Oh, wow. It’s been a while since our last newspost. Almost one year, precisely. Anyway.

Patch v2.2.14 is finally out, and we have a very good reason for why it took us this long. Besides the usual batch of bugfixes and optimizations, this patch brings to you a major overhaul of the Match and CTF rotations.

This is the first part of our two-patch content update plan to wrap up v2.2 with a neat little bow. As the next major version of SRB2 is very likely not going to include ringslinger game modes by default, our mappers have worked hard to give these maps the love they deserve so we can send ringslinger off with a bang.

There have been revamps across many existing Match and CTF maps and you’re also going to find brand new ones by our community creators, like Crystalline Heights Zone and Pristine Shores Zone by Revan, as well as Summit Showdown Zone by Evertone, so knock yourself (and others) out.

If you’re not big on ringslinger, you also get to eat – a few of our unlockable stages have also received updates. Shoutout to our community creator Skydusk, whose reimagined Pipe Towers Zone is the ultimate version of our homage to the plumber, remade from the ground up and sporting shiny new assets. Definitely give it a try!

We’ve also chosen to replace Techno Legacy Zone with something that better represents the game’s own legacy. By our former developer toaster, enter Final Demo Zone: a delightful mashup of all the levels in the Single Player campaign of SRB2’s Final Demo (1.09.4, for the nostalgic) in one bite-sized experience. No better thing to tide you over as you wait for the final version of the game to come out.

There are a couple more Single Player changes lined up for the second part of this final update to v2.2, but for the time being, Aerial Garden Zone enthusiasts will also notice more pleasant visuals due to the improved texture work.

And the thing everyone’s been waiting for: all character sprites have received a fresh coat of paint by megatalented spriter and former developer MotorRoach. He’s been a long-standing member of Sonic Team Junior and we’re going our separate ways for now, but as soon as you take a look at the new spritework, you’ll agree with us that we’re not gonna need any new ones for a very long time, and whenever we do, it’s not gonna be an easy task to match his craft. Thanks for all the hard work, Roach!

As for the quality of life and modding features for this patch, you’ll see there’s more stuff that justifies the wait. Such as:

• The game now has a dedicated Shield button.
• The OpenGL renderer now supports Software-esque palette rendering.
• Mappers now have access to texture scaling, per-wall lighting, and sector portals.
• Scripters can now take advantage of longer sprite names, ZDoom-like color translations, a bunch of new Lua functionality, and a raise in the skins cap.

As usual, you can head over to the Downloads page to get this update, and the full changelog can be found at our GitLab.

A big thanks to everyone that contributed in the testing process for this patch, a Happy New Year, and see you next time!