DEVELOPMENT

Ancient King Road's development goes as far as September 8th, 2024 - I essentially started mapping on a whim for SRB2Kart because not only I hadn't done something for it in a while [as well as how I knew that my last track, Prototrack, had a few things that could have been done better], but also because I felt like I was on an art block and thought that going back to basics with essentially forcing myself to design for a less complex type of gameplay [and having to drive it enough to see if it was fun to drive in Kart] would be a nice change of pace.

I happened to record two videos from when I was building the layout from NOTHING, as I didn't have a plan or something sketched beyond maybe doing something that could use Fighting Vipers music, as indicated by it being the music while I built the track, and when the layout was done, I was thinking that it could be based off Armstone Town to use Bahn's theme for it.

By this point, I didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted, not even a name - but I had a layout that seemed fun to play when I was testing it alone, and had some positive feedback over at Sunflower's Garden when I shared this video over there of the track's layout in action.

The next preview/piece of development that would be preserved after that would be the first preview of the track for SRB2Kart, already painted over with textures, music and waypoints.

The video is dated October 17th, 2024, so I'd assume that I retook the layout the days before, and while I did search for western textures to do that FV idea at first, I ended up going with a different path altogether when I grabbed the SRB2 Community Textures to see if something there could be useful...and saw the castle textures I ended up decorating the track with, by then deciding on the name Ancient King Road.

Beyond the visual motif itself, the name is also a cheeky reference to how this was the first time I had been mapping for Kart with more polish than before since 2021-2022, with "Ancient" being a kind of nod to the fact that I was doing the map from scratch for SRB2Kart rather than Ring Racers.

But ironically, because I ended up delaying ArcadePak v1.9's release a fair bit due to other stuff, the Kart version didn't release first...and instead, the Ring Racers port that I did to have another track as part of the Round 3 lineup, would be the first version of the track publicly released on the Message Board. And...I think that's the whole story :p