Our ReVolt Pub

... is subtle height changes! Big height changes are awkward, uncomfortable, often bumpy and they tend to make you fly out of control. Subtle height changes are smooth, fast and exciting, because it means you have to concentrate a little more on controlling your vehicle.

So why does everyone always put huge, sudden height changes in their tracks?

Toy World 2 is an awesome example of this. There's a LOT of height changes, and only a few of them are steep. The rest of them are just fun and exciting to drive through.

Aeon, have you tried my 'EIR' track? It's a lego, but......

Geoff

I have now, but those aren't especially subtly height changes.

Actually I don't think you can get very smooth height changes with lego tracks unless you keep the angle changes to no more than one step each time. Anything more than that makes it awkward. However, if someone wants to go all-out, they can use wscale to change the height of the track. At 50% a 2 step height change becomes a 1 step, and a 1 step becomes half a step, which makes everything smoother for the most part.

A track that uses rv-resized TrackMK "bent" track pieces would work really nicely though, since TrackMK already comes with some fairly smooth track pieces. Reducing their height would make them even smoother, but you'd end up with some side walls that look more like sidewalks or kerbs. Its just a big hassle to pieces together several dozen track pieces manually... Plus it would take a while to resize and re-ncp each track piece, though I suppose you could just make a batch file.

Yes, I wondered whether the track changes would be too violent(?) for your ideal.

There is nothing wrong with only using 1 step changes. Let me refer you to another of my old legos - 'Oxford Road Speedway'. This track was the end result of a project to make a long, fast speedway. My criteria for this was:-
1. 1,000m long
2. Make every corner from the largest corner tile
3. Only use 1 step incline changes
4. If I had to use a diagonal tile, to connect it to a straight tile at each end.

I found the requirements too difficult to obtain and gave up on it; however, a few weeks later I made 1 last attempt and got Oxford road. But I did have to cheat - I believe that 1 of the incline changes is a 2 step. I've been told that it is possible to drive all the stock cars round this track without braking - I've not tried all of them, but I did manage to do a Toyeca lap without braking or touching a wall.

More recently, ManMountain has produced a new .fan that helps the faster cpu cars.

re TrakMK, srmalloy, its creator, found a problem with it and created prmBend to replace it. This gives greater flexibility in use and should allow you to create exactly the sort of incline change you're after. However, it is no easier to align the tiles - which is why I am so interested in Zach's track making project!

Geoff

TrakMK, srmalloy, its creator, found a problem with it and created prmBend to replace it.

I was under the impression it was the other way around. *shrug*

This gives greater flexibility in use and should allow you to create exactly the sort of incline change you're after. However, it is no easier to align the tiles - which is why I am so interested in Zach's track making project!

That's what I was intending to use. I'm just not fond of the idea of piecing them all together manually in MAKEITGOOD mode. So I'm just as interested in that aspect of Zach's utility.