SRB2Kart

SRB2Kart 1.6

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I've played RRR. I gotta say it's better than SRB2K, but there are some considerations:​
​
(-) Negatives
- The intro is super cute and all, very "Unique" but kinda annoying. Having to wait for the dialogue to finish the setup? Can we just press A to skip the dialogue and get to the point?​
- The tutorial is absolutely overwhelming: The game doesn't need to be this complex to need such a massive and tiresome tutorial. If it is, the game will need some serious refurbishing (Yeah, it's terrible you may need to redo something you spent so much time, but for the sake of this game being accepted by more people outside the nieche, it must be done)​
This can be solved as being "unlockeable lessons". The player could feel more rewarded to learn thing little by little with its own effor. Seeing as the tutorial tries this hard to make the player "as PRO as possible!!!"
- Also, trying to read the dialogue while steering and trying out what to do was a very bad idea. There are a couple times when the game actually stops so you can read what Tails or Eggman have to say.
- One of the worst aspects from SRB2K: Karts still need more traction and weight. It's great to "gotta go fast", but we're still struggling to steer, bumping into walls and falling off the tracks, you know.
- The "Breaks" is absolutely pointless since "Spindashing/ Bounce" is much more useful and provides the action necessary, and also "Breaks", this could be a single command. One button less to care about.
- Why Spindashing more than 3 second is a punshment? You're already stopped and vulnerable.
- Please, let me save the resolution I've chosen. I don't want to set it back every. Single. Time.
- Why not using the good and old "Let's wait and spindash at the countdown"? This new "Sonic Riders-like free roaming start line" is confusing and it allows for Tryharders to bully new players. It makes the game harder overall. If you fail, the punishment is way too harsh. Failing it will guarantee you will lose a race.
- Could you please change the music on Northern District? I know you like Touhou but please, this is a Sonic game. Don't put Touhou in this game. Thank You.​

(+) Positives
- Graphics are much better
- The new compositions are very good and the remixes are good (Heh, still using Fluvial Beat Deposits as the title theme? Simon Stålenhag is cool with this?)
- Althought not perfect because of controls, but the new tracks are much better designed than SRB2K
- You've seriously put a huge amount of effort on menus and GUI
- The hands at each lap are a nice touch
- Bonus stages are a little tricky but a good addition. Reminds the bonus tracks from Stunt Race FX

Unfortunately this game is definetly not a "Pick and play", that you can recomment to your friends to play, because they will struggle and pass off, unless they're inside the SRB2K niche and hyped to play (I've witnessed people that gave up on SRB2K because of controls). But since there is still room for improvement on controls and it's freshly released, I hope you consider all these points to make this game something beyond SRB2K was, so anyone can play.

Of if you think that everything above is *****, it's okay. There's nothing bad on making something tailored for a specific public to enjoy, if that's the purpose.
Good Luck on developing the game​
 
There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said, but I still feel like my opinion's valuable so I'm gonna voice it anyway. I'll work my way up from my least favorite aspect to the stuff I really really like. I think RRR is a pretty great game but it's definitely struggling from launch day woes, so I want to help wherever possible.

  • The tutorial's implementation is really, really messy. The length on its own isn't terrible, but it's made worse by the fact that you have to do all of it at once. What's there is kind of all over the place, especially compounded with the fact that other mechanics and features are glossed over or aren't brought up at all.

