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updates, the exact details may change in the future, and in fact in a few of these cases these screenshots are already outdated.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.

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.

It is now setup on the following sites:
https://www.srb2.org/
https://wiki.srb2.org/
https://mb.srb2.org/

That is all.

	The new special stages are based on our main single player zones, so the first one is based on GFZ. This area is large and simple, with a low blue sphere requirement, easily shown by the red background in the upper left of the HUD signifying that the requirement is already met. Also, the powerups that were previously invisible while active are now visually represented on-screen for the duration. The helper is now a flicky, which you can see in the middle of all the particle effects in this screenshot.
	Special stage 2 is based on THZ, and is much larger, with multiple rooms, and several indoor areas. The difficulty level is still extremely low, so feel free to relax and continue to get a feel for the mechanics.
	Special stage 3, following the pattern, is based on DSZ. It’s impossible to drown in the underwater sections, but the level is quite large and has a large blue sphere requirement.
	Special stage 4 is a revamped version of Slumber Circuit Zone, retextured to look like CEZ. The track layout is mostly the same, but the object layout is pretty heavily modified, and starts to up the difficulty level a bit. Like the helper, the super paraloop powerup is shown by a red spark trail for the duration. As an additional aid, the name of the powerup is written out for a few seconds after grabbing it, to clarify what it does. This should help players actually learn what the powerups do, as we’ve found a majority of SRB2 players don’t know what the NiGHTS powerups do.
	Special stage 5 is a revamped version of Spring Hill Zone, retextured to look like ACZ. Some of the extra territory has been removed to streamline the map, such as the long loop around the lake, and the stage is now much faster-paced in general. The time limit is also quite strict and the object layout has been moved around a bit in places.

Not shown are special stage 6 (RVZ) and special stage 7 (ERZ), which are both not far enough along to provide screenshots that aren’t missing objects entirely and displaying weird things like time limits of several hours. Expect the difficulty of those two stages to be quite brutal when we do have them completed. While we hope to have NiGHTS special stages included in 2.1, like everything else we preview, they will arrive when they’re actually done. The user interface and HUD improvements are already in 2.1, though, so the cleaner implementation and user-friendliness changes will be included in the next release regardless.