Version 1.09.4

Version 1.09.4 (also known as Final Demo 1.09.4) is an outdated version of SRB2, released on August 19th, 2006. It added Time Attack mode and Circuit levels to the game, as well as new editing features and several other additions. It also removed a few Match and CTF stages and added several new ones, mostly taken from the OLDC and previous versions of SRB2. v1.09.4 was the last version in the "Final Demo" series and was current for almost three years. After its release, work started in earnest on new Single Player maps for the final game. The first of these maps were released in v2.0, making it the first release that could no longer be considered a demo.

To ensure that v1.09.4 would have to be patched as little as possible, its features were publicly tested in the Version 1.09.3 beta releases, which were distributed via the SRB2 Message Board starting on April 9th, 2006. While a success in its goal, v1.09.3 led to a lot of confusion in the community since it was updated over 40 times. v1.09.4 was eventually patched once: Security issues with netplay forced the development team to release a small patch called v1.09.4a on February 17th, 2008.

History

Version(s)	Release date(s)
v1.09.3.xx	April 9th, 2006 – August 17th, 2006
v1.09.4	August 19th, 2006
v1.09.4a	February 17th, 2008

Features

Single Player

• The barrels in THZ1's underground tunnel were made much bigger. The slime that blocks off the exit of THZ2 was now lowered much faster. Some lasers at the start of THZ2 were removed in Easy mode.
• Detons now made beeping sounds when chasing a player.
• The Egg Slimer was modified to have a more fluid animation, and in THZ3 it now sped up after each hit. For custom maps, the Egg Slimer's ability to speed up each hit is enabled by adding the Ambush flag to it.
• The Special Stage font was removed and replaced by the normal font that is used to this day.
• Super Sonic now jumped using normal Sonic's spinning animation (colored yellow). Previously, Super Sonic had jumped using his "walking" animation.
• Time Attack was added. Previously, play times were recorded automatically while playing Single Player and the best recorded time for each level was listed in the "Statistics" screen. With the introduction of this feature, player could play the stages one at a time and record playback demos of these runs. Additionally, Time Attack was needed to obtain one of the emblems, requiring that the total time recorded for all levels be under a particular time.
• Two new secrets involving RedXVI were added, allowing the player to get the black Chaos Emerald (which was added in v1.09) and the God cheats menu without cheating or modifying the game.
• Ultimate mode no longer allowed the player to save the game.

Multiplayer

In v1.09.4, both the Match and Capture the Flag rotations were reworked, and the levels that returned from v1.09 were reordered. In the Match rotation, three of the previous version's levels were removed: Jade Valley Zone and Noxious Factory Zone would later be reworked for v2.0, while Zero Ring Zone would never appear in SRB2 again. Starlit Warehouse Zone and Midnight Abyss Zone returned from v1.08; they had been removed for v1.09. Finally, Tree Ring Zone was added; it originated from the November/December 2005 OLDC and was the only level ever in the OLDC's history to score a perfect 10. Four new maps were added to the CTF rotation: all three maps from the January/February 2006 OLDC's CTF division, and a CTF version of Sapphire Falls Zone.

In Match and related gametypes, the "World of Pain" effect was introduced: If a player collected the Automatic, Explosion, Homing and Rail rings all at the same time and fired a shot, it would cause a map-wide explosion that hurt all opponents. The player would also immediately lose all four weapon rings after doing so. The Infinity Ring, if collected, was unaffected. This was intended to remove the immensely overpowered effect of a combined Automatic-Explosion-Homing-Rail ring, while still giving players a reward for achieving the combination. However, since most combinations of only three weapon rings were also considered overpowered, the official maps and most custom maps still contained at most two types of weapon rings at once, which made the World of Pain effect irrelevant for the most part.

Capture the Flag received several new features and changes of its own:

• The CTF HUD was redesigned: New icons were added to replace most of the on-screen text messages that indicated important information.
• Normal rings fired by players were now colored after their teams – i.e. red team players fired red-colored rings, and blue team players fired blue-colored rings. This does not apply to thrown weapon rings.
• A Return Flag sector type was added, which automatically returns dropped flags that land in the sector to their base. This alleviated problems with some CTF maps where flags would get stuck in hazardous areas.
• Pressing the Light Dash button now allowed a player carrying a flag to toss it, so that other team members can grab the flag instead.
• Hitting a player carrying a flag now gave you an extra 25 points, and capturing the enemy team's flag now gave you an extra 250 points.

Circuit levels were introduced for Race mode, which had been previously played on Single Player maps. These maps were exclusively built for Race, consisting of circular tracks in which players had to complete several laps to finish and win the race. A rotation of nine Circuit maps was added in v1.09.4. The Circuit rotation would later be removed in v2.1, but the capability for custom Circuit maps still exists in the game. A three-second starting countdown was also added to Race's HUD, and the player was now prevented from moving until "GO" appeared on the screen. A new trigger linedef that activated only in Race was added, allowing some of SRB2's Single Player maps to be modified for the gametype; in particular, buttons that usually needed to be pressed to get to the exit were not needed in Race: The slime that blocked off the exit in THZ2 was automatically lowered, and the doors in CEZ1 and CEZ2 were automatically opened.

Editing

• Var1 and Var2 were implemented for actions in SOCs, allowing for different behavior for many of the actions that existed at the time.
• Many further modding features were added, such as new abilities and options for character skins, new linedef types, and zoom tubes.

Other

• Knuckles received proper sprites for four frames: grabbing a bubble, hurt, death, and Tails pickup.
• The multiplayer-only Zim character was removed.
• Level select pictures were added, allowing level selection menus to display preview images of selected levels.
• Screenshots were now saved in the PNG format, instead of the PCX format as in all previous versions.
• Some of the skin colors available to players were modified or replaced: Yellow's colors were modified to use brighter yellows as with Super Sonic, while the skin color Black was replaced by the new skin color Gold (which used the old colors of Yellow), and Default was renamed to None.
• The NiGHTS Bumper was added for NiGHTS mode.
• Drowning was disabled in Mario mode and NiGHTS 3D mode.
• The camera now zoomed out when climbing a wall as Knuckles or other characters that can climb.
• The ability to skip across water surfaces with a sufficiently fast spindash was added.

See also

• Emblem guide for v1.09.4
• Emerald token guide for v1.09.4
• Easter eggs for v1.09.4
• Linedef types in v1.09.4
• Sector types in v1.09.4
• Thing types in v1.09.4

External links

Archived Versions – srb2.org – Information and download