Interview with Mr.A about StarContest

Few weeks ago, I asked Mr.A of TMX (the largest track-exchange server for Trackmania) few questions about StarContest. Today, you get the chance to read the answers…

(Al)Q(ator): When did you first learn about Nadeo’s plan for a community-built campaign?

(Mr.)A: It was in the build up to the the release of the Forever games. We had alot of chats with Nadeo about it and actually the StarTrack Contest might have happoned much earlier in the year. The original idea was to do it with the beta version of United Forever, but for various reasons that diddn’t happen and so we decided to wait until after the summer (when people are less likely to have holidays booked during the contest).

Q: Have you had any influence on the structure of the competition, or did Nadeo already have the rules pretty much cast in stone??

A: It was Nadeo’s idea for a rounds based contestest where builders are eliminated at each stage. I guess you can liken that to the way those TV shows work where a contestant is voted out each week. The detail of the schedule, the way tracks are named, the rule set, all that stuff was a collaboration between us. Quite alot of things changed from the orirginal plans becuase you really only start to realise how things need to be when you are trying to put the whole thing together.

Q: How much coding (code lines, scripts, database structures) were needed to allow for the competition?

A: I dont know about lines of code, but it was a huge ammount of work. Buzz made the initial work on the allocation program and then Ricardo Rix picked that up, finished it, built the front end presentation and the way TMX handles the changing stages of the contest through the rounds. We spent weeks and weeks with him coding, then me running simulation contests (we had a button to randomly enter people) and reporting back with what happoned and how things looked or worked.

Q: How long did the coding and other tasks take before the competition was announced to the public?

A: Well, the idea was always to be ready before Forever came out, so we were ready by then. I think it was 2 or 3 months in developement, as we knew right from the first rumblings of the Forever update that we might do a contest… not a bad length of time to keep a secret

Q: Are there any plans for some special TMX awards for those who either make it into the campaign or make it to the final few rounds?

A: Nothing like that is planned at the moment, but we will see. We still need to decide how we will deal with the Star tracks once the contest is over. (ed.: As it turned out, several TMX mugs were distributed to the finalists and some of the best drivers on the finalists’ tracks. Also, as you may already know, Nadeo promised an ingame TAG for PapyChampy as the ultimate winner.)

Thanks to Mr.A for answering the questions!

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

Things I learnt from TMU (Jozii)

The fuel barrel has been stealthily smugled into Jozii’s house, and Jozii, being the honest fool he is, couldn’t help it but fill it with these remarks:

1. Four wheel drive isn’t required to go off-road.
2. Gas prices appear to have gone down (at least I haven’t paid a thing, and I’ve been driving for years).
3. In the desert, vehicles laying on the side tend to tip back up on their wheels. Something about heatwaves…
4. All lights go on automatically when it’s dark.
5. A technology to keep things floating in the air has already been invented. (Damn, I was so close!)
6. When on the road, you don’t really have to take other driver’s into consideration.
7. When crossing a dirty Rally road with a car made for desert driving, you get a dirty American!

Oh, and TimeBreaker, you must have done something bad to Jozii, since he chose you as his victim

Avatar tutorial – part 2

this is the 2nd half of The Doctor’s Avatar tutorial. This time, you’ll delve into some advanced topics.

Things I learnt from TM 2 (Mr. A)

Mr.A from TMX faced the challenge vigorously and here comes his hepta-set (is that even word?)

1. Everything in the world is made of titanium.

2. In the American desert you can drive under a lake and re-emerge the otherside still dry.

3. If you work in a building with a flat roof, dont pop out to catch some rays else you might get run over.

4. What goes up, must come down… but only eventually!

5. If you wear glasses the world looks more 3D.

6. Poles usually grow up out of the middle of the road… go figure!

7. When you reach you destination, no need to stop, just take your foot off the gas and see what you hit.

Mr.A decided that the ideal person to carry the FUEL BARREL is >>Tuta<<, so… we’re waiting, Tuta!

In other news, Hillary Clinton fractured her dog, and the “Five into One challenge round 2″ (see the side panel for a link) is still open!

