Hello everybody. Many of you have noticed that the Message Board and Master Server have not been available for the last few days. They’re back now. In the interest of transparency, I’m going to explain why they were down.

As Easter came to a close, we suffered a security breach. The password of one of our administrators was brute-forced, giving the attackers access to administrative permissions. These permissions included the ability to see email addresses of members, but not their passwords nor the hashes thereof. The attackers proceeded to spam the forums, edit posts with offensive text, and change emails and passwords of some other staff members.

We took down the forums briefly to assess damage and reset the password of the affected administrator. However, we did not notice the email on their account had been changed, so the attackers were able to break back into the account and continue using it. They set the forum software to begin deleting all user accounts. The Message Board was then taken back down. The Master Server partially relies on the Message Board in order to run, which is why it became unavailable.

To fix this, the forum has been rolled back to the state it was in on April 14th, so expect some posts and addons to be missing. If your account was deleted in the attack, you can expect it to be back, complete with all of your posts and other data (as of the 14th). The staff member whose account was compromised has voluntarily stepped down and will no longer be an administrator. We rounded up the staff, including SRB2 & SRB2Kart developers, to assess their security, change their passwords, and enable 2-factor authentication. All staff members are now required to enable 2FA in order to use moderator/admin powers. Additionally, we’ve set stricter password requeriments for all new accounts.

Although the Message Board was functional by the end of April 19th, we kept it closed to the public because not all staff were immediately available for the security check-up. Some staff have still not responded, so instead of keeping the place closed, we have temporarily disabled their accounts as a precautionary measure. Staff members whose accounts are disabled should contact an administrator at their earliest convenience.

We appreciate your patience and support during the recovery process. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please reach out to us via this forum on the SRB2MB, our Discord server, @SonicTeamJr on Twitter, or our Facebook page. Have a great rest of your week!

Hello everybody! It’s come to our attention that some minor fixes were left out of SRB2 v2.2.10. Sorry about that! Here’s the TL;DR of what changed:

• Adjustments to several item animations
• Several sounds replaced with higher quality versions

Since these are so minor, we won’t be issuing a new version of the game just yet. Instead, simply download this PK3 and put it in your SRB2 folder. This won’t autoload, so make sure you add the file yourself using the Add-ons menu!

My work here is done, so I’m off to get a snack. Have fun!

Hello everybody! It took longer than we’d like, but SRB2 v2.2.10 is finally here! Here are the highlights of this patch:

• The file limit has been massively increased. (The skin limit is still 32, though!)
• The tutorial has been redone for the new default controls.
• Many new additions to Lua, including bot features, an improved input library, easing functions and more.
• Blending modes for midtextures and FOFs.
• Multi-tagging and more convenient slope copying for non-UDMF maps.
• Generalized slopes for UDMF maps.
• The ability to load folders for easier addon development. No need to compile your resources into a PK3 until you’re ready to release your work!
• A couple of updated graphics, textures & sprites.
• Way too many bug fixes to list here.

You can read the full changelog here.

Please note there is only a full install available for this release since every single one of the game’s files have been modified. You should be able to install it to your existing SRB2 v2.2 folder just fine, but feel free to back up your addons and saved games first.

Android players should be aware that the Android port of SRB2 is no longer officially supported. We know that’s disappointing, but we’ll keep the v2.2.9 APK up on the Downloads page for your convenience. The source code is publicly available on Lactozilla’s GitHub, so anyone with the necessary skills should feel free to update it themselves.

Our goal going forward is to get smaller updates out more often. We’d like the next patch to be made up of little more than a few quality of life features and more bug fixes. A lot of upcoming features and fixes (and many from this very patch) were generously contributed by the community. We’re grateful for your hard work.

That’s everything! Go grab the update from our Downloads page and get going! (At the time of writing, only a Windows build is available — hang on, Mac users!) Enjoy.

Hello everybody! Round 2 of this year’s contest is among the best ones ever. There are so many great maps in the compilations.

The winner of the single player division is Mikhael Blur with his entry, Bricked Busted Zone. This massive zone with solid platforming has music borrowed from our very own CobaltBW. The bright colors and architecture of the block castles look very nice. Congratulations!