    I understand the vision, and I get why this is the way it is, especially since SRB2Kart was a much less accessible game in theory due to being purely PvP, but the learning process of DRRR can be assisted with the existence of PvE content, so the sheer amount of tutorialization feels like an overcorrection that makes the game end up convoluting itself.
    • Like many people have said, having the tutorials for things like tricks and SPBs be introduced when the maps/skill level of upcoming cups calls for it would be a lot better for the user experience. The tutorial is so far off from the introduction of certain tech and mechanics that I feel like I ended up forgetting what the game had taught me by the time I was meant to put them into practice. Being told to outrun an SPB before you're even allowed to race is ridiculous. That's like throwing a baby in the Atlantic Ocean before you let them go swimming at the community pool (minor exaggeration, but hopefully it illustrates the core of the issue).
  • Conversely, a lot of key modes like Record Attack that would really help people learn this game more effectively are locked behind the unlock system. It feels really counterintuitive to really encourage the player to learn the game and then lock away the resources with which to do so. With things like Record Attack, Online Play, Addons and even player colors being locked, it feels like we have to "work our way back up" to having SRB2Kart, which creates a weird gamefeel overall. I don't dislike the unlock system by any means but there's a lot to be said about some really basic things being way too hard to get.
    • Additionally, some of the quests in question are really time-consuming. A particular blemish for me is the one where you need to clear Sega Saturn with Flicky in under 32 seconds. In theory, this is totally fine, but in practice it's unnecessarily difficult because you are required to do it in a mood where you cannot accurately judge your time (in GP, Prison maps count down instead of up) and in a mode that doesn't let you retry, so you're constantly playing the same two races until you get the one good Sega Saturn run. Not that I think all the challenges should be easy, they're "challenges" for a reason, but the need to redo a bunch of other stuff just to try to do this one other thing for a challenge compounds into a really frustrating player experience.
  • The AI doesn't really feel like it has a happy medium to it. In Gear 1, they're so easy they may as well not be there. In Gear 2, they're really really aggressive, and in Gear 3 it can feel like the rubber banding straight up makes them cheat. It's hard to want to be challenged, but not frustrated. It's clearly designed with the experience of the people who are already really good at SRB2Kart's gameplay loop in mind but it makes learning the game feel really not fun.
    • While I'm talking about things that can be frustrating to players, the trick system is also cool, but I think it could be telegraphed a lot better. With how fast players are moving, they often don't see the Trick Pads and end up accidentally using a trick while trying to correct their jump arc, which more often than not ends up flinging them off the map and wasting a lot of their time.
  • The visuals aren't bad by any means. They're great, actually, but there's a lot of visual clutter at times. There's a lot of screen tilt, screen shaking, etc. and especially a lot of noise on screen with moments where things like shrink rays and rings are flying everywhere on top of the already extremely bright courses. Some of this is togglable as an accessibility option but a lot of it is not when it probably should be.
  • The control scheme is a little confusing at first. I understand why Honking had to be rebound to a new button, but making it the same button as Look Behind is a really strange choice. Not necessarily bad, just... strange. Besides that, I think the game feels pretty good overall.
  • Speaking of, I actually really like the movement in this game. I think the fast-fall is my favorite thing that's been added. I especially like it when courses reward intuitive use of it with secret passages, rewards etc. rather than punishing not using it with a random spiked ceiling.
  • Everything else I think is generally fine and not really worth talking about in detail. The roster is great, but I feel like it's missing a lot of characters I feel like should be there. Having every Chaotix member except for Vector is kind of crazy. Nothing mods can't fix, I suppose.

Oh, before I forget.
Rolly Polly Pal said:
As I mentioned in my previous post the fact you can't assign multiple binds to a button unless you reset to default (which is annoying because this was something Kart was able to do)
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Hold all of the buttons you want to assign at the same time. It's finicky but it's something.
 
I just played through the tutorial, and I will not say a whole lot since a lot of points are already covered.

There is the potential for a great game here, but the drifting and wall collision especially could feel a bit tighter and less bouncy. The tutorial is also quite a challenge for something that is supposed to teach you the game (with the real challenge coming later) and it could've used a lot more arrows and other guides to figure out what to do. It is also pretty odd from my perspective that the main menu and even the Kart Krew splash of all things would be gated off behind it. The story guiding you through such things as graphics and control options is cute, but a lot of people could be thrown off if the tutorial is not at least skippable with the option of doing it later.

Then there is what the tutorial covers, sections like the bomb chase could be significantly shortened, and is it necessary to explain what springs are considering how unlikely it is for a player to not know what they do? The control icons could also be made a lot clearer and with a version designed to be read by keyboard users.

That is all, I do have time to do the cups yet tonight (the fact the game now has AI racers is a major factor in me picking it up).
 
