[Open Assets] ArcadePak (Thanks for playing!!) 1.8.1

Changelog:
Snowdust Valley Zone
Reduced slightly the music volume [probably everyone]

Tricolored Space Zone
Raised an invisible wall to avoid an (unbelievable) skip with the SPB.
Patched a ridiculous skip that skipped the entire blue segment straight into the red one (????
[Shoutouts to dgplex]

VR Big Forest
Fixed a tiny few GFZROCK traces remaining

Meteor Desert Zone
Extended a bit the death plane below the last jump. [hydrolo]

Dinosaur Canyon Classic
My first map ever released brought back as a final gift, as seen in ArcadePak 1.6 before being replaced by Jungle Fort Long in 1.6a. Due to how old and jank it is though, specially compared to Pilzkopf's renditon- it is now called Dinosaur Canyon Classic to not be confused with that new version unrelated to mine...and this one is here as a Map Hell map.

4 years after the first release of ArcadePak, 5 years since SRB2Kart released, and having just arrived to a brand new year 2024...this might be the time to give the keys of this good boy to the people.

With how it has been an entire year with 2023 since the lack of any updates, major or hotfixes, you can guess that this one had been coming. There's been many passionate Kart creators that have been far more active than me with the mapping stuff since then, and there's probably some stuff that people would preferably want to iron out for their own servers if wanting to include these maps like mapslots, bugfixes, music and lap counts, etcetera.

I have always thought that it would be cool to try remaking some of these maps in their entirety with how a handful would be kind of a nightmare to rework for me with the way they were built by the time I made them (look at Virtua Circuit, Snowdust Valley, the hidden Jungle Fort or Big Forest for that), but with how rusty I've got with Zone Builder and the time plus passion I would need to fully rediscover to finish a new map.

As I don't want this to be locked for as long as that takes (and whenever DRRR releases, my efforts will likely go to that instead), I'll mark this track pack as REUSABLE and entrust players to do whatever improvements they see fit to my tracks- if there's any version with big fixes or updates from you all that want to see posted here, let me know and I'll give it the blessing to make it official!

This is not a goodbye, but a "until later". Most likely whenever the day to play Ring Racers finally arrives, but who knows what can happen from now to then.

Thank you all for playing, and see you next race!
-ArcadeStriker

it's been complicated

Changelog:

• General
  
  • Two new tracks have been added: Meteor Desert (a new original track/layout)...and after roughly an ENTIRE year of being stuck in development due to a variety of reasons, RR Seaside Route 765 (aka the Ridge Racer Short track) is FINALLY here!
  • Jungle Fort Long had some retexture work done on it...but currently it has been sent to the shadow realm of maps, since I've learned that the super old layout didn't age well for players so it was pointless to keep working on it (a remake or revised layout MIGHT arrive in the future but no promises). Its still in the pack but needs to be mapforced if you do actually want to play it though.
• Virtua Circuit Zone
  • Modified a bit of the map visuals (but not too much; I'd rather remake it than try to figure out how to clean up the mess that this one is inside)
  • FINALLY got rid of that ugly sticking weird sector in the hairpin thanks to vertex slope tag + offsets.
  • Adjusted layout a bit (widened the hairpin's road and moved the spring & item batch in front of it.
  • Added a new item batch in front of the spring after the hairpin.
  • Added a new shortcut that's easier to see and access. While I had initially thought on removing the old "cool" shortcut, turns out that people did remember that one, so I kept it alongside the new one :DD
  • Speaking of shortcuts, that one booster pad nearby that could be used to cheese it IS GONE. Long live sneakers!
  • ...somehow there STILL was a missing finish sector in here, but now that saga should be finally over.
• Snowdust Valley Zone
  • Modified geometry so that the off-road is larger on that area (both inside and outside) and patch a cheese cut.
  • Modified a bit of the slope geometry at the end of the big ice slope.
  • The poorly-placed booster pad nearby has been removed.
  • Replaced sneaker texture in certain areas for consistency.
• Polychrome Polygon Zone
  • Added outline on the first slope hairpin and fixed the floating items in it.
  • Removed the shadow in the minimap of that long lost underground tunnel that hasn't existed in a long while.
  • Removed the fan sector at the end jump to avoid a potential silly moment of getting stuck on the fan for seconds if you get hit and spin out on top of it.
• Backroom Velocity Zone
  • Reduced slope hill height on several areas of the road. This should help on the visibility and avoiding cheap shots from feedback given on this track.
  • Added more stripes to the road.
  • There's a new shortcut available.
  • Increased lap count to 5.
  • Remade the very last turn of the track.
  • ... Found out that bots weren't drifting well in some turns because the Axis things weren't set to the right flag to make them drift right. This was fixed.
  • Fixed an untagged death sector and a invisible barrier being too close to the road blocking a turn in the inside.

