Hello everybody! We’re happy to inform you that another fantastic SRB2 update has landed on your doorstep. Here are the key changes in SRB2 v2.2.11:

• Removed the framerate limit: Using interpolation, SRB2 can now run at far more than 35fps, allowing for smoother looking 60fps gameplay (or much higher on supported monitors). You can set a custom limit at the bottom of Video Options.
• Fixed error 503: This prevented some players from accessing the ingame Master Server browser. If you’ve been having trouble using the Master Server, give it another try.
• Support larger characters in ERZ: Addon characters with large collision boxes, such as Ryder the Falcon, can now complete ERZ. We introduced some new gravity-related elements you can add to your maps as a part of this fix. Read about them here.
• Added support for the Universal Doom Map Format (UDMF): UDMF is a more flexible and powerful map format that allows for easier editing and more complex level designs. This long-awaited feature is a game-changer for mappers, opening up new possibilities for custom levels.
  • The implementation isn’t set in stone. We intend to make changes to it based on mappers’ feedback if necessary.
  • The UDMF map editor is not complete. Until it is complete, you can find the latest build pinned in #udmf on our Discord server.
  • You can convert your existing map to the new format, but older levels should continue to work as normal (let us know if they don’t!)
  • UDMF maps are allowed to be submitted to the OLDC!
• Better rendering in large levels: Levels that used to break the renderer by the sheer size of their rooms should be far more visually stable now.
• Improved Lua command/cvar safety and added basic rate limitation for Lua file access: Helps prevent addons from writing too much data to hard disk, among other things.

There are plenty of other bug fixes and other improvements. Check out the changelog for a complete list.

We appreciate your continued support and feedback as we work on our favorite project. You would probably appreciate heading over to our downloads page to get the new patch and start playing. Enjoy!

Hey everybody! I hope spring is treating you all well. We are thrilled to announce that the OLDC is officially back after all these months!

In case you missed it, the OLDC is no longer a contest. It has become a purely collaborative event. Check out this news post to catch up. We concluded that article with the news that OLDC submissions would be closed until our new rules were in place, and now that they’re published, I’d like to talk through some of the changes with you.

First, the collab divisions have changed. There are now only four of them, all part of base SRB2: Single Player, Circuit, Match, and Capture the Flag. We know there are still a good number of Battle fans out there, but we’ve run into logistical issues that prevent us from including its game modes. On the plus side, this means there only has to be one file per pack from now on, which should hopefully make adding the OLDC pack to your game a little easier.

The second and most important change to the event is the new requirement that all participants must be members of our Discord server in addition to having an SRB2MB account in good standing (read: not banned). During our last few events, we have used a private Discord channel for event participants to talk in, where they helped each other test maps, fix bugs, and more. It is now the most important source of map feedback for all submitters, and discussion there leads to an overall better final map pack for everyone to enjoy. But why require every participant to be there? Well, submitters who chose not to be present there simply weren’t there to get all the important feedback, and therefore they couldn’t use that feedback to improve their maps before each pack launched. We believe that this phase of private group testing, bug fixing, and feedback is so important that we are requiring all participants to be a part of it. We have even moved the submission process to Discord — you won’t be submitting OLDC entries via the Message Board anymore.

Third, I’d like to mention that each OLDC pack from here on out will have the permissions set for anyone to maintain it, but not make major modifications to it. This is a more lenient approach compared to previous packs, which were fully barred from being ported or otherwise modified by anyone outside of event participants and staff. (If you weren’t aware, the simple “reusable” vs. “non-reusable” system we used to have for addons submitted to the Message Board is gone; it’s been replaced with new options you can read about here.)

Finally, some minor details: In the past, we required maps to work properly in the software renderer and not cause crashes. We still require maps not to crash, but we have expanded the requirement for maps to work properly to include both software and OpenGL rendering modes. It’s fine if one render mode doesn’t look quite right, though, as long as the level remains playable in it. We are willing to make exceptions for submitters who don’t have computers capable of running both render modes, but please note you will need to hand off your map to other participants in order to have it fixed in time for release. Also, custom music and sound effects must be converted to OGG format (quality level 0). We’ve included a link to how to do this within the event rules. [EDIT: A small handful of other formats are now allowed for music as well — see full rules for details.] Last but not least, we have lifted the restriction on the amount of maps you’re allowed to submit. Please keep in mind that you should be striving for quality over quantity when you make maps to submit, though — don’t spread yourself too thin!

That’s it! The submission deadline is Saturday, July 1st at 6:59PM EST. Be sure to check out the full rules before you submit, and make sure your entry complies with them. We’re stoked to get this event off the ground, and we hope you are too! See you soon!

Well, we didn’t have anything special prepared for the big day. It kinda snuck up on us. Sorry.

