A racetrack built in an island [citation needed] with plenty of slopes and slaloms to drift and sliptide through. Origina
There are some straights ripe for tethering, mainly in the first half of the track. Keep your eyes on the racers ahead.
If you are using a heavyweight, always remember you have brakedrifting and null drifting. You'll need it for the slalom halfway through if you don't want to run into the offroad, especially in Gear 3.
For frontrunners, if you can eye a line for you to take the Land Mine capsule that's on the left of the first halfpipe, it could be useful to keep your opponents at bay.
The Gust Planet swings at the end of the walled room are sitting next to a sneaker panel at the center. If you can see that someone else will take the pulleys, then take the panel. If you are the closest though, then don't miss the chance to take those for a big boost of speed.
If you have a boost or power item handy before you get to the multi-slalom, take the chance to shortcut through the tripwire at the first turn of it and skip two of those turns.
Are you a heavyweight? Do not dare to miss the chance to charge a blue or rainbow drift on the final spiral. Lightweights are also welcome...as long as you have enough rings. Sorry Tails, I can't give credit.
This track, unlike...almost every other track I've made in Kart or RR, was actually first drawn on paper during a time I wasn't at home and carried my drawing notebook. The concept was initially to do something tentatively similar in theming to Ridge Turnpike but with Sonic Rush Adventure's Hovercraft music, as well as having a lot of sneaker panels for you to use and sliptide through [which is why I had done the slaloms at first], so theoretically I had a lot of plans in mind for the map...but you might notice that all of those things didn't end up happening in the final result.
When I started blocking out the map in HVR, I actually started poking at it first with Advent Angel textures, and they had stayed there for the most part until the day I decided to revisit the idea [which was September 13th] and try a new batch of textures as I was neither confident in how those were looking with the layout nor had a clue on how to continue decorating if I had stuck with that layout.
One factor in that was because of some crucial feedback I was already getting in regards to it being compared by a few players to some of my other existing tracks in regards to looking like [tracks in nowhere] and etc, which I obviously know isn't intended to be rude or so...but it certainly felt like a jab to my face for messing around with what I thought would be a fun idea for players- the offroad over most of the smaller turns were added while the sneaker panels were gutted due to those players feedback.
So yeah, while the offroad and no sneaker feedback ended up working well, as the track had that bit of visual indication of the edges and a bit of extra challenge, and the slaloms originally intended to be sliptided through were still quite doable with Class I characters [it was actually easier to control than the way I had setup the boosters and sliptides when I tested those again for a bit just to compare], the shot at my often usual approach of blocking out maps and then tending to just try for a good combo of textures that give me a certain feeling of a theme while using a simple sky was like...
"Oh, okay." Not that I actually confronted anyone over that specifically (and the offroad/no sneaker player while was pretty direct in how they wished for more variety, they also were aware that the message was likely to come off as rude despite not being the intention)...but it still was a kind of a sour feeling that had me neglect the layout for a good while in both that sour taste and the fact that by that point, it still looked directoinless texture-wise due to the mismatch of some Advent Angel textures over a solid blue sky and not feeling the...vibe to transform what I had in hands into a presentable map.
Enter Carbon Crucicle.
More specifically, its textures. I already had poked at using a battle map's textures for a race track when I first made Blast Processor through Deluged Metroplex, but in this occasion it was a surprise to see a green colored texture that looked cool for the track- reminding me of the usual Bomberman battle mode stage. Which is why one of the names I had for it, destined to be discared as it was not the motif intended, but only while it didn't have a set name, was Bomber Slalom. And additionally, since the texture reminded me of Bomberman, I ended up using the Survival theme from Bomberman 64 The Second Attack as the music.
The name went from Bomber Slalom to Sunset Slalom Attack due to the combination of the back-to-back sharp turns and the sunset sky, but to simplify it, it eventually turned into just Sunset Slalom Zone, which is shown in the menu as Sunset Slalom. There are currently two Orbi capsules and two Kitchen Sinks placed at the start for position tomfoolery, and while there was a singular player thinking that it was weird + detracted from the rarity of sinks (But mind you that Sinks are IMPOSSIBLE to get unless you specifically Hyudoro someone carrying an SPB...or grab a capsule with one, another one thought it was funny enough to say to keep it. Still no definitive jurisdiction in that regard as of writing this [16/09/24] BUT as stupid as it looks, it definitely would be the epitome of "because its funny" and giving players a reason to rush the conveniently placed near the edge of falling off the start and fault themselves.
It did go from a Test Version 1 with plenty of rings that I was advised to tone down a notch, to a Version 2 with more balanced item sets [Ver.1 had only two single items at the end of the two starting halfpipes and then a single item set near the spiral] and reduced ring placements...and Ver.3 readjusted that again with adding more rings to avoid starving players that don't take extremely particular lines just for rings and adding yet another item set for a total of four.
Thanks for reading!
If you are here from the video version, then I'm glad that you checked this out :)
If this seems familiar to you, then it is because you might also have read the original version of SRB2Kart The Documentary on my old Wordpress site- what you just read is a considerably condensed version using the video version as a base (as I was working on it concurrently as I decided to move the article to this site).
There's already a video version of the Part 2 of this published [it should appear at the end of Part 1], so you can check that out if you want to follow on what's next already with visual reference and everything.
You can still read the old, longer but maybe outdated in some areas version of Part 2 in my Wordpress- although I hope that you have adblockers because I don't get a single penny from that site deciding to slap ads in a few places because of the free plan. I might eventually get to finishing a written version of Part 2 to share here though now that I have this new layout that makes me feel better about writing in this place.