Special thanks to all who playtested this (CGB and KCS), and every single one that gave feedback on the old and new tracks to polish these tracks to finally be able to live on without complications in multiplayer:

• mari
• JugadorXEI
• SeasideDoe
• Raivolt
• Diggle
• mindacos
• Cole
• Hydro
• Rambo M.

• New track: Backroom Velocity Zone, complete with bots and ghosts
• Bots in VR Big Forest got fixed; there was an incorrectly paced gather point out of bounds for some reason
• Fixed an incorrect linedef in DWZ

...and yes, that's all, though this is also coming with a new versioning number system (thanks Ashnal): 1.X updates will be for new tracks, while 1.X.X updates will be for hotfixes, instead of the previous "a/b/c" method.

Changelog:

General:

• Renamed "Nagoshi Cup" to "Arcade Cup"
• Renamed Tricolored Space Zone to Trichromatic Space Zone
• Patched some unintended oddities using impassable linedefs (FL_GUI, Triblue)
• Due to changes in Big Forest and Jungle Fort Long, both tracks have new ghosts

Big Forest:

• Fixed misplaced seat on the ferris wheel (Saturn)
• Relocated and reduced item box sets to 2 (RetroStation)
• Reverted to no booster on pit lane (RetroStation)

Jungle Fort Long:

• Added fences in some areas to avoid going into unintended areas (and fixed some non-solid fences)
• Fixed an oddity regarding respawning on certain areas
• Lowered slopes to ground at the end of the river slide
• Changed laps to two laps

So uhhh the reason why I call this a "day one patch" despite having taken some few days is because I wanted to fix this ASAP...but only recently I could somewhat sort out my internet connection (spent entire day trying to fix between modem and router...right now I could only do with plugging directly to modem while its late). The thing is that I had left maps using v1.5a versions instead of v1.5b...but along with rectifying that, I had enough time to do some extra adjustments!

Changelog:

• Accidentally most maps were reverted to their 1.5a versions in the first 1.6 release instead of using 1.5b versions (MACS had several fixes and changes, SVZ had a patched barrier, VRBF had 4 laps instead of 3 and TCZ had a bridge instead of a ramp jump; that last one is where I realized that I had messed up). This has been rectified and any new changes to the maps have been applied to these.
• Small tweaks to RTZ lightning in some few places.
• Mount Acres Circuit Short and Tricolored Space Zone have been optimized to reduce unused map space and make the minimap bigger.
• The ferris wheel bug in VR Big Forest in OpenGL (which made the white circle appear glitchy) has FINALLY been fixed!!
• Dynamite Wilderness Zone has been changed to 4 laps (ColdMoon)
• Floor sign added near the end of PPZ plus some adjustment to signal easier the turn at surface level (ColdMoon)
• Added boost panel to the pit lane in VRBF (ColdMoon)
• Fixed a typo with DWZ's song name (It's "Roaring Sound", not "Roaring Around" lol)
• Added unreleased track I had made in 2019 as a bonus (enjoy!!). Replaces Dinosaur Canyon Classic (MAPE0) but isn't in Map Hell, and while it might look rough, it is perfectly playable with the tweaks I did over the original (+PlayerBot Support)
• I made new ghosts for all tracks! The Gold Sonic ghosts are somewhat optimized, though some of them have some dumb mistakes (I recorded them on the first go). Black Sonic ghosts are currently the fastest times I have done for these tracks; some of those have potential to be better but these definitely should be a challenge to beat.