My expectations for DRRR were at rock bottom and somehow I was still disappointed.
It's very easy to tell that no thought went into any of the new gimmicks that were slapped onto this game, and it's also very easy to tell that Kart Krew didn't think anybody who wasn't them would play it.
The huge amount of criticism this game is getting from pretty much everywhere right now is deserved because there aren't really any redeeming qualities to it beyond "it looks nice".
Dr. Robotnik's Ring Racers is a very real contender for the worst Kart Racer I've ever played.
 
-You seriously need to shorten that tutorial and make it skippable. It was exhausting. Before I tried a single race with bots, I was writing a whole post about how that was turning me off from the entire game and modding for it.
-The visuals of the maps and GUI are way too hard on the eyes (the photosensitivity warning in the splash is a red flag). You also should water the menus down as I find it excessively hard to locate certain options, and include an option to turn off the squash and stretch on characters.
-The new gameplay mechanics feel tacked on. I spent a while trying to perform my first Insta-Whip but had trouble with the key bindings, again thanks in part to the menus. I don't see myself including many of those in any maps I do for this.
-Driving physics need work, especially underwater. I barely got past the halfpipe section in the tutorial.
-Addons, skin colors, and extra modes should be available immediately. I know of no arcade racers that make you unlock extra colors or time trial mode.

All this said, there is a lot of serious work by a lot of people here. Obviously you're going for an arcade-style racer, and you've captured that pretty well. As a character modder, I'd be more psyched to do the frames for driving in reverse and being ejected from the kart (glancing at SLADE I don't see a frame for the kart itself so what will this mean for those with unique vehicles?). Unfortunately, I can't recommend/don't like Ring Racers as is, so I can't develop for it right now. I obviously need to know that SLADE, Kartmaker, and Zonebuilder will account for it before I consider it, and that comes from other sources. In the very least, you really only need to do an update to SRB2 Kart with bots and a cup mode.
 
The art, design and music are wonderful, probably the best-looking and sounding fangame I have seen in years. Since the game inherits from SRB2K, the base controls are pretty good. Well, except the drifting. I don't know why drifting without going offroad is so hard when Mario Kart pretty much nailed it.

I didn't mind the tutorial too much, it allowed me to get into the controls again even though some sections are cumbersome and I sometimes felt like I passed doing the wrong thing. It's just a shame that it's 30 minutes long just for me to start last place in my first race because I hadn't realized it uses the Sonic Riders electric barrier at the start thing, which was not mentioned in the tutorial if I remember correctly. But that's only one time, afterwards it's fine. All the locked stuff has been said a lot already and I'm not too bothered by it either, even though I do find it weird.

A complain that I haven't seen much is that the AI is stupidly agressive, even in easy mode. It's already hard to get used to all the new things and to manage to focus on the race with all the colors and HUD but I was being pushed around and hit all the time as a bonus. Rubberbanding is also a bit excessive. It's basically impossible to explore the levels and find secrets if you want to learn layouts, and since Time Trials are locked, you can't use that either. The game was probably mostly tested by veterans and not by beginners, it seems easy to you but not to us.
The physics can be hard to master, I'm being pushed by springs and dash pads all over the place and can barely register what is happening. It's very hard not to hit walls, something that I didn't have trouble with in other racers and even in the sequel (edit : prequel).

I think most complaints about base gameplay would be lifted if the option to press down for sharp turns was turned off by default instead of on. I know the game forces you to check the options but most people will not change the defaults before racing once.
The levels seem to underutilize the new mechanics, I don't remember having stumbled on a trick pad yet. At the same time, I'm not sure I want them to be used more because things are already hard to manage as-is, I don't need more. I also don't think that forcing people to stop for a spindash or to find some rings for ramps is a good idea. It should be used for shortcuts, but there's already a shortcut mechanic in place and I actually like it, so spindash and boosts just sound redundant and add more things for the sake of adding things instead of just letting us climb ramps like every other game.

This game is not made for beginners or casuals, and that's fine, but that's also not what people will expect of a kart racer and they can get angry as a result, especially since the previous game is much more beginner-friendly.

I hope I don't come off as harsh or anything and I hope you haven't been insulted over that release, it's just a game at the end of the day !
 
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I really, REALLY hope the devs actually listen to the criticism given here, on Discord and any other social media website. The game a ton of potential, and seeing it getting roasted to death is really discouraging...
 
