I've been thinking about that a lot lately, since this has been mentioned quite much on RVZT in comments. Here is an example; a comment towards Green night created by Killer Wheels:



Now, my guess is that LeO probably didn't grade, but if he were supposed to be grading, should the fact that he didn't find the track long enough, be a reason to lower the grade?

My own opinion towards this, is that grading should depend on the effort that has been done into the track tested.I rarely find a long track which is fun all-through, but therefore you cannot generally just say that long tracks is boring. Whether the track is fun or not, is depending on flow and detail to me - not length, even though a long track has a tendency to be boring after several laps and short tracks has a tendency to feel repeated if neither of them isn't filled up with nice accessories and decorative objects.

Since I doubt everyone is sharing my opinion, I've opened this discussion - What do you think?

Hard question ! I would probably modify it like : What should influence grading ?




I think this is good towards beginners, but the most objective grade is the one of a simple player who don't care about graphics nor AI tweaking.


What would someone like that think about a track ?

- First : "Ow it's ugly " or "Yeah that sounds good " : graphical part. That's why something with ugly things coming among alltogether is really really bad.
- Then he may play it : "Too hard, I quit ! " or "Too easy, I'm not going to play it another time. " : this is about the overall raceline. The best example would be a track with one straight line and a chicane : you have both easy AND hard parts.
- Then the Artificial Intelligence : is it good enought to bring more challenge to player than a simple straight line and a chicane ? Maybe player don't hurt any wall, but AI is taking turns better than him, ahaaa !


So now, what about lenght ? Well, as you see, it's only a matter of personal opinion. Anyway, I think that because long tracks may have framerate drops easier than shorts ones, shorts tracks are generally better. So that may be why the overall opinion is that there is no enought long good tracks, and the reason is simply because they are more difficult to make. A good average length would probably be 700meters (for Re-Volt game, of course), wich is about 50 seconds long.


It's not the author that makes a good creation, it's the one who like it !

I agree with you that whether you like (ex.) long tracks or not is based on car driven and your own opinion. I think the length shouldn't directly be what the grade partly is based on - It's the consequences of the length that affects the grade. Some track makers do actually plan how long their tracks is going to be, but as you point out they (hopefully ) doesn't plan how bad the frame-rate should be.

You could generally say the same when it comes to difficulty, but as you again mention the AI Nodes, the racing line and many other factors is also influenting compared to the length, which I think mainly think is a factor itself.