[Level Pack] Chengi's Track Attack Pack (kr_CTAP) v7.0 [updated 09/23/2021] v7a

[Chengi]

Introducing C.T.A.P! (Pronounced see-tap, or si-tappu) A collection of levels I've put together for your SRB2 kart racing pleasure!


NOTE: On account of current obligations, I am becoming increasingly more preoccupied with other work to continue making frequent patches for C.T.A.P. They will likely still happen, but expect there to be long periods of time without any updates. Apologies in advance.

CURRENT ZONES:

PRISM CUP:
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Obsidian Oasis Zone (Race)

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Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
Laps: 3
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What was once a lush, radiant spring becomes murky, dilapidated wreckage in the midst of a storm. A multitude of different-colored geodes light up the path as the player drives through.
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Shuffle Square Zone (Race)

Difficulty: ★★★★☆
Laps: 4

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Venture fourth into the upbeat urban environment that is Shuffle Square. This city has a rhythm that keeps its residents hopping around to the beat of the music -- pretty soon, you'll be in the groove, too!


Vermilion Vessel Zone (Race)​

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Difficulty: ★★★★☆
Laps: 3

Board Dr. Eggman's treacherous vessel for the race of a lifetime! The constant turbulence from the ventilation system might make you feel as light as a feather, so drive cautiously or you might just end up falling into the sky below! ...Although I bet if you were skilled enough you could use those fans to show off.


Avant Acropolis Zone (Race)

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Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
Laps: 3


The successor to Avant Garden, making its long-awaited return in the form of Avant Acropolis Zone! A gigantic kingdom soars throughout the heavens above. With gigantic flowers and pristine gardens, this floating wonder is a dream come true.


765 Stadium Zone (Race)



ACTUALLY IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

If you upload footage of this track to youtube, you might want to swap out the audio if you don't want a content claim from Columbia Music Entertainment.


(warning: painfully anime)
"oh god chengi what have you done what is this music i can't understand what they're saying but this track slaps" -- average certified testimonial

Difficulty: ★★★☆☆
Laps: 3


The final frontier. No Items. Idols Only. 765 Stadium...

Are you READY?

(don't worry there are actually items I promise)



TERRA CUP:
Sketchberry Spring Zone (Race)

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆
Laps: 4

Step into the colorful vista that is Sketchberry Spring. If you don't already have a smile on your face from the charming visuals and upbeat soundtrack, you'll have one after you have some good-old-fashioned summer fun hopping across the various rivers scattered throughout the course.
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CURRENT VERSION CHANGE NOTES: (5.1)

Special thanks to SoupBowler, Eldog, and roy for getting a lot of this stuff to work.
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General Fixes:

Sketchberry Spring:

• Fixed all known exploits.
• Fixed death pit near the end not being tagged correctly.

765 Stadium Zone:

• Improved the palette.

Shuffle Square Zone:

As of 5.1, Shuffle is now a Hell Map and here's why:
The way that the turn in the mandatory ramp section before the window break is structured means it is actually, literally impossible to redo without drastically messing up the map geometry beforehand.

I am sorry, I have done literally everything within my power to find a natural fix for this jump. It is actually impossible. As for now I'm making Shuffle a hell map until it's fixed.

Changes have still been made, however.

• Slopes have been made easier to anticipate.
• Mobjscaled by 10%
  
• Adjusted the ramp/arcade cut so that lower-speed characters can make the gap with the mobjscale change.

 

[D00D64]

Welcome to releases!

 

[RgxSuperSonic]

Love shuffle square! Aesthetically pleasing, good song choice and plenty of multiple paths. Awesome stuff!

 

[Chengi]

Pushed out a quick hotfix. The unintentional skip before the final checkpoint in Obsidian Oasis should be gone, now.

 

[Chengi]

V2 is out! I've added a brand new zone to the lineup of currently-existing levels: Vermilion Vessel Zone!

It's a track designed to make the player feel lightweight, enabling all sorts of freedom and cool tricks with the fans placed throughout the level.

I've also made a lot of fixes for Shuffle Square, particularly in the glass window/downhill area, as most complaints seemed to stem from that part of the map.

 

[SeventhSentinel]

These maps are impressive. Did you make these new textures from scratch?

 

[Chengi]

Pushed out a quick hotfix that should remove the console spam on breaking the glass in Shuffle Square, I didn't catch that when I was testing in time attack. (which, admittedly, was my mistake in the first place, whoops)

These maps are impressive. Did you make these new textures from scratch?

All the textures aside from the ones that are just simple edits of the existing ones (IE: the two THZ steel flooring textures and the Eggman spring) are all absolutely self-made! This includes the animated ones like the fan textures and the wind particles, those of which were sprited and animated by myself.

 

[Chengi]

Hey, another update, sorry about the bump. I've fixed the sector + spawn issues in Vermilion Vessel. I prioritized pushing this out sooner considering how urgent it was. The players should now all face the same direction at spawn.


...and as an apology for making people download the pack three times in the same week, I've taken the liberty of giving the tracks brand new palettes, so that it's not just a simple hotfix this time.

