User:Rex/Mod Blog
This is a page where I go into detail about recent releases I've made, sometimes sharing little tidbits about them, and overall just talking more about the work I put onto the CT Wiiki.
Veer from Fear, December updates, looking back at the year (2023-12-31)
Last entry of 2023! A new track that I worked on with Mystora, some tracks I updated this month, and looking back at some of the stuff I've made this year.
Veer from Fear is Mystora and I's submission for the Nightmare CT Jam, and the track was made in early November, but I didn't release it until a few days ago due to wanting to wait on the video to come out. I'll record a better showcase video for the track whenever I have the chance to, as the CT Jam video only shows one lap, and there are some niche features of the track I'd like to show. Mystora made a majority of the model, I would have liked to help more with that, but I had COVID for a few days during the track creation period, so I couldn't do much for the track then. I made all the game files for the track, as well as a little surprise for the blooper effect that ties into the loose theming of the track a bit. The track model is a bit incomplete in areas (hence why the release is a Beta version), but in the future once I have the motivation, I'd like to update it to be more complete, and sorta redeem that lost time I could have been working on the track for.
I released updates for Poisonous Pass, Harvest Harbor, and Withering Will-O-Wisp Woods this month, the former I actually started work on this month and was mainly to fix that one inconsistent ramp KCL, though the latter two were both updates I started several months ago and didn't finalize until this month. I would like to update my old tracks more often, but I tend to have more motivation on updating other people's for some reason, and also most of my old stuff I think I'd rather remake or do a major update for at some point instead.
I am overall much happier with my output this year compared to 2022, as I released more in general, but also released stuff I'm proud of for the most part. The only track I made this year that I've regretted a bit is Craft's the Limit, but every other track I made, I like in at least some way. I am especially fond of Quil Island, Wispy Caverns, and Sleepytime, each having some unique traits between them that I like them for. Quil Island was my first track I made in a while where I was actually kinda happy with how it turned out visually, and I enjoyed both making a track with a small bit of Pokémon theming, and making a track as a gift to a friend. Wispy Caverns I was similarly impressed with how it turned out, but mainly for the model rather than the visuals, as I personally think Quil Island looks more unique than it. Regardless, I would still say it's one of my best tracks in an overall quality. And Sleepytime was one of my dream track ideas for a while (no pun intended with the theming of the course), just making something pretty zany and inspired by the style of some older custom tracks. I want to make a new version of the track every year or so, each one having some ideas from the previous version returning, combined with some new ones, and a new layout overall. And in November, I updated Crawlspiral Castle, my only work of 2022 I'm quite fond of, to be a bit better.
2023 was a great year for me, both in the MKW modding scene and out, and I hope 2024 will be just as good. Have a happy new year everyone! - Rex, 07:24, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
Quil Island v1.1, Crawlspiral Castle v1.0 (2023-11-29)
As I've been motivated to do so, I've updated three of my tracks recently, those being Quil Island, Crawlspiral Castle, and Sleepytime. The first two are fairly major updates, so I will cover those here.
