Month in Review: September 2019

1 year ago, 27-09-2019

Hello, here is Alexander welcoming you to what will hopefully be a monthly column looking back on what happened and the releases of the previous month. As this is the first post of this new series, let's look back on what happened before September because, boy, a lot sure did happen.

Most notably it was Re-Volt's 20th birthday and, for such an occasion, there were three meetups to celebrate. One in Frankfurt with the most international turnout, one in Budapest for our Hungarians, and one in URV's house with URV and Marv. I personally attended the Frankfurt one, which was fantastic. You can check out a great video of us driving RCs edited together by RV Passion here. Another thing that came out of that was the skatepark that we raced RCs on, which was turned into an RV track by yours truly. It's called Skatepark F20 so check it out!

Another significant event was All's Fair 7 which saw another round of crazy and beautiful cars. This time around the categories were for the most competitive car, coolest car and craziest car. The coolest car was taken with 49 votes by BloodBTF and his SBP Racer AF7 Edition, with the next closest car being THE COOL SHOESHINE by Krobe with 41 votes. The craziest car was swept by me with my Botanical Garden reaching 58 votes. If you want to see any of those cars, hop over to our Discord server and scroll down the channel list to #af7-halloffame . I also started on making a hall of fame for all All's Fairs on this site, so stay tuned for that. The craziest thing was not my car but the final results for the most competitive car. I may have won with 315 points, but Shara managed to get second with 314 points making the top two a single point difference with URV right behind at 307 points. A top 3 and especially top 2 so close is unlikely to happen anytime soon. If you missed the action you can check out the videos here.

With the rollercoaster ride of late July and August we reached September, which may not have had these large community events but was not without its own happenings.

Starting off with what may be the most significant one was an RVGL update, adding sprint track support and a reworked MAKEITGOOD mode looking to finally free us from the clunky and unintuitive old one. The Circuit Track Pack also followed the recently updated Real Life Cars Pack with its own update, with a large shuffling of the track list, plenty of fixes and improved AI

Also of note is the opening of the Re-Volt Speedrunning Discord for those who want to chase highscores on speedrun.com.

User creations did not disappoint either this month. High quality tracks and cars saw their release to the public with many standouts among them.

Starting off with tracks, kallelay came back releasing two new tracks at the start of the month with the first being Desctructed City which is a reimagining of his old track with the same name from 2013. The second one is Fragments, a self-admitted joke track which is, as the name implies, in lots of tiny pieces. The tricky jumps galore would be no problem for any flying car but that's no fun.

Continuing with joke tracks, Zeino brings us what may be the first reskin track on RVZ. BLURSED LAND OF TOMATOES is a reskin of bonezone replacing dogs with tomatoes made for an online session entirely dedicated to the tomatoes.

Saffron wasted no time with the sprint track update, releasing Touge Mountain, an A to B race that goes up (or down) the twists and turns of the mountainside. For those who think the track is too long, each half exists separately as Stage 1 and Stage 2. A great racetrack, but also especially fantastic for drifting.

Continuing on the streets, we have Route-77 by javildesign, the creator of The Bunker. This one is a real challenge with debris, harsh turns and obstacles everywhere and yet a clean lap feels smooth like butter. A great looking track too with well made shadows, a cartoony outside and gritty tunnels. My personal favorite from this month.

Lastly, we have Rooftops 1 by G_J and I_Spy, heavily based on Fiddlers on the Roof by Marv. Fiddlers was a track based on concept art that never came to fruition. This applies the textures and aesthetic of the Dreamcast track Rooftops to Fiddlers, giving us what may have been had those original concepts made it into the original game.

Starting with cars, we have something from the end of August, but it is too good to not include it here.

Koin Karp by RV Pure is an absolute beauty with its unique fish-like body and fantastic paintjob. Fitting squarely in the Amateur rating, it's both a pleasure to see and drive.

Skarma has been busy this month with three car releases. All of them are conversions of mods for Cities: Skylines, the first two of which are real cars: Jaguar I-PACE HSE and the Smart Fortwo. The Jaguar is a powerful Advanced car and the Smart is a lightweight Rookie. The third car is Sooo Fast, another Advanced car this one weighs even less than the Smart and has superb top speed for its rating.

Kiwi has also been active this month, with two Super Pro releases. He released Screamer, which is a remodel of Skarma's Mercedes Benz SL GTR conversion. Its crazy speed is counter-balanced by its love to oversteer, so it takes some experience to drive this. The second car is the heavyweight truck, King Moloko. With good speed and handling, it drives quite nice.

Another Super Pro release this month is done by me, with the Crashdozer. Its absurd weight, great turn radius and good top speed are weakened by its low acceleration.

Another person with a long release list is Aonikenk, coming out with two drag cars: Dragster Tarmac and Dragster Eight. A remodel and a repaint, these two focus on top speed, as expected of dragsters, with the latter clocking in at a crazy 50 MPH top speed. The third is Mazda RX-7 HD, which upscales the textures of the car from 2009 by MOH.

Lastly, we have Berry Go by aryo_adhi. This is a pink and cutesy repaint of Volken Turbo based on the music video of its namesake by Freezer feat. Kiichigo. It handles a bit odd, but it's a fun time driving it.

These were all the releases in September! Let's see what October, the month of Halloween, has in store for us. A big shoutout to all the creators, racers and just those who hang around and chat that make this community what it is. Until next month!