Mikhael Blur also won the Capture the Flag division with his entry, Colorful Towers Zone, which shares Bricked Busted’s theming. The winner of the Match division is Diegão with their entry, Marble Acropolis Zone. InferNOr won the Battle Arena division with their entry, Misty Gardens Zone. Congratulations!

You can view the full contest results here. If you haven’t checked out this contest pack yet, you can download it here.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest! The deadline for OLDC 2022 Round 1 is June 1st, 2022 at 23:59 UTC (6:59 EST). See you then!

The Official Level Design Contest is back! This round has 21 single player maps, 2 match maps, 3 CTF maps, and 2 Battle Arena maps, totaling 28 entries by 24 creators. Get into an aesthetic mindset, drop into the vapor dome, and get going! Be sure to vote for your favorite maps when you’re finished playing. Check it out!

Be aware that in SRB2 v2.2.9, there are some visual errors with the character swappers. These issues are fixed in the upcoming patch, v2.2.10. Other various bugs are present in some of the submitted maps. Patches for these maps are likely coming sometime in early January. For now, we’ve eliminated every soft lock and crash we could find, so the pack should be pretty stable.

Please submit your votes before January 16th, 2022 @ 6:59 PM EST (23:59 UTC). Thanks to all our contestants, and have fun!

Hello everybody! Round 1 of this year’s contest has been a great success. Let’s see the results!

The winners of the single player division are Othius, Inazuma, and Spectorious with their entry, Hollow Hill Zone. This mysterious place is full of strange liquid. Players can climb up streams of it by jumping up. One section of the level has a very cool shrine that collapses. The stage has fun slopes to spin off of and nice custom assets to look at. Congratulations, all three of you!

Of course we can’t forget the winners of the multiplayer divisions:

Congratulations to MK.exe for winning the Match division with Uncharted Badlands Zone!
Congratulations to Ruberjig and Apollyon Woman for winning the Battle CTF division with Metallic Madness Zone!

You can view the full contest results here. If you haven’t checked out this contest pack yet, you can download it here.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest! The deadline for OLDC 2021 Round 2 is December 1st, 2021 at 23:59 UTC (6:59 EST). See you then!

It’s that time again, folks! Well, rather, two days ago was that time again — I’m late to post this. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still that time! That’s right, the Official Level Design Contest is back for another exciting installment! Come on down and experience some brand-new, never-before-seen maps! We’ve got single player maps, we’ve got match maps, and we’ve got battle CTF maps, totaling 23 entries by 22 creators! What wonders await in the mysterious asteroid base? Who will win the trophy for each game type? Are you a bad enough dude to vote for your favorite maps? I sure hope you are, and if you are, then click right here to get started!

Phew…ahem. Now that the sales pitch is out of the way, I’d like to highlight some quality-of-life features new to this iteration of the OLDC. Here’s what our contest staff has whipped up:

• New map portals, complete with new voting UI
• All emerald tokens now award Chaos Emeralds
• Hub character swapper for single player mode
• Press & hold the Fire button in single player mode to return to the hub

At the time of writing, we advise players not to use the return to hub function while standing close to a star post unless they would like to spawn in an erroneous location upon their return. There are a couple other minor bugs with the new features that contest staff are working to fix, and we hope to push said fixes soon.

Be sure to submit your votes before June 26th, 2021 @ 6:59 PM EST (23:59 UTC). Thanks to all our contestants, and may the best maps win!

Hello everybody! Thanks to community feedback, we were able to find and fix some major errors preventing players from properly enjoying the game on Android devices. If you were getting nothing but a black screen in OpenGL mode, this could be the patch for you! The changelog is short, so I’ll copy the whole thing:

• Remove the f suffix from the GLSL shaders
• Use precision qualifier in the GLSL shaders
• Properly recreate the OpenGL context whenever the app resumes
• Fix a bug where touch navigation buttons would not scale properly
• Implement framebuffer objects (FBOs)
• Fix a bug with screenshots in OpenGL
• Load gamedata from srb2path
• Load savegames and live event backups from srb2home and srb2path
• Add a “delete” navigation button
• Fix playintro command not closing the menu
• Fix the user being able to open the console in situations where it should not open
• Fix the TV remote not responding to the credits/ending/continue
• Fix an issue where the game would not start under Marshmallow
• Support multi-window mode

That’s it! Grab the hotfix from the usual place and have fun!

