Article - The Importance of Scenery

Written by Micster. 

I’m sure most trackmaniacs know that scenery is an important part of track building. It makes the track satisfying to play, blocks passages that may be used as cuts, and adds more emphasis to speed. These are just a few reasons why you would want to add any form of scenery along your tracks. But there are some track builders out there who find scenery more of an optional feature, either because they’re new to track building or because they want to make their tracks online friendly.

Whatever the reason for leaving scenery out, I’d like to show these trackers how scenery can have a drastic effect on their tracks, and that they should add at least some form of scenery around their creations to make them more enjoyable.

Here’s an example of a track without scenery:

I doubt many of you will know what track this is, but if you’ve played it before, you’ll know it looks nothing like this. It’s a version of one of my own Bay tracks, except this time without scenery. Only signs, certain lighting and ground buildings are kept, and even with those, the track still looks awful, and isn’t much fun to play. Need further proof? Try the “naked” version yourself:

NakedLegend

Here’s a pic of the track with scenery:

Looks much better doesn’t it? With plenty of buildings to cover up ugly spots, lots of scenery to pass under, over and inbetween, the experience is much more enjoyable. Once again, a picture can only show so much, and the track should be played in person to get a good idea on the whole concept. Here’s the track with scenery:

UrbanLegend

Hope this short article has given you a rough idea of how important scenery can be. In the near future another scenery-related article will arrive. Consider this one an introduction to what is to come

Screenshot of the Week - Week 44, 2007

Screenshot Collection

By Kendal:

 

By -Homie-:

Screenshot of the Week

TimeBreaker 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.

Track Review - Speed of Silence

Once again Micster is giving a Track Review as a gift, this time to Cab.

• Track: Speed of Silence (direct download)
• Author: Cab
• Type: Race
• Environment: Island
• Length: 45 sec
• Mood: Day
• Coppers: 5502
• Difficulty:  Average
• TMX Awards: 14
• Award Level:  Suitable
• TMX LB Rating: 26,785
• Custom Content: -

Quote:

“You remind me of pitstep when he builds Island tracks.”- Micster

First Impression

Fast and with good transitions, but doesn’t seem to have anything extra special to take it to the top.

Kamistar’s Birthday

All TM players are worth celebrating, right? But today we celebrate on in particular: Kamistar!

Wish Kamistar happy birthday in the comments bellow 

Extreme MiniTrack Contest

If you’ve read the comments of the previous post entitled “Reviews” you know that Alcator suggested a contest to get more reviews for the blog in the near future. He also introduced an idea of people making short, 15 second long tech-track for this purpose.

I decided to use this idea and a contest has already been created for this While I did decide to remove the tech-track parts and give people more freedom to be creative the idea of extremely short tracks is still valid.

To get to the case, here are the main details:

1. People (yes, you fall into that category) create tracks following the below rules.
2. The tracks are uploaded to TMX and posted in a specific forum thread (again, see below)
3. The submitted tracks are judged in a three-stage process.

This may all sound very simple, and basically it is The main twist is the fact that each track may be no longer than 15 seconds long, and that, during the judging process, two to five tracks are to be reviewed here at the blog. The highest rated track is then the winner of the contest.

Prizes: Up to 5750 coppers split between the top tracks, along with the free exposure to the tracks being reviewed.

Now, as track building contests are usually best advertised at TMX I’ve already created a forum topic there, which will be the main asset of this contest. In other words, that thread is where you can get all the details of the contest as well as being the place where you submit tracks.

So if all this sounds interesting, go check out the thread at TMX and start building some short masterpieces

Extreme MiniTrack Contest

Good luck and have fun!

Reviews

Today I’m short of time, but as I’d still like to make a post in order not to make you confused of where I am, I decided to advertise Track Reviews some more. Since TMX went back online I’ve hardly had any requests at all. Before TMX went down in the first place, there were too many requests. What happened?

In short: Let’s see some more requests for Track Reviews 

Logo Contest

The idea of a logo contest came up in the comments of this weeks Screenshot of the Week, and I decided to follow up on it. TMU has a cool logo, and so does TMX, so it’s about time the TMU Blog got one as well.

So what this contest is all about is for you to make a cool, nice looking logo for the blog. I’m not talking about a banner, but a smaller logo to represent the blog. As talked about in the screenshot post, this logo could be put on screenshots, but of course it could also be put on TMU Blog creations distributed outside the actual blog (non-blog articles and projects, blog track screenshots, etc.)

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Create one or several logos for the TMU Blog. Make them cool and good looking!
2. Send your example(s) to Jozii@pp.inet.fi. Deadline: Friday, 2nd of November.

One winning logo will be selected, and the winner receives 1000 coppers.

There’s no limit to how many logos you can enter or how you design them.

Good luck

Track Review - Speed Anxiety

I’ve added a “Quote” section. Hopefully I’ll be able to make an interesting quote from the awards, author comments, or anything else for each track reviewed from today on  Let me know if this is a good idea or not in the comments.

Oh, and this review was given as a gift to the authors by Micster (probably because Micster did some MT work on the track, but it’s still a nice gesture  )

• Track: Speed Anxiety (direct download)
• Author: XT Projects (DanDaMan & S8ndm8n)
• Type: Race
• Environment: Island
• Length: 1 min
• Mood: Night
• Coppers: 7237
• Difficulty:  Hard
• TMX Awards: 12
• Award Level:  Heavily underrated
• TMX LB Rating: 24,030
• Custom Content: -

Quote: 

DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS TRACK IF-

a) you are a prima donna
b) have high blood pressure
c) have never been laid and most likely won’t for the next decade
- if ever

First Impression

Holy farm animal! What a start! What speed! What an adrenaline rush! I suspect you’d be a fool not to try this track!

Screenshot of the Week - Week 43, 2007

What’s with the usage of the TMX logo on screenshots? Has TMX grown to be a sign of excellent craftsmanship? Is it an honor to wear the logo on your screenshots? Or does it just look cool?

Maybe a bit of everything…

Screenshot Collection

 

By TimeBreaker:

 

By -Homie-:

 Screenshot of the Week

Kendal 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.

Track Review Gifts

Only because I like doing these so much

(But the offer still applies, of course )