A Race Map

Description
"A Race Map," by AgentSmith_27, is a large snowy map with an interesting concept.

Obviously the author put a not-insubstantial amount of thought into the background of his map's concept, and I have to applaud him for that. Like many maps with an outside-the-box concept, this one needs more than it has to really be effective, and it's clear that the author's imagination is limited by his modding ability (which is not inherently bad - everyone needs to learn, and it's infinitely preferable to having ability limit imagination than the other way around). What this gives us is a map that is different enough from most newbie maps to stand out, but still bears the hallmarks of a new map creator.

The map itself isn't something overly spectacular to look at - it's not bad-looking, but in the effort to create a "functional" map, the author left a few things to be desired, visually (i.e. the large sheer terrain walls, the un-blended terrain, lack of consistent prop use, etc.). While it is a lot harder to make a visually-pleasing map that serves a nonstandard functional purpose (i.e. built for more than a stock game mode), it can be done. Instead of relying on sheer terrain walls, I might suggest simply using some invisible collision (included with the modtools as objects). This'll at the least allow you to have normal-looking cliffs. I'd also suggest using a few more props scattered throughout the course of your "race."

Also, the idea here would be infinitely improved by a little scripting. The biggest downfall of making a map like this assumes that the player is going to buy into the idea 100% - if I load this up and just want to get from point A to point B, I'm going to just jump the cliff wall and drive there. In a video game it's important to have a little bit of hand-holding of the player's character. It's not something that's easy to do, but start out small (I actually started learning scripting to do the exact same thing) and you'll get something that's workable and much better than just an open map.

All in all, it's a fairly basic map. To enjoy it as the author intended, it'd be best to read through the readme. To the author - spend some time working on making your map visually appealing as well as functional, and don't be afraid to branch out into some basic scripting. It'll make maps like this much better for you in the future.

-Mav