direction.
I don't think this is how it's supposed to work.
very hard to play on a double monitor set up.
Another unplayable game on non-QWERTY keyboard
I play on dvorak. All keybinds are adjustable in the menu, even in this web version.
If you care to compile from source, I have a patch that makes SDL input by scancode which lets you type in dvorak in the chat box etc, lmk if you'd like a link.
I found the game & it's spin-off "Robo Blast Kart" like 6 years ago? The Kart game is SUPER fun & honestly better than official Mario Kart games. I didn't know the original game is 25 years old?? Incredible
SRB2K is very frustrating to me for a few reasons
- it is very nearly perfect, but has some minor issues especially in regards to the strength of frontrunning (early leads tend to become unbeatable) - the development team has mostly abandoned it in favor of the sequel, which completely abandons the brilliant simplicity of SRB2K - the development team kind of take a rude approach to the GPL. They don't really accept PRs from the community, and work in secrecy rather than out in the open. They still publish their work, so they comply with the license, but it's a bit lame - The modding community is super weird about reusing other people's code and will pitch a fit if you get caught reusing someone's lua script without their permission.
It's not rude to the GPL, it's just not collaborative in a way you want them to be?
The four freedoms allow you to share your enhancements with the community, they don't say the original author has to accept them. They pursue their own vision for the software, they give you all the sources and license you need to pursue a different direction.
Stallman has also talked about how "works of art" (pictures, stories, music) are different from "functional" works (software, recipes, typefaces, etc.). He thinks that nonfree "functional" works are unethical, but is ok with a modest copyright time limit before being permitted to remix/modify art:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.ht...
> But eventually I realized that modifying a work of art can be a contribution to art, but it's not desperately urgent in most cases. If you had to wait ten years for the copyright to expire, you could wait that long
With that in mind, he'd want game code to be published under a free software license, but would be ok if the "art" of the game remained briefly copyrighted. Probably not what modders want to hear!
Kart Krew accepts patches from outsiders. I've found the community to be quite collaborative.
I'm an outsider and I've gotten a few patches accepted to Ring Racers, like this small screenshot bugfix[1], or this more complicated rework of camera momentum to make "look behind you" work better[2].
One dev gave an initial cursory review of [2] within 36h, and the project leader chose to merge my change within a couple of months. By OSS standards, this is shockingly fast. (I suspect I got lucky - the project usually moves much slower.)
[1]: https://git.do.srb2.org/KartKrew/RingRacers/-/merge_requests... [2]: https://git.do.srb2.org/KartKrew/RingRacers/-/merge_requests...
Kart Krew is more secretive when it comes to the non-public "in-development" branch, but I think this is because the core team is more tight-knit and wants to keep a smaller audience for their more invasive gameplay vision/experiments. (I don't have access to this branch, but most PRs don't need it)
I don't blame any project that does work in private and doesn't accept community PRs.
Being open to the community isn't unilateral upside. It comes with huge trade-offs especially the more toxic and opinionated and bikesheddy and entitled the community is. Sometimes you have a vision you want to execute without dealing with egos and emotions in PR comments and without people who have entitled themself some sort of weird ownership of the project because it's small.
Elm's creator has some talks on this. But it's also an experience I have in any project that has traction.
For anyone interested in this debate about working in 'secrecy' vs 'out in the open', this is the subject of the 1997 essay (and later book) "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond, comparing the classic free software development models vs the model used by the Linux kernel.
Interesting really, I was never really in the community that much it was mostly me & my siblings playing the game for fun! But that's unfortunate to hear .. never heard of the sequel as well will check it out soon.
I do find it odd how modders have such a different culture about programming than regular developers. Like I know mods for Skyrim or whatever are always involved in crazy feuds about even things like modlists (some people are very opposed to something that would automatically install mods for example).
I wonder if it's just an age thing or something else?
It's not, the same thing happened even in the 1980s and 1990s. Think of it like "stolen valour".
Let's say you enjoy Skyrim. All the people are like "Yay Bethesda!". Bethesda gets the warm fuzzies (and lots of money)
Then PERSON X introduces the HORSE ARMOUR mod. All the people are like "Yay PERSON X!". PERSON X gets the warm fuzzies, and this keeps them going. To get the mod, you have to go to PERSON X's page on nexus, read their spiel, download their file, read their README, install it just right, and so on. That's a lot of time the masses are spending with PERSON X because... they changed a piece of Bethesda's game.
