Thing type 300, Ring, is a type of Thing that can be collected by players.
Giving a ring the Ambush flag will make it float 24 fracunits above the ground. All rings that are not already floating above the ground due to Z offsets should have this flag, because items that do not float are difficult to collect and look as if they were stuck in the floor. The flag stacks on top of the Thing's regular height, allowing rings to be a total of 4119 fracunits above the ground at maximum.
Usage
In SRB2, as in most Sonic games, rings serve as the player's primary means of health: As long as the player is carrying at least one ring, they will not die after being damaged by enemies and most other hazards. However, upon damage, the player will lose all the rings they are carrying and spill them on the ground (although only a maximum of 32 will appear). Spilled rings can be picked up again, but they will start blinking and disappear after a while. If the player is hit multiple times in a short time frame, the distance the rings go after they're spilled slowly increases, to make picking them up again harder. If the player is carrying a shield when they are hurt, they will not lose any rings (the shield will usually be lost instead). If the player is carrying neither rings nor a shield and they sustain damage, they will die. Because of this, levels should have a substantial amount of rings to make sure the player can avoid dying.
Rings have additional purposes depending on the gametype or type of level being played:
In Single Player and Co-op, rings are used to award extra bonuses to the player: Collecting 100 rings will award players with an extra life, as will collecting 200 rings. After finishing a level, the player is awarded 100 bonus points for every ring they were carrying at the moment they finished, as well as a perfect bonus if they collected all rings in the level.
In Match, Tag, and CTF mode, rings become the player's ammunition. At the cost of one ring from the player's ring counter, they can shoot a red ring which will harm other players when they are hit by it. When certain weapon panels are collected, the player can shoot special weapons, which also deplete one ring per shot. The red ring can be fired at a rate of four rings per second. Knuckles can fire it at a rate of six rings per second.
In Special Stages, players do not spill collected rings when hurt. Instead, they will lose five seconds of time.
In NiGHTS stages, collected rings count towards the player's score, but unlike blue spheres, they cannot be used to destroy the Ideya Capture. In non-Special Stage NiGHTS stages, rings are replaced by NiGHTS stars, or, if the level uses the Christmas NiGHTSsupplementary level type, bells.
