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I absolutely love the models, looks like as if the sprites were just inflated. Oh and i think metal sonic is missing (might be me idk)

The levels themselves are great. The only issue imo is the difficulty spike at map 18 - Even small mistakes drop you to the point where victory can be just out of grasp because of a crusher. Although likely just me being bad at that regard.

Map 20... is just a kaizo troll map, to be honest. I can't put it any other way.
I tried doing map 20's hard route as fast I could cover it, but Tails' 8 second long flight was never enough (ascending and then instantly descending was a must or the ceiling or bottom poison would be leading to a death). I'll admit I looked at the map in SLADE, and... That's about 23 seconds of flight in the same narrow hall (way beyond what Tails can last, even with maximum speed, cannot reach about 2/4th).
Considering the large "LMAO" spelled at the end via floor tiles, I'm guessing that is meant to be intentionally undoable without cheesing it...

Besides those 4 hours of utter pain I'm never getting back, I'd argue this is a great pack. The pacing is just a little off at times.

my problems are fixed it's a decent mod . i wish it had customcharacter patch. some sonic stages need some rework.

I'm suprised that I've played this character a lot and I didn't leaved a rating so here is it!

Gameplay wise overall, I feel it balanced, or as I always say, "Vanilla paced". that's a big plus! the moveset is fun to use. I like to use a lot the cool homing attack it has. the sound effects are also cool to hear.

The voices, im not fan that voices applies for all situations like death, pain, etc. The only acceptable situations for me where the voice applies is their attacks and taunts. nothing else.

I know that a command to turn off voices is there but, maybe another option is good to turn off most of the voices and only apply voices in the situations I mentioned...? maybe, is probably a dumb suggestion. or I can just make an external pk3 to patch it for myself.

I said this because attacks or taunts without his voice feels, off.

Now, Sprites. To be honest, it looks amazing despite being prerendered. If there would be actual sprites with "srb2's style" would be better of course, but I understand that not everyone are skilled or being veery patient to do that.

Overall this character is pretty decent and proves that a coder with a bit of blender knowledge (or the basics of spriting knowledge) can make very good characters.

This map pack seems to jump between a fun, fairly easy experience and a sudden difficulty spike to kaizo-level traps that are nothing but trial and error. The longer it goes on, the bigger these dips and spikes in difficulty get. One level will be easy going, then it'll suddenly crank up the difficulty and drain your lives. I'm convinced map 20 wasn't meant to be beaten by a human, at least on the "secret" route. Sure, I'm weak, whatever, but I'm not gonna waste my time going for a secret level when the design of the levels directly punishes and hates me. Some segments I could mercifully find a way around (those narrow platforms in map 19 for example, you can spindash jump to a small path on the left wall), but for the ones I couldn't, it was just a matter of dying to a trap, retrying, getting past that trap, then dying to the next trap. Rinse and repeat until you can manage to brute force your way to the end.

That said, there's a lot to like for the good parts. When the maps are good, they're very fun, and visually they look pretty good as well. The cutscenes were good for a laugh or two. Bit surprised there were no emblems in this mod, though I found several places where a green grayed out emblem was hovering in place. I actually didn't mind being forced to switch between all 3 characters for different levels, though quite often when faced with kaizo-like challenges I'd wished I could choose my own character. The lack of being able to pick Amy/Fang/Metal kinda hurts too.

The mod's overall a good experience, but the levels towards the end where you're hit with beginner traps and trial and error challenges are infuriating. I think it can have its place in unlockable maps, but for main campaign levels, some of this stuff is discouraging. If the difficulty curve could be smoothed out, I think this is a pretty solid level pack.

Like the maps conceptually, especially the return of Basic Bounce. I don't think these are all that great right now though.

