Shifting Sands
Shifting Sands is an official STK track, created by ctdabomb.
History
Shifting Sands is the only track except Oliver's Math Class and Snow Peak that has been staying in SuperTuxKart since the first game versions. Older revisions of Shifting Sands are now available as addons, such as Original Shifting Sands, Old Traditional Shifting Sands and Shifting Sands (Timewarp).
Description
The track is most suitable for middle or heavy karts. The default number of laps is 3, a typical lap time is between 35 and 40 seconds.
The starting grid is placed in the middle of a rather long straight, marked by an Egyptian-looking gate. Soon after the start, 3 gifts follow. A race can already be pretty much pre-decided if a player gets lucky with his powerup. Especially swatters, cakes and bowling balls can be dangerous for others here. Immediately after the giftboxes, the road narrows a bit, leading to a small bridge. After the bridge has been crossed, 3 bananas that can be pretty annoying for players, follow. Then, the road is doing a long 180 degree turn to the left, ending in 3 giftboxes. A slight right turn follows, going to a nitro surrounded by 2 bananas on the right, and vice versa (a banana surrounded by 2 nitros) on the left. Next, the road turns left, containing 3 giftboxes, and ending in 2 alternate ways. Going right here leads into a pyramid, ascending using a wooden path, followed by slightly turning to the left, containing 2 small nitros, and going back to the main route, another pyramid. Going left at the place the road splits leads players into the second pyramid where the other path ends, using a stony bridge. On the way into the pyramid, players pass a nitro set consisting of 3 small nitros. Entering the pyramid, it is possible to get 4 more small nitros before the two ways merge. The right of the alternate paths is slightly faster, winning about 1 second over the other path, thus being used most in both online races and speedruns. However, for the nitro challenge in Story Mode, the left path may be better as it contains a few more nitros. After the two alternate ways have merged, the road stays in the pyramid for a few metres with the possibility to get 4 more small nitro cans before going out again on the final straight which has 3 more giftboxes, making the race result sometimes changing in the last moment.
The whole track is located in Egypt, which is shown by the landscape which mainly consists of pyramdids and palm trees. The main part of the road is a light sand, the offroad sand is rather dark.
Shifting Sands however hasn't been changed much during the last few years, so a texture overhaul is currently wanted by devs, a first try for this was Sven Andreas Belting's WIP track New Sandtrack.
Even if Shifting Sands is not considered one of the most difficult and best-looking tracks, it is quite popular in online races, mostly because of its newbie-friendliness.