 

[Chengi]

Okay, for real this time, 2.22 is out!

Obsidian Oasis has been given an immense visual and gameplay overhaul so that it falls in line more with the quality of the newer maps in the pack. I uh, I got a little carried away with the detail.

But aside from that, the rest of the patch notes are available in the first post. (...and hopefully, if all goes well I don't need to touch this map pack for another three weeks)

 

[Chromatian]

One of your biggest strengths is location design. All of your maps feel like being in the area the name describes. Vermilion Vessel deserves special mention for the fantastic texture layout and design, that skybox is incredible.

However, your directioning and track layout suffer from a few incredibly crippling flaws. The biggest of those being slopes immediately before turns:

In all of these images, you can see arrows in the distance. An arrow tells you what button to press, the road tells you what kind of turn to make. If you can't see the road, you can't plan out a drift in advance, or be prepared for the wall (or deathpit, more likely) proceeding it if you guess wrong on the angle of the turn. You aren't the only one falling into this mistake, many custom and a few of courses in the main rotation do as well. It's something we've never really brought up in any of the course tips on Discord, but it's one of the most important things to get right. The best way to take a turn in Kart is to start a drift long before it, but if you can't see the turn, how will you do that?

Moving on to your maps specifically, I used to think Shuffle Square had the most issues to address, but that prize definitely belongs to Obsidian Caverns.

Your arrows tell me to go left, then right, and the road travels beyond the closest wall here, so I'm expecting a U-turn, and it is...but the optimal route is to not drift at all, despite the arrows telling the exact opposite. I get that you want the bottom path to be balanced with the top, but this turn feels very redundant. I'd pull the path split up closer to where the first arrow is, and remove that turn entirely.

The upper route is slower than the lower, significantly, there are two reasons for this, in my opinion:

This bridge giving a gap between the yellow spring-pads. And the red spring-pads letting you skip the second half of the yellow entirely. The second reason is the diagonal yellow springs on the top path. If you replace the bridge with more lily pads, remove the red spring-pads (you can keep the items), and replace the yellow diagonal springs with a regular bridge, it should solve the path imbalance issue.

This jump is very inconsistent. Remove the blue springs, adjust the jump so that you don't need them. Clearing the gap is consistent, which is the most important part. The inconsistent part is whether or not you'll hit those springs, which is a toss up depending on your speed. This means your landing zone is different every time which is really not ideal when there's a turn immediately after...

Miscellaneous Issues:

You can't get stuck here, but is there really a reason for this gap to exist?

I like the idea behind the yellow springs, but a slope and boost pad would be friendlier to the current version of kart (v2 forces you to face the direction sprung when hitting diagonal springs even when you hold the accelerate button.)

(Splitting feedback into one map per post)

 

[Chengi]

v3.00 is live!



Shuffle Square Zone:

• Palette has been adjusted to be easier on the eyes.

Avant Acropolis Zone:

• Added.

One of your biggest strengths is location design. All of your maps feel like being in the area the name describes. Vermilion Vessel deserves special mention for the fantastic texture layout and design, that skybox is incredible.

However, your directioning and track layout suffer from a few incredibly crippling flaws. The biggest of those being slopes immediately before turns:

In all of these images, you can see arrows in the distance. An arrow tells you what button to press, the road tells you what kind of turn to make. If you can't see the road, you can't plan out a drift in advance, or be prepared for the wall (or deathpit, more likely) proceeding it if you guess wrong on the angle of the turn. You aren't the only one falling into this mistake, many custom and a few of courses in the main rotation do as well. It's something we've never really brought up in any of the course tips on Discord, but it's one of the most important things to get right. The best way to take a turn in Kart is to start a drift long before it, but if you can't see the turn, how will you do that?

Moving on to your maps specifically, I used to think Shuffle Square had the most issues to address, but that prize definitely belongs to Obsidian Caverns.

Your arrows tell me to go left, then right, and the road travels beyond the closest wall here, so I'm expecting a U-turn, and it is...but the optimal route is to not drift at all, despite the arrows telling the exact opposite. I get that you want the bottom path to be balanced with the top, but this turn feels very redundant. I'd pull the path split up closer to where the first arrow is, and remove that turn entirely.

The upper route is slower than the lower, significantly, there are two reasons for this, in my opinion:
This bridge giving a gap between the yellow spring-pads. And the red spring-pads letting you skip the second half of the yellow entirely. The second reason is the diagonal yellow springs on the top path. If you replace the bridge with more lily pads, remove the red spring-pads (you can keep the items), and replace the yellow diagonal springs with a regular bridge, it should solve the path imbalance issue.

This jump is very inconsistent. Remove the blue springs, adjust the jump so that you don't need them. Clearing the gap is consistent, which is the most important part. The inconsistent part is whether or not you'll hit those springs, which is a toss up depending on your speed. This means your landing zone is different every time which is really not ideal when there's a turn immediately after...

Miscellaneous Issues:

You can't get stuck here, but is there really a reason for this gap to exist?

