MTM2 Racing here to stay
14 January 2008
Yes, it's been a long time between updates on this site. Not that MTM2 is no longer part of my life, far from it - it was an almost weekly fixture through 2007 as I joined in with ShadowPrincess' racing tournaments. Time constraints and other commitments meant I just never got around to creating anything to upload on this site, although tangentially related, I have been involved in the creation of another website about monster trucks (AMT, the Australian and New Zealand monster trucks gallery).
In 2007 I competed in 45 races over the 50 weeks of ShadowPrincess' tourneys (though there were actually 57 races with the inclusion of some mid-week tourneys). I only won on two of those weeks (SLO_Fila on the other hand won fully half of the 30 races he participated in), but the commitment has netted me the award of points champion for 2007, on a total of 479. A fast-finishing OLD_Jammer came in second on 457, just leapfrogging SLO_Scatter who finished third with 441. That's less than 40 points covering first to third, which illustrates how tight the totals were looking around the latter half of the year - I needed to race every week possible to defend my points lead! In the month-long tournaments, I also secured equal first (tied with Jammer) in February's Guitar Bill Memorial series, and fifth in the Team AXE circuit series in June. I am very pleased to receive these awards and would like to congratulate my fellow MTM'ers and ShadowPrincess for running an excellent series all year. You can see the full results and weekly points breakdown here.
There are now new sites serving MTM2 play online: visit mtm2online.com and mtm2tournaments.com for all the multiplayer goodness.
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Yep, I'm still here and actually more into MTM2 than I have been for years. Weekly MTM2 racing tournaments hosted by ShadowPrincess have just kicked off for 2007 and she deserves kudos for the great show she runs. For 2006, though I started a couple of months late I played through almost every weekend of the year and I intend doing so this year as well. On the final point score for 2006 I finished 4th on a fairly isolated total of 362 - well behind the top placed OLD_mumhra, OLD_Jammer and SLO_Scatter who I was over 100 points behind, and yet 80 points ahead of 5th-placed SHO_Death and 6th-placed RIP_JM (notice all those team racers lol). I also scored 5th in the Nostalgia Series and 4th in the Malibu's Circuit Series month-long mini-tournaments (dropping probable podium places in both because I missed competing the last week of each). Hmm, that's a lot of just-off-the-podium results, which I hope to better for 2007. For me the highlight of 2006 was winning the inaugural Peter Brock Memorial Tournament, which being the Aussie representative, felt a very right and satisfying dedication. And I didn't half practise that track in preparation either, I tell you :)
2006 was a time of great upheaval for MTM2 with the demise of the Microsoft Gaming Zone, but we now have online gaming support at WGC and BattleHQ and should soon be running at RenGames too, so there are always places to play if not people to play with. Obviously the biggest challenge is that the game is nigh impossible to obtain these days, being long out of production, and apart from the legally shakey abandonware concept it has not been authorised by the copyright holders for free distribution. However the MTM2 demo is free and is fully addon-capable, if you are prepared to invest a little tinkering.
Between the tourney and my following the improving (real life) Australian monster truck scene, the interest is being strongly kindled. Possibly soon I will be able to translate some time into making exciting MTM2 addons again... we shall see.
Time keeps running away
13 August 2006
Today's update is to announce the release of a new truck: ShadowPrincess' Ride which is a dedication to the lady herself. I actually had this one finished and ready to release over a month ago, but was having a struggle finding the time and getting around a mental block to write the readme file, of all things :p
Anyway I'm very pleased with how the end product turned out - I think SP is too :)
I've also got a couple of brand new wings added to the end of my parts page that I designed in the course of building this truck, that folks are welcome to use with their own creations.
Although I haven't been updating this site a lot lately, now's also as good a time as any to mention that I've actually been playing MTM2 quite a bit participating in the weekly racing tournaments hosted by SP. She got me started back in March when she ran my track Silverrim Raceway as the tourney track for that week - as the track maker I joined in as 'guest of honour', and managed not to embarrass myself by running out of talent too early lol. Despite the locally early time I've been sticking with it ever since, and enjoying myself immensely.
Here's a fun pic from today's action :)
Monster Truck show tomorrow night!
16 September 2005
Very excited at the moment! Tomorrow (Saturday) night there's a monster truck spectacular showing here in Bathurst. The trucks performing are Outback Thunda and Monster Patrol, with additional attractions that include a demolition derby, stunt jumping, Jet Car, Transzilla and fireworks show. All in all an exciting night out to look forward to, I only hope I don't freeze to death being outdoors after nightfall (with the recent weather we've been getting, this looks like being a distinct risk)!
Update 23 Sept: Well I didn't freeze, which is good (though mother nature tried her darnedest). New photos from the event are now up in the gallery, enjoy :)
The six-monthly newspost
5 August 2005
Not intentionally, but that is how tragically big some of the gaps in my tending to this website have become. Anyway, this latest bout of activity is owed to the lovely ShadowPrincess, who requested (some while back...) that I add her link to my Links page, in return for linking to me on her site... a fair enough request, although when I finally did put fingertips to keyboard I had to do more than just "add a link". In fact with much of it so out of date, I ended up redesigning the entire page - and then went on to perform a bit of tuning on several other pages of the site just for good measure. Anyway, just posting to invite you to have a squizz at my new-look Links page, and reassure that MTM2 is still on my mind even if it doesn't always show in the activity on this site.
I had a plan...
22 February 2005
...and for once I've managed to finish it! Today's new truck release is a dedication to the band The Cat Empire, a project which was inspired by the banter which takes place on the Main MTM Message Board (for a time, regular weekly postings featured truck repaints done up in the theme of a band). I'd like to give a particular shout out to Winterkill, whose enthusiasm for the Empire matches mine, which helped propel this idea onto my computer screen; and Cale for his new PSP7 truck painting tutorial, from which I discovered some new painting techniques to use here - even I can still learn new things in this business!
As an aside, I can hardly believe that the last time I released a truck was over a year ago. Yikes.
