Startrack reporter 15 – Judging of round 3

Right now, you have an excellent chance to influence the future!

Hop over to TMX and download all the 20 tracks submitted to round 3. Try them the way you like playing new tracks, check the intro and replay, and provide feedback (as thorough as you can) for each of them on TMX. Don’t just put awards where you like it, but also say what you don’t like in the Comments section where appropriate.

Nadeo DO read these comments and awards and will take it into account.

I’m sorry I didn’t post yesterday, life is turbulent right now

Startrack reporter 14 – Questions, questions…

While the Magnificent 20 are currently building and/or finetuning their Round 3 tracks, a lot of discussion is happening over at TMX (the greatest Trackmania tracks exchange server ever).

Question 1: Round 3 allocation weirdness

A question that gets repeated over and over is “Why are we building unneeded tracks?”

As Kiwininja (and many others) has stated recently, there are already enough high quality tracks for some Environment-Difficulty combinations (Desert C is a good example), but still, another track in that combination is just being created, while for other combinations (e.g. Desert B), not nearly enough tracks are already “greenlighted” or “yellowlighted”, but still only 1 more track for that combination is in production.

What this implies is that

1. A builder who was allocated an Envi-Diff combination that is already “crowded” with good tracks has a very difficult position, since in order for that new track to make it into the campaign, it would have to best at least some of those tracks that are already considered “good enough”.
2. On the other hand, if there are only 2 or 3 good tracks in the Envi-Diff combination, Nadeo will ultimately have to include (into the campaign) some tracks that at the first glance seemed “not good enough”; the builder who got this combination in Round 3 needs only to make a mediocre / average track and still has a good chance to make it through.

This is what some participants (either former or current) think about the current (Round 3) situation.

The thread where this question came up is waiting for an answer from the officials, so stay tuned…

Question 2: “E” as in “Extreme”?

Those of you who made it through the United campaign all the way up to Extreme (Black) tracks probably have the understanding that Extreme tracks are either very long (Coast E = 6+ minutes on an 8-lap circuit), or they contain difficult stunts with lots of airtime (Stadium E, Island E). While the first “E” track in the TM Nations Forever campaign is only 48 seconds long Stadium wallride madness, its difficulty is still insane, especially with the near-end wall-to-wall hole jump.

What some builders are already getting worried about is how are they supposed to build an Extreme track if the Nadeo requirements of “track finishable from every checkpoint” and 60-90 seconds length are in place. Already we’ve seen in the previous rounds that the difficulty of StarTracks is significantly lower (on average) from the original United/Nations campaign. Therefore, round 4 and 5 building of Extreme tracks will be a challenge between “make it extreme” and “don’t overdo it”.

What might help tremendously would be Nadeo pointing to a particular track in each environment (such as “Coast D 3″ or “Stadium C 5″) and stating “This is the difficulty we’d like to aim for with the Extreme tracks.”

Stay tuned… And feel free to provide your own opinion in the comments section!

Startrack reporter 13

The following builders made it through to round 3. They now have 1 track to build each.

• smok3y
• DaKKon
• Dengel
• HawkGer
• MrA
• ~KiWiNiNjA~
• PapyChampy
• pjw
• Rax
• Snakey3000
• JumperJack
• TimeBreaker
• Ricardo Rix
• Nitryx
• Qbert
• The Idler
• Ichirou
• Phil’sTracks
• ratracer
• 57060v2

They are ordered by the number of awards on TMX, with smok3y having over 2.300 awards, and 57060v2 having less than 30. What a spread!

Please remember – from this round onward, Nadeo will take into account the feedback of the community on their tracks, so if you have the chance, try as many of the tracks as you can and provide feedback about how it played. It’s not like “Every award is a positive point and every comment without award is a negative point”, it’s more like “Do the critics criticise the driving itself, or some minor things such as replay camera?”

Startrack reporter 12 – Anxiousness before Round 2 results

We’re just minutes away from the moment when Mr.A reveals the results of Round 2 and the 20 lucky contenders who make it to round 3. In round 3, these 20 will still be building tracks with B, C and D difficulty – no “Extreme” tracks are to be created yet.

There will be 1 track per Environment/Difficulty combination, with the exception of “Bay D”, which is not available now.

Things I learnt from Trackmania – TimeBreaker

After a longer pause, the time for TimeBreaker’s TILT finally comes.

1. Believe it or not, Rally has frozen lakes outisde the building area! What a multiclimatic environment.
2. All environments exist in parallel universes, you can see them through carwindows.
3. The world is a plate and the sun is an unreachable light.Trackmania knows best.
4. Stadium is the only environment with an actual driver in the car.
5. Trackmania has 4 different daytimes, but you never see them changing while racing, not even after days of driving.
6. The TM-Stadium is probably the only stadium ever without tribunes.
7. The Stadiumcar driver is the only living being in the whole world of Trackmania. Sounds like just another end-of-the-world movie..

With this, the TILT series is over, so thanks to all who participated. Of course, if you’d like to write your own list, feel free to either post it in the comments section, or send them to me – they might get published eventually

Trackmania Inslider 3

Our special undercover reporter is constantly peeking through keyholes at Nadeo offices and today, he brings us disturbing news about one of the nastiest unfairnesses witnessed throughout the StarTrack contest: the history of SiverT’s exclusion from Round 2 and later!

