Since last month’s update didn’t have enough space for post everything we wanted to show off, here’s a bunch more 2.1 screenshots. As with all previous updates, everything here is subject to change before release.

	The escape key menu has been dramatically changed, providing something closer to a pause menu than the old behavior of bringing up the title screen menu. The emblem checklist for the current stage and some unlockable options are also displayed here, making it less important to go all the way to the statistics screen to look up what’s missing.
	The rotational chain launcher gimmick in CEZ has been streamlined. None of them allow you to change their facing direction, and all of them are large enough that just standing underneath their block will cause the player to grab it. Jumping is no longer necessary to grab hold. The chain swing gimmick has been removed from the stage entirely.
	The special stage tally screen now gives you a link bonus equal to 100 times your max link in the special stage, and also gives you a continue if you obtained fifty thousand points in the special stage itself.
	We’ve made some changes to make debugging custom objects a little easier: SOC warnings given when adding a file are now accompanied by line numbers allowing you to instantly find the issues in question. Additionally, unknown things and mobjs that try to use invalid or nonexistant sprites now appear as a warning symbol, as shown in this screenshot of a work in progress Azure Temple.
	Another new addition is NiGHTS mode, which is essentially Record Attack for NiGHTS stages. Like record attack, it gives you the ability to replay any special stage you’ve already completed in an attempt to get a high score or best time, hopefully beating the requirement for an emblem. Obviously, we haven’t gotten around to making map screenshots for the special stages yet, hence the black ? box.
	The new emblem system is now fully implemented and ready to go. The exploration emblems have card suits and the star, while the other emblem types have special icons to themselves. Each emblem type also has a different color to help differentiate them.

Finally, if you’re looking for more 2.1 information, most of what gets previewed in IRC is meticulously documented on the Version 2.1 page on the Wiki.

Rumors of the project’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the lack of news, we have been making slow but steady progress on SRB2 over the last year. As with the previous updates, click on the screenshots for a higher resolution version.

	Techno Hill 1′s revamp continues on schedule, providing a stage that no longer feels anything like Greenflower 4. New slime, enemies appropriated from a prominent mod (No more Crawlas outside of GFZ!), and just a nice good old-fashioned set of polish all around.
	The Techno Hill slime has been completely revamped, as seen here in the underground tunnel’s first room. The slime doesn’t hurt anymore, but is exceptionally buoyant. Jumping in it will cause you to float up, bouncing in and out until you eventually lose enough momentum to start walking on it.
	Here’s a simple example of what can be done with the new slime. Just jumping into the slime won’t provide enough depth to reach the goodies at the bottom, but if you climb up to the upper ledge and jump down, you’ll have enough speed to touch the bottom and grab the reward.
	The NiGHTS Special Stages are now 100% complete and ready for release with 2.1. You can even run through the stage multiple times in a single run to attempt to get a high score. For more details on the NiGHTS Special Stages, check out our previous update here.
	2.1 also includes some outright new content, such as Azure Temple, a brutally hard extra stage which is entirely underwater. In the previous tradition of Aerial Garden, expect lots of pits, fire-breathing gargoyles, and other hazards to beat this stage. Unlike the rest of this update, you can actually try out a beta of this stage, as a 2.0.6 version was included in the May/June 2012 OLDC on the forums, located here.
	Finally, our coders haven’t been sitting entirely doing nothing with the netcode not working. One of the new features of 2.1 is skyboxes, which allows for more interesting, animated skies like this one in Castle Eggman 1. Those clouds are very much layered and moving.
	Castle Eggman has nothing on this impressive demonstration skybox, however.

It’s been a while since we posted any information about 2.1′s progress on the front page, so here’s some random tidbits from the development team:

	The shield graphics are finally getting a revamp in 2.1, with a unique image for each shield. This means it’ll be possible to figure out what shield you have in a colormap, as well as in the dark. They also just look awesome, as this screenshot of the Armageddon Shield demonstrates.
	Emblems are also getting a dramatic revamp, as this heavily beta screenshot sorta demonstrates. While we won’t provide accurate details of what the new system entails, the player will no longer have to worry about coming across an emblem that they cannot collect. You can now taste the emblem rainbow.
	Record Attack now allows you to race against ghosts of your previous replays. The game automatically saves a replay of your fastest time, highest score, and most rings, as well as your most recent attempt at the stage. While playing, it shows all of these replays at once as ghosts, allowing you to directly race your best attempts. You can also race against a guest replay to try your luck against a friend’s best time.
	SRB2 now supports LUA scripting. LUA is a scripting language which allows you to modify SRB2 with far more flexibility than SOCs, allowing you to change tons of stuff that previously required a custom EXE. As an example, here is a screenshot of creator.wad, a test WAD for the feature. Creator.wad is a competitive map played in the Coop gametype where a random player is selected to pilot the Eggmobile to design his own GFZ3 arena layout, and then fight the rest of the players in it. The player piloting the Eggmobile has access to all of its normal attacks and movement abilities, and takes eight hits just like the real thing.

As with all of the previous updates, the exact details may change in the future, and in fact in a few of these cases these screenshots are already outdated. These features are all functional in the current beta, although they aren’t all fully complete.

Srb2.org will be down at February 25, 2012, at 6am CST and will be hopefully back up by 6pm the same day.

The data center the SRB2.org server sits at will have 8 hour downtime on February 25, 2012, at 6pm CST

Oh, and someone submitted false spam report on SRB2MB and SRB2 Wiki emails on Hotmail, so Hotmail has banned the server from sending email to hotmail, msn, and live users. If you wish to change your account to a different email, you can, I’ll be watching the mailbox of the MB and Wiki, and forward emails messages from a non-blocked account.

Well, this is Alam, your srb2.org server administrator, I am sorry but on Tuesday the 10th of January, the server’s hard drive started to fail. So I had to replace it and reload everything from the weekly backup, so we may had lost some MB posts, Wiki changes and a few other things (including the “Police Public Call Box” we had on hand).