After playing 2 lines of cups. Yes I know that's a lot this is what I have to say.
Positive:
- Colorful Graphics.
The textures and sprites do live and fit for it's 2.2 counterpart since this is built in 2.2

- Spin dash in case you're stuck on a slope
The spin dash is a life saver in case you're going up a slope and such or even just to get out of offroad.

- Respawn button if you're stuck somewhere
This is huge. Getting stuck on a part of a map is not good but having the respawn button makes it good.

- Unique menu
Having it's own menu style is awesome as not many srb2 mods do have something like that.

- Prison Mode when you're alone in Battle
This is a nice game mode as it's to destroy all prisons before time runs out. It's definitely good

Negative:
- AI rubberbanding.
The AI seems to be cheating way too much at least from my experience. Even if they are like last place they get back immediately.

- Long tutorial map.
There's a lot of stuff to know on RR yes but.... half an hour tutorial seems a bit too much for a simple tutorial to show you how it works.

- Spin dashing punishment.
I get that it's to not supposed to be cheesy after 3 seconds but still its a little unfair since you're already vulnerable when charging it.

- Addons and Online locked.

I get that the online part is understandable as they want to encourage you to first to try for your self on single player but having addons locked it's.. not good. Addons have been available to use even in the first version of 2.2 so don't get why it should be locked in the first place.

- Locked Colors.
This one always confused me... Not sure why you would see to unlock simple colors like red, blue and all that. If it was like special unique colors that I could understand but the simple colors seems a bit off putting...

Overall at least for me the game is fun and there's a lot of potential on what's to come but some of these negative stuff seems a bit overwhelming...
 
HajimeBannings said:
There's a lot of stuff to know on RR yes but.... half an hour tutorial seems a bit too much for a simple tutorial to show you how it works
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You must've had some handle on the controls already, I came in completely new and for a tutorial was pretty tough in terms of the maneuvers you had to make to pass some sections. The drifting section was the hardest and was where I wondered if I was going to make it through at all.

In my opinion, the tutorial level should more or less be the easiest part of the game, it really should not be that easy to have your kart blown up unless you are simply careless with your driving. At least the team had the foresight to have the checkpoints be somewhat frequent. In addition to what I already said about the bomb chase, I would also remove or fence off many of the pitfalls as well, or at least convert them to teleporters like in the fan section. Now I will add to my critique regarding the bomb chase and say that some rings can be thrown in to make it a little easier to pass (so you can boost normally in a pinch and not have to drift as much).
 
MechaDeka said:
Actually they've been banning people from the Discord server for posting the passwords there. Because how dare anyone play the game the way they want to, right?
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This is outright false, the only people who've been banned are people that have been posted hacked save files to unlock content despite it being made very clear not to post them 2-3 days after game is out.
 
-This is the most toxic community I have ever seen in a "free and open sourced" gaming. its a glorified witch hunt of people who if you do not do exactly as told you are punished.
-the quality of the updates in kart have been declining
If it was truly open sourced it would not be about the egos of levels designed off of existing properties and characters, i hope that the companies come in and destroy all the properties off of the new game so the old game can exist away from this trash. Fuck lal your egos it has ruined this wonderful game as someone who loved nintendo and WAS DYING for a sequel to mario kart 64. Srb2kart was the only game I could enjoy. Now i want to enjoy the new one and it has to much mario kart 8 in it for my liking.

You havent listened to anyone who has stayed here since the beginning.

This game is the culmination of all the bad choices into one. You reap what you sow. There is faster servers on SRB2Kart that are more fun with less things going on and its just the racers and the items and you dodging them. That is all the sequel needed the og video for kart was good not any of this extra bullshit.

My problems are
-Every level in modern kart is designed the same where old kart there was many different variables in all the levels.
-You see people actually designing kart the old way WITH FUN levels and you have people who criticize them and turn them into GENERIC levels and you have developers at the top that keep this regiment.

THE DESIGN is a systematic ISSUE from the COMMUNITY from the top trickling down. NOW the people for this game are acting all nice and evertythign after being the most toxic and hateful people i ever seen leading a game.

