Idiots guide to making your track "Professional".

[Voutare]

A lot of the time, I'll download tracks, and see some things that need fixing, even if they really don't. I'll go over some of these in this.


1. When you start making a track, copy the empty track that JLV had uploaded, and rename it.
a. When renaming a track, don't include uppercase/mismatched letters, and don't use special characters, (-, /, ', !,etc.). When the games are loaded, sometimes your decals will not work, due to special characters.

2. Create a desc file. (Sort for description). If you don't have one in your folder, which I think is how it defaults, you should copy one from another track, and paste it into your folder. Edit this file using Notepad++ (Don't use notepad, it sucks). You will see a line that says whatever track you copied it from. Delete this line, and write in the correct name of your track. This is what you see in game. For example: my folder name is mxdn, but my desc says Donington Park MXdN. Donington Park mxdn is what shows up in game, not mxdn, which is something I hate seeing ingame.

3. Decals: Delete your decals you aren't using. What I am talking about, is the 10 or so decals that are on the top left of the map. To do this, either select all of these, and press 'x'. Don't do 'X', this will delete all within 50 yards. What this does, is it allows me to actually play the track. My computer freezes every time I look in that direction on every track (scaled 2), that has the decals still. If you are using .5 scale, this isn't as important. Another thing, is when lining up your decals, if you need to make another 'row' on a section, and you click with flow, your first decal will most likely be crooked. Fix it. I hate crooked decals. Also, when you have a jump that is slightly crooked, line the decals up with the landing. I don't hit jumps at the angle of the jump, I hit them at the angle of the decal. Once I release Donington, you will see how I do this. If you got rid of all the decals, you probably won't land a single jump on a landing.

4. Billboards: Delete the extra billboards. They aren't needed in the corners of the track, and try to refrain from dotting the edges of the tracks in a straight line all the way down the section. It looks ugly. Also, if you are going to put people in for billboards, don't overdo it. I hate seeing 1 person 30 times within 10 square feet of each other. If you are going to do this, space them out a little bit (there is a adjuster somewhere). Also, use all 10 people, please.

5. Elevation: Try to raise up the elevation surrounding the track. When it is flat, you can see the skybox way to much, and it's way to obvious. Perfect (and very nice looking example is Motox161's new track Motoland, and DJ's skybox.)

6. Delete the files in your track folder with a ~ after them. These are memory files for if you screw something up and accidentally save it. They are NOT important. And, if you end up having 30 of these like I usually do, just press ctrl+F when your looking at your folder, and search for ~, then select and delete them all.

7. Mediafire is the best way to upload, and ALWAYS include the folder in your upload, and zip it. I've seen a couple 'folders' for other games that are missing the folder, and I don't know what they are called so I can't use them.



If any of you can think of anymore, post it an I'll add them.

And, go Phillies.

[jlv]

I'll add number 8:

8. If your map.png says "MAKE A MAP!", you still have work to do.

I deliberately made that image as ugly as possible hoping that people wouldn't use it!

[DJ99X]

Yeah, and if you can't be bothered making the map, at least get rid of map.png!

9. With the new decal system, don't have any of the tilemap showing. Put decals on the whole track, or at least the whole track in view. Don't just texture the on track part.

10. Statues: As Voutare said with Billboards, get rid of any unused statues.

11. Track Path: Don't have the track go too close to the edge of the terrain.

[enzopersson]

I'll add number 8:

8. If your map.png says "MAKE A MAP!", you still have work to do.

I deliberately made that image as ugly as possible hoping that people wouldn't use it!

HAHA, Rofl.

[HonYamaSaKi]

how do u get the map layout??? where it says make a map?