The online Options screen now offers the enhanced party menu: choose up to four slots and play with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy. Earlier netplay builds bypassed this menu and showed the original screen.
Roster and menu state now rewind with rollback. Applying a roster online affects the current session and preserves everyone's saved local settings. This patch includes the v0.8.0-rc2 startup fix.
Playing together
- Everyone downloads and extracts the same v0.8.1 Windows ZIP below and supplies their own Sonic 2 Rev A ROM.
- Before creating/joining the room, enable the desired character features under Mods. Amy requires Amy in Sonic 2 Rev 1.7.1; Knuckles requires the combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles donor. Each participant needs the donors for the host's enabled features.
- Leave Sonic 3-style Save Menu disabled for netplay. Its toggle is separate from Knuckles.
- Start the online match, open Options, set PLAYERS to 4, choose the characters, and press Start to apply. Each participant uses their player-1 controls for their assigned seat. Online lobbies support four participants; LAN/Direct IP supports two.
No game ROMs, donor ROMs, personal settings, or saves are included. Keep the assets folder beside the executable. Quickstates from earlier builds are incompatible; campaign SRAM remains portable.
Validated the exact ZIP with a two-peer session selecting all four characters through online Options, plus Knuckles/Amy gameplay and a rematch with forced rollback and simulated latency. Peers stayed in sync and local settings were unchanged. The Windows Release build and all three focused menu/party/character tests passed.
The final Internet playtest with these character selections remains yours to confirm.