Very recently as of March 2023 I've decided I should dabble in modding other games despite my lack of all around coding know-how. And since I had recently gotten into playing the only solid Mario Kart DS ROM hack I could find, Ermii Kart DS, I figured I would at least try my hand at making something of my own. It seemed daunting, but so far it's proven to be pretty okay although tedious and a bit weird sometimes. I was following a tutorial by AltairYoshi on YouTube on how to do all the necessary stuff. It covered basically all the bases, but there's not a whole ton of help you can get unless you wanna dive into whatever DS hacking sites and forums exist out there. Still a fun endeavor I want to chip away at over time though.
The final product of my mod (KJDS is what I'll call it I suppose) should consist of 32 brand new tracks with various theming, 12 new racers (stats will not be altered) and 6 battle courses. These could be based on some media or just a random original idea. A few of the racers would probably be of my creation or at least inside characters that most people will have no idea about. Some track ideas are my friend cflip's LAN party setup upscaled as a race course, featuring a red cup cannon and various objects scattered around the desks. Another is based on a local area here in Alberta on the outskirts that greatly resembles Shroom Ridge although much flatter. There's a lot of potential to make something pretty cool and I'm sure I will improve at making this stuff over time.
I would like to do something with Mission Mode eventually but obviously you'd have to make up new missions or apply existing ones over all the new tracks over 50 times which I for one am NOT doing. If possible, a simple boss rush with more elaborate challenge to each fight would be a really interesting hook for the project. Basic improvements like avoiding piranha plants while fighting Chief Chilly or something, just so the missions don't take 4 seconds to beat. Still a very distant dream, though.
I really don't have a lot done, but what I have gotten is a small test map simply called Block Circuit. It replaces Baby Park and will probably keep the music and five laps. Unfortunately porting everything into Mario Kart Toolbox is extremely weird; a few surfaces just fail to exist and so does the collision in a few cases. The fence collision also only works on the side you'd need it on least which lets you get stuck. It was probably all a rigged tutorial series to spite me, so thanks a lot. Jesting aside I'll get back on it soon enough but it's just so frustrating when things don't work for no conceivable reason.