Quil Island I mainly updated to try and make the gameplay of it more interesting, there are a few new additions to it. There's now a simple off-road shortcut at the U-turn, as well as halfpipes on the pillars on the outer side. The halfpipes I originally planned on including for taking an alternate, elevated path, but I wasn't sure how to incorporate the new path in a good way that would make it at least somewhat faster. I decided to include the halfpipes anyway though, even if they might be useless. Some boost panels have been added to the track as well. As I initially planned and mentioned last time with v1.0, I would have put slow ramps around parts the course for the purpose of going for some low tricks, but someone in the MKM feedback form mentioned that adding boost panels could be a good idea, so I added those instead. Boosts are more simple, but likely less controversial than slow ramps would be. (Maybe I ought to have included slow ramps in Sleepytime somewhere... I don't count the fence jumping ones all too much)
Crawlspiral Castle I had thought about the idea of doing a minor update to for a while, but I decided to make it a more major update as there were quite a few things I wanted to change. The first turn of the track is a bit wider now and the shortcut soon afterwards should now function how I intended it to, with sticking to the grate instead of flying into the air. The alternate path to the left of the drop should be at least somewhat more worth taking now, as the ramp exiting from it is now aimed downwards, giving less air time. The lava room's platforms are each altered a bit in angle, position, and size from previous versions, and the last one now ends in a normal trick instead of a boost trick. The top bomb route now has wider holes, as I removed some of the bars up there. I would have added grate roads that items can be dropped through, but there isn't a KCL type like that it seems (I gaslit myself on that when thinking of new concepts for this track and future tracks), though throwing bombs at the wall and having them bounce into the holes is the best way this idea of bombing the players below can be done, so do that if you wish to be a bit mischievous in races... The exit for the top route is also a lot more convenient now, but be careful of the slippery road! Marty now doesn't continuously spin (it was caused by how the rotation was inputted, which is strange), and there are now two ramps at the end instead of three, with both being a bit less steep. The visuals of the track are also a bit modified, mainly in adding extra details such as more arrows and some chains, and I changed the boost panel colors to match the gray colors of the track. The textures are also now a bit bigger in tiling size, I think some people dislike/probably will dislike the texture choices for the roads and walls in this track, but I'm keeping them for now because I like them personally. (Though, the wall texture was a bit hard to work with how dark it was. That's why I made the texture of it a slight bit brighter in this update!)
Another thing this month was that The Great Apple War released, and I contributed in making the KCL for the track during October. It's not very good because I've never made a KCL for a model this complex before, but I allowed for some exploration in this first version by purposely excluding invisible walls in some areas for example. Some updates will be made to the KCL in the future to make it more polished, likely by other people and not me. (We've gotta add even more author credit to the track!) I also made another update to Thwomp Swamp recently that fixes the unintentional lighting change among other stuff, but I'm waiting on publishing it to the Wiiki until a later point, in case more changes need to be made to it.
That's all for this time. I have two tracks yet to be released that may be released during December, but the statuses on both are unconfirmed, so there's no promise on either coming out. One of them is the track I teased at the end of the previous entry, which I didn't work on at all during this month... I'll see you later and go work on that... and totally not get sidetracked with other things... haha, yeah, that won't happen... - Rex, 18:19, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Sleepytime, Wispy Caverns v1.2 (2023-10-31)
I didn't forget about this page, I was waiting until I released both of these to add this new entry!
Sleepytime is a track I made for the 5th CT Jelly, where the twist was to make a controversial track. The theme was Fantasy, and I've already made a "fantasy themed" course in the past for these that was controversial for its theming... why not do it again, but better? Sleepytime is a spiritual successor to Journey Across Maps, a track I had already thought about making a sequel to, but it'd be made for April Fools day or something as it'd be more of a joke. The main controversial thing I wanted to make about this track though was the gameplay more so than the theme, as the slight dream theming to it makes it at least somewhat more fantasy themed than Journey Across Maps was, and the people in the CT Jams server nowadays aren't nearly as publicly harsh about the themes in the tracks as the people that were there over 2 years ago. (Also, I feel like those people would flip out if they saw the tracks from this jelly in that original jam)
My original inspiration for Journey Across Maps were more crazy tracks such as Area 28, Big World Way, and River of Dreams, but I executed this inspiration in more of a gameplay way (and also much better in general) for Sleepytime. The track has quite a few shortcuts, some being a bit broken. If you want to read more about Sleepytime, this is a Google Doc I wrote while I was waiting for the CT Jelly results to come out.
I've also updated Wispy Caverns to add more to the model of it and hopefully polish it up more in general. There's a few bigger changes, but the update mainly adds and changes small stuff otherwise. The custom blooper effect with the Dreepy is inspired by my own Common.szs custom blooper effect I use, with a little extra "Boo!" text in the middle, as I wanted it to give off a bit of a "cute scary" vibe. I wanted to include this custom blooper effect in v1.1, but I had issues implementing it then and decided to wait on it. (And I'm partially glad I did, because I like the images I chose for this new one better)
That's it for this entry! In November I may be releasing a track that's been on my update backlog for over a year now and a few people have been anticipating, but don't count it. I still need to figure some things out with it!
- Rex, 14:18, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
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)