Changelog:

• A new track, Dynamite Wilderness Zone, has been added, complete with PlayerBots support! (MAPE7)
• Ridge Turnpike Zone had some few visual tweaks (mainly replacing some textures and removing fences in the starting areas)
• A small detail regarding cup names was changed (TCZ used to have an erroneous "Villa Cup FINAL"; now its renamed to "Stratos Cup 1"). I might end up rearranging and renaming cups in a future version, though I don't know when.

First of all, apologies for the many months that the reports "went unchecked"; I was aware of most that were fixed in this bugfix since months but either I happened to be incredibly wrecked with university, or was offline and couldn't really access Internet outside of rare instances.

The changelog is as it follows:
Virtua Circuit:
-Raised a bit an outside orange wall
-Fixed a small sector missing the finish line effect

Snowdust Valley:
-Made those out of bounds fence areas near the fan impassable (as it should have been)

Mount Acres Circuit (Short):
-Fixed two anti-cuts nearby the bridge (Goldencreme)
-A slight FOF adjustment below the bridge
-There's now a proper slope at the corner of the stretch after the bridge (yay, vertex slopes)
-Replaced lake textures with sand
-Changed arrow flat at the last turn
-Reduced a bit of tree objects
-Extra detail and visual fixes:
--Propeller-powered finish line flag
--Several small untextured linedefs now textured
--Two pillars with a flag added at the bridge
--Simplified offroad statue area at the last corner (its a small pool as well now)
--Due to the above change, minimap can be bigger now

Tricolored Space Zone:
-Added a bridge replacing the ramp jump in the end of the blue area
-The starting green ramp and roof were changed: No more roof and ramps were adjusted in angle
-Should have fixed the weird pink linedef thing showing up (adjusted thokbarrier)


Ridge Turnpike Zone:
-Removed that one death plane where people were getting stuck at with eggbombs right below the ending hairpin.

VR Big Forest:
-Turned it into a 4-lapper based off feedback by FaytStayx

Hopefully I'll be able to make and finish any new tracks if I don't get caught again with university stuff (...which recently might actually happen again), or at least deliver an update with reverse tracks as I wanted to since some few months ago. (if enough time goes on without any extra weird bugs/GBJs/stupid cuts reported this time around)

So just one day after v1.5's release, Triblue had found some few unchecked unintentional skips/GBJs

• One of VR Big Forest stretches no longer has slope physics, preventing a weird hop from happening if going too fast in there.
• An invisible safety bridge in Snowdust Valley was not in the right place for some reason; its fixed now
• A slight change in Tricolored Space Zone to avoid some memes
• Undisclosed invisible barrier invocation in RTZ
• And taking the chance that this is a thing in first place, updated the advertise banners

Record Attack ghosts should be included in the next update/hotfix since I ended up a bit short of time with finishing that (as well as waiting for some extra guest ghosts for all tracks). Kudos to Triblue and GaiaDragon for their impressive times in VCZ/SVZ/Big Forest; if you're a fan of challenge then their ghosts will definitely give you a run for your entire pocket and pants

At long last, after many months of inactivity and GBJ/cheap skip reports, today I finally officially deliver ArcadePak v1.5! The new big features are PlayerBots support, several issues getting patched, Snowdust Valley having a touchup, Polychrome Polygon Zone getting the orange lower tunnel removed, and a brand new track: Ridge Turnpike Zone!

While the current post also has the changelog, you can check it below here as well if you want

General:

• All maps (except Dinosaur Canyon Classic atm) have PlayerBots support.
• All music tracks (except SVZ/PPZ since they use module music) use Quality 0 OGGs, which means a massive size reduction.
• Speaking of size reduction, ArcadePak now comes as a proper PK3, now at a humble 6MB!
• Due to being outdated, ghosts were removed from this version. While there was the plan to have new ones done for this update, it will probably happen as part of a future hotfix due to certain layout changes done during development.