So instead of showing something off, we wanted to hear from you! We asked what your favorite memories of SRB2 were on social media. There were plenty of people talking about downloading the game on to their school computers, nostalgia for almost every version of the game (and every mod you’d expect), big achievements in speedrunning, antics in netgames, and much, much more. If you’d like to take a real trip down memory lane, check out the many responses to our post on Twitter.

As for me, the big hype trains behind the v2.2 and SRB2Kart releases were big highlights, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss struggling to play Final Demo netgames on mom’s slow PC and slow internet. Well, okay, maybe only a little bit.

What SRB2 gave me that I’ll remember the most is the drive to learn and grow. To put it shortly, I may have never gone down the path of game development if I didn’t have a free Sonic game to make levels for as a kid. I wouldn’t have met any of the people I now consider to be my best friends, either, and they wouldn’t have helped shape me into who I am today.

Thank you SSNTails, Sonikku, all of STJr and Kart Krew, and everyone else who contributed to SRB2 and/or its community over the years.

I can’t tell you if I’ll still be here writing news posts in 25 years, but whether I am or not, I think SRB2 will still be around in one form or another by then. After all, it’s proved to be a great platform for people to have fun playing and creating, and that’s not changing any time soon.

I look forward to seeing that future. I hope you do, too.

Hello everybody! If you’ve been paying attention to our Discord server and our social media accounts, then you’re already aware that the latest OLDC pack is out. There are some pretty good maps in it that you should definitely check out, especially since we’ve just put out a patch that fixes issues in four of the maps. This round is a little different from previous one, though — from this round forward, OLDC no longer stands for Official Level Design Contest. Instead, it stands for Official Level Design Collab!

We made this change for several important reasons. First, we felt that removing the contest element from the event would create a more positive atmosphere in the community. There aren’t any winners or losers anymore, just a bunch of cool people making maps. Second, this solves a long-standing issue we’ve been running into with submissions for the multiplayer categories. Multiplayer has simply not been as popular to make maps for as single player, so submissions for match, CTF, circuit, etc often ended up with no maps to compete against. We addressed this by holding maps back from release in OLDC packs until they had another map to compete against, but this means submitters would have to wait a minimum of 6 extra months before their map would be released, and we ended up with a few maps that waited well over a year. With the contest aspect gone, multiplayer maps will always be released in the pack they were built for. We hope this will inspire more people to submit new multiplayer maps. Third, shifting gears away from being a contest makes it easier on us to host the event. There’s a surprising amount of behind the scenes work that goes into running a contest, and we seem to have less free time to work on it every year. With a collaborative format, we can simply release the pack with no extra work required. Several minor things also contributed to this decision. We hope this change to the event will be a net positive for everyone! Also, we expect to revise the OLDC rules later on — we’ll let you know how that turns out. Please note that OLDC submissions will remain closed until the new rules are published.

With that out of the way, I’d like to briefly address the other half of this article’s headline: Sonic Team Jr. now has a Mastodon account. Mastodon is a free and open source social media platform that recently gained traction in the wake of events on a certain bird-themed website we use. This post from Fedi.Tips explains more about it. We’ll still be on our bird- and face-themed accounts, too.

That’s all we’ve got for you today, but we’re hard at work wrapping up development on the upcoming v2.2.11 patch. We plan to upload a build for our prerelease testers on our Discord server as soon as possible. Why not join and be among the first to help with testing it? Some newly-added features have introduced bugs, so we’re trying to fix them before prerelease — please be patient! Until then, keep being the awesome community you are, and thanks for playing!

Hey everyone! Round 1 of this year’s OLDC has ended. There were a lot of great and amazing maps created for this OLDC round. Let’s see the results!

The winners of the single player division goes to Othius, Kanna, and Spectorious with their entry, Foliage Furnace Zone Act 2. An incredible sequel to Foliage Furnace Zone Act 1 with a lot of neat barrel canons interactions and a scorching hot furnace theme to go with it! Congratulations!

Now onto the multiplayer division!
The winner for the Battle CTF division goes to PeneBoi with their entry Quartz Quadrant. A very fun and vibrant map featuring Sonic CD’s Quartz Quadrant in Battle CTF! Congratulations!

The winner for the CTF division goes to Blast98 with their entry Aquatic Territories Zone. An interesting CTF map based underwater with bases! 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 the OLDC 2022 Round 1! The deadline for OLDC 2022 Round 2 is December 1st, 2022 at 23:59 UTC (6:59 EST). See you next OLDC!

The Official Level Design Contest is back! This round has 14 single player maps, 2 CTF maps, and 3 Battle CTF maps, totaling 19 entries by 18 creators. All aboard the contest train! Be sure to vote for your favorite maps when you’re finished playing. Check it out!

Please submit your votes before July 11th, 2022 @ 6:59 PM EST (23:59 UTC). Thanks to all our contestants, and have fun!

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!