Eight Beat doesn't have much going on, but the trick panel pad in the center isn't all that fun to make it ever worth picking over something like Green Triangle to give a map that's close to compare. If you add some other stuff and didn't make the tricking gimmick take up so much of the track, then it could be pretty neat. Also the (seemingly) random sound effects could be removed so that the music can be better enjoyed. They didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason that was apparent and just disturbed the music unnecessarily.

Star Slalom is really laggy and probably needs some fixes to make it fun even in GP on my system. Even with that, there is very little room to drive on making the map very tough with little leeway on counterplay. This was only ran through once on GP Vicious like the other tracks so I missed out on taking advantage of shortcuts that might have helped me.

Basic Bounce might be really fun, but it probably should have normal springs or maybe moon panels instead of tricks so that pace doesn't break trying to take the small cuts. I think there were other problems too, but those could be from running this also really hard track for the first time.

[Spoiler] probably should have just been unlocked right away rather be required to beat in GP. I did learn how to play the track effectively from losing on it a couple times, but I didn't have much fun playing the same joke after the first time.

I think if the track design were improved, then this pack could seem less like a meme track pack. As it is now, the tracks are kind of just Hell maps or the equivalent of such as of right now. Besides that, I think the maps look distinct and could become iconic with improvement.

when i tried playing, it gave me the messege of "makeviamapthings: slope vertex 0 (for linedef tag 1010) not found "

good for getting emblems and can be used with mod chars
very good char, can be used with models (chars who have models)

I always hate how l have no room for the OCs people make, but I just HAVE TO for this goober. The clean art really heightens the design

truly the char mod of all time, truly incredible, riveting story, colorful and whimsical graphics, fun mechanic, indeed the best mod in world

Very well done guide, but I wanna ask: does this all work on Steam Deck? I got whatever dev tools I could find and I've started working on the sprites for my own character addon, but I wanna know if the whole process is doable on Steam Deck (since that's what I've been using) so I'll know if I need to borrow a family member's windows computer to complete the development process, especially since I don't know if Kartmaker will work on Deck.

It's cool, got through in 3 tries. Only issue that stops a five is that I don't see many varied uses of the rock, only the same pinballs. If there were things like jumping from one rock to another while it's bouncing. or dropping a rock off with momentum then getting it back, kinda like a kaizo, I'd bump this up to an easy five. Still though, it's great. enjoyed it a lot

This is probably the simplest thing I've ever done for something relating to maps (yes, this is even easier than making a level header). Works like a dream!

In terms of visual and audio quality, as well as the gameplay changes, it's all fantastic. Where this really struggles is the level design. Just like the original mod, this mod's level design struggles immensely with stage readability.

There are so many points in this campaign where I've just been completely lost as to what to do, the special stages have it the worst. The forest maze and lava special stages are genuinely hair-pullingly annoying. THe lava one especially forces you to make do-or-die leaps of faith or play super quickly whent he level design really is not clearly conveying what it wants you to do, or where to go. I never even figured out what the wheels you can activate were doing. THere's just no feedback to the player or any indication.

When a stage's entire gimmick is "follow the arrow on the ground" or the signposts have to actively point you in the direction of progress, that's a sign of a fundamental flaw with the level design.

Honestly, the new special stages should be scrapped entirely, I don't understand the scoring, and none of them so far have really been fun to play. Please, just give us back the simple "collect the rings" stages I beg you. I want to get my emerald and get out not spend 20 minutes in a single stage and then be kicked out because i ran out of continues.

Overall this mod is impressive, it's given me a ton of nostalgia over the original mod, but just like the original mod, frustrates the hell out of me. It's better in a lot of ways, but worse in some others.

An amazing cup all round. The guy I know as the maker of Funky Fortress and the rest of the original Draft Tracks did not disappoint.

