I meant to make that short, goddamnit. Admittedly it only took me a few minutes to write, but you must be getting tired of me by now =P

But for some good ways to use gold, check out my first race. It's imperfect, but I was really quite proud of the way I used the gold. You'll notice that in the laser room, if you want a speedrun, you can just jump off the first oneway rather than go all the way around the gold area, and it flows just as well. Also, for the gold just after that bit, it requires a tiny jump to grab it, whereas if you just run right off the end, you can still keep the flow, you just won't get all the gold. And then there's the gold at the end, where the flow gets quite tricky to follow, but if you do it right it works out perfectly.

Also, putting some gold just on the path for fun and looks is perfectly fine. It should just not *all* be there, because then there's no extra challenge to an AGD.

Another one to look at for good gold placement is Riobe's Grand Entrance. There's a huge difference between the AGD route and the speedrun route - if you watch both of his demos for the various paths, you'll see exactly what I mean by having 'optional AGD route'. It doesn't have to be a whole other race, just a separate piece of the same race.

You've got the idea with the gold you talked about under the oneway.

And I have actually been thinking about a race guide sometime in the future... but I'm going to get better at race mapping myself before I do that. =P

3.5 is a good rating. 4 is a map that's got no obvious errors but isn't yet quite perfect, and 5 is a perfect map that's unbelievably fun. I think I've given, like, six of them in my life.

just try to make the agd route the fastest and most natural. gold should help to guide the flow. going across the top the first time, it really wasn't clear that you were meant to fall off the end of the platform rather than jump so i kept being killed by the rocket. some mines or gold would make that clear. the demo was pretty cool to watch - i just didnt find it that fun to play. 3/5.

look at that racer--- da_man894 and look at the amount objects used to make a smooth race.

your improving though :D
3/5

but maybe at the top of a difficult jump so you only get it all if you do it near perfectly. making a seperate agd path is good, but tends to limit the length of the race because you have to fit in 2 paths, and i always think it would be better to make two separate races, one hard and one easy. i havent played this yet - i'll do that later.

I keep intending to keep it short, and it doesn't work.

Ah well, at least I know it's helping - you're definitely improving.

I loved the start, again - did you check out magirocker's latest? It has a start very similar. I didn't like the fact that you couldn't hold right as you pressed play - you exploded - but it was still fun.

The flow was a lot better and more interesting this time - no evidence of loops except for that one on the left, and that was forgivable considering the ways the rest of the map played. I liked seeing you throw some reuses of parts in there too, complete with different flows each time, and the use of trapdoors to change the map up was great.

Some problems I had with this map - the first one was the gold. It was really hard to get it all, and you can see in my demo the parts where I had issues with that, because I don't get it. Gold should be in the flow still, you shouldn't have to slow down at any point in a race. In this one, there were some points where you had to hold the direction opposite the one you were going, and that's only good in certain situations.

The second thing I didn't like was the fact that if you held left off the edited launchpad, you died on the bounceblock at the gauss. That wasn't too fun the first time. When I run a race I expect to be holding a direction the whole time, except in very special, well-considered circumstances.

The use of enemies was much, much better in this one - I liked the chaingun calls and especially the floorguard, which is my personal favourite race enemy =P The thing I didn't like about them was the hidden ones - they did work well, and in the case of one gauss it was necessary to have it placed behind the bounceblock, else the flow would've been broken, but for the most part, it's not good to hide enemies.

Aesthetics are still something you need to work on, though the gold was OK in this one. Make use of all that empty space to spice your map's look up, and don't throw bounceblocks everywhere.

This one was certainly better than your last one, and a very solid 3.5.

Only AGD.

and map 5 and 6 will be featured. Good job. A bit odd but fun.