Digging The Past Even Deeper

A brief fangirl moment here: OMG MY OLD SITE IS STILL ALIVE!!!1111oneoneone!!!11!!!!

For my next entry this month, I was confused as to what should be written for my next post: The IziEditor? My Student Study Service days? Or my new TMUF Skinning project? Writer's Block is a bitch, I know, especially when once again Fashion Week took over my life once more. It doesn't help at all as I also started to binge certain web series, and the high level of obsession with female leads of those series has dropped my will to be productive.

But interesting enough, I stumbled upon my old Turbo Sliders site recently and stoked that it is still active until now, compared to my RendyTUNED site that has been frozen already (yet thankfully Internet Wayback Archive allowed me to view the site however I see fit). There, I discovered one track that I stupidly forgot to release on my RendyTUNED days onwards: Fantasy Road, a countryside track situated near a river. The track has been floating for years, and it actually was a much more decent track than the existing ones if I had to be honest.

However, Fantasy Road isn't the only track I forgot as the search for my old tracks continue from there on, starting by digging my old CDs I used to store my files on from the day I started being crazy for internet cafes. I remember making tracks with the names "Champark" and "Manggus R1", two of the default car tracks unreleased to the site but with no luck, so I decided to turn into Mike Nike whose track/car search helped me the most. Using his help, two things were revealed: Number one, those tracks are in the broken HDD, and number two and the most important of it all is Night Beach Party, my first ever NightMod track. I would thank Mike Nike for taking care of the NightModded track since it was a product of disqualified origin for TS's first ever track making contest.

GETTING TO KNOW

Fantasy Road, a track inspired by VPA's track with a shorter length from its inspiration. A fun track it is.

Two forgotten tracks, two different ambiences, two different personalities, and two different purposes. Yet, only one has been released publicly for once and the other has been hibernated until now. Fantasy Road and Night Beach Party are two of the default car tracks with distinctive environments; Fantasy Road is a semi-technical countryside track that puts the "countryside" feeling up to eleven, while Night Beach Party is a technical racing track situated in a beach at night.

Fantasy Road is a track influenced by one of VanhaPuinenAuto's tracks which combines elements like the freeway road, line-less asphalt, and stuff I couldn't remember as the track somehow is lost in the abyss of time. While VPA's don a longer layout, mine had it shorter. The track starts in a very long straight road and then proceeds to the left turn which is actually a combination of turns. This section, before it heads left once more, is one of my favorites as it gives the track a natural feel, it even doesn't need white lines on both ends of the track to make it more beautiful. The next one is a chicane which heads to the bridge that crosses the river for a residential drive section. Here, the turns are tight but are actually harmless as you can take these turns easily. Exiting the residential, a couple of 90-degree turns await you before to an S-turn and eventually the final 90-degree for a return to the Start/Finish line. While Antislider is the recommended car to use due to the fact that they can lap the track faster, I would recommend Slider more for a good amount of challenge because as I replay this track the S-turns are the challenging bunch for the said car, especially the last one that doubles as the penultimate corner.

A hidden jewel that is Night Beach Party. The illustration uses normal Palms tile as a placeholder to its NPalms tile that's missing.

Night Beach Party on the other hand is one of the entries for the 2008 track making competition which I participated with the said track. Of all the sentences I've put in the e-mail submission, the only immortalized description is "Oh, this track can be played with Antislider", but it is very true as the serial tight corners in this track fit the car well among others. Everything went fine until many found out that it is broken, and later on it got disqualified, even though it has a promising layout. Telling people to download the NightMod wasn't really that helpful, and the actual issue that has cost me my qualification in my first ever track making contest was my forgetting the Night version of the Palms tile dubbed as "NPalms", exactly the core reason for the mentioned statement. I would return to the second track making contest and revisit the beach concept with Big Billow, but in the MediaFire release the Palms tile needed to play the track was forgotten until it was put thanks to the fact that I uploaded it to the TS Tracks Database beforehand. Same Palms tile issues, different occasion.

But The two tracks aren't the only one that are now revived from their "hibernation". In fact, there's more...

RISE OF THE UNRELEASED TRACKS

From top to bottom, Billiard and Dual Ways. Two different tracks with the same layout.