Virtua Circuit Zone (MAPE1):

• Raised wall near the end of the track, done to stop anti-cut from happening (Goldencreme)
• Made a square wall be sloped (looks nicer and aligns with the rails)
• Added transparent wall barriers; done to avoid a skip where if you somehow bounced off someone right above the bridge, you could skip the last hairpin. (Goldencreme)
• Adjusted first checkpoint sectors so that it can't be accidentally skipped. (Professor Renderer)
• Fixed the sloped side of the circuit finish not triggering...circuit finish (Diggle)

Snowdust Valley Zone (MAPE2):

• New Sky thanks to FaytStayx!
• Several texture alignment tweaks, replacements and some extra decoration to make the map look better
• Revised a bit the minimap
• Added forward wind at the fan area to avoid potential GBJs (Fayt)
• Added more item boxes at the first offroad shortcut.
• Added some more item boxes in both sides of the fan pit area.
• Invisible walls added so that you can't accidentally go off the sides in the first ramp jump.
• Removed a lot of tree objects in a certain background area to mitigate object pop-in issues.
• Moved the booster pad in a offroad shortcut a bit forward so that there's more offroad at the beginning of it (have a sneaker handy you cheapskate )
• Fan sector area now has some few ramps inside and outside to avoid issues if going through the sector using Grow

Mount Acres Circuit Short (MAPE3):

• Weird messed up linedefs corrected, fixing a rare GBJ (Goldencreme)
• Walls added at the bridge on the big circle turn so that you can't get knocked off to an earlier section. (SoupBowler64)
• Reduced a bit the tree density

Ridge Turnpike Zone (MAPE4):

• Publicly, it exists now
• For those that had beta-tested this track before release, made a linedef wall impassable to avoid a spring-related GBJ, and removed slope physics from the stretch after the first hairpin. Sky number was also changed.

Polychrome Polygon Zone (MAPE5):

• Added extra item boxes in some few places
• Some out of bounds areas that didn't have Death Pit effect on for some reason have it now.
• Added some bit of item density at the hairpin slope turn. It is also slightly bigger and now doesn't have slope physics.
• Snapped out of existence the entire orange underground tunnel thing; replaced it with two side booster pads and extra dense items at center on that straight

Tricolored Space Zone (MAPE6):

• Adding a outer wall at the last hairpin (makes the turn safer on high speeds but also avoids an anti-cut where...you land at the blue track) (Goldencreme)
• If someone somehow ends up going over the wall and potentially eating an anti-cut from yellow to blue area, then...no, since an invisible wall was extended to reach there
• Extended an invisible wall to avoid a cut from the yellow section with the ramps (Fayt)
• Fixing the accidental goal cheese by using a Circuit Finish Line FOF and extra checkpoints. (Fayt)
• Due to the above, invisible killer FOFs above finish line are gone; hardsneakers + acrobatic players rejoice (Goldencreme)
• Adjusted yellow last area with a wall so that you can't accidentally fly off.
• Offroad area added inside that infamous turn after the last jump.
• Patched some untextured linedefs.

VR Big Forest (MAPEB)

• ...whoops, didn't know I had left the final turn tree area passable; now the invincible powers of the invisible tree guardians make you unable to go there (and also save you from GBJ by trees) (Goldencreme)
• Made the linedefs at the side of the pit lane impassable.
• Added boost pad at the right starting lane.
• Some few untextured linedefs patched.

Dinosaur Canyon Classic (MAPE0):
It was there since v1.3 but there are some few things changed from that version. Originally I was going to take it out of Map Hell...but after revisiting and realizing it would need a huge rework to have it look more presentable today, I decided to keep it there. The mapslot is MAPE0 if you wish to revisit this fossil (or want to subject your friends to what clearly was my first map ). Oh, and some few slopes got slope physics removed.