Avatar tutorial (part 1)

this article was written and prepared by team ATP member “The Doctor”. Due to its length, I’m going to cut this article into two parts, with the second part coming on Thursday.

A checklist for improving tracks – part 2

A week ago, the first part of the checklist listed some things to check when you finish a track to see if you did all you can to make it better. The list continues here…

11. An intro clip: is there a 10 to 20 seconds introductory “movie” that introduces the track? Does it show the key (or the most interesting) part(s) of the track? Notice how every track in Trackmania Nations Forever has an introduction consisting of (usually) 3 short camera moves, one showing the overall track, and the other two or three showing key areas — try to do the same for your track. But don’t make the intro too long.

12. Is there an outro (replay) for your track? Will the player be rewarded for finishing the race by seeing himself in action from interesting view angles?

13. Does the replay work reasonably well even for a worse driver? Make sure those who are slower can still see themselves, and if a longer replay clip tends to “run away” from a slower car, cut it into two or more partial clips so that those who can finish can also see themselves in the replay. An extra benefit of this approach is that Spectators in online races can then use the Replay mode to observe other racers!

14. Light trails: Have you considered adding trails to jumps? It looks pretty awesome, especially in night and evening mood tracks, if you approach a jump during online play and see the colorful stripes ahead of you, showing you what’s gonna happen.

15. Finetuning (smoothing): After you’ve driven the car enough times, you might have noticed some areas that are not perhaps the smoothest possible. Don’t hesitate to take an extra time making them smoother. It does not mean “easier” — if you have a sharp turn that was intentional and the player is warned that it’s a sharp turn, then it’s OK, but if at certain combination of speed and angle the car just bounces off of a landing platform, then something’s not right.

Well, that’s my tips for making your tracks better, but I’m sure there are other tips that you use. Please, share them in the comments!

A checklist for improving tracks – part 1

I’ve compiled this (incomplete) list of things that you can check to see if the track you’ve finished can be any better. Please, if you know some other things to check, please share them in the comment section below!

1. Checkpoint respawning: Is it possible to reach the finish after respawning in every checkpoint?
2. Respawning smoothness: In many tracks, authors build spectacular areas that are pleasant to drive through IF you manage to maintain your speed and direction; however, if you lose speed, such as due to a CP respawn, suddenly the very same areas become very bad – what serves as a landing platform for the fast driver becomes a nasty bump for the slow driver, and what is an easy loop for the fast driver becomes a dead-end for the slow driver. If this is the case, you can either try to help the slow driver gain speed in order for the area to work OK, or you may add an alternate route that will take him “around”.
3. Decorations: Is the scenery around the track varied enough? Do the scenery tiles work as markers, so that the player may remember “When I pass the inflatable castle, I should make a hard right turn”? Or did you just place thousands of the same cactus trees all around the track? No scenery at all is bad as well – add some!
4. Loop cams and wallride cams: Does the view automatically switch to front-camera when the player enters a loop or a wallride? Does it stay on long enough even for a car that is going slowly (if that car is able to finish the loop or wallride, the camera SHOULD stay on for the whole ride)? Does an empty clip’s trigger switch off the camera when the loop or wallride ends?
5. Loopcam emergencies: If the car flies out of a loop or wallride, does the loopcam switch off? Add empty clip’s triggers around the loop/wallride tiles, so that as soon as the car is out, the player can drive the car normally, potentially trying to get back on the track (yes, there are players who do not restart/respawn when that happens!).
6. Clearly visible and informative navigation signs: Are nasty turns and other confusing parts preceded with navigation and warning signs? Will the player know that he should slow down due to a sharp turn? (i.e., is there “WARNING” and “LEFT/RIGHT” sign before the turn?)
7. Length of the race: The optimal race length for each environment is somewhat different, which greatly depends on the general speed impression of that environment (Island is the most “taxing” on reflexes, while coastal rides are more casual). Lengths of 30 to 70 seconds are generally OK for all environments; making the race between 40 and 55 seconds is optimal.
8. Learning curve: this is not something you as an author can check easily, but in general, players like it when they gradually learn to drive the track (i.e., on their first attempt, they crash after 15 seconds, but on the second run, they last for 25 seconds, and then they almost finish, and on the fourth run, they make it to the finish. Ask a friend to try the track and report to you how the “learning curve” progressed.
9. Description and snapshot: Did you set the snapshot to some interesting position and angle? Don’t leave it to TM to make the snapshot for you! Have you filled in the description of the track? Will the player learn something useful about your track (style, speed, difficulty) from it?
10. Author time and medal times: Have your tried at least 10 times to set the author time? Don’t give up too soon, make many validation attempts and try to make a perfect run! Set the gold medal time to about 5% more than the author time, and the silver and bronze to cca 115% and 140% of your author time, respectively.

