Track: Twilight Decks
Maker: SoulRaiZer
Type: Rumble
Music: RockX
If you ask a racer what’s the first track they think of when you say “MTM 2”, more often than not the answer will be Crazy 98. Of course, that's that's the answer from those who either shuns add-ons because “
there's just too many tracks to learn” or they think stock tracks are the crème of the crop, and that add-ons are second rate...believe it or not. Conversely, if you ask a rumbler what track comes to mind when you say “MTM 2”, at first you’ll get a blank stare for about 5 seconds, then a little mumbling, and then you’ll see smoke coming out of their head lol…ok, ok we’ll stop–Hypercube will be the answer you get approximately 7 out of 10 times most likely. Both are good tracks, with Hypercube besting Crazy 98 in terms of overall popularity in the past two years with racing taking a backseat to rumbling. There have been some very good add-on rumbles made over the years. Unfortunately they're (
1) seldom made nowadays, and (
2) they're not as popular as they once were, and both of those statements of fact feed off of one another to form a sort of catch 22. Of course, Of course, the drag race popularity figures in there as well. Still, most rumblers are content to beat each other senseless for hours on end playing Hypercube.
Despite all of that gobbledy-goop, we’re here to tell you about Twilight Decks, by SoulRaiZer. “If” by chance you’re burnt out on The Cube (as it’s referred to in the game room), this rumble offers up a refreshing change of pace. Rumbles usually come in two
flavors, if you will: tactical-fun oriented and strictly push ‘n shove. For instance, one of the reasons Hypercube is so popular is because it doesn’t require a great deal of skill to play it and have fun, but at the same time, there are quite of few techniques one has to learn in order to compete with the big guns out there. On the opposite side of the spectrum is Arena rumble, which is of the push ‘n shove variety. On rumbles of this type lag and luck are much bigger factors than actual skill.
Twilight Decks is a cross between tactical-fun and push ‘n shove, with emphasis on the latter. As the name implies, it’s a two-tier arrangement on which the scoring and summit zones are fully functional on both upper and lower platforms. The summit itself is covered in MTM 2 brake and head lights with the texturing pattern of one deck being the negative image of the other deck. It's not something you see every day, and despite a couple misplaced textures, looks pretty good. The upper platform has two square-shaped
cutouts that rumblers can and will fall thru. The good part is you only fall to the lower deck, which means there’s no point penalty. The surrounding terrain is textured with MTM 1 grass with sand patches here and there to break up the otherwise barren ground beyond the area of play. There's a grandstand of on-lookers in view to cheer on rumblers, and a sprinkling of trees putting the finishing touches on a nice looking landscape. As for the grandstand, it’s purely a personal preference thing, but we feel it could have been placed a tad closer to the summit, that way the people don’t need binoculars to see the action lol. The only glaring flaws we noticed, and they don’t impact game play at all, are as follows:
• The access ramps don’t
align properly with the summit.
• Inconsistency with respect to the gravel textures as shown
here &
here.
• A fews seam blemishes as shown in this picture
here.
Small potatoes, but hey, we had to make a note of it.
Finally, for a touch more realism, these hills could have been
rounded off a bit more. As is...well, someone could hurt themselves on those things!
This track has a name conflict with <a href="http://mtm2.com/~tracks/dl.cgi?dl=3599" target="_self">Twilight ZOne by ZO_RudeDog</a>. What this means is if both of these tracks are mounted in your pod.ini list, then the one highest in the list will be the only one to appear in the game. This is a common error made by new track makers and not really a serious problem. However, if you want to make sure people can use your track without interference from other track, then you must take steps to ensure your track has a unique name. There are several ways to do this. When choosing a name, take a moment to search the track page to see whether or not the name you want has already been used. Note, however, that only the first eight characters of the name are what count. Anything after that doesn't come into play. And that's exactly what has happened here. "Twilight" has exactly eight letters in the word, so it doesn't matter that one track is called zone and the other deck. The first eight letters in each name are the same, and so we have a conflict. Another way to get around this problem is explained at this link: <a href="http://forum.mtm2.com/viewtopic.php?t=1199" target="_blank">Tip To Avoid Track Name Conflicts</a>. Perhaps that method is not for beginners but it let's you name your track anything you want without fear of name conflicts with somebody else. Lastly, there are a few notes on choosing and developing unique names on the <a href="http://cownap.com/~mtmg/slice60/" target="_blank">Slice60</a> page. Those notes are in the context of using the texture slicer called Slice60 but the principles are the same and apply equally to track names and model names as well as texture names.
Coming back to Twilight Decks, then, this is really a large track and should be played with a full room of rumblers. Because both decks are active, it is theoretically possible that two people could get could get atop the summit, score full points, but never actually see one another. Or, if you were on the lower deck and wanted to knock off your opponent on the upper deck, you would actually have to leave the scoring zone, which results in points being deducted from your score, and climb to the top where hopefully you can give the other player what s/he deserves. On the other hand, if you have a house full of battle hungry warriors this track offers all sorts of opportunity to engage in strategic enemy strikes since you can attack from almost infinite angles of approach. And let me tell you, there's nothing quite so fun as being amid the heat of the fray and watching a monster truck drop in from the sky (coming down from the upper deck) and landing in the middle of an ongoing confrontation. Yea, baby, let's rumbllllllllllllle!
Nicely done, Soul – keep up the good work!
