Greetings Forza community!
First of all, I would like to point out that the updates to created routes (a MAP, thank you!) have been positive. While I was disappointed at first by the restriction of starting custom routes from a campaign race start point, I understand the practicality and stability of implementing such a restriction from a development standpoint.
One feature I would love to see added is the ability to start from any of these race points facing EITHER direction. Limiting the race to pass through the start/finish gate from a single direction severely reduces the creative possibilities for tracks. The map is full of fantastic routes to be built, but literally 50% of all the options are killed by this one directional limitation. In its current state, you can start building a race, make an immediate 180 degree turn, create a circuit and save. On starting the event, the game implements a mandatory first checkpoint in the gate after which point everyone can turn around and proceed to run the track “backwards”.
This seems like a feature that could be added smoothly into the game without excessive development headache. Regardless of direction, the start/finish gate can keep track of lap times. Right now, you are placed at the “starting line” which is roughly half a grid back from the gate. Simply update the geography to make the car start centered under the gate itself when starting a custom route. The game could then populate the starting grid relative to the direction of the first checkpoint placed.
Anyway, these are my hopes for an already wonderful game feature! Let me know what you all think!
4 Likes
Heya.
Now as a route creator, have had many similar ideas. Having the ability to start both directions would be fantastic.
As it stands now, the limiter is that the start points are location sculpted to the terrain. They do have a sort of clunky work around on fortune island where there are two starts at each start point. This is because of the need to work around the variables in the road, terrain map and set pieces.
But are onto something. If the model was unidirectional, outside of maybe textures, then you just need to flip the starting grid tail by a select direction when you begin.
This tail concept could then be applied to custom start points with smaller flag starts. Place down, then you place and curve the tail to match road curves.
2 Likes
It really isn’t though. The way the Forza maps are built make it rather difficult to change things in a patch, And the starting grids are likely built into the map. This is also likely the reasoning they have never added content to the base map Via DLC or even fixed the Map bugs with FH3.
Things are always far more complicated then 99.9% of the playerbase thinks they are.
3 Likes
Fair enough. It may well be a larger scope dev effort than it appears at surface level. I still think the unidirectional start feature is a good improvement to ask for. Obviously the route creation was a serious undertaking and in its vanilla form, still leaves much to be desired. But, thats the point of making these requests. While having total freedom to spawn a race event anywhere may be a near impossibility with the current game design, the idea of adding the option of direction to the predetermined, hard-coded start locations is a legitimate next step.
A reversible start is probably one of the most valuable additions any work with route creator needs. I hold it more important to me than the ability to edit routes.
So many good tracks are not possible simply because you start pointing the wrong way.
1 Like
I support this wholeheartedly. Although if this is implemented, they really need to also add the ability to publish more than 1 blueprint per start points (as it stands, we can have up to 5 blueprints saved per start point, but only the most recent shows to others online).
Some other improvements for route creator I’d like to see are:
Let us edit a track after it’s been saved, it’s painful having to redo a long route from scratch just because a couple checkpoints have not been placed optimally.
Also, and this is not really an editor issue as such, but I would love to be given the ability to delete blueprints without having to create some extra blueprints just to delete one when the 5 max limit has been reached.
My biggest wish is for better support for people not using the default control scheme.
As it stands right now you either use the default controls, or you have a buggy, incomplete route creator.
It’s actually the main reason I haven’t created many routes.
How does non default muck it up? What is not default?
I use controller layout 8. Give it a try and you’ll see what I mean.
Basically, the route creator doesn’t properly reassign all of the commands when you are using a control scheme that isn’t default, leading to some buttons having two commands assigned to them while others are unused.
I play on PC with wheel and keyboard with custom control layout, so cannot see that. However it is clearly a bug in that case needing a report! Not getting double mapping on that.
Grats @Vaporisor on getting a custom route featured in the update 8 live stream!
Personally Id love to be able to place down stuff such as walls or ramps seens in the cross country events as it can be very useful for more complex courses and for dividing up areas etc many utility uses there