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The ratings have been updated for ZCT272! Two personal best ratings in this round: Spoonboy (a +50 change brings him to a very busy slice of the table!) and Zapper (second round in a row). Below is the updated evolution chart:

To be fair, the LM002 has a significant advantage there due to its good grip on ice. To make it thornier, switch to the Carrera or, harder still, the Thunderbird. (I think I have a reliable strategy for the former, but couldn't make it work yet for the latter.)

If you enjoy track making, we can find a slot for one of your tracks to be in a race. In ZakStunts, we normally reserve these slots at the beginning of the year, so they're all taken this time, but in Race For Kicks, we still can make it. Only you have to take into account it's OWOOT (see https://wiki.stunts.hu/wiki/OWOOT) when designing the track. In live races, maybe, you could also get to post a track, although those are special too.

I'll consider, but no exact promises as I've also been busy modding other games, alongside real-life responsibilities and such. Sounds like an interesting challenge, though, if not a bit complicated (due to the jumps and bumps in track variations that I know of).

Designing for OWOOT races is arguably an easier way to get started, as the rules mean you don't have to plan for shortcuts or the wilder tricks. By the way, your Mandalika track from the opening post is a nice one! It's well-paced, and has some tricky combos that help to keep it interesting all the way. Here goes a Jaguar no-shortcuts demo run 

Borrowing the thread for a moment, here are a few more u/d cork composites. Clockwise from the top:

• A bridge chicane, as seen in ZCT106 and ZCT230 (though note the one here has the other possible orienation: west-to-east, left-right).
• A walled chicane, as seen in the currently running ZCT273 (the same goes for its orientation). It is assembled in pretty much the same way as the bridge chicane, only matching the lower parts of the u/d corks rather than the upper ones.
• A walled 90 degree sharp turn, based on a suggestion by @Daniel3D . Though the illusion is a bit rough, as you only see the banked piece at the exit when you're on it, that's arguably not a big deal as the landing is pretty straightforward.
• An S-ramp (though in this orientation you might prefer calling it a Z-ramp).

However, for some reason, my map just won't execute at all. Anyone know what might be wrong here?

There's a terrain mismatch on the edge of the southern hill, by the large icy corner. A modified track with what's probably the least intrusive fix is attached. By the way, it turns out that the gap jump towards the bridge at the north is not only accepted by the game's track validation, but it also is quite doable even with the LM002!

Nice! No idea about what you have in store for us, of course, but it looks like there will be a nice palette of cars for you and everyone to work with. Lovely track title, too 

Some scattered thoughts...

If we were to try and actively draw an audience for a competition, some kind of live racing event could be a good fit. (Cc @Erik Barros and @alanrotoi , who have been thinking about potential ways to broadcast things.)

The remake question is an interesting one. The Restunts project always had on the horizon to someday reverse enough of the code to allow a port away from DOS, or possibly a faithful enough remake. Either way, I guess people generally agree (not literally everyone, but a large enough share) that Stunts is worth preserving, both as living history and as digital art shaped by a peculiar set of constraints. Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised to see, just the other day, a piece on The Guardian the other day covering "Why are younger generations embracing the retro game revival?"

I'm now wondering what the TrackMania community and ecosystem is like these days. I remember the game was fairly popular back when I used to play it regularly, but that was around 2008 or 2009 -- at this point, Trackmania itself is approaching retro game status   

Lovely flow of those bridge esses in 28i.trk! @mrdries I think you'll enjoy driving on ZCT273 -- some of the combos are inspired by the catalogue 

@Daniel3D's track features (spoilers ahead!) an illusion walled chicane. While the illusion means you don't get to see the exit walls of the chicane while you're entering it, you can get a decent sense of where to place the car by aiming at the asphalt of the exit "ramp", whose underside is overlaid by the illusion.

Since this configuration is made out by fusing the lower parts of two u/d corks, there is a crest at the point they meet. While it's perhaps even be possible to take advantage of a little jump there, it's also rather easy to fly into the exit wall if you're going too fast. That being so, a conservative approach to begin with might be slowing down hard enough to keep the car on the ground, and then gradually pushing harder on further attempts.

Here is a GIF demo of navigating past the illusion:

It looks nice! How do you race this element? I can't try now. Could you describe what the car should do?

In effect, it's a straight bridge which drops directly to the ground and is accepted by the game's track validator. The lower cork sets up track continuity, while the upper one provides the final bridge tile.

A 100% legal bridge drop! That's really nice! While strictly speaking the track continuity can be achieved without the second cork on the side, by having a regular bridge piece for the third tile drop, I like your solution with the two corks better, as the illusion is smoother: you get to see the bridge continues before reaching the third tile.

Yeah, that's a funny effect! It's as if the F2 camera failed to keep behind the car for a moment.

These long corkscrews are kind of cool.

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An amusing (and hard!) little challenge is making all of the upside down turns.

This works too

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That's a cool idea! It works so well because the pipe and the l/r cork have exactly the same diameter.

Figure 8 

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One neat thing about this is that the figure-8 layout can be changed into a barbell one just by flipping one filler tile.

Data maxima venia 🤭, I find it a perfectly fine element! Besides, it's the only way we get an usable 360° turn. (I guess calling it a "corner" might be a bit of a stretch  )

Metal

It's been so long, indeed, that I'm not even sure I remember the last time we had to climb a cork at ZakStunts. (Was it really as far back as ZCT089?!)