Now PERSON Y introduces the PERSON Y's MEGAPACK mod, which combines multiple mods and makes sure they work together. PERSON X's HORSE ARMOUR mod is just a single bulletpoint on the list, along with hundreds of others. They are mere datapoints, what's important is PERSON Y, because PERSON Y made sure all these other modders' stuff worked together, and used their taste and discernment to decide what was worth including or not. All praise now goes to PERSON Y. PERSON Y gets the warm fuzzies while PERSON X gets the cold pricklies. Boo!
Now do you see why PERSON X doesn't like PERSON Y's modlists.... for Bethesda's game?
A side piece about who's "stealing" from who in the 1990s demo and piracy scene, which cracks games and makes painstakingly pixellated copies of famous artworks: https://www.datagubbe.se/scenecop/
I didn't know about these Sonic games, but as a Doom fan, I have to say that the use of the Doom engine for Sonic makes good sense. The way it feels to move around in "3D" space in Doom is one of the best parts of the game, IMO; there's a weight and sense of momentum to the player that I found lacking in full 3D games like Quake. I could see this working very well in a platforming/kart racing context.
The 32X version is incredible. Imagine if there were other genres of games running on the DOOM engine, maybe it could have even saved the 32X.
Watching the trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia097A0pKNM&t, it looks very "sonic."
Then, when I look at the walls, I don't know why, it just "feels" Doom to me.
Very cool!
RIP Mugen and Bid For Power. Don't forget to make backups of those fan games!
I've still got burned CDs of some of the Bid For Power alphas downloaded from KaZaA (I think?).
My memory was that despite the enormous time-sink required to get it working, it actually wasn't very good. Like once you get over that initial thrill of being able to levitate in 3D space and blast a crude Kamehameha at people, the rest of the experience was pretty clunky.
It definitely lacked balance and game polish. But it was fun for fans, and unheard of at the time (a bit less so today).
Crazy imagining the alternate history is they'd figured out the Doom engine would be a good match for this back in the day. Although I'd never have believed it if I hadn't seen it.
I tried playing it but W key (forward) is doing nothing. Only A and D do something.
This looks fantastic, but I can’t help but wonder how long before SEGA or the owners of the Sonic intellectual property take legal action against the game.
I’m not saying it could never happen, but SEGA appears to be much more tolerant of fangames than Nintendo. A cease and desist is a given for any Mario fangame of renown, but Sonic games appear to attract no attention from SEGA. Also, it’s been 25 years..
On the contrary, Sega has hired notable Sonic community members and published Sonic games they've made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Mania#Development
Sonic Mania is great, but fewer people seem to know the team also went on to create Penny's Big Breakaway independently of SEGA, and I actually liked that game even more!
Yes, there are other examples like the recent Sonic Unleashed recomp. I never heard of a SEGA/Sonic game receiving a cease-and-desist letter or anything similar.
I played this back when it first released. SEGA has absolutely known about it for the entirety of its existence; the Sonic fangame/modding/etc community has a long and storied history behind it.
They've taken action against things in the past, but they're not Nintendo. I'd be shocked if they did much about this particular effort.
This project has been going on for over 25 years. It used a Sonic Doom wad I made in the 90s as a starting point. If Sega really objected to it, they would have dropped the hammer by now.
Wow! How did your WAD start? What were your goals? What do you think of how others have done?
It was just Sonic music, SFX, and some sprites in a WAD. I was just messing around, no real goals in mind. I think SRB2 is a phenomenal project that's really pushed the limits of what the Doom engine and Sonic community can do and showcases, better than Sega has ever done until fairly recently, how well the classic Sonic formula can work in 3D.
One of the key factors in the history of Sonic that I didn't know until recently was that he was a total flop in Japan. In fact the Mega Drive struggled to gain traction there. That's why they kept trying to reinvent the formula into the 2000s and beyond; from Sega (of Japan)'s perspective, unlike Mario, they hadn't established a gameplay template that they knew would be a worldwide hit, only a character they knew was popular in the USA and Europe.
But the SRB developers got it. They knew what made classic Sonic work, and sought to replicate that with the strengths—and limitations—of the Doom engine and produced an absolute banger of a project.