We can add a lot more to the overall difficulty taxonomy and I think yours is somewhat incomplete / not super precise. For example I would completely separate the idea of punishing vs not punishing from difficult to go fast and difficult to pass without crashing (often because of narrowness/precision), and add some more categories, give things like speedchecks and checkpoints their own taxonomy, etc. What you talk about with uphills aligns much more in line with what I would call a map being punishing and I think that's totally different from the issue of precision / difficulty to not crash. And yes I do think that's very important to distinguish the two, and what i would call punishing is much less of a problem since it's only really an issue in KO or if checkpoint placement is horrible. KO is a horrible mode though its always shit i hate ko all my homies hate ko ko is the worst. Anyway the important thing I have to say is that difficulty to not crash / precise lines scale very differently with player skill level. Because you either are good enough to make the precision or not, anyone skilled enough to do it won't even notice that it's there unless they are thinking more in terms of the map as an abstract construct than the thing they are experiencing driving, and then you're basically camera 7ing to find the difficulty spikes. Anyway this is the one thing map review server is actually really good for, just spectate the players and watch where people die and make it easier to not crash. Also I should note that competition maps have trended towards more and more precision in the last few years and it's definitely too much for most players, and in that case it's more the difference between tmgl adjacent players vs mid level comp players, rather than decent players vs really bad players on map review server, same principle in action though. I don't think people's issue with grass maps and such are that they aren't difficult/punishing enough actually, I think in reality it's just that they tend not to be wicked enough. I'm adding another slider to my taxonomy and you can't stop me. Wickedness is strongly correlated with difficulty but not the same, obviously, and the 99% of players in 99% of situations want the the most wickedness possible without going over their threshold for precision difficulty they can take. I hate this idea of "Don't put stuff on the best line!" though, and I've been hearing it from the random occasional person for years. It appears to naturalize whatever blocks people view as the ""real"" route and say anything that affects the line beyond that is ""artificial". This is bullshit. Using an obstacle to change the line is arguably the only legitimate way to place it if we are deciding that precision difficulty is generally a negative in a vacuum. Having random obstacles just off to the side of the line that aren't actually impacting the fastest line only add precision to not crash for no benefit besides a small amount of visual wickedness. On the other hand, if I just want to change the apex of my turn by having it be driving around a pole instead of a 1x1 road block or platform, that doesn't inherently have any negative impact due to being 'on the line', any negative impact to difficulty comes from the added precision of narrowing the road. In general I think talking about things as if they are organic/natural difficulty vs a broad sense of artificial difficulty (which here you are calling punishments) is, although I'll admit better than not having any theory, is rather annoying because it muddies things through some kind of strange appeal to a vague sense of adjectives and doubles as a rhetorical tool because of that appeal to things being natural/artificial. Random thing: having multiple obstacles in a single section of map is more of a pain than one obstacle even if the one obstacle causes it to be narrow. Here I'm using obstacle to mean anything you can crash into including walls, poles, etc. It's not possible for trackmania players to focus on all things they can crash into at once so extras add a lot more to difficulty than you would expect and can easily lead to the player crashing into things they don't even see in the moment. Anyway another problem is that totd/cotd shouldn't be the only place for user maps, because yes, if you are good at the game, maps with higher wickedness and higher difficulty are enjoyable and we shouldn't be stopped from playing and mapping them (if you want anyone to actually play your map) just because the only context user maps are used requires everyone to be able to play with 15 minutes to learn and then play in the worst mode ever. Also another one more thing: I tried putting a higher precision/wickedness grass map through map review and it got reviewed by nadeo and not totd, and took some refining to get the map review players to be able to get through it decently. This hate on grass and fast maps and such is really stupid because the only reason all the grass maps you play are low on the wickedness slider is because people are only playing and mapping for cotd, there's nothing inherently causing the style to be ""boring"" at least to the degree that it is in practice in totd. Oh and your definition of fs isn't the best but whatever

Why not only have autoqueue? I mean the mapper "has" to be there and manually submit? That's just asking for rigging. I'd imagine it as Kacky, rotating maps, few minutes every time, maybe more servers (but that could be too much) and every player can vote 1 time for each map. But they have the option to drive the map longer if they weren't ready yet. I understand it'd be impossible to block haters but that'd be the case for every mapper so the average best map score may be 3.8 but who cares? That's the best. If noone can rig by gangvoting it doesn't matter.

How I can place blocks into other blocks? Like this pipes at minute 3:50.

The fullspeed community can suck it. Full speed is any track that can be completely without crashing just by holding accelerator the whole time without ever lifting or braking.

Thank you, this was incredibly informative!

Nice map, I remember playing this and I thought it was fun! Quick question: where do you see the stats that you're showing at 7:35?

Love your videos 😍

what is bonk

Thanks for the guide, I just wanted to know what Kacky was but I ended up watching the full thing

Thanks for this video, I’m subbing now. 🙏🏻 Would you be able to make a live tutorial of a PF map? … I’m curious to learn techniques on making smooth transitions, designing a seemingly complex route using angled blocks (some go-to OP plugins & custom block recommendations maybe?), and honestly more than anything else, I’d say for me, it’s observing an efficient workflow. I know it will obviously involve a lot of trial & error, and I’m not afraid of putting in the hours. But learning from a simple/basic yet efficient workflow could really help me find a method that works for my idea. Hope to see more of those intermediate tutorials. Will check out the rest of your channel too.

