TOP 5 Beginner mapping mistakes in TrackMania

hello and welcome to possibly the start of a new series on this channel one of the favorite things i like to do in trackmania is creating new maps i actively participate within the mapping community and always love to see what others have created while many builds are incredibly impressive very often you can find some beginner mistakes even within the best tracks because of this i decided to make this video describing 5 of the most common beginner mapping mistakes i see and how you can solve them hopefully at the end of this video you will have learned something new and can use this to take your maps to another level so let's jump right in with number five one of the most useful features of the editor has to be ghost blocks ghost blocks allow you to place blocks inside of one another which can be very useful for routing and scenery however using ghost blocks can often lead to something that is generally called flickering flickering happens when you have two blocks inside each other with two faces in the exact same place the game does not know which face to put on top and tries to show both at the same time resulting in this ugly flickering effect this flickering is common in many maps and generally people will try to hide it behind some scenery or have it in places where you generally won't look but what if i told you there is a way to put blocks inside of each other without this happening simply place one of the blocks in normal block mode and the other in ghostblock mode this way the game will prioritize one of the two faces and the flicker effect will be gone if you would like to show the other face just switch which block is in ghost block mode and which one is in normal block mode as a mapper you know your track in and out you know where the turns are how sharp they are and you know how to take them this can make it easy to forget that your map will be played by people who do not have the same knowledge and these people will need to learn how to drive your track as well because of this it is important to properly guide the player through the track first of all you will need to know which areas are problematic you can find these areas by trying to imagine how a player would discover your track but i always find it easier to just get people to try my tracks out i will go into where you can get your tracks tested best in a later point but in general uploading them to trackmania exchange and map review are good ways to get some people to play it so you can see how others drive it if at any point players are hesitating on which direction to go take note of the area then when you are back in the editor go to this area and define the route you intend people to take by blocking off the way you don't want people to go or by making the right way look more correct i will show a few examples on how you can achieve this when using inversions it is common practice to add custom cameras to make sure the player can properly see what is coming up however many people do not know how to properly do this which can lead to problems when people drive the track so let me give a step-by-step guide on how to easily create a proper cam switch first open the in-game media tracker from there click the plus icon under tracks and select player camera now click on default to switch through camera types one click should be sufficient as the second type is the desired cam type called internal then you will need to place triggers which will activate the scam change make sure to place these slightly before the inversion so the player has time to adjust to the new camera now that the entry is done we can add a second change using the plus icon under triggers this one will be left completely empty and we will only place the triggers once again make sure to do this in a place where the player has time to adjust to the new camera as you can see i did not add a second camera switch to this exit trigger that is because an empty trigger will simply reset all media tracker effects adding a second cam switch here will force people into a camera instead of the one they might want to use this is one of the most common things i see when i play tracks on map review you will be able to build up a large amount of speed only to then be met with a jump or a tight corner that you are much too fast for this often comes down to one of two things either the player was not good enough to get this much speed or they did not realize it to be a bad thing the reason it is generally considered bad is because it breaks the flow of the map large differences in speed especially from high to low speed is not very flowy so you should generally try to avoid large traits or other places to gather speed unless you are planning to use this speed if you're not good enough to get the speed you can either practice that part specifically until you can do it near optimally or you can ask someone else to test for you which leads me directly into the last point this to me is the most important step of mapping if you do not test enough you are very unlikely to end up with a good map testing is about 90 of my route building and even something i still do while making scenery even experienced builders will not always know directly which block combinations will work it is also important to note that testing is not just driving your map the way you intend try some different approaches to make sure the way you intend is the fastest way and that there are no exploits or goods using different ways of driving if it does not work just try a slightly different variation of the section and test again and again and again until you have a section that works once it does add another section and test it again not just the new section but combined with the part before to make sure it flows into each other nicely it is common to change an earlier section to make a later section work better the more experience you get with improving this way the faster it will go you will also learn which blocks solve with issues so the process goes much faster if a problem can not be solved with a block in the vanilla game you can even go to item exchange and fight items that fit better i will put an item back by ski freak that i personally use a lot which includes many useful route pieces in the description below i would also recommend once again to have other people test your maps it is always good to see how other people approach your map to find any problematic sections on top of that many of these people that test maps will also have a lot of mapping experience and can give very detailed feedback as they know what to look for in the description i will link a few twitch streamers who i know can test your maps on stream and give good feedback as well as links to some discords focused on mapping where they can answer any questions you might have about mapping lastly i would like to mention that any of these previous points are mostly guidelines as mapping is a creative process it is always possible that you might want to break one of these guidelines to make an id work there is no right or wrong in mapping as long as you know what audience you are mapping for not everyone likes the same things so don't expect everyone to like your map even if it is objectively a good map and similarly even bad maps can be fun to play for some people i hope this video was useful to some feel free to share it with anyone who might be able to use some of these tips i would also love to hear what beginner mapping mistakes you see a lot or what parts of mapping you would like to learn more about so i can keep them in mind in case i make a part 2. that will be it for this video if you would like to see more make sure to leave a comment about what you would like to see like this video and subscribe thank you very much for watching and of course keep mapping

Channel: SparklingW

Views: 19,576

Keywords:

Id: H692xSeFxF4

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022