(to be continued…)

Let’s talk about puzzle tracks

In puzzle tracks, player is given up to 8 different track tiles in different quantities (such as: 3 normal road tiles, 2 curves (2×2), 1 jump ramp etc.), and a partial track with start, finish, some checkpoints and other preplaced tiles, obstacles and decorations; the terrain of the track is also preset.

Player’s goal is to use the tiles given to complete the track so that he can then drive it from start to finish in shortest time possible.

If you want to create a puzzle track, you usually first build a track that requires some skill to finish, then remove some of the tiles that you placed in it and remember what you removed and how many of each tile type you removed; then, you set the needed amount for these tile types, and you are good.

However, there are different styles of puzzle tracks, so let’s describe them and talk about what makes them “puzzling”…

 

Optimization style

In this style of puzzle track, it is quite obvious what needs to be placed where – such as when you see that the checkpoints are placed in a zig-zag pattern and you have 45 normal road tiles, which means you must build a simple road between the CPs. The only trick here is to optimize the added tiles placement: will you build an L shaped road, or will you build a zig-zag road, which will allow you to drive diagonically between the CPs? Will you shift the curve tiles closer towards the earlier CP, or further from it?

Similarly, you may be provided with a couple of boosters, and you have to find the best spacing between them, so that the car gets the greatest boost; unfortunately, this may also mean that by the time your car is gaining the maximum boost, someone who placed one of the boosters closer to the start may not have the peak speed, but he got that speed earlier, and may surprisingly get to the finish sooner.

In this style, minor changes result in minor time improvements (less than a second).

 

Unusual tile placement

In this style, players, who are used to the most common sequences of tiles from standard tracks, are deceived by the preset tiles and environment and they overlook a possible placement. Typical example would be a jump over a water channel: If the road leading to this jump is straight, players often don’t see that they might actually jump diagonically across the channel and thus avoid an area that would be costly (considering how long it takes to pass through it). Or you may provide the player with a tile that is most often used for one purpose, but in fact if he lets the car smash into the tile or bounce off of it, he may get to otherwise inaccessible area and save some time.

Useless tiles

In this style, you provide the player with tiles that, although they seem they should be used, are totally useless for the fastest solution. Once the player becomes convinced that the tile HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE, he becomes his own worst enemy and will torture himself with endless attempts to optimize something that in fact wasn’t meant to be present at all.

Changing the car into an airplane

Considering the Trackmania cars are indestructible, there is no real reason to treat them like cars. Why on Earth should you think that you are supposed to drive through a CP? Do you see the ugly red engine killer behind that CP? Hm… I know! What about building an uphill ramp towards the CP, so that the car flies through the CP and above the engine killer, thus keeping the engine running?

The key in building this type of track is to not make the trick obvious. Just as in the previous style – if you allow the player to become convinced that he simply has to go through the CP and get his engine killed, especially if you convince him that he will need that ramp elsewhere, you will have the benefit of dreaming about players who, while sweating, finally manage to get the SILVER time on the track, only to learn that they are actually supposed to cut additional 10 seconds to get GOLD. Trust me, that look on their faces when they learn such thing is priceless.

Oh, and just so you can check if you’ve learnt something from this article – try this track!

Do you know about some other tricks that make a great puzzle track? Please share them in the comments below!

