Track Introduction

Craving for some Rage in the Streets? Sure, I can get you- wait...no, you can't use your bare knuckles, you are in a racing game.

Hmm...does road rage work for you?

Red Rage Highway is a track focused on having a steady hand on the wheel and drift bumper to tackle the multiple tight turns, whether at the first third of several short turns, tackling a 180 hairpin into a jump you can triangle dash from for efficiency, and knowing how to tackle the ending with two hairpins with boosters- you better know how to Sliptide for that.

Tips and Tricks

If you get the First Blood boost, make sure to at least try and use that for sliptiding the first harsh turn of the track before it runs out.

The large circle turn has rings on the outside and a box near the inside. You can either drive outside to run through rings if in need, or gamble your only rings to zoom through the inside.

You can drive on the inside of that turn without hitting the crate, but if it bothers you and no one else has broken it yet, try an insta-whip.

There are two shortcuts on the track: The safer, skip the circle turn one...and the riskier but rewarding alternate path with a sneaker panel and ring box awaiting...without any rails to stop you from falling off that wide but brief road.

Seriously, prepare to sliptide in those last two turns with boosters. Ever raced in Dark Fortress?

If you are playing as a Class I character in Gear 3, you may actually need to either gamble with brakedrifting over the second booster, let go of the accel as you do the second sliptide, or aim for a sliptide that, if it doesn't turn you enough to clear without a wall bump...then lets you bump the wall instead of the wall-less area that's nearby.

Development

September 16th, 2024.

I woke up feeling relatively well, if not pretty well as the first day I had got just a bit of extra shut eye and woke up early in the morning. Was doing some stuff, tuned in to Spin on the Bridge to Yuzo Koshiro...and then it hit me. Or more specifically, the motivation to make this track.

I actually had written into the SOC of my working trackpack file an entry for Red Rage Bridge the night before, but it wasn't until that morning where I actually, and surprisingly, sat down to lock in for the morning with that specifically, having a clear idea of what I wanted the track motif to be like. The initial result was having the road and fence textures imported, although the music at the start was using another Last Bronx song as a placeholder, as I made that music entry in case I made another track with that song in mind.

Street of Rage 2's second stage on the bridge, which is where Spin on the Bridge plays in the original game. I even went the unusual extra mile to fetch a shot of the stage just to turn a few of what was inside into textures for the road and fences. Although due to RR's default mobjscale which is usually good to design for, the fences were actually...too big in their 32x64 or some sh format. So I had experimented with lowering it a bit and used that in a few screenshots, but late at night I got word of that being a nuisance on visibility for some scenarios so I ended up lowering them further.

Reception had been smoother in positivity than usual, aside from Yoshi finding two cuts with the Gardentop to patch and the music being too loud for the stage on the first test version of the track dropped for testing and later on needing to lower the fence further to improve visibility.

Soon after previewed, the original name intended to be a direct reference to it's origin [the red bridge from Streets of Rage 2...hence "Red Rage Bridge"] would get adjusted due to the fact that the track itself didn't really resemble a bridge in its layout, so it got renamed to Red Rage Highway.

Between Test Versions, with one difficult yet cheeky exploit being discovered and patched out before release, there was also some additional seasoning to the track. Not THAT much to look as good as some of the vanilla tracks, but it went from mainly being the fences, to having a few billboards here and there, buildings, a tunnel and a ceiling. Again, not the biggest amount of visual work, but at least does add SOMETHING of variety when you play it, and more so if you compare the release version with the old preview that didn't have these visual extras.

Oh, and one funny thing during pre-release testing was RC1 iirc having the music too high in the MUSICDEF entry. This prompted the usual Garden Top skip archeologist to send a clip with hilariously bass boosted audio as they always played with the music higher than default.

The track otherwise went surprisingly smooth compared to other of my ventures.

And yes, if you ask, Spin on the Bridge wasn't just the music choice because the textures were from that stage, but also because it is one of my personal favorites from the SOR soundtracks- although the Remake rendition that's also included in the track is also awesome. So apologies to anyone's personal tastes if the music sounds "too repetitive".

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Thanks for reading!

rah rah rah rah rah rah rah

Still surprised that this ended up being such a relatively fast track to see to the finish line and yet has a pretty solid set of ideas to race with [even if decoration wise it isn't still on the heights of other maps...but does have a bit more effort in that regard between custom textures and extra things besides the track and sky].

Like, I started this track WAY after Sunset Slalom was looking close to being finished after weeks of being in the drafts, and it picked up progress in half the time that took.

But yeah, I hope y'all are enjoying to race here :]