Let you go. (by CraxX)

Introducing my newest track a map by CraxX. This is one of the first fullspeed tracks I ever had the pleasure of driving in Canyon. And it is without a doubt one of the smoothest fullspeeders I've ever played.

Early in the private beta in July 2011 CraxX made this track. Someone had it on a server and I ended up playing it on the first or second day that I played Canyon online. Downloads were disabled on the server, so I wasn't able to download the track. But I was able to save a replay of the track and I've occasionally raced against it.

Later I found a copy of the track, and that was great. But, soon after that Nadeo made a big update to the way lightmaps worked in tracks, and this made all previous maps invalid. They couldn't be opened or raced on servers without recomputing the lightmaps on each map. The problem was, CraxX passworded his map, so I was unable to do this. So I deleted the track, as it was pretty much useless to me at that point. I've always saved the replay though, and I've occasionally raced against it.

Enter 2013. I really want this map to be available to play online. In my book, it's a little known classic. I want to put it on my server, but I also want others to be able to enjoy it. So, I decided to rebuild the map from scratch, block for block, matching every block of the route and every block of the scenery 1:1. This was a lot of work, but not as much as you would expect. The map is quite simple after all with a minimum amount of blocks. In addition to the track itself, I also copied the original intro as best I could and matched the camera angles shot for shot.

You'll notice there are no signs. This is because the original track was created very early in the beta, before Nadeo added any of the sign blocks. This track was also created before any of the huge quarter pipes were added which are now used for so many fullspeed tracks.

So CraxX used what was available at the time and created this incredibly fast and smooth fullspeed track.

CraxX has been inactive for some time now. I haven't seen him around for over a year. So... I didn't ask his permission to release this track, as it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

I know if he were to update the track, he would probably add signs and bring the track up to date with the current block selection. However, I wanted this to be a snapshot in time, a way to remember the way Canyon once was.

AT of original track: 47.98
My AT: 47.97
Gold: 51.00
Silver: 58.00
Bronze: 1:12.00

If you want to see the original, you can download the replay and play against it.

It wasn't my goal to make this point, but this map does go to show that track passwords are almost completely useless, and will not stop someone truly committed to bypassing it.

Regarding awards, I'd be okay if I didn't receive any here. Just to be clear... I did NOT post this to increase my award count. I have plenty of tracks with awards already. I don't need to take other people's tracks to get more. My only reason for posting this is to make it available to people and to servers. It's too much of a classic to go into history as a forgotten map.