As you can guess simply by looking at SiverT’s nickname, his real name is Trevis. When Trevis was 6 years old, he once accidentally drove his bike over a remotely controlled car toy that one girl in his neighbourhood was playing with. That girl was none other than Alinoa, Nadeo’s official campaigns’ trackmaker.

Alinoa swore secretly that she will hunt Trevis down no matter where he hides and make his life the most miserable.

Because we found Alinoa’s girlie diary, we can dive deep into the dark path of her revenge. A selection of dates and records follows (parental advisory: explicit darkness!)

“My dearest diary. It’s 2 a.m. on the 25th of December, 1997, and today I sneaked into the house where Trevis and his parents live, and stole all the presents they put under the christmas tree so that he cries his eyes out when he does not find any. I hates him!”

“My dearest diary, It’s 16:37 on the 14th of February, 1999, and I am putting a video of Trevis, crying over the Valentine Card I sent him, on YouTube. The card reads “You smell!”. I hates him!”

“My dearest diary, it’s 23:54, 16th of October 2008, thursday, and I’m sneaking into Florent’s office to modify the ratings my colleagues gave to Trevis’s track so that he suffers as a loser when he drops out of the competition.”

There’s more sinister records in the diary, but those will be dealt with by the police. Meanwhile, you should try to provide Sivert with some positive feedback, such as telling him “I told you so!” You can usually find him in the Loosers Lounge, sipping ice cream with his straw. That straw is the only thing (besides clothes) that he has left after the mysterious fire in his appartment in February ‘08, and after he’s been fired from his job due to the drugs found in his desk (he denies any knowledge of them, of course).

Startrack reporter 11

Round 2 is now closed, and of the 126 allocated tracks, 108 were submitted.

You can download all the tracks (split by environment) here: http://united.tm-exchange.com/main.aspx?action=threadshow&id=1170425&page=auto#auto

Now we have to wait for 2 days to see which 20 participants make it to round 3. Stay tuned!

Startrack reporter 10 – Round 2 is a go!

The allocation program for Round 2 successfully allocated each “winner” 2 tracks to build; those selected to move on to Round 2 see the two upload links; while those who weren’t see “You were eliminated” (in one form or another).

The participants of round 2 and the tracks they built for Round 1:

• STADIUM
  • StarStadiumB 57060v2
  • StarStadiumB ermanito
  • StarStadiumB metalyan666
  • StarStadiumB reknaw
  • StarStadiumC koentjuh
  • StarStadiumC mattw_cstrfan
  • StarStadiumC teisen
  • StarStadiumD etidu29
  • StarStadiumD kiwininja
  • StarStadiumD timebreaker
• SNOW
  • StarSnowB fastforza
  • StarSnowB rycardoo
  • StarSnowC djoszee
  • StarSnowC kristian_vorpenes
  • StarSnowC Sandder
  • StarSnowD kevin916
  • StarSnowD pjw
  • StarSnowD Zooz
• DESERT
  • StarDesertB jezza0505
  • StarDesertB ricardorix
  • StarDesertC knuk
  • StarDesertC mra
  • StarDesertC remo
  • StarDesertD _s_f00_iCrazy_horsE
  • StarDesertD hawk_ger
  • StarDesertD loentje
• RALLY
  • StarRallyB matto
  • StarRallyB rainer
  • StarRallyC leonard
  • StarRallyC Mikey
  • StarRallyC mr._impossible
  • StarRallyD dakkon
  • StarRallyD jumperjack
  • StarRallyD snakey3000
  • StarRallyD tcq
• ISLAND
  • StarIslandB hageldave
  • StarIslandB maphios
  • StarIslandB markus
  • StarIslandC procarracer
  • StarIslandC smok3y
  • StarIslandD cool-t
  • StarIslandD dork_incorporated
  • StarIslandD micfis
  • StarIslandD mighty-mike
• COAST
  • StarCoastB djac
  • StarCoastB ichirou
  • StarCoastB phil83
  • StarCoastB raxor
  • StarCoastC alcator
  • StarCoastC avendail
  • StarCoastC benutzername
  • StarCoastD dengel
  • StarCoastD scorpius
• BAY
  • StarBayB ralcan
  • StarBayB skunky
  • StarBayC nitryx
  • StarBayC qbert_
  • StarBayC stig
  • StarBayC zaraz
  • StarBayD -winnie-
  • StarBayD papychampy
  • StarBayD theidler
  • StarBayD tmjonas

Startrack reporter 9 – Round 2 opening soon!

As it turns out, there will be 63 participants in round 2, each building 2 tracks.

The most probable reason for this 50% increase in participant count is the somewhat low submissions count for Round 1 (only 135 out of 215 tracks were submitted).

For each environment, these participants will be building:

• 9 start tracks (very simple, 15-20 seconds long)
• 3 easy tracks (simple, wide, no “stunt combos”, 20-30 seconds)
• 3 medium tracks (a bit of a challenge, 30-45 seconds)
• 3 hard tracks (challenging, 45-60 seconds)

The assignments should come up any minute now!

Five-into-one competition cancelled

Since I received only one submission to the FiO round 2, I decided to cancel the event. Depending on the statistics of the blog in November, I might restart this round after StarContest is over.