Players can try a free beta of TrackForge on 4th March in The Crew Motorfest’s Season 9 update.
One of the biggest surprises in The Crew Motorfest’s upcoming Season 9 update is TrackForge. Like an extension of Ubisoft’s Trackmania series, this powerful mode lets players create and share their own circuits, or try custom tracks from the community. A new deep dive video showcases how the toolset works, and it looks very promising.
Accessed via the main menu, created tracks are split into three categories: Authentic Motorsports, Unleashed Motorsports and Coaster Tracks.
Authentic Motorsports tracks are realistic circuit-style tracks, while Unleashed introduces jumps among other elements. Coaster Tracks are the most outlandish, featuring Hot Wheels-style twists and loops.
After choosing one of the three toolkits, the creator tool allows you to create custom time trial or race events, with options to set the time limit, or the skill difficulty and the number of opponents for players to beat. Once a starting grid is placed, you can then add ‘modules,’ from connecting track pieces that lay out the track, to pit stops, cliffs and waterfalls.
There are also three different ways to build a track. Fast Build allows you to quickly link modules to create a track in seconds, while Library mode lets you add visual details and make simple modifications.
For those who want to meticulously tinker with creation, the Selector mode lets you select the entire track or groups of modules at once and adjust the banking, layouts and checkpoints.
Further customisation options let you set the time of day, weather, theme, music and vehicle types. Once the layout is complete, the track be tested and shared online.
If you don’t want to build anything, you can browse custom tracks in the main menu, sort them by category, or access them via ID codes.
TrackForge is “the biggest feature ever developed in the entire Crew franchise”
Developed in over 18 months, TrackForge is “the biggest feature we’ve ever developed at Ivory Tower in the entire Crew franchise,” The Crew Motorfest’s Creative Director, Julien Hummer, told Traxion last year.
TrackForge is so versatile that Ivory Tower showed us how the tools can create homages of real-life circuits like Monaco and Suzuka.
“It’s a very deep and powerful system,” Gameplay Director Paul Narducci explained. “It’s designed to let players create something very easily, so you don’t have to spend ten hours to create your first lap.”
Free for all players, a beta version of TrackForge will be available on 4th March alongside the Season 9 update. As well as the track editor, the next season will add a new Playground Island and NASCAR-themed playlist, with RC cars also set to arrive at some point in the season.