ok, great idea to have these narrow ones, hope to put them to good use.
Thanks for the quick reply.

This is my submission for MTC January 2022 - Custom Palette
Good luck, have fun, and be sure to leave a comment!

Hi everyone, I have a problem finishing the map. While building the scenery all of the items suddenly got really bad shadows and went undetailled in a kind of way. Since it would have been my best and prettiest map (at least in my opinion) I am looking for a fix to this problem. Maybe someone has an idea? Thanks and have fun mapping!

Hey dackstone, i will copy paste something that can interest some of you (from htimh in TSH discord server)

SIZE LIMIT AND OPTIMIZATION
Trackmania maps can be up to 6144kb in total for online play. That's including the map, mediatracker, ghosts and author ghost.

The filesize is only 100% accurate after you calculated shadows and validated your map and saved it out afterwards. Pre-calculated and pre-validated maps don't give an accurate filesize, so be aware of that.

The item limit of 4mb can easily be bypassed using the Infinite Embed script that comes with Openplanet.

LIGHTMAP PRIORITY PLUG-IN
You're now able to set lightmap priorities in Trackmania!
Get the Openplanet plug-in here: https://openplanet.nl/files/137

You have 7 lightmap quality options, and you choose the lightmap quality the same way you choose coloured blocks which were introduced in the Royal update.

The 7 lightmap options are named (from smallest to highest quality) -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3. The way this works is that it's relative to the other settings AND the lightmap calculation (low, medium, high, ultra, ultra2). What I mean by that; Putting everything at +3 won't have any effect at all; it won't make it look better, nor will putting everything at -3 make it look worse. It's also bound by whatever overall shadow quality you will set.

However, what DOES make this tool work its magic is when you have all your background items at -3, but the road and items close to the road at +3! I highly recommend playing around with it on your existing maps.

ULTRA2
Items obviously add up quick, but so does the Lightmap calculation (shadow calculation in game). One thing you can do to optimize the Lightmap calculation is enabling ULTRA2 shadow compression. This takes longer to calculate and doesn't look better outside of the map editor, but does lower the overall file size by some bit. It's definetly worth trying if you're barely over the limit.

To enable Ultra2 head into Documents\Trackmania\Config\Default.json and change "LM QUltra" : false, into "LM QUltra" : true,

Restart the game if you had it open and you can now go beyond 'High' shadow calculations. Do not use Ultra, it's bugged and will cause artifacts when playing the map online. Ultra2 is fine.


LARGE WALLS DECREASE PERFORMANCE AND REDUCE LIGHTMAP ACCURACY thanks to @Chraz
Usually when you build scenery, you most of the times switch between ghost-mode and the normal block mode and therefore your maps looks bad from below (see screenshot 01: https://i.imgur.com/9FhA8jt.jpeg). For normal sized maps this is not a problem, but when you are building bigger maps it can actually cause a problem because all the stuff/walls below the map still affect performance.

To fix this, you should fill all the gaps and empty space below the map with the 13-2-1-1-1 blocks (see screenshot 02: https://i.imgur.com/ZZeQLl7.jpeg) because this removes all the unnecessary walls below the map, resulting in better performance. It even makes calculating shadows faster as well as making the filesize a bit smaller, because less shadowmaps have to get saved. On the map in the screenshots it gave me on my system a 10-15% performance boost alone. On one of my newer and bigger map "Skaftafell" it actually made a difference of about 30-40% in fps (modifié)

Thanks for the input! I experimented and it got a little better. But the solution for me was also experimenting with mods. I really like the blocks as they are, but with the overall new atmosphere of the mod it becomes easier to overlook some bad shadows. But I definitely learned some lessons with this map. Looking forward to use these blocks again!!

The results are in and we know our winner for the month of January

I would like to thank the judges for this month:   skybaxrider»UD and   StunTMan for their judging.

I would like to apologize for the very late results, i completly forgot this month MTC results. Results are known just before a break i made and when i came back i was thinking results were out since its judged completly since march.

Another thing we have a draw at the top of the classement (not a real problem for 2nd to last place but for a winner it is) so we used the basco notation system that we used in the past to decide and pick a winner.

THE RESULTS

So as said before the Eighteenth Monthly Track Contest of TrackMania sees a tight ranking and   deadfish and   Grymlock are the collab winners of this month. They managed to get the best note from the three judges to have a win with the basco notation. Good job for this first place

(Grymlock/deadfish map is the first for Sky and Stunt and the 3rd for TerOor. And for tobbe's map its the first for TerOor but the 4th for skybax and 2nd equal for Stunt. In the basco system its Grymlock first 10 + 10 + 8 = 28 and tobbe second 10 + 9 + 7 = 26)

For second place we also have a great map by   Tobbe with a more transtional style very close behind. Good work.

And to close this podium here is the 3rd place from   asyr.nj. Good job.

1. Place "MTC - Woodkid by   Grymlock - 136/150 pts - Basco notation: 28 pts
2. Place "[mtc] Schwiizer Schüümli by   Tobbe - 136/150 pts - Basco notation: 26 pts
3. Place "MTC - A Journey by   asyr.nj - 130/150 pts

Here are the placements:

You can find the full feedback of the judges in the results:

Full Results: Detailed Results of MTC January

We thanks ALL participants/judges and see you for the nexts competitions!

What a pleasant surprise, I thought the community did not like the track at all. Being so close to victory was not what I expected. GG to   deadfish and   Grymlock, I think a very well deserved winner with a brilliantly themed track. Also congratz to   asyr.nj for the podium spot.
Thanks to the judges.