This is Portal Raceway! A winding, exciting, and fun racetrack for anyone who enjoys racing. It has many banked turns, jumps, and other cool things. There are two portal sections, where you go in through the red portal and come out the blue one. It is my first racetrack in Halo Reach, I hope you all enjoy it! EDITS: -Added some respawn points to the first area to prevent off map spawning. -Added a respawn camera (I don't know if it was needed) -Small visual changes. -Fixed last checkpoint. Pictures: [ Overview ] [ Banked turns ] [ Off-road section ] YouTube - Portal Raceway
Very very nice, map itself looks a bit generic, and I don't usually like maps that end with teleporters, but this actually has a portal-ish feel to it, great job!
nice race map more awesome than i could ever forge, i CAN'T forge race maps :S But isn't it a little short just a thought The map is nice anyways
The video is up! Sorry if it is not super smooth or doesn't cover EVERYTHING. I am not a very good cameraman. Changed some things on the track too. If you were having respawn problems (off the map) then try out the newer version.
This is your best map! I LOVE THE PORTALS!! I have never thought to create portals that look like that. I just use the generic ones, but you have created an amazing looking portal. The race track is very lovely too.
I fixed the last checkpoint because some people would fly over it. Again thanks for the compliments people and I hope you enjoy the track. If there are any other problems feel free to tell me and I will try my best to fix them!
Portal Raceway Portal Raceway is a map that is on the verge of being that race map that everyone enjoys, but just falls prey to wanting to utilize a unique but broken gimmick instead of focusing on what is really important for a race map, racing. Portal Raceway is not a particularly large race map and fits the default three-lap race gametype just fine. The map supports up to nine racers, however the map is possibly its most enjoyable at around five to seven players. The reason is nine players makes the map feel a little crowded and actually discourages that competitive, jockeying for position feeling that good race maps generate. Right from the start of the race there is an odd design choice. The start of the racing area is segmented into three “gate” like constructs. If there are more then three players then this needlessly slows down momentum and forces cars to go through them single file. This is just a feature that should never be in a race map as freedom of movement is essential to racing. Some of the steep angled bends do encourage some decent driving skills as players thinking they can just push the gas all throughout the map will find themselves sliding off and plummeting to their death or ending up in a kill ball. These moments are few however and the rest of the map plays rather linearly. If a driver is careful enough they can hold first the entire race without any opportunity for lead changing. The largest problem with Portal Raceway is, unfortunately, due to its namesake. The “portals” are just not effective enough. Nothing is worse to a player then when they are in first, go through a teleporter, and end up flipping out of control on the way out of the teleporter. The other teleporter at the end of the map completely kills players’ momentum going into the starting area. Forcing players to lose momentum is a big problem for a race map. Players just cannot have fun on a race map if there will be parts of it that are out of their control. At the end of the race, some players might feel like they had unfair moments while others will just not feel the map was that exciting and had no moments that really tested them. Portal Raceway is a linear race map. There is only one path so as long as racers stick to it there should be no problems with players that have raced on the map before and new racers. Now, does every player have a fair chance at winning? That is the question and the answer is not at all. Due to the inconsistence nature of the “portals”, players who are leading might end up in last due to an unfortunate spill coming out of the first teleporter. All players going into the second and last teleporter at the end of the track will lose all momentum they had which does level the playing field but is a very frustrating feeling for a player in first. Though the teleporters are a problem, as they are unpredictable when a mongoose will come out of just fine or will flip over and lose momentum, that is not controllable by the players so is therefore, a balanced unpredictability. It could happen to anyone at any time during the race. The way the lap system is set up on Portal Raceway it makes it impossible to skip portions of the track. There is also no noticeable lag on the map despite there being numerous killballs. The teleporters technically work but unless the first one’s unpredictable nature was a design choice of the author to add an element of chance to the gameplay then it is just another gimmick that doesn’t quite work well enough to be considered a viable option. The other teleporter kills all momentum and sometimes will even flip drivers coming out of the teleporter. While these teleporters work, they break the action and feeling of being in a race. The track is smooth and has shoulder pieces in all the correct locations to ease player movement. The entire track is wide enough to allow passing and the decorative pieces thrown around in a few locations do help the map with that raceway theme. The key aesthetics of Portal Raceway are, of course, its portals. The repelling side of a one-way shield door is used as an aesthetic cue that a teleporter is there. This theme is broken a little bit by a false orange wall by where the first teleporter spits out players. This wall is not a teleporter so including it is an odd aesthetic choice and just confuses racers. Some decoration in the initial start area could have also added some unique flare to the map. As it stands, once players go through the final teleporter, they just end up in the far corner of an empty Coliseum space. New players might get a little disoriented their first time through this teleporter as it halts their momentum and it is not made instantly apparent through aesthetics where they are supposed to go. The floating killball near the beginning of the map adds a nice hazard but is unnecessary. The bank is difficult enough in its own right and the killball just adds potential frame rate problems and makes the map seem tackier because of it. They could have easily been removed and the map would have lost nothing because of it and would have in fact gained some more respect. Teleporters are not a new invention to race maps. They have been used with varying success. It is unfortunate that authors continue to use them as they usually do the one thing that should never happen in race maps. They slow momentum and take control out of the players’ hands. That being said, the orange one-way shields used as aesthetic cues that a portal is coming was unique. The rest of the map was the run-of-the-mill curves, bends, and flat segments that players expect to see in a race map. Rating Multipliers Enjoyment: 3 x 3.0 = 9 out of 30 Balance: 7 x 3.0 = 21 out of 30 Durability: 4 x 1.5 = 6 out of 15 Aesthetic: 6 x 1.5 = 9 out of 15 Originality: 2 x 1.0 = 2 out of 10 Final Score Understanding the Review Hub's Ratings Have a question about your review? Review Hub Community Feedback
Ouch..... I never had any problems with the first teleporter, but I understand that the second one is kinda messed up. The second one has the shield door so people don't fly all over the place, but I never realized it could hurt gameplay at all considering it stopped most people from flipping over.