In case you need a quick look at all the basic functions of the track editor, you can always come back here and watch the quick reference guide.

Navigation can be either done with clicking buttons (see picture), or with keyboard strokes.

Track blocks will always be inserted at your cursor's actual position, so I highly recommend learning all the (few required) keystrokes and mouse movement combinations, because you will develop a much better workflow later on.

Moving the cursor box

The transparent cursor box follows your mouse pointer (or arrow keys). Move your mouse over the screen and you will see how the cursor box follows your mouse.

When moving the mouse pointer to the edges of the screen, your viewing area will be moved correspondingly.

Your mouse's scrolling wheel (or page up/down keys) is responsible moving the cursor upwards/downwards.

Nevertheless, this is a very limited view of your editing area, so we need some more freedom.

Freelook mode

When additionally pressing the left ALT key, you get into the freelook mode, which enables you to move around the environment very quickly,change view angles, zooming etc.pp

Pressing ALT + Left Mouse Button drags your viewing area away from the screen center very quickly.

Pressing ALT + Right Mouse Button rotates and highers/lowers the camera around the center of the screen. Very useful to get different impressions of your viewing area.

Pressing ALT + Mouse Wheel will zoom the center of the screen in and out.

At the lower screen menu, you will find several buttons with pictures of blocks, which you can place in the editing area...

You can either select them with clicking the buttons, or you can (should!) use the number keys on your keyboard to make quick selections of the blocks...

Use your left hand to select the blocks (represented by the number on their little thumbnail). To go up one level in the hierarchy, use the key left of the "1"...

With CTRL + Left mouse click on an existing block, you automatically chose the clicked block at the same height as the clicked one.

On the lower right screen you will always see a rotating preview of the block you selected.

We select a simple road part (2/1/1) and put some single pieces of them onto the grass with a Left mouse button click (or Space key).

Rotate selected blocks with Right Mouse Button before placing them.

This button activates the "underground" mode, in which you can place a limited group of blocks (such as tunnels) below the ground surface. This mode is only available in TMU environments.

When the excavator icon on the left is activated, all parts can be deleted just by clicking them with left mouse button, without going to their exact X/Y/Z position with the cursor.

Press the icon again to deactive the deletion mode. The arrows on the right side are undo / redo functions.

Lots of blocks can be connected or merged with each other...

Select a block, click on the desired location where you want to place it and keep holding the left mousebutton and drag it to the other part which shall get connected to it.

Which block can be connected ???

In case of flat road parts this is very easy to answer, because regular roadparts have coloured endpieces, from which you can see, what they can be connected with...

There are many more possible combinations between (road and) non-road blocks, so only lots of testing will give you the necessary experience on this matter.

If parts cannot be connected, the editor won't let you click+drag to make a connection between both blocks.

You can edit the environment's ground, the available ground blocks are found in block subcategory "1".

Placing and connecting ground blocks works the same way as for other blocks.

If the bottom basis is large enough, some ground blocks can be piled up on top of each other. For this, you need to create a large ground area of one type, then go up 1 height step and place the same ground block type there.

Not all blocks can be used at any location on the map.

Some parts can only be built in the air, others need a particular ground type to be built on and even others can only be placed as a replacement for an already existing block. Usually, the form of the block tells you, which basis/underground is needed.

A list of special blocks and placement methods is available here.

Here are 2 examples:

Mud Blocks 7/4/4 and 7/4/5, connected to each other.

Before you are allowed to place these blocks, you must pile up a mud hill, so you can lay the blocks into the edges of the upgoing mud hill...

The huge advertisement sign block 8/8/7 can only "replace a classic block", in this case the sidewall of an inflatable.

The most simple example would be a track with 1 start and 1 finish...

Any driver will just need to drive from start to finish , online and offline.

As soon as you use a Multilap-Start/Finish , some special rules apply:

First of all, you must insert at least 1 additional checkpoint.

An additional red finish line would behave just like the green multilap start-finish.

Give drivers feedback on their time (and improvements) on different crucial sections of a driving track.

Stop drivers from looking for "illegal" shortcuts (not driving the track as it was meant to be, because you forgot to place enough CPs at the track).

Give people the ability to "respawn" at the last checkpoint they passed, instead of restarting the whole race from scratch.

You can define the type of your track by clicking the "Access objectives" button.

Race

This is the "normal" type of track we drive every day.

You can set the number of "laps to be driven" here... but remember what we've learned before about playing Multilap tracks online!

After you have validated the finished track (= driven a fast author's time), you can set the times for Gold, Silver and Bronze.

Stunts

This is a pretty exciting track type. People get a certain time limit to drive everywhere on the track and make wild stunts, for which they get points.

They can respawn at any time and then drive into the red finish line to get their stunt points counted together.

After validating the track (getting as many points as possible), you can also set the stunt points, which drivers need to get in order to achieve Gold, Silber or Bronze medal.

Platform

People need to drive the track from start to finish.

Usually such a track is very hard to complete, so people need to respawn. The track must be possible to finish, no matter where a driver respawns his car.

For every respawn, drivers get penalty points.

After validating the track (you must get 0 penalty points), you can set the penalty points for Gold, Silver and Bronze medal.

Puzzle

Weird. First you build an incomplete track.

Then you add (the missing) parts to a list of blocks, given to the players, so they can finish building the track themselves. After building it, they try to drive the best time possible.

After validating, you can set the Gold, Silver and Bronze times as well...

Testing

You can test a certain section of your racing track any time by either:

Placing the cursor where you want to drop your car and press RETURN/ENTER.

or

Click the "Race mode" button to drop your car at the desired spot (Right Mouse Button can rotate your car before beeing dropped).

Validating

Before you can share your track and let other people drive it, you must "validate" the track, which means you must drive it from start to finish, hopefully with a good time.

Your author's time will be saved within the track and people will drive against it.

Don't forget to change the Gold,Silver, Bronze times (or points) in the "Access objectives" menu after validation!

Saving the track

If you're satisfied and the track is validated, you can save it to harddisk.

In the file dialogue, you can enter your track's name at the bottom. This is how it will appear within the game.

You can use text formatting, colour formatting codes to give your trackname a special appearance...

Special characters can be used as well, but it's not recommended, since the track couldn't be found under its supposed name anymore, when people are searching playlists on servers.