Review of Tech Fortress

MT 9/10
Good overall, but the camera clips through a pole during the intro and there's a glitch with the trails of one of the cars (the blue trails).

Flow 8/10
Drift tech with lots of transitions. It is easy to make drift tech in canyon because you don't have to do anything, any combination of corners at a sensible speed works. What makes the difference is a large variety of drifts, and you succeeded at offering this. The transitions are effective and smooth (not that they really need to be in canyon) and somewhat original. Generally the track flows well once you have figured it out, with no forced hard corners or long straight sections.

Do try not to make the track so you turn in one direction for 10 seconds, then in the other direction for 10 seconds, but that's really minor. It is also a wee bit long while we're nitpicking.

Scenery 7/10
I'm not a fan of random track pieces as scenery, it clutters your view and makes it harder to figure out the optimal route. The arrows don't do anything: you can easily get lost at some point or crash into a blind obstacle. At the cp at 25 seconds you WILL get lost because the only visible arrow points in the wrong direction and the correct path doesn't even look like you are supposed to go there. Also, the start lacks scenery.

Speed 9/10
Well calculated except for the first transition which is a bit too fast and you may fly right into the concrete block, and the uphill at 30 seconds is a bit too slow. In fact it looks like there was supposed to be a transition to the GP track here but you were too slow to make it so you removed it.

Other than that, the track keeps up the pace and never goes out of control super fast crazy mode. You can always see turns coming and the track doesn't feel like a grind, so that's very good for a boosterless platform track.

Difficulty 9/10
Completing the track is not hard once you know the layout and figured out the two surprise obstacles (the transition from GP to tilted platform, and the tunnel to GP transition with the metal beam in the middle). For a transitional track it is actually pretty easy, which is great because you can move on from trying to complete the track to hunting that much sooner.

Overall 8/10
This track is obviously inspired by TMNF trackbuilding good practice. Unlike TMNF, the challenge in canyon is not to make a driveable track, because that's easy. The only blocks that require some effort to use are the narrow ones. The challenge is to create a track that is competitive, respawnable, interesting and has correct speed.

This track succeeds when it comes to the driving part because it is a lot of fun to hunt and has a variety of drifts - automatic, manual, tight, fast, transitional. If this was the mission, you definitely succeeded. It is not repetitive, doesn't stall the car and doesn't have the kind of drifts that are faster if you drive perfectly on rails, a flaw that often pops up in other "drift" tracks and ruins them.

It is however also hard to figure out due to all the reuses and unlike in TMNF there is no gameplay reason for it. TMNF associated labyrinthine tracks with high quality tracks, which was because prolonged drifting resulted in the track bending back into itself, but now it doesn't really matter which way the track turns. Spreading it out a little could have made this a great online track, but now it isn't viable for 5 minute servers.

___

Can someone review this:

[Bad Track/Map Link]

There seems to be something wrong with it because it has a large download count but no comments or awards. I can't figure it out though...

Enai, I've seen it on a server somewhere, maybe that's it?

I'm not sure whether I should review your track, as I'm clearly not a good enough player for it, so it'd be a pretty negative review

I think the problem Enai is that it is an expert track. I just tried it and DNF because I got stuck at a point where I just couldn't get enough speed. I'm sure with persistence that I could finish but like most people here patience is not my virtue

The track looks very cool though and with some built in forgiveness it would be more appealing

Well that's the thing, it felt unnecessarily hard - all of the jumps could have been made so that you don't have to do all of the track up to that point without making a single mistake.

I dunno, I just got very frustrated with the track, and despite trying it for 45 minutes I only managed to complete it twice (although I wasn't feeling at my best when I tried). And of course I realise that in order to get a good time on any track you have to do it without making mistakes anyway, but it's at least nice to feel some sense of achievement for getting somewhere, rather than repeatedly being told "you are not good enough for this".

Sorry, ranted on a bit there. Maybe I just suck at TM.

I, myself, seem to be suffering from the same problem in Enai's track. Combine that with the fact that I'm a horrible driver, and I can't even get past the first jump. Some respawn routes could easily fix the problem... I think.

Anyways, here's a new track for you try, if your interested:
(link removed until this is a review)
(Showcase won't work for me either)
It's my first real creation in TM2; A pretty straightforward track with drifting and a few jumps.


EDIT by Ville: You have to review the last track to get your track reviewed. Otherwise it wouldn't be very fair towards Enai, would it? To everyone: someone just review the track, you don't have to like it to give constructive feedback. Just tell what you feel about it.

Ok, here's my review of Enai's track, after a second round of attempts.

Well, where to start? I am not really sure how best to proceed with this, as I'm in two minds about the track. On the one hand, it says on the track's download page that it's an Expert difficulty track, so it seems unfair to complain about how hard it is to complete. On the other hand, it really is hard to complete, which is very frustrating to non-Expert drivers.