-levels dont need to be the size of a football field, its ok to have al evel with a choke hold or TO FALL OFF I PLAYED this game because of the original obstacles and challenge I dont want to play MARIO KART 8 but you can fly up on the walls OH WOW!!!!!
-old kart was faster and with the right mods and the right techniques can turn AT ANY DEGREE no matter HOW SMALL OR TINY A TURN WAS
-boost stacking and tricking was better before it was split into 3 STYLES OF ACROBATICS which made the GAME SLOWER!!!
-Rings are dumb just give people items- remove the new items- return the banana and ghost and growth to what they were before

I bet the argument was oh growth is to QUICK so we HAVE TO REMOVE IT FROM THE GAME instead of LETTING PEOPLE FIGURE OUT THE GAME
now its just pure chaos but the pure chaos is i just stay in the same place the whole race where with the right speed of SRB2KART you can change hands every 2 seconds.

slipstream was never fixed with augment and burst and the other dumb one i dont remember the name if slipstream was added so you can follow people who zip away it would of been better.


I am not even saying tether from the new one the old slipstream was fine.
Srb2kart needed skill
this new one is rng based.

stop trying to turn this game into brawl when we had super smash brothers melee before.



I BET these devs who shill another shitty first person game are going to drop this game in its state and go and make a game on steam or some other shit. AND WHO IS LEFT will have to go into their code and slowly remove the cancer from the game to make a true SRB2Kv2 without all the extra bloat. and then they will go to steam or fuck over another fan game and then fail there. I feel that is where they are headed.


Let them go it will be better for them rather to keep this disgrace of what has happened.


Speed is the most important thing and there is servers faster in srb2kart1


its so bad
 
Ring Racers is a game which I have very mixed feelings about. I wanna love it, I wanna say it's amazing, but there's so many baffling design choices which really sour the experience for me. It feels like a game which in every aspect, hates the player. Sure, the patch fixes some things like the unlocks being more lenient, but I very much question why they were issues to begin with. (You had to unlock add ons in a game who's prequel prided itself on its flourishing modding community??? That feels like a massive slap in the face.)

Worse still though is the general game feel is just not as tight as Kart. There's some fun new additions, such as the rings and the catch up game generally being better. That said, it's all soured by needless mechanics which are either worthless or frustrating, more slippery controls while being overall slower, and worst of all, a sense of utter chaos beyond anything the previous game ever had. There's times where I can get flung into the stratosphere and/or combo'd by multiple obstacles at once and go from first to dead last, and it doesn't always feel like it's at any fault of my own. It can make the game feel quite frustrating, not helped by the fact some of these track designs are quite questionable. It often feels like tracks want to mimic the traits and level layouts of their original games, but those are platformers. This is a kart racer, and when you put those together, it does not always work. (City Escape is literally just the same layout as SA2, like verbatim.) Being flung into the sky uncontrollably by half pipes can also be super annoying, especially on tracks like the one based on the Sonic 2 Special Stage.

What probably urks me most of all though is the overall reception that the developers have given to these issues which really cements my idea of the game just being anti player. Specifically, when I read the extra dev note, it not only comes across as needlessly corporate for a fan project, but it also gives a sense of entitlement. Stuff like "Ring Racers is a maximalist game by design (I mean, check out that track list) and it’s a significant departure from kart racing norms. It’s our belief that the initial frustration and even overstimulation a player experiences in a game like this is a near unavoidable hurdle, especially in a game where many players will have their first experience in a 16-player netgame (possibly filled with mods)." comes across as the developers onboarding on purpose; them making a game only a select few elite people (such as themselves) can really enjoy. It also contradicts with what they mention later about wanting to make sure the game was designed for everyone thanks to how much playtesting they apparently did.

Look. I understand wanting to have a game which can stand on its own. I understand wanting to bring back the love of being able to unlock things with fun and crazy requirements across a big period of time. I understand wanting to make the game you want to make. However, I feel like in all these aspects, Ring Racers really fumbled the bag. Unlockables are insanely convoluted, it doesn't feel as good as the previous game in fundamental areas, and the whole game feels like it's designed to purposely block out casuals who just wanna hop in and have fun. Stuff like the massive tutorial which most people won't be aware they can skip, even with the updates, the absolute chaotic ruthlessness of general gameplay and the AI, the ridiculous unlock requirements. It all just feels like an endless uphill battle where you are fighting back against the game.

