Banner by   Keissla.wp

Welcome to the MTC (Monthly Track Contest) for August 2022!
The MTC is a track building contest hosted by TrackmaniaExchange which challenges you to build a map with a specific theme.
There are no prerequisites or qualification requirements to enter, just continue reading the theme below, hop in your editor, and submit a track before the deadline!

Theme: Curiously Contiguous
- All checkpoints must be contiguous
- In other words, all checkpoints must be adjacent to one or more other checkpoints, such that all CPs are connected to each other
- Item and Offgrid CPs will be considered to fill all blocks they occupy
- Start and End blocks aren't counted and thus do not need to be contiguous with the checkpoints
Some examples and images for this will be provided below this post!

Deadline: Entries should be submitted to the MTC mappack before the end of 31/08/2022
- Submissions will continue to be accepted until an announcement is made in this thread
- All builders will have up to 24 hours after submissions officially close to make any last minute edits to their map file

Prize
- Honor and right to brag!
- The winning track will be featured on the TrackmaniaExchange front page!

Rules
- One entry is allowed per user. Multi-author maps count as an entry for all authors involved
- "MTC" must be present in the track name as it appears on TMX. Example: "(mtc) checking points!" or "Stuck Together | MTC"
- All entries must be built using the latest version of the game
- All entries must be built specifically for this MTC
- Blockmixing, Offgrid mapping, and Embedded Items are allowed
- Texture mods are allowed
- Royal tracks are not allowed
If you have any questions or would like to contest a rule, feel free to ask!

Judging System
All entries will be graded by a panel of three judges who will be scoring each map based on the following criteria:

Theme (20 pts): How well does the track fit the theme? How creatively did you implement the theme’s requirements?
Design/Route (10 pts): Flow, smoothness, layout, speed, transitions, difficulty. The “Feel” of the track.
Details/Polish (10 pts): Signage, Scenery, Mediatracker, etc. Does the map feel polished?
Fun Factor (10 pts): Is the track fun to the judge?

Good luck! Please ask any questions in this thread or in the MX Discord server's MTC channel. That's all I've got, so get out there and make a masterpiece!

"Contiguous" is a bit hard to define in text, so here's some images that will hopefully make things easier to understand.



In the above image, all the checkpoints are contiguous. Each checkpoint is adjacent to at least one other checkpoint in some way. If we were to start at one checkpoint and only travel to adjacent checkpoints, we'd be able to visit every checkpoint. Notice that the start and end blocks aren't connected to the CPs at all; this follows the rules since we only care about CPs. Since no theme rules are broken, this map would be accepted.

You'll notice that the checkpoints have a nice transparent block to show the space they occupy; you can turn this on yourself by clicking on the "Edit Block Properties" menu item. It's in the middle bar on the far right, and it's the same icon selected in the above image.

Now let's look at an example of something that isn't contiguous.



In this image, we have two groups of CPs. While each CP in each pair is contiguous with the other CP in the pair, the two pairs are distinct from each other and are NOT contiguous. The start and end blocks cannot be used to bridge CP gaps, so the end block in this image can't magically make the two CP pairs contiguous.

Even if it could, diagonal corners like this aren't considered truly adjacent, so these two groups wouldn't be contiguous anyways (though, if you do end up placing CPs diagonally from each other, I'll accept the map anyways but will dock Theme points for not quite being contiguous).

There's one last thing I want to touch on: items and offgrid blocks. Items and offgrid blocks can be placed essentially anywhere, which makes judging their adjacency to other blocks a bit weird. For judging purposes, an item or offgrid CP is considered to completely fill all blocks its Block Properties box occupies.



Take a look at the above image. In it are an item CP and an offgrid CP placed off the standard grid. The black and white checkerboard blocks behind these two CPs represent the area these CPs are considered to occupy. You'll notice that the space they're considered to occupy is a lot larger than the CPs themselves. In fact, these two CPs are considered adjacent and contiguous by our definition! Though, maybe don't abuse these rules if you can help it; we have the Theme score for a reason!

Hopefully this clears up any questions you may have about what counts as contiguous or not. That said, feel free to ask if you still have any questions!

is it still allowed if just the corner edges of the checkpoints touch

I'll allow for corner edges, but it'd be better if a little more than just an edge were touching. If you don't have a better option, don't worry about it that much, but do keep in mind that judges have a Theme category for a reason!

Hi, everyone.

I really don't want to be unfair or sound nasty, but there have been no final results for 5 months and new competitions are added every month.
i mean new competitions are nice and great for the community but where is this supposed to lead?

Bladerunner78 says:
Hi, everyone.

I really don't want to be unfair or sound nasty, but there have been no final results for 5 months and new competitions are added every month.
i mean new competitions are nice and great for the community but where is this supposed to lead?

Hi bladerunner,

Thats not a problem to ask but i don't think its the right place to. There is another topic for that and there is a discord thread for this.

To be fully transparent with you the last three months i organized are completly judged for my parts all notes ready, coms, etc. Problem is i cannot force any judge to speed up things plus i cannot force anyone to be judge too. We asked for judges multiple times we didn't have any response. So we do our best sorry if it takes time.

Yes, imagine if you need to judge 22 maps in MTC - May and more month.

This is mad. xD

Here's our submission with   OHIO_JG :

Submissions are officially closed! All builders have 24 hours from this post to make any last minute changes to their maps. I aim to have judging done by the end of the month, so you can yell at me if I fail to make that deadline.

Hi,

I think i messed up with submissions, and my map for MTC August isnt in the mappack.

Is it still possible to add it in it, since I uploaded it on trackmania.exchange before the deadline ?

Here's the shortlink : https://trackmania.exchange/s/tr/74068