I like the idea behind the yellow springs, but a slope and boost pad would be friendlier to the current version of kart (v2 forces you to face the direction sprung when hitting diagonal springs even when you hold the accelerate button.)

(Splitting feedback into one map per post)

Thank you for the critique, It's much appreciated. I'll likely be taking these suggestions into account for future updates.

 

[D00D64]

While I should probably point out whatever grievances I have with your previous maps (which are still very nice, FYI), and give more indepth critique than this at some point... I don't think a map has put on quite a smile on my face as Avant Acropolis did.

 

[Chengi]

Updated to v3.01.


Avant Acropolis Zone:

• Wall midtexture linedefs have been made solid.
• Fixed a potential GBJ sector when launching off of the second outdoor section's ramp.
• The grass is now using a different, less noisy texture.

(I'm also incredibly glad to hear people enjoy avant acropolis as much as I do ;u;)

 

[mania123]

This is really cool! Also does anyone know when SRB2 Kart V.2 is coming out?

 

[RobinE]

Great Tracks! Especially love the Nights one.

 

[Chromatian]

Let me finish my feedback in this post. I'll keep it as concise as possible so that it's easier to parse.

Shuffle Square Zone

The arrows you use to guide the player are far above the road, you have other arrows--

--But they only show up after you've ascended the slope and drifting now would make you bonk a wall. You've got some cool turning floor textures here too, may as well slap those on the slope as well.

The same deal here, less problematic due to the animated mid-texture giving the player a visual cue of the end of the slope.

This is probably the biggest issue in this map. The two main paths which you are expected to take are on the outer edges of the road here. That's fine, you've got some arrows telling you to go there. What isn't is the totally invisible spring pads that are required to progress, and will slow you down if you don't aim for the edges of the road.

This is a cool-ass set-piece, but it you feel pretty cheated if you guesstimate the wrong area for the red springs. You can easily solve this by lowering the platform before the spring panels so you can see what's going on during the jump.

Lastly, there's massive path imbalance, which I'm sure you're already aware of, but for the Spring panel section specifically, the right path should definitely have a Sneaker Panel to help balance it out with the left. As it is now, right is harder to take, harder to see, and slower overall. It may as well not exist.

Vermilion Vessel Zone

I'd prefer to show you in a netgame what issues exist with this map than through discord/message board. :V

Avant Acropolis

The green shaded arrows on the ground here have always implied to me that this is also part of the Sneaker Panel here. Apparently, it's not. Consider changing it's color to anything not green.

...That's it, really, Avant Acropolis has had so much time in the oven that I can hardly find anything particularly wrong about it. I'd love to see it be 3 laps instead of 2 so it exists for longer than 1:40 before being dumped back in the voting pile for another 30 or so races, but I'll leave that decision to you.

 

[aa479758]

I really enjoy the stages you made for this pack, It's very fun to play through them. Though I should point out that you can get stuck Obsidian Oasis and Shuffle Square when you have the shrink effect. Knowing that most Srb2 Kart servers disable shrink, I figured I let you know.

 

[Chengi]

Updated to V4.0.

765 Stadium Zone:

• Added.
• I'm sorry.

Obsidian Oasis Zone:

• Blockmap issues with the immediate first cut should be fixed.

Avant Acropolis Zone:

• Temporarily removed the skybox trigger sector as it was a global trigger, and caused issues with multiplayer.
• Improved the textures.

I really enjoy the stages you made for this pack, It's very fun to play through them. Though I should point out that you can get stuck Obsidian Oasis and Shuffle Square when you have the shrink effect. Knowing that most Srb2 Kart servers disable shrink, I figured I let you know.

View attachment 28383

View attachment 28384

I'm aware of the issues with shrink. I'm unfortunately not able to sink in the time to fix them right now, and will likely have to be in the next update. Nevertheless, thank you for bringing this to my attention.

 

[Sunnyside]

Awesome work on 765 Stadium! Your maps are always enjoyable.



I found a potential ID conflict while I was playing around. 765 Stadium is replacing Motherlode Canyon from the Abstraction Pack when both are loaded. The idols are worth this loss but I thought I'd pass the info along.

 

[Chengi]

Updated to version 4.1

(Likely the final update for some time as I have important endeavors to take care of. I attempted to fix as much as I possibly could to compensate.)

General Fixes:

765 Stadium Zone:

• Added an Encore Palette.
• Fixed the final cut exploit.

Obsidian Oasis Zone:

• Made the start of the map level so players can easily anticipate the first turn.
  
  • Leftmost cut removed, partially integrated old cut technique into the cut required for the lilypad section.
  • (By extension, this means that players no longer get caught in the linedef.)
  • Lilypad section no longer has items.
    

• Fixed spiral section not being shrink-safe. (Thanks, Barkley!)

• Overall directioning improvements.

Avant Acropolis Zone:

• Fixed missing texture near the start.
• Increased offroad friction to both ramp cuts near the middle section.

Vermilion Vessel Zone:

• Drastically improved visuals.
• Increased offroad friction to first ramp cut.
• Re-positioned boosters/fans for a better sense of flow.
• Improved directioning.