How to build a platform track

written by Alcator

Have you tried the Platform mode in TMU(F)? Quite difficult, right? Even with unlimited amount of time and the knowledge that each section is passable from the last CP, there are sections where you just stare in plain disbelief at the seemingly impossible task ahead. Such as when you were getting faster and faster, finally facing a sequence of about a dozen air CPs that you were supposed to fly through in one pass…

Most track builders only build race tracks; this is mainly because online servers usually rotate race tracks, so building something else automatically lessens the chance of your track becoming known.

How to build a good platform track?

Let’s start with the basic “rules” of platform mode. Although some of them may be violated a bit, it would be better to respect them.

1. The track must be finishable from any CP respawn. No exceptions.
2. After respawning in a CP, the respawning player should be able to pass the next segment by going forward – no backtracking should be required, although an alternate route may be available for a particularly fast jump etc.
3. Your author score must be “0 penalty points”; the gold medal should be set to 0 as well, with 3 penalty points for silver and 10 penalty poins for bronze. That’s the setting for official platform tracks, and it should be followed in custom tracks as well. Don’t make the limits harder just because you built an “easier” platform tracks – those are needed too!

OK, that would be the basic concepts, but what to build to make the track challenging as a platform track?

There are several “themes” for this as well:

Engine killers – the #1 tool of platform track builders, the engine killer forces the player to pass the next area with a car that keeps getting slower and slower. This means that wall scratches, sliding and braking may result in halt, and a respawn. In combination with the other themes, this seriously increases the challenge.

Technical corners – forcing the player to find the optimum path around corners, especially in combination with an engine killer, is also very common in platform tracks.

The right speed – a thing that is very difficult in trackmania to achieve is keeping a particular speed. Unless you are using foot pedals, you are either gaining or losing speed, which means it’s nearly impossible to travel at one exact speed. The above mentioned jump through a series of air CPs required that the speed of the car fall into a narrow range – cars that were faster crashed into the upper parts of the CPs, while slower cars didn’t make the whole jump. In combination with a long jump through a narrow spot, such as a “hole” in the wall, forcing the player to try and get the right speed may be very challenging.

Dirt – dirt, the loved/hated alternate ground for Stadium, can be very tricky. Not only do the formula cars oversteer and slide on it, but it is also known to randomly bounce, flip or slow down the cars when they land on it. Which means a slight difference in speed, jump angle or airbraking moment may have a huge impact on whether you make it through the next section or not.

High speed – similar to full-speed tracks, by making a section of the track mandatorily fullspeed (meaning: either the player drives it fullspeed, or he won’t make the final jump etc.), you can increase the challenge a lot. Please always verify that the section is playable by keyboarders as well – there were cases of Coast tracks with high speed turns that were only doable by steering wheel users (coastal car slides if you turn at full speed).

Downstairs! – by forcing the player to perform “non-driving” things, such as walking the car “down the stairs” (a set of descending platforms), you can increase the challenge, because such tasks are uncommon (rare) and it may take the player some tries to truly grasp the concepts of airbraking, spin-drops etc.

Security by obscurity – I’ve borrowed this term from computer security, where hiding (obscuring) information about the programming language or operating system you are using can make it harder to crack. Likewise, if you obscure an obstacle the player will only have a limited time to react to it. In combination with an engine killer, this may be deadly (the player’s car cannot continue after crashing into the obstacle). The christmas trees on Stadium, heaps of rocks or cargo containers on Desert, or all those decorations available for Island – they can all be used very effectively to obscure the situation.

Tire them down! – make the track longer. It’s always harder to stay 100% focused for 2 minutes than it is to stay focused for 30 seconds. This is especially good for making the gold medal (0 penalty points) harder to reach – players are more likely to make a mistake after a long race.

The MT madness – nothing throws a player out of ballance more than if you suddenly switch the view to some unusual angle. If used with caution, this may increase the challenge without frustrating the player. Of course, if you choose an angle that makes it impossible to guess distances or steer properly, they will hate you!

What other tips for making challenging platform tracks do you know? Share them in the discussion!