When I was a kid, I wanted to be in a band and so a group of us decided that we’d ask our parents for instruments and we’d just form a band.  It was, of course, that simple.  I got a guitar, Oggie got a bass, Sweeney already had drums and it was decided that we’d work on a singer once we’d written our debut album – just before heading out on the road for our first world tour.  Life was simple back then – we came up with ideas and acted on them.  That band didn’t actually happen, but I stuck in with the guitar and actually wrote some pretty decent songs.  Over the years my ability grew, as did my frustration.  The funniest thing happened… as I learned more techniques, writing good songs grew difficult because I wanted to use those new techniques and innovative ideas.  This ultimately meant that the “song” had gone out of the song, and it became more a case of seeing how many different techniques and tricks I could fit into each song.  The more I learned, the more difficult it became to just sit down and write.

The same has happened to me with my gaming.  When I first started tinkering around with the Trials HD track editor, I really had no idea what I was doing and so I’d place objects wherever I felt they posed the greatest threat to the player’s ability to get from A to B with ease.  My first real track, Fumblerunner, took me almost an entire weekend for something like 45 seconds worth of track (assuming you can play straight through without faults).  The more I learned what each object did, and how best to utilise them, the more difficult it became to create a new and exciting track.

Over the last few days, I have spent perhaps 15 hours in total contructing, then deconstructing and reconstructing a series of objects which would, I hoped, form a simple elevator that is triggered by the rider hitting a switch.  No matter how many ways I tried, I couldn’t get a pulley system to work and so I had to opt for a leverage system instead, which is certainly more crude than a pulley but uses a lot less objects.  I finally managed to achieve this last night and enjoyed playing over that particular part of the track several times to make sure that it was genuinely possible for other players to reach the elevator and trigger it without knowing the actual mechanics of the objects, or the physics involved.  The entire process from reaching the elevator to landing at the next floor down takes around two seconds… yet it took 15 hours to create.

The problem is the new DLC… it contains 50 new objects for use within the track editor.  This means I not only have my renewed knowledge of the previous objects to contend with when deciding what to include, but I also have the new objects to learn and think of ways to use them within the tracks.  Although some of the newer objects are genuinely quite impressive, I feel they spent too much time replicating similar objects (why five almost-identical cars?) and not enough time improving on the game.

As incredulous as it may sound, given my apparent enthusiasm for the game as a whole, the track editor is massively flawed for two reasons.  The first reason is that you are limited to the number of objects you can use per track and the second, unbelievable, reason is that there is no way of knowing how many objects you’re limited to or even how many you’ve actually used.

It wasn’t until I’d finally completed my latest track, Platform Wheels, that I was confronted by that damning message of “Track could not be saved” because I had used too many objects.  How many was too many?  I went back to my sublevel route of the track and had to painstakingly remove whatever I could to salvage the overall track and yet, after removing HALF of the sheets of glass that made up my brief homage to Fallout 3, I still had too many objects and so my track was forever sitting in limbo as I sat in fear of a power cut that would lose my third day’s work forever.  After removing countless ambient objects such as burnt out cars, crates, additional lighting and even part of the final stage of the track… I still couldn’t save.  Ultimately I stripped everything out of the final room and left just the finish line.  I cannot think of a greater anticlimax than this, especially after three days work and so many physics objects… to simply “end” the track with a finish line, but I had no choice.  At last, after one more object was removed, I was able to save my track.

In retrospect, I wouldn’t say that my tracks are any more complicated than the other GOOD custom tracks out there, and they’re certainly not any larger as I’ve seen tracks last more than five minutes, albeit with a lot less going on in terms of physics.  I do feel hindered, however, because I have these new objects to play with as well as a lot of new track ideas… yet I don’t think they can be executed due to restrictions within the game.  With one hand, they gift us with tempting treats and yet, with the other hand, Red Lynx leave the number of permitted objects as an obscure formula known only to them and so there is no way to fully utilise everything and expand our imaginations because of their imposed limits.

I will, of course, continue to build… it’s what I do.

Completed Tracks…

The section below lists all of my custom tracks in reverse order of creation, with the most recent at the top.  The HD versions will be stream for anyone with a 6mb/sec connection or higher and the standard def will be best suited for those, like me, who have to suffer with lower connection speeds.  Personally I’d rather watch the HD and put up with the buffering!  Please note that the videos have been edited to remove any repetition of faults.

Platform Wheels View Video | View HD Video	Fruity Loops View Video | View HD Video
How Do You Do It? View Video | View HD Video	Fumble Runner View Video | View HD Video

Last five articles by Mark R

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