There are some tracks that I don't seem to upload to the site yet has been staying on my OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) for years. Thankfully, Cloud Storage technology has allowed us to upload and download things easier when synced to the server, so I would have no problem putting my past stuffs I found alongside others to the drive for the sake of backups. But one noteworthy thing to know is that my OneDrive is only for personal backups, while I would put all of my releases on MediaFire instead because I already re-released my old Tripod-era tracks there from the Day 1, hence "MediaFire Re-release" on some of the tracks' readme files.

Tracks in question are Billiard, Dual Ways, and Yoroichuu. I didn't seem to release them either on my Tripod site or RendyTUNED due to the fact at how basic their concepts were, but after a rather quick decision making session you can expect them to be added as the new [R]GARAGE gets online. You cannot run away from your n00b past after all.

Yoroichuu, a straight up rough track with a little to no room for escape.

All the tracks mentioned are rough racing tracks, but they stand out in their own different ways. Billiard and Dual Ways were the earliest uploads back in the day, however I did release the former on TS's forum while introducing the Billiard mod, but in the end both have a similar layout premise where players can take any of the two paths only to "converge" with each other at one point. While Dual Ways depicts the most basic portrayal of the premise with normal environment, Billiard depicts it with an element similar to Micro Machines. Yoroichuu on the other hand is a straight-up bump race where you would drive the track with four different racing lines you can choose with a high probability of crashing with other players. With Pro Mode turned on however all hell would break loose; you would have to bop your way completing laps while praying that you won't be disabled by a faster car. This track also has a namesake of that samurai mouse of the same name seen in Takeshi's Castle known for obstructing contestants that get on its way with its punching gloves (its punching glove might be the perfect analogue for the track's premise) and is 10.5 seconds long under normal racing speed without any obstructions.

WHAT TO EXPECT AHEAD

Certainly the newest addition to the Default Car Tracks family of Turbo Sliders

While you won't expect any Photoshopped track from me, I have been perfecting my default car track making skills. In fact, the all-new releases as the new [R]GARAGE is alive will revolve around default tracks as I felt that the community needs a balance between default tracks and custom tracks. The one you see is the one that's certainly going to be released, among the old ones I have showcased in this post. The track itself is situated in a residential at the foothills. This new track might be still not perfect but in terms of quality it does show how I have improved for the past seven years, from the day I cluelessly put tiles here and there without abiding the trackmaking guidelines to the fact that I make sure that the widths are consistent and has a much cleaner environment where tiles don't clutter to each other.

The next releases after the site's grand re-opening will also revolve on default track cars as now I have more default track WIPs than I have more custom track WIPs. The biggest project of all however is a track where I mash up my old tracks into one 2K race track. The construction is already underway but I only have 1/3 of the layout finished at the moment as I have to focus on making the readme files for all files and finalizing everything after yet another delay I have stated at the beginning of this post.

Buckle up! McLaren F1 GTR and Aston Martin DBR9 GT1 are coming to TS!

But it's not only the old tracks are getting the spotlight; the old cars AND the new cars will get theirs too, and so does the old stuffs for the other games such as GeneRally and MiniRacingOnline. For GeneRally, I haven't added my new additions to the site while for MiniRacingOnline I haven't added the packs I once released before. But the star for the new wave of releases will be the two TS cars I have teased on my Facebook and Twitter: McLaren F1 GTR and Aston Martin DBR9 GT1. Both are British cars and both are GT1s of their respective eras. I have worked both cars for a long time and slowly perfected their graphics, but the real challenge is the physics. Somehow I wanted to make a physics that can simulate car control under no ABS and traction control. I envision an added challenge of minimizing excessive sliding to save tires and lift-and-coast to save fuel. This would be very useful and challenging at the same time for endurance-based events. Other than those two, I also have a hefty load of TS cars, but it's better for me to keep them as a surprise.

Realizing that I have stupidly put [R]GARAGE to hiatus for one year, I cannot be bothered procrastinating once again. With no more non-racing stuffs ahead other than my Midterm tests, it is now my time to settle everything to end [R]GARAGE's hiatus for once and for all...

~[R]