The very first corner is a sign of things to come: you need to take it without bumping the sides or you won't make the jump that follows. This is a common theme throughout the track, where any bump against the sides will kill your speed just enough that you won't have enough to make the next jump. It is punishing, and possibly somewhat demoralising, depending on how you view this kind of challenge. In a way it's similar to old-school 80s video games, which are clearly beloved of many, so as I said I'm hesitant to be too critical of this aspect.

That said, the challenge does seem somewhat arbitrary, in that the challenges are entirely binary; you're either fast enough or you're not, there's almost no in between, no sense of being able to do better beyond simply not hitting the sides. If you go flat out and don't bump the sides, you'll be able to complete the track and probably get a gold medal too – on my second round of attempts today, I completed the track on my fourth (I think) go, and managed to get a silver medal with a time of 45.31. The only reason I wasn't faster is because I crashed into the building just after the final jump.

My point is, I believe it'd be a much more likeable track if only it allowed for minor mistakes – perhaps short ramps to allow less-than-perfect attempts to finish the track, even if not with a good time. Constantly failing because of tiny mistakes is very discouraging; allowing drivers to at least get to the end would be a great incentive to improve, since as things are, and based on the (admittedly small sample of) comments in this thread, people are much more inclined to simply give up and do something else than fight a relentlessly punishing track.

At risk of sounding overly negative in this review, I'll also mention the the track's flow. Assuming you've avoided making any mistakes, the track is plenty smooth to drive, and there are no awkward turns that require you to brake too much, or small bumps that can throw you out of control. This is good, however there's also something missing, and it ties in with the "common theme" I mentioned earlier, which is basically: "corner, then jump". You take the corner well, you make the jump, and at only one point in the track is there any deviation from this (the tunnel section after the second corner). There's no flowing from one corner to another, the corners just seem to be there as a series of separate challenges, with straight bits in between to give you time to set up for the next challenge.

One part where the track definitely needs improvement is on the last corner before the ramp leading up to the finish, as there's very little indication of which way you need to go. It doesn't necessarily need a big obvious arrow sign, but some kind of suggestion about the correct direction to turn would be nice – the first time I made the prior jump I picked right as the way to go, and ended up falling off the buildings and ending up in an unrecoverable position.

Oh, checkpoints: don't bother respawning at them, you won't get very far; their only purpose is to measure how relatively fast/slow you're going.

On a brighter note, the MediaTracker stuff for Imperial Defense is generally very good. The intro gives a nice preview of the track, and is smooth and without any odd clipping. The title/credits are also tastefully done too, unlike some of the cheesy ones I've seen on various tracks online.

The replay is nice, with some great angles, in particular the one of the jump after the big, wide, sloped turn. The green light trails are kinda cool too, I guess.

The screenshot is really nice (as are most of Enai's others).

The scenery is a tricky thing to discuss here, as the use of a texture mod complicates matters. It definitely looks nice, but I can't really give Enai all credit for that as Hawkger made the textures. However, that's not to say Enai just dumped a load of blocks around and called it a day. Clearly a lot of thought and care has gone into the placement and use of various blocks to enhance the mood, and it works well – I particularly like the blue lights in the first jump and corner. Furthermore, the colours of the textures serve to make everything look very contrasty: bleached out white areas, deep shadows, and not much in between, when you're outside, which ties in nicely with the black-and-white nature of the track's difficulty (whether this was intentional or not, I don't know).

There's good use of track and road blocks to give an impression of an environment more complex and extensive than the parts you drive on, and the "buildings" look great too, perched on top of buttes and overhanging the track. Generally there's a good sense of "worldness", a word I just made up but basically it means the setting feels like a real place, with no weird floating-in-midair blocks, and nothing really out of place. The one exception to this, I think, is the last couple of jumps, which I guess could be excused by saying they're "under construction" or something.

It would be interesting to play the track without the mod. I think this is how I fist encountered the track, playing on some server that had it in its jukebox – I cancelled the download of the (50MB or so) texture pack as I don't have the fastest connection in the world, but I guess TM continues to download the texture pack even when you click Cancel, as when I came back to try the track for this thread, the textures were completely different.

Alas, I can't really remember what it was like to play sans mod, as of course it was only for 5 minutes (possibly not even that – it might have been vote-skipped). That those 5 minutes didn't really make much of an impression on me beyond "wow this track is hard and unforgiving" might say something about it, I dunno. Perhaps that's not really fair, since I guess it's very hard to make an impression in 5 minutes in the midst of potentially hundreds of other tracks.

Overall, I would say Imperial Defense is... ok. It's not terrible, although certainly not suited for general online play as it'll quickly accumulate negative karma. Then again it's not really outstanding, either. The texture mod works in its favour, and the scenery is well-made, but I'm not keen on the "series of separate challenges" style, especially not when the track demands that you complete all previous challenges perfectly. Sure, as I mentioned in my previous post, you'd need to make a perfect run anyway in order to get the best time, but most people will give up long before that point, and in the end if people don't want to play your track, it's hard to really recommend it.

edit:
almost forgot to say which of my many, many (i.e. two) tracks I'd like someone to review.