I hope Kart Krew takes what I and many others have been saying to heart and listens to try and fix the problems with the game and their attitude towards its criticism. As someone who has previously been in the general Sonic fan game scene for years, I know how much ego and pretentiousness can rot communities, and I fear that happening here.
 
The new patch is absolutely an improvement, and in many ways I absolutely want to love Ring Racers? But as someone who didn't play that much of SRB2K and whose kart racing experience is mostly through Mario Kart and some Crash Team Racing, I gotta frontload my criticisms:
  • The game feels too slippery. On some tracks it's difficult to avoid bumping into everything no matter how well I drift. It's especially egregious on tracks like Skyscraper Leaps (which I hate with a passion). Navigating tracks on Gear 2 should not be this challenging!
  • There's probably too many mechanics for this game's own good.
  • The tutorial being so long isn't a great sign, but it also puts emphasis on the wrong mechanics at times. The spin whip move is nice to know about, but in practice you'll rarely use it because you'll want to be topped up on rings as much as possible.
  • The ring mechanics are... how should I say it... confusing and odd. I get the general principle, but in practice it's kind of a boost mechanic and basically something akin to F-Zero's energy meter, and it doesn't have the feedback for that kind of mechanic. The tutorial also doesn't quite communicate properly that you should be using rings constantly to maintain speed. I like the idea, but it does need some changes.
  • Being sent a billion miles away because of something that came out of nowhere with no time to react is not fun. Races are still too chaotic to be as fun as they could be.
  • The Grand Prix difficulty needs to be tweaked a lot more. Normal is more playable now, but it still doesn't feel like the proper starting point for most new players that it should be. The CPUs are still too hard and the rubberbanding is still too much. Normal should be more like 100c in Mario Kart when in Ring Racers it's more akin to 200c, and I don't even wanna know how hard the actual hard mode is. If you want to give kart racing veterans a challenge, that's what higher difficulty levels are for, there's plenty of room to accommodate beginners.
  • The criteria for getting to the chaos emerald stages are excessive, especially since the singleplayer is difficult enough as it is. It does not help that the ranking criteria also includes how well you placed throughout the race, as if in a game like this you can't get completely screwed over immediately before the finish line. I've only managed to access the emerald stages twice.
  • The placement of the spray cans is all over the place, no pun intended. They can vary from being quite literally in front of you and just having to go off the track to grab one or looking behind you in certain spots, to "how the hell am I supposed to get over there?" and "where the hell could this track's can possibly be, I looked literally everywhere?!"
On the positive side:
  • The presentation is absolutely top-notch. It is above and beyond both SRB2 and SRB2K in most respects.
  • I actually really liked the more narrative aspects of the first start and the tutorial, as well as the banter between Tails and Eggman, and I honestly wish this game had an actual story mode. Probably would be a better way of spacing out teaching the mechanics, I reckon.
  • I actually really like the Sakurai-style challenge board that also lets you earn keys to eventually bypass challenges, it's just that the execution could use some more work, especially with unlocking certain must-have features. Also, some of the challenge criteria are... Painfully obtuse. The main saving grace is getting keys every 5 rounds, which not even Sakurai's games afford you, since the keys/hammers in his games usually are very much limited in number.
  • I love how you can get both Carol Tea and Jack Frost by just loading up an addon from SRB2K that crashes the game. Also, Carol being in this game at all. Lilac when?

This game could be amazing but it needs a lot of work.
 
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Rolly Polly Pal said:
Since I don't see a thread specifically for ring racers, I guess I'll ask here. Are you not able to bind multiple keys to a single function anymore? You could do it in V1 and it let me play the game with both my controller and my keyboard. When I set the controls in DRRR to default it shows multiple keys bound to all the functions, but when I try to change the binds for my controller it erases the keyboard binds as well, and adding a keyboard bind replaces what I bound to the controller.

View attachment 117957
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I'm probably far too late, (or your question was already answered in the Discord,) but just hold the inputs you want to have bound to the same action at the same time.
 
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