The first track I've ever made and finished for Ring Racers, started with haya's unofficial UZB config until the official mapping tool and documentation got released, Grit Mountain is a track that's simple for a reason: It was made to test the power of UDMF slopes, paving the road for both a big downhill turn and then a big upwards turn - complete with many rings to run down or power through upwards.
Grit Mountain (Classic) is a 5-lapper with few yet long turns, many sloped areas and A LOT of rings for you to keep pushing on the road, whether trying to outrun players at the start, or trying to climb up the big hills at the end.
TIPS AND TRICKS
DEVELOPMENT
Oh boy, where do I begin with this one.
The earliest surviving footage I have of the very first blockout draft, which I also shared over Twitter back then.
You can see that while obviously lacking in any decoration and even having the second half's uphills being different [being more lineal hills up to corners], this is unmistakably the track that would become my first custom track ever for the game...and also one of the first - as I finagled this old blockout into a somewhat complete layout thanks to haya_'s unofficial UZB config at the time that I used to make this *before* the official High Voltage Ring tool for RR mapping was released with the config to go with it.
By the way, the song in that clip is this song from the Mod Archive - I had it loaded on the map at the moment as a placeholder, but I had no clue what I was going to theme it with yet by the time I recorded that.
With how the hype was at an all time high for me about this game, I actually started working on this around only one or two weeks post-launch, as seen by the date of the first clip being from May 07, 2025. As I was one of those that EAGERLY awaited for this game for the five years it took to release, it checks out how I rushed to try and make my own track the moment there was a way to start on one - same way I made a rough but nonetheless notably early release of Dinosaur Canyon for SRB2Kart [not to be confused by the later and more polished version by Pilzkopf, which then was ported to Super Striker GP for RR with permission] also soon after it released.
That same day I had recorded that first clip, I had found Rumble Ridge's textures and started doing the visual work that eventually ended up sticking with the final release from the get go - and settled on the ManxTT Superbike song right after that. What also happened that day is that the official HVR tool had been released...so I happened to grab my mostly finished initial version of the track minus the missing waypoints, and put it together in a playable state thanks to the official tool + documentation for waypoints freshly released.
And that's how a day later, I already had the first preview of what was already none other than Grit Mountain.,.and yeah, the video is unlisted - at that moment I made it a preview only for the Discord server, but the following days I made public TA previews and even a recording of a multiplayer test clip from Babo and Garfield & Sonic running the track.
There's some more to this story before the final release, but since it's pretty late as of writing this, I'll leave it up with how, if you have been a bit observing with the two videos so far, that aforementioned simpler uphills on the second half of the track are still there, which contrast to how the final STANDALONE version had those uphills a bit more uneven and sloped diagonally to feel smoother...and then would get remade once again for the Super Striker GP version after another round of feedback. But the layout itself so far hasn't seen a drastic remake or change - most notably on the visuals at the moment.