[track="full"]7487[/track]
"Ward U1 by   caerphoto

my track, Ward U1

...and now it's not working?

Vile says:
(link removed until this is a review)

Hasn't been a single forum yet where I haven't made a fool of myself...

Anyways, in a desperate attempt to redeem myself (and the fact that I download every track on this thread), I will (try to) give a "solid" review of Ward U1.

I guess I'll start with the atmosphere. The atmosphere of a futuristic, concrete utopia works very well. The usage of pipes and half-tunnel-dam-things really helps the track to feel "gritty". However, the sheer darkness and a few wasted opportunities for directional signs really mess up the actual driving.

Ah, yes, the actual track design itself... well, it's rather confusing. at almost every turn where you could fall off into a pit, I got lost and had to respawn two or three times. The turns that gave me the most trouble were (counting U-turns as a single turn): the 1st, 5th, 7th, and 9th turns. I had no clue where I was supposed to turn and usually dive-bombed straight into... something that wasn't the racing line.

In your future creations, I heavily recommend at least a few signs, or perhaps a GPS Ghost Car. Try to think where would I think to go if I never played this track before? and try to place something - whether it be Enai's Gigantic Sign Pack or a MediaTracker Ghost Car - to help tell the player where to go.

Overall, it's a good track with a nice, simple racing line - it's just finding the racing line that gave me trouble.

(Am I allowed to post links now...?)

Way to steal my review as i was typing it up Shredster!

Anyways, yes you can post your track link now since you did a review. (Maybe il review yours instead! since you awarded Red Canyon (thanks for that btw! (the track i was going to put up for review )

ANYWAYS, sicne the track was already reviewed. i can just skip the review part and just get to

HOW TO IMPROVE WARD U1
and where the problem areas are. WITH SCREENSHOTS

(This is the problem area that people talked about in the comments on your track page)
http://imageshack.us/f/521/wardu1tweak1.jpg/

The issue is the fact your totally blocked off from seeing the track because of the giant silo in your face.

By the time you drive up to it, its EVEN MORE in your face, and it looks like you want to drive off into the darkness, instead of making a hard right, i noticed the track has mixing all over it. so this should be Easy to fix with just a sign or fence closing off the area. Or just get rid of the silo blocking the path
http://imageshack.us/f/408/wardu1tweak2.jpg/

The second problem area is immediately after that, because the driver cant see another blind hard right coming up, the track looks likeit wants you to jump into the wall. Just fixing it with a warning sign should suffice some kind of clue that HEY DONT DRIVE THIS WAY.
http://imageshack.us/f/695/wardu1tweak3.jpg/

Finally the last tweak i have to suggest is just change the very last S hard turns into something a little more friendly and forgiving, and fun! Because of the angle you come at it, this part of the track Really breaks the flow. So either take out the wall after the first turn, so you can nicely get to the finish. or just add in a new block piece that you flow right into as you come off the turn.
http://imageshack.us/f/35/wardu1tweak4.jpg

Decent track, but could be better with the tweaks i mentioned ( in my own biased opinion )

Oh and shred its NOT futuristic, its a prison theme, thats why its called "Ward"

Thanks for the feedback!

Like I mentioned on the comments page, it's hard to imagine what it'd be like for someone new to the track, as I've played it so much I could probably do it with my eyes closed

You're right though, I guess it is a bit hard to tell at some points where you're supposed to go, especially even after you had to respawn more than once or twice.

The bit with the big oil tank didn't originally have the thing there, it was just a ramp coming down from the wall, but it turned out to be kind of annoying if you clipped it wrong, and hard to judge anyway, so I put the oil tank there as a better obstacle. Clearly since I already knew the layout it never crossed my mind that someone would get confused here.

The second 'mystery corner' (tweak3), yeah, some kind of sign would help there too. I had hoped that the wall and the slight ramp would be enough of a hint, but it's admittedly rather vague and ambiguous.

The only part I'm not sure on is your last suggestion, in part because I can't put anything in that gap you've outlined in blue as it's only half a block wide - the bit you drive on is the other half. This screenshot from the editor might explain it better:
http://caerphoto.com/misc/tm2/wardu1-halfblock.jpg

I did try some other stuff, and came up with this:
http://caerphoto.com/misc/tm2/wardu1-halfblock2.jpg

Also, you said "i noticed the track has mixing all over it." What do you mean by this? Blockmixing? There isn't any of that (mostly just because I don't know how to do it).

aha, i thought the pipes scenery were mixed a bit, iv only dabbled in the TM2 editor before deciding it wasnt different enough compared to TM1 so iv been editing mostly with mixing . I guess i over estimated that blocksize on the last tweak. you COULD fix it with mixing ironically. But it looks like your tweak made the last last turn better. Alternatively, you could try the piece 5-3-2 with the gaps so you can drive over it at higher speed but still need to take the S turn at lower speed.