Acrobatics (v0.5a): ABS System

Man, this mod is amazing. And I'm gonna explain it via an actually review, so here goes:

First off, the initial idea to pull off tricks when you jump off a ramp is super underrated. I don't know many games that have some sort of trick system, so this is a breath of fresh air for me.

Now I'll talk about the boost modes. Burst is essentially just a "trick to boost" mode, but it's visual effects never make it old. Having the effect of flaming balls around you whilst zooming past everyone is super satisfying, especially when you hit "Perfect". (which I actually did while testing this offline)

Charge is pretty neat too. I like the idea of storing non-offroad Boosts when you don't have Sneakers and are desperate for some extra boost. ESPECIALLY when you notice that you can just hold the ITEM button whilst you trick like a absolute maniac. That part instantly made me think of NFS's (2003-2017) Nitrous system.

Augment is, by far, my favorite style to use with the Daytona mod. Having the ability to stack up extra Top Speed via tricks always gives me an adrenaline rush). Even if you check if your character's Top Speed stat is at 9 sometimes. The big downside to this is that it loses the Stack when you touch the walls, but sometimes I rarely touch walls at certain courses, so it's a non-issue.

Overall, amazing mod. Can't wait to use this in my server (and probably get destroyed in it too.)

As some of you may know, I have a complicated relationship with this add-on. I feel like I've spent enough time mulling over this mod however to call this add-on an excellent addition to the game. However, this comes with the caveat that I do not believe this mod adjusts balance in any meaningful way, nor should it. To me, the goal of this mod is to make jumps more interesting beyond drift storage by providing an extra speed boost, and I think this mod succeeds wonderfully in this regard.

The mod itself has fresh and interesting extra ways to play with the game. The three modes-Burst, Store, and Augment-each provide the user with interesting methods of going faster outside of just drift storing after a jump. Burst allows for quick, snappy dashing that is beneficial in the immediate moment, while Store gives the user extra safety and potentially extra speed in a pinch, investing the boost that would normally be gained upon landing a trick for later. Augment is a bit of an odd duck in this scenario, simply jacking up the speed and acceleration of the driver, which has implications the author is well aware of at this point, and may be revised later.

The main issue the mod has otherwise is that it exacerbates skill gaps. Among people who are of a relatively equal skill level will find a more volatile experience. However for people of moderate to large skill differences the frontrunner will often be unchallenged, leading to frustrating games for those in the back and less interesting experiences for those in the front, as they are confronted with what amounts to record attack with input delay. Another important issue to note is that acrobatics currently is heavily ping reliant due to the QTE minigame. The minigame is also rather overstimulating, so it would be interesting to see a fallback option where you simply chain boosts much like with Acrobasics (which is even available to download here!)

Personally, I like to use Acrobasics with Juicebox on normal speed. I love the extra dopamine one gets upon landing multiple tricks, and find combining the high speeds of trick boosting with the careful decision making on normal speed juicebox to be one of my favorite ways to play SRB2Kart version 1. I commend Angular and everyone involved for creating a mod that creates a more volatile game, as I've always enjoyed matches that get nice and chaotic.