Thanks for mentioning nascar :)

Hey there, great analysis. personally i really enjoyed the track, I even remember it now! one quick question, at 7:45, your map clearwater has a tag "Map style" do you know what this means? I have a track getting reviewed by nadeo and it has the same. am i in danger of not getting totd because of this? best regards!

really helpful but maybe some backround footage would be good instead of the same thing for the most part

came here mostly to watch about the map cause I personally quite like it (which I guess makes sense since I'm someone who enjoys a lot of old school tech or even remakes from tmnf/tmuf), but my biggest surprise was seeing parasect gaming. 10/10

i really like the map, its definitely unconvensional by todays standards but i love it

This track was definitely one the community needed. Recently its just been super refined tracks as TOTD and it just starts getting boring

I know its a throw away joke, but TM3030 as a theme sounds like an idea you should investigate more

Holy cow that feels ancient. But its not. Im so confused

hi :3

how do you get rid of the stadium

thx

where is french mapping

22:36 , Half an hour??! dude you are crazy, it took me like 20 hours of driving on ice to get to point a where i can sometimes do a bad iceslide, but still mostly crash.

7:49 - Pyramidori - Wirtual must have seen this :)

(irrelevant comment for algo) Gotta hate youtube encoding. Whenever there's a sped up section the bitrate sends the quality to space.

I love all of these because you can apply them to pretty much anything visually appealing. Whether that be when building in minecraft, having a nice outfit, etc... I think that a lot of art forms benefit from your own knowledge of other art forms.

Modless skids is very good for tech and full speed

I was really into Trackmania 2 and just recently started playing this version. The artsy person I am, I’m finding myself pretty quickly drawn to the track builder. I’m kind of leaning toward the approach of starting with a theme or location in mind and then forming the route around what will really make my scenery look the best. I like doing tracks that loop and turn back around on themselves anyway, so I’m looking for opportunities to have the drivers go through the most decorated locations 2+ times.

I don't even play Trackmania and your tutorials are being really usefull for me to understand Level Design in a fast-paced game, so please keep'em going!

The tech subgenre you were thinking off is simply called autoslide tech

Me listening to this video while building a lol map

I don't play trackmania but found this video very interesting. It's like anything that's creative, there are rules but all of them can be broken and knowing when to break the rules and attempting to find a theory on when and how is always a fun topic.

aaaah nice

just watched one of your videos and im now hooked. your voice is calming to listen to. thanks for the videos

I’d really love to catch your Wednesday streams!! Unfortunately it’s 8am Thursday here for me… Not far from the worst possible time. I’ve not long stumbled on your vids and they are a godsend for helping me to re-evaluate my maps and my last two maps have both at least score 4.5+ from 40 ish reviews… good start. On the back of your tips!! I’m one that is always craving feedback so the discord is where I think I’ll head next (reddit is better than I expected - but not by much) Thank you for your awesome content!

Would love to see a console day. Console obviously has limitations vs PC yet there are some absolute banger console tracks that don’t get the love because it’s not scenery of the day. Massive fan of almost all of your suggestions! The Community Campaign is a brilliant idea. I unfortunately feel sometimes as though Nando either has no control or simply isn’t interested in taking on board the feedback from the community of what is truely a wonderful game. We all know that one player who complains about every map voted one star and puts up trash maps - the tiered TOTD set up is an awesome way to reduce that hurt - even if they left the voting and timer exactly as it is. I have no problem giving money to Nadeo for a subscription but at least listen when we are trying to improve the community and it seems to fall on deaf ears. Which is why your content is so wonderful - it’s clear you love the game and have great ideas… if I win big on the lottery and buy the whole shebang can I hit you up?

30:20 oh my gosh that is such a good idea :O

Having a 1:40 seconds long "intro" makes you lose a lot of viewers early off. Don't tell us why we should care about your mapping knowledge, show it.

downloaded the game just to try making maps, after having watched Wirtual for a long time hah. but the editor is very annoying to use imo. the weird folder menu thing for the track parts and all is very... fun... to use and try to find parts. many times I lose in what folder what part was lol. also, since I have not actually played the game. aka, no idea how the car handles other than just from watching Wirtual's gameplay and him explaining some mechanics and how the car acts. probably need to play since having watched your videos about map making tips, seems that being able to finish my own maps would be... uh... a plus. XD

god this brought up memories... back when I was in school a friend and I loved playing trackmania. but I was pretty terrible at it. I did, however, love the editor and I started creating maps for him and grew more and more frustrated because he would always beat me on my own maps on his first try. :D

You did not mention GPS, so I my headcanon remains at "Gde Piči Su".

Another great video!

Great video, agree on all of the tips! My stance on risky fins is a bit harsher still: I'd always rather have a single finish where you can push your final lines for a slight timesave, but if you have some insane idea that absolutely must be built, I'd only make it 0.2-0.3 seconds faster. Overall I'd say this: if a map isn't interesting enough without a wacky, difficult finish that's completely disconnected from the map - instead of focusing on the risky fin, why not try to figure out why the rest of the route isn't interesting enough? There's one possible exception, and that's when you have a completely balanced ending to your map, but it's not always possible from the final respawn. Sometimes placing another finish as a "respawn finish" can be a good idea in that case, but that really only applies as long as the main finish isn't overcooked haha

I wonder who that guy was who did the snipe. Thanks Nolafus

5:54 should have added that on jamz dip smh 😅

Lack of flow is basically every map designed to only be run at div 1 pace. Dirt and grass gears can make those maps a nightmare for people who are only slightly off that pace Also. Maps with only 1 forced line are terrible. That feeds into the gain and lose time point

Risky finishes. Are map ruiners

I think the DesertCar map that I've been working on is definitely a good example of everything here done right. Currently, all i want to do with it before i try for my final try at getting TODT with it is to increase consistency for double respawns and the start of the track. I also want to make a custom thumbnail for the track without the use of photoshop, so I'll need to figure out a way to do that in game.

Nolafus is there a way to remove the outline from platform blocks?

Remember the fall 2021 - 06 safe fin xdd