The secret additional map not mentioned on the page as of writing is absolutely fantastic being on a whole other level of fun. It's really tough, but worth giving a go at it. I posted a guide in the discussions tab if anyone wants to try it out by unlocking it.
https://mb.srb2.org/threads/draft-tracks-ring-racing-edition.43932/post-683109

The one glaring issue though was figuring out how to unlock that track. There was a whole ARG behind it that had to be solved and the puzzle design isn't that great as a game. It's possible that if the participants and I better spent our time those days, the ARG might not have stung so much, but I think better puzzle design would have been better regardless.

The puzzles themselves get a 2/5 for trying and almost giving a fun little hunt, but failed due to the ultimate let downs and over exertion trying to solve it.

I have never had anything to do with phantasy star online before.. and still don't. So I have no idea how well anything is ported over from the original, what adjustments have been made, etc.. that didn't stop me from enjoying this addon a lot though.
Combat takes some getting used to, but it gives a more tactical feeling, along with the satifaction of building up a big chain for big damage, it's pretty great. dodging is useful, both in mobility and avoiding attacks and allows for some clutch moments, but luckily not the end-all-be-all tool for every situation, positioning is still important, so it overall manages to have a good mix of both. I also like how the npcs scattered around the hub have something different to say after every mission.
And multiplayer, I only got to play with one other person, but the experience for that has been positive as well. you get to keep your own gear, can share items and overall feels pretty synergistic. and multiplayer support is just always fun.

There are some things i'd like to critique though. To start with something minor, the Jump Pads early on feel like a relic of development, given how we not only never see them again after the early missions, but also see them replaced with springs later on.
The coffee shop felt rather... useless, until i was pretty late into the game. i never found materials for it and the gear would've been outdated pretty quickly anyway. Having a limited inventory of 60 also feels a bit redundant, because consumable items are stacked and have their own limits anyway, so it's kinda just for gear you find. And I know we could have more space, the storage exists after all. The fact you can just send anything at any time there anyway makes it less of a consideration on what to bring, but just an inconvenience to bring more items to sell.
The length of the Missions also blows up a looooot later. From beating a mission in 10 minutes at first to later on get an S-Rank after almost passing the 1 hour mark in a mission.
A bigger point for me would be how poorly some things are explained. And if there's a place in the game that explains it, i have no idea where that's supposed to be. for example, elements. weapons, some skills and even armor can have elements and enemies have elemental weaknesses as well. But for a long time, i wondered if it even did anything. Testing the same attack on 2 different enemies didn't feel any different, despite one of them being supposed to be weak to it. Did i do extra damage, does it have an extra effect, do the elements even work?.. They do, but i didn't really feel it until i went all in with elemental damage. And the elements on the armor are even less transparent, because.. what kinda damage do the enemies even deal? how do i know? do most of them even deal any? Is it even supposed to be a damage reduction? And besides the elements, the game fails to explain other minor things like the how technique-based weapons allow you the freedom to choose for yourself what attacks build chain and which ones break it. my coop parter also didn't know about a lot of things, until i told him, like how units work, how you can quick-switch weapons with the corresponding weapon buttons (doing it via the manu is pretty clunky after all), that you can level up your weapon proficiencies or that you can buy new skills at the shop.
Lastly.. there's a bunch of endgame gear to grind and unlock, but.. for what? there's no endgame to speak of. nothing feels like it was meant for this equipment, even though max level is where you really start unlocking all your possibilities, all the variety and some extra rare gear. but you can beat everything in the game with much less. so what's the point in even grinding anyway, particulary the last few levels don't feel like they're really meant for fun repeat play. i guess the Arena kinda fulfills that, but it's limited and not enough, especially since it's pretty much the same every time and lacks the usual stage gameplay. No cool post-game stages, enemies or bosses for my shiny gear. But i suppose, it all boils down to.. i just want more.
I know the negative section is a bit longer, but don't let it fool you, the issues are overall relatively minor compared to how this is has been a very fun experience for me, it's a great Addon with lots of effort behind it. I had a lot of fun with it and am certainly looking forward for more!

Literally one of the highest quality mods for SRB2 out there. All of the characters are fun to play and really easy to understand.