Phase 1 of stage 4 judging is finished!

The following tracks have made it into the final (they are listed in random order):

Enai Siaion
kamakaze
haenry
Exploding Lemon
Nimrod

Congrats!
Final results as usual on Friday!

hm, I miss some diversity in the map. It becomes a track with only GP-platform-GP-platform and a little bit offorad. There are 6 different types of normal road, but I don't see any little turn on it in the first 3 parts and the final parts now. Next point is that the transitions between GP and platform are already used in tmjonas part and starting to repeat now in some parts. Surely these parts are nice to drive, but that's not hard if you use only GP and platform. One last thing: marti had only one CP in his part and it was right at the beginning. I gave much trouble to place a CP somehow in the beginning of stage 4, but now I see it wasn't necessary as there are parts who have their CPs at the end of stage 4. So a respawn on marti's CP costs ~20 seconds.

Have to agree with marius here. I love all of the build parts, but in case of diversity of the whole map i would have already disqualified the Enai Siaion, the kamakaze and the Exploding Lemon parts, because they all use the same transition as in the tmj part and therefore don't add anything new (but have to agree that i love the drop on the kamakaze part to the finish). And same goes about the gigantic CP gaps in some submissions. Even if the map is easy finish-able, it kills simply the fun for the driver if he needs about ~1min30 to finish a one minute map on the first try (including 1-2 respawns).
And i thought the idea of the contest was to build a fun map with diversity, with a flow which makes it indistinguishable to differ the different parts, easy finish-able for all drivers and therefore good for online play. But might be i was wrong -_-

well I'm no huge tech expert, but for me this track feels exactly like every other tech track till now, looking at the diversity. But maybe it's just that I don't really miss the narrow roads since I can't really drive them. I usually just use them on straight spots, like I did in my part

anyways, nice to see my part in the favorites again. good luck others

Marius 89 says:
One last thing: marti had only one CP in his part and it was right at the beginning. I gave much trouble to place a CP somehow in the beginning of stage 4, but now I see it wasn't necessary as there are parts who have their CPs at the end of stage 4. So a respawn on marti's CP costs ~20 seconds.

so true. that was quite the main problem for me to place CP soon, that's why I failed to sumbit... but to judges CP in the end seems okay

When the part in between is not to hard, sure!

Just a rememberer: ohei2 was the only one really complaining about cp's. And he's not judging at this stage, as far as I know.

here I'd rather he judged

As a judge I was told to give a score with a max of 10 points per track. I haven't been told what criteria to judge on, so I've been approaching the scoring of the tracks in my own way, although I make an earnest effort to score every track using the same criteria.

Some of you say the parts aren't distinctive enough. I think that's actually a great accomplishment. I'm of the opinion that duo and community tracks should feel seamless. It should be difficult to tell who built what if you were driving the track for the first time. The ideas should be consistent within the theme that has been set out in the first few stages. In my opinion the track shouldn't suddenly change styles in the middle. That's more disturbing to me as a driver than having some transitions repeat from one part to the next.

That's not to say that each stage can't have unique ideas, but they should be consistent within a theme.

Some thoughts about things I score on:

I know there was some issues raised about CPs early on in the contest. The only thing I've ever looked at when examining CP placement is to make sure that the lack of them in some spots does not introduce cuts, because cuts can be really annoying and ruin an otherwise good track.

I personally never respawn at CPs, except occasionally in rounds mode online. That's usually if the track is really hard. This track is so far extremely easy, so I doubt anyone driving on it on a 60-90k server would be likely to respawn at all. So distance between respawns isn't really a major issue for me.

I do think that every respawn should work and you should be able to finish from every CP. That's important.

Also, a track can have CPs every 4 seconds and always be respawable, but if it has bad flow or disjointed parts, then it doesn't really matter.

For me the biggest criteria when judging is fun factor. How does the track feel to drive? Does it have a consistent feeling from start to finish? Is the spacing between transitions and turns good throughout so as to keep a good flow and keep a high level of fun? Most of all do I get the feeling, after every run, that I want to drive it again? If I don't get that feeling after 2 or 3 runs, then the score is likely to go down.

I know that personal taste definitely enters into it when judging. I feel it's important that as a judge I score based on my feeling of the track, and not just some written rules that things have to be a certain way. Track building is an art. There's certainly not a single right way to do it. But as I've seen from the many parts at each stage of this contest, everyone approaches the next stage with their own artistic vision for the track.

Just like art... some parts I enjoy, others make me uncomfortable. I guess with some art, it's okay to make you uncomfortable... it's there to evoke an emotion. But for me, TrackMania is all about evoking the good emotions. So I shall score up those tracks that make me feel good.

I must say that I'm really enjoying BASCO. I remember when the last one took place in the Bay environment. I was around TrackMania for it, but I hadn't really got active on the forums yet. I remember seeing the news about it, and everyone excited about it going on, but I only really got around to driving the final result after it was released. I was otherwise not involved in it in any way. So it's been very interesting to me to be involved in this BASCO as a judge. I wish to thank KekX for his relentless work to make sure the contest proceeds on time and in an orderly fashion. Unlike the MTCs, which have a slightly looser schedule, especially for judging.... BASCO is on a tight schedule for many weeks.

I'm also gratified to see many contestants who have lost several stages continue to make parts for each stage. Many have changed the style they were building at each stage, which shows their true depth of understanding of the Canyon editor and all the things possible.

Anyway, keep it up!

tcq says:
And i thought the idea of the contest was to build a fun map with diversity, with a flow which makes it indistinguishable to differ the different parts, easy finish-able for all drivers and therefore good for online play. But might be i was wrong -_-

Well, in my book, so far the map's pretty much like what you described here. And surely it's the target, no doubt. But therein lies one of the problems: normal road is very hard to drive, especially later in a track - it makes you crash very easily. I agree with both of you though, the diversity issue does exist.. I always kept block variety in mind and tend to give more points to parts that use new blocks, however it shouldn't just be new blocks for the sake of it. And the thing is anything except GP and platform (and offroad) is quite hard to integrate without the track getting too tricky and frustrating. In the end, it's the fun that counts.

edit: way to go eyebo

^^ Thats why i tried to add an offroad part ..... but why speak about GP-platform transition if judges prefer that ..

Anyway, GG to all finalists