The old acrobatics was pristine combined with old casual armies boost stacking players could effectively weave in and out behind people and latch onto them. Almost like a dog pilot in ww2. There was so many times I was weaving behind people and dodging their items. I do not know what happened to the design process of this on top of the new additions to the game but it makes the game less competitive and less fun. With old acrobatics it was like augment and burst mixed where the game would get continously faster and faster. If you had boost stacking on top of that and slipstream people would be neck and neck and you always had a chance to get to the top. It made low weight low speed chars amazing. And it gave depth to every racer style in the game. It made a level with one jump amazing because you could still gain speed if you were spot on with dodging. You could just do a loop and the whole race would get faster and faster. On top of this the mechanics of the speed it was combined with items in the game so sometimes it would be better to be hit or to bounce off people which would push you sometimes to first. One other feature is you could bounce off the walls if you were going to a certain speed and sustain the speed effectively doing like a wall hop in mario 64 to control and pass. It was always amazing to bounce off a wall and shoot someone and get hit it was so satisfying and it is a mechanic that does not exist in this game or any other game to be exact. Another good thing about old acrobatics is the grass didnt slow you down. if you had enough boost you could just go past the grass. This was an amazing addition to the game. Because you always could come back. This old style of gameplay would work really well with level design using speeds that slowly build up and cool down over time with the mechanics. The new acrobatics is not as complex as this when it comes to mechanics. What has caused this change is the additions of the three newer speeds which was augment burst and store. All three of them have been nerfed. The closest one to the old is augment but you get hit and you lose all of the speed. Also there is a problem with slipstream and modern acrobatics. You lose your chance to slipstream behind people because they boost away. One way to fix this is to create a new mod which would slipstream behind people who boost kind of like the warp mod juicebox mod? But better and faster and stronger. That way everyone could have a chance to catch up and some of these old mechanics would be able to happen again that made kart well IMO kart.


Is there any way for a new server with old acrobatics and old slipstream and old boost stacking to be available on this game for those who appreciate it and want to experiment with it? If there is someone please contact me. I love this part of kart and I would hate to see it die.

"ts eldog" in the console changes you to burst so i rate 5 stars

thanks ang

Acrobatics is really fun and a high effort mod - I could be fooled into thinking it's vanilla with the appealing aesthetics, albeit it's a bit unbalanced with highly skilled players, since they'll likely min-max styles and stats to get the best out of their style and character. Stomp in Battle is also a really fun gimmick that freshens up the Battle experience, with a lot of interesting tech to it, too.

Acrobasics would seem like it's the "inferior" version, but there is a lot of skill to it too, as you'll go incredibly fast with just a few tricks, and controlling that much speed is part of the fun too. It's also a bit more balanced by virtue of being simpler.

If you use Acrobasics' "as_trickbtn" to change your input, an error gets thrown on the console, but it still makes it work.
If you're a server host, I want to raise awareness of the hidden "ac_SPBlock" console variable. By default ("on") it will stop you from tricking, which should theoretically make it so it's easier to catch up as the tricks give lots of speed and goodies - in practice however, it doesn't naturally degrade Augment's boost any faster or does anything about Store's stored boosts, so it only harms Burst which is not passive and it can only be performed using tricks. I would actually suggest disabling this because it unnecesarily nerfs the most underpowered playstyle compared to the other two, which provides glass cannon-esque frontrunning and infinite amount of recovery respectively.

Some people might say it's unbalanced, and it somewhat is.
But it's still the greatest gameplay-altering mod out there.

First off, a mechanic you can fail has better gameplay value than a mechanic you can't fail, and that why I absolutely prefer holding and timing that button press over a braindead "just press a button to go nyoom".

About individual trickstyles now...

Burst is the best of the bunch, and a blast to use, the visuals and feedback is satisfying as hell, and that zipboosting mechanic is extremely cool and satisfying to use. Airzippping is also a solid thing and can be used skillfully or creatively to get an edge. I do like the skill ceiling on the use of that trickstyle.
The only flaw of burst is that it's possible to zipboost snake, which allows a frontrunner to frontrun even more... Would be nice to have something against that without ruining how fun this trickstyle plays.

Store is fine. It does have satisfying visual feedback and its uses, but lacks the depth you gave to burst. It also feels like the weakest of the trickstyles.
Didn't really play it enough to truly give my opinion on it, though.

Augment is a bit boring. Mostly due to its passive nature. Lacks the depth of the two other trickstyles. I suppose it's nice for people who don't care about fancy gimmicks.
It also seems to be quite a controversial trickstyle, apparently making accel chars a bit too good. I can't really judge that since I mostly play big fast. Though it'd be nice to have it become equally useful for all characters.

Overall, I absolutely love this mod, and zipboosting is, to this day, my favorite mechanic in a kart racing game.