Hey. 2.2.9’s out. Grab it at the usual place. It’s late, so I’ll just paraphrase some of the more interesting lines from the changelog:

• Fixed animated skin colors in OpenGL.
• Fixed an error when loading addons with custom savedata via the command line (notably, when testing from Zone Builder).
• Optimized Lua, plane rendering, and drawing of FOFs.
• Added polyobject support for Lua.
• Added multitag library for Lua, which allows reading and manipulation of tags on mapthings, lines and sectors; also added tag iterator functions.
• Attraction Shield’s homing attack may now be chained.
• The addfile command now supports adding multiple files.
• The player will now smoothly slide across a sloped ceiling.
• Let more graphics lumps be replaced clientside.
• Various bits of progress on UDMF.
• Special text is printed when the player begins the final lap in Circuit mode.
• Ring drain sectors play the ring depletion sound.
• Pausing the game is no longer possible during the score tally screen in Marathon Mode.
• Tons of map fixes from sphere.
• Added acronym keywords to Co-op levels. For use with the map command, so e.g. you can warp to Green Flower 1 with map GFZ1.
• The game now resends the whole gamestate when resyncing a player.
• Fixed an issue with the installer executables where you wouldn’t always be asked where you want to install the game.

There are lots of bug fixes and other quality-of-life things in this patch. We hope you enjoy it.

It’s done.

After over a decade, the SRB2 Message Board is finally upgraded to a modern interface. Gone are the days of the broken ratings system. No more shall we have to deal with a subpar experience on mobile browsers. We’re back, and we’re better than ever. We greatly appreciate your patience with us during the migration process.

We hope you like the new Addons & More system. There’s way too much to say about it for a single news post, so check out the instructions on how to submit files to it as well as these answers to some questions about it you probably have. If your addon somehow didn’t make it into Addons & More, please let us know!

“So, what other new features are on the new message board?” you might ask. First, one of the more obvious features: the ability to react to posts. Just click the “Cool!” button at the bottom of a post to let the post author know you like it. (It doesn’t do anything else, but they might get a notification for it, which could give them warm and fuzzy feelings.)

You now have the ability to set a banner that displays on your profile and on the profile preview that appears if someone hovers over your profile picture. If you’re not sure what to set it to, may I suggest a screenshot of your favorite map?

Another fun feature is native support for emoji. Click the smiley face in the post editor to browse available emoji. There’s a text box in it to make searching for emoji easier. We added some custom ones that you might recognize from our Discord server.

We’ve also added an extension for the code block BBcode that lets you denote what language your code uses as well as highlight any lines you want. The code language is set to Lua by default, and several more languages are available.

There are a bunch of new styles to pick from, including ones for every character in SRB2, with more on the way. The style selector is still on the bottom left of every page, just like the old forum.

Contest winners will now see their wins displayed on their profiles. These trophies are part of the badges system. We will continue adding badges for every OLDC, but any other new badges will be few and far between. Winners of the most recent contest will also get a yellow banner under their name instead of a yellow username. With all these styles, we decided it’s best to keep all usernames the same color.

Finally, here’s a big one: you can now install the SRB2MB on your PC or mobile device as a web app. As far as I know, it only supports Android and Windows 10. The Install button should be on the top navigation bar or on the bottom of the side navigation bar if you’re on mobile. Opera doesn’t always seem to show the Install button, so try Chrome or another browser if you don’t see it. (No, it’s not on the Play store, silly goose!) The web app looks and feels identical to the website, and you can access the SRB2 home page and the wiki through it. Now our community can always be just a tap away!

There is one small caveat: we still need to copy over info from v2.1 and v2.0 era addons so you can see which of them are reusable. This will take a while, so please bear with us!

Well, that’s pretty much everything. I probably forgot a couple of minor things, but I’m sure you’ll find them eventually. I sincerely hope you all find the new message board to be an improvement. We’ve certainly done our best to meet that goal. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to make a post in the Talk to the Staff subforum — we’d love to hear it.

I’d like to close by extending my gratitude to everyone involved with the migration: AlamGBC, Alice, Boinciel, Charybdizs, D00D64, Inazuma, jameds, Larz T, LoganA, RoyKirbs, SteelT, and Varren. You guys are all wonderful!

Happy posting, everybody!