2.1.16 is here! There is one very important thing we need to state up front – in order to make the online SRB2 experience more stable and reduce the number of desynchronisations that may occur, we have decided to make the difficult decision of disabling netgame capabilities in Direct Draw (srb2dd.exe) builds. It will be a long road, but this first consolidating step will help us understand and potentially solve the problems with the netcode.  We’ll give you the patch notes at the end of the post, don’t you worry.

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the forums, there’s been an interesting group project that’s been going on – and it’s out now! It’s called Shut Up and Get On It, or SUGOI, and with 29 unique levels it’s one of the biggest map packs in the history of SRB2. Pretty much the whole community has come together to work on this thing and, thanks to the magic of slopes, it’s really amazing.  We encourage you to go play that map pack after downloading the 2.1.16 update.

Also in exciting news, we don’t usually get attention from the wider world… but a couple months ago we got three separate sites reporting on us at once!

1) – Dorkly mentioned us in their list of cool pop culture DooM mods. We’re mentioned alongside ancient greats like Ghostbusters DooM as well as the relatively modern Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch.

2) – IGN went into our game wanting to hate it, but realised they couldn’t!  Someone should tell them we have mediocre support for controllers.

3) – Last but not least, Gizmodo interviewed us devs about the history of the game! We gave ’em a few 2.2 screenshots to pick from for their header image as gratitude for their thoughtfulness.

We did give them a few more images than they had space for, so here’s the other two – featuring the new versions of Tails, GFZ1 and CEZ1! It also features our new Sonic, although he’s now available on the message board with some custom abilities for fun here.

It’s a shame 2.2 isn’t ready yet… but that doesn’t mean 2.1.16 isn’t pretty great in and of itself!

General
* We, uh, accidentally compiled 2.1.15 without any optimizations turned on. Sorry about that – the framerate in this version should be way better…
* Knuckles can now climb on one-sided linedefs that don’t have the No Climb flag. This means thok barriers are no longer needed outside of decorative uses.
* Fixed an issue where colliding with the edges of Mario blocks, bustable FOFs, and bouncy FOFs was extremely unreliable.
* Fixed falling through a reverse platform FOF clipping you downwards (and vice versa with reverse gravity and normal platforms).
* Fixed FF_SHATTERBOTTOM FOFs acting like THZ goop when stood on.
* Thrown match emeralds now disappear in death pits instead of uselessly bouncing off.
* Fixed an issue where the NiGHTS drone was visible at the end of a special stage for a single tic.
* P_GetMobjGravity(mobj) is a new function available to Lua.
* You can now disable the weapon rings and power stones displays from ringslinger gametypes using Lua.
* Single-sided linedef skewing now behaves like midtexture skewing; the No Midtexture Skew linedef flag disables, instead of it being on by default.
* Fixed several issues with the Solid Midtexture linedef flag not playing nicely with the Peg Midtexture and Repeat Midtexture flags.
* Cleaned up the error message when failing to load a sprite that doesn’t have enough rotations.
* The game will no longer crash whenever it gets lost trying to find a special linedef from a tag number.
* Fixed an issue with one custom cutscene immediately following another causing the game to softlock.
* If the game becomes modified during a record attack run, the run will now immediately end.
* Using the -warp game startup parameter will now let you know if you are attempting to access an invalid map lump.
* Fixed zero-length REJECT lumps reading from arbitrary memory.

Slopes
* Teetering on the edge of platforms and ledges now takes slopes into account.
* Slopes can have their physics disabled by applying the No Sonic linedef flag to their master linedef. (Zone Builder will probably rename that linedef flag for the slope types soon enough, but until then…)
* Slope physics now take sector gravity into account.
* Non-player objects are now able to move up and down slopes much smoother.
* Vertex slopes now crash with a descriptive error message if they’re set up incorrectly.
* Fixed a crash caused by hitting a bouncy wall whilst on a slope.
* Fixed an issue where Knuckles attempted to climb on thin air above a slope in 2D mode.
* Bustable FOFs with sloped planes now have accurate collision bounds.
* Running into a spring or gas jet on a slope will now always send you on the correct path instead of at an awkward angle.
* Fixed gas jets having dance parties on slopes.

Software
* Fixed most, if not all, crashes caused by drawing parts of textures offscreen. These crashes alone caused many of the annoying crashes people have recently been reporting, so software mode should now be a lot more stable to play with.
* Fixed sloped FOF planes with translucent pixels losing their translucency when enveloped in a colormap.
* Fixed a crash caused by wedge-shaped FOFs mistakenly attempting to draw the top of its side textures below its bottom.
* Fixed skybox positioning being visually inconsistent between chasecam and first person mode.
* Fixed sprites in skyboxes being drawn with weird artifacting.
* Fixed the linedef backside textures of polyobjects floating above the polyobject’s position.

OpenGL
* Lower unpegged is now consistent with the new software mode behavior introduced in 2.1.15.
* Fixed specific arrangments of floor and ceiling slopes causing HOMs and other visual glitches.

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