User:Rex/Mod Blog

Wispy Caverns, Pyroclastic Gymnastics (2023-07-30)

Wispy Caverns is the track I made for the 60th CT Jam. It is meant to have a bit of a haunted vibe, but currently it doesn't have much of one, aside from the ghost Paratroopas in the track, though currently I feel like their inclusion seems more confusing than anything. The track was mainly meant to be something at least a little different from what I usually create, though I think it turned out decently in general. I just think it needs more visually mainly, so I plan to update the track at least once to add more to its visuals.

Pyroclastic Gymnastics was a track me and JadenMKW were making in December 2022 for Mayro's Kaizo Mario Kart event, but we didn't finish in time due to a few problems we experienced with the objects. Recently when Jaden updated some of his old tracks, he managed to get it in a good enough state to release it then. (Mainly by changing up the third section, as that was where one of our big problems was) The only significant thing I contributed to the model was the fifth section with the moving water, otherwise most of the things I contributed were small things within the files I can't remember all of since it was over half a year ago, haha. It's good we finally got this one released!

Once I'm mostly done updating Wispy Caverns, there's those two other tracks I mentioned in the last entry I want to get out. (and no, Wispy Caverns actually wasn't the one I was hoping to get out this month, it's the main reason why I didn't work on that track since that entry to begin with) After those, I want to update several of my old tracks, as I've got a bit of a kick of motivation for doing that recently. Now that I finished writing this, it's time to fix my dumb butt mistake I made on another page before I went off to write this in the meantime :p
- Rex, 05:47, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Crumble Rock (2023-07-21)

With this track I unfortunately(?, I do want to release more this year) broke my trend of only releasing stuff on even numbered months this year, but whatever haha, this track is called Crumble Rock. The name is intentionally similar to JadenMKW's Grumble Rock, and is a track I created for him for his birthday. The track also repurposes one of his old track designs he made. I would have liked to have more time to creating the track, as I only worked on it for a few hours total, but I think it is pretty fine in its current state, especially since it isn't a very serious track, as you may find out if you end up playing the course.

In other news that I would like to mention here, I am working on at least three other tracks that I hope to release in August. (Maybe at the end of this month if I work fast enough on one of them, but don't expect it) Working on those is part of the reason why I didn't use a lot of time for making this track, the rest being I didn't think of the idea for doing this track until like 2 days prior lol. It's realistically not a good track model visually, but I do hope people have fun playing it in a non serious manner :)

- Rex, 12:29, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Quil Island (2023-06-10)

Throughout the week prior to now, me, Chouchintosh, Mickeyman713, Coffee Toffee, AlexTG4517, Atmosphere, and an anonymous creator created our own remakes of G-Force's first custom track, Factory Island, and we released them all on his birthday, as gifts of sorts and also to surprise him. My version is called Quil Island, and is a bit themed around the Pokémon Quilava, which is one of his favorite Pokémon (and one of mine too!). The layout is the same, but there's a new route that players can take too. I planned on adding some extra things to the track's gameplay such as low trick ramps, but I found playing the track to be good enough as it is now. I'm probably too easily pleased by tracks though, so if you have any feedback for the track, whether it be for the gameplay or visuals, I plan on updating the track in the future, so I'd like to hear it! If you vote in the Mario Kart Midnight monthly track polls, please write your thoughts on the track in the feedback portion of the form if you'd like. - Rex, 23:38, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Updating some old tracks (2023-05-08)

Since I haven't posted a new entry here in over a month (which could end up being a recurring thing anyways), I thought I might as well fill the gap with something new. I don't have anything that is nearing completion enough currently to where I can say it'll be coming out soon, and lately I've thought about focusing on doing some significant updates to some of my old tracks.

And so I want some basic input from others. Below I've linked a Google Form you can anonymously fill out where you can vote on which of the listed tracks you'd like to see me update. Videos will be provided there in case you've never seen any one of the tracks listed, and I would like people to have at least seen the tracks before voting on them. (Best case, you play them too so I can get input on what could be changed about the gameplay, though I do not expect people to do that, so it's completely fine if you don't) You can also optionally write feedback and suggestions for any of the tracks, which isn't needed, but I would definitely appreciate it, as it would give me input on what people would like to see in updates for the track.

Here is the link to the form, it'll be closed about a week or so after this post is made. Do not expect any updates I plan to tackle for this to come out any time soon, ideally the most requested one(s) would come out soon after the form closes, but since I don't work on custom track stuff very regularly, it may take weeks or even months for it to come out.

- Rex, 11:07, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Heavenly Road and Craft's the Limit (2023-04-02)

These are two new tracks I released in the last two days, the former being made for April Fools, and the latter being a CT Jam course I made in March, but I decided to release it later.

Heavenly Road is actually my first original track outside of jams I've completed and released since Sherbet Circuit, which is a bit strange to think about with how it was my first Custom Track I released and it has been over 4 years since that, but it also isn't really that strange, because I don't tend to have the motivation to finish tracks outside of the jams. But I do have a track I'm considering creating soon that I hope to finish and release! (albeit, the inspiration for doing it comes from the recent remake CT Jam that I didn't feel like doing during the creation period of it)

Heavenly Road's concept I thought about about a month prior to creating it during a conversation in a Discord server whilst it was 1 AM for me. I don't think it was a particularly "original" idea nobody has ever thought of, but after some people in the conversation showed a bit of interest in it, I thought it would be interesting to make a track around it for April Fools. Both parts of the track aren't really designed to be good, the track model was made in a few hours since I planned on releasing other mods for April Fools as well, but those I didn't feel as much motivation for compared to this one. The "heaven" part has two pretty broken shortcuts to it that I think are fun to do, so I decided to have them allow counting the lap, but otherwise it is a pretty normal track. The triple U turn bit was designed to be hard to get through without stopping, so that the player would be more likely to fall off the track and experience the gimmick of it, though it ended up being easier than I thought it would be. The "hell" part has some purposeful bad design to it, such as the intentional bean corners, and an interesting item route to say the least. This is somewhat meant to be more of a proof of concept for this idea, so if people end up liking it, I'd be interested in making an update or sequel to it at some point!

Craft's the Limit is a course I made for the recent Floating Islands CT Jam. I'm not very happy with how it turned out (it was more ambitious in my head compared to what was executed), but I decided to release it anyways because there are a few people who do like the track. There are quite a few things I had planned on doing that I never put into the track, mainly to do with using more objects, though I don't have interest in updating the track any time soon. Some people have said they think 5 laps would work better than 3 laps for this course, but I decided on it being 3 laps because I feel like recently there haven't been many shorter layouts that use 3 laps, and also I think 5 laps could potentially make it a bit too drawn out. If there is interest in a 5 lap version being used for something, anyone is free to release an alternate update to the track that changes the lap count modifier to that.

That's all for this entry, thank you for reading! - Rex 14:27, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Creation of this page (2023-03-28)

Hello! This is a new thing under my user page I've created where I may sometimes post more information on the mods I release when I do release them. It'll be like a personal blog of sorts, with new entries being added to the top of the page. I might think of other things to put here too, but for now what I have planned for it is for it to be a place where I can talk about any interesting details about specific mods I've released (such as the process of creating the mod, features of the mod, why I made decisions for things in it, etc.), or just how I feel about it overall.

I don't have much more to say for this first entry. Hopefully once I actually write a couple of these, this will make more sense, but if you care about these at all, I hope you enjoy them :) - Rex 03:26, 28 March 2023 (UTC)