Article - Timing Events in MediaTracker, Part 3

Last week, an article taught you how to create smooth navigation tips - tips with a smooth direction indicator that sort of counts down from the best (fastest) route to the worst.

This week, it’s not going to be about actual “timing”, but it still brings yet another solution to the problem of telling the player where to go. This time, we will take advantage of the vertical dimension.

General stuff

My apologies for not having the time to post Alcator’s article today as promised. Expect it tomorrow instead ;)

The reason for this delay? I had a blast driving in real life at the skid-pan (dictionary translation of a Swedish word - I’m not sure if it’s the correct thing to say in this case, but basically it’s the slippery track you drive on to learn a thing or two about driving in poor conditions) :D One step closer to that driver’s licence…

Oh, and if it would be of anyone’s interest, I was THIS close to meeting Tonic_91 in Helsinki today

While waiting for tomorrows article, I just started the 25th round of our lottery. Go play a round, it’s completely free

Track Attack!

No, I’m not talking about that old TMX feature, but it is something TMX related. If you check old the old and dusty “Blog Files Box” to the right, you’ll see that there’s a new file added: “TMU Blog Track Collection“!

Track Download

Now that TMX is down, where do we get all of our tracks from? Well, for the time being, this 3.8 Mb Zip file might be the answer. It contains 177 tracks, all somehow related to the blog. Here’s the content in more detail:

• Most reviewed tracks (not tracks reviewed by guest writers),
• Most advertised tracks (again, not tracks advertised by guest writers),
• All tracks listed in the TMX Track List,
• The 50 first tracks from the “Underrated Authors” project (where people were asked to link to tracks they considered to be underrated at TMX),
• Ans a few others that are somehow related to the blog…

Sounds good enough? You’ll find the file in the big blue box in the side bar Oh, and while we’re at it, don’t forget the “Blog Tracks” file also located in the file box!

Now let’s move on to a contest based on all this:

Look

We’re playing around with skins and banners today. Comment the new stuff here, but note that it may change from time to time during the day

EDIT:

The new skin is causing some minor problems. Some can be solved, some probably can’t. Please take these into consideration before you go “I LOVE THIS SKIN!!!”

• Some images that are not squared, especially in the track reviews, have white backgrounds. This looks ugly, but can obviously be solved if I get around to it
• When clicking the “Screenshots” category, only the titles of each screenshot post appears. In order to see the screenshots, you have to click each individual title. (Probably can’t be solved, I’m afraid)
• “Pages” are not displayed at the top of the blog. Instead, you have to find them in the sidebar to the right. (Can’t be solved)
• I personally dislike the font and font size in posts, but that’s just a matter of taste

TMU Blog Survey 3

I recently created a third blog survey for you to take part in. At first I thought that, with TMX down, some of the questions might be bad, but then I decided that it won’t be much of a problem

So, please take a few minutes to answer the questions in the below survey. It will help improve the blog in the future

TMU Blog Survey 3

TMX downtime

I (Djoszee) just read this on the official forum, and though I’d spread the message:

Hello members of the TM Community. My name is Joanna, I am a Coder at TMX. Due to technical difficulties, TMX will be offline until further notice. Technicians are currently working on the problem, however we do not have any estimate on when services will be restored. I will keep all of you up to date with the latest news concerning this problem.

Thank you, and I am sorry for the inconvenience.

[ATP]Joanna
Coder
tm-exchange.com

Hopefully the site will be up and running as soon as possible

QuoteMania

Here are some funny quotes from the world of real-life racing. Note that some may sound completely irrelevant, but after all they were said in associations with racing (even though it’s not always obvious), and hey, they’re funny, so what the heck!

“He is shedding buckets of adrenalin in that car” - Murray Walker

“Todo es justo en el amor y las carreras. All is fair in love and racing.” - Felix Sabates

“Women in the truck is bad luck.” - Ed Donovan

“I want to be a race car passenger: just a guy who bugs the driver. Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Can I put my feet out the window? Man, you really like Tide…” - Mitch Hedberg

“Robby Gordon has a tremendous amount of talent, but when he pulls the helmet over his head, he knocks some sort of switch that makes him an idiot.” - Felix Sabates

“Everything was fine until I left and then I ran out of talent!” - Don Garlits

“Do my eyes deceive me, or is Senna’s Lotus sounding rough?” - Murray Walker

“If you’ve got $20 million coming in and $30 million going out, sooner or later your wife’s going to say, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’” - Felix Sabates

“It’s raining and the track is wet” - Murray Walker

Got any more? Post some real-life racing quotes (or TM quotes - some players say the most hilarious things!) in the comments below, or make up your own quotes

TMX Track List returns!

Today I was going to write a track review, but TMX seems to be down (I’m not the only one experiencing that problem, right?), so instead I spent some time working on the behind-the-scenes stuff for the blog. There aren’t many changes you’ll imediately notice, but there are two things I’d like to officially announce:

1. The TrackManiac of the Month concept has been dropped
2. The TMX Track List may be restored

Article - Timing Events in MediaTracker, Part 2

Last week, we learned how to add an MT navigation tip that only displays for slow drivers - those who need to take a detour around Speed Requiring Section (SRS).

The approach shown had some disadvantages:

1. The navigational tip (instruction) appeared at some moment, but it was possible for some players to see it for only a split second, thus being unable to read it.
2. Unless the detour path was significantly harder to enter (such as a sharp turn from a straight road), there was a risk that the fast player might choose to go through the detour even though he didn’t have to.

This time, we will try a different method. I’ve named it the “smooth pointer”, and unlike the previous method, this one can be used to instruct the player to take one of several paths, depending on his speed. The demo track for this method has 3 different paths - one of them is so called “safety net” (passable even from checkpoint-respawn), second requires speeds of 500+, and the third and hardest requires speeds over 900+.

Screenshot of the Week - Week 37, 2007

Screenshot Collection

By Ninjer8:

By TimeBreaker:

 

 Screenshot of the Week

 

Loony wins 100 coppers for this screenshot.

If you have a screenshot or two, send them to Jozii@pp.inet.fi. All screenshots will get published in the blog, and every week one screenshot is selected as Screenshot of the Week.