(Since I complain about this all the time, I'm posting my critique from discord here, for permanence)
Going to start off with my most base opinion of this course.
I fucking love it.
Theming is always super important to me, especially when the course is taking after a level from another Sonic Game. While most Sonic Zoned themed maps are fun courses, they lack any identity from their original source material (besides the music) to make me really feel like I'm playing the same Zone. But you really hit the nail on the head with this. The music is so 90s you can
feel it. The Sonic CD sprawling path level design combined with the psychedelic hazard and boost placement you see in the special stage. The texture usage and sky box just all work so well in making me really feel like I'm driving in a special stage based off of Wacky Workbench past.
I want to mention the textures a second time because a lot of people think that in order make a map look really good visually is to go over the top with level geometry (Volcanic Valley from Blitz, Chengi's levels). When in reality, really clean, neat, and clever texture placement along with good use of midtextures can make levels look amazing without risking the framerate. You nailed this.
The base layout (before extra paths) is very easy to get behind and follow, and difficulty of the course is actually a lot higher I'm betting most players perceived it to be (due to the flat layout giving an impression of a simplistic design), which is in my opinion a good thing.
Small tiny choices on the main path make a huge difference in how well you play through the course, and you end up Free-styling the map which is ton of fun and something you don't get to do in many courses. Small things like this feel really good to perform:
Where the course starts to fall flat though, are the shortcuts. To be specific, the issue (based on my experience) stems from there being so many options the player can access at any one time, but nearly all of them are pretty precise and can really kill your position if you screw up.
A good chunk of these are also reachable without any item, so instead of it being a case of "do I have the cash to spend on this shortcut?" it's instead "I have to take this shortcut to keep up with everyone else. The start of every race here has everyone scramble to reach those two ramps on the edge, so the problems start early, but this is easy to fix.
Some of the shortcuts require some crazy amounts of mid-cut decision making, the gif above lets you either go straight, drop down early through the yellow bounce pad, or go without the bounce pad, all without any visual idea of where these will take you on the path below this one:
What's happening here is that you're asking the player to put a full commitment to an jump but then also ask them to make a decision DURING the jump itself (what's generally the reward for landing the cut).
It's just too much pressure in a race. Even the best players don't have the processing power to make a decision mid-jump about left or right, while also considering who has what item, what place they're in, any traps that may be on the path they choose to take, what item THEY have at the time, is it the final lap or not. People bumping you off of your racing line. Even the path splits in Toxic Place and Misty Maze make people panic.The end result is the that the player gets overwhelmed and makes no choice at all, and you end up with the two scenarios above.
On a much more minor note. Boost pads are the same shade of yellow as the weak Bounce Pads. Combining that with the flat style of the level, you end up with unintelligible interactable course you have to look out for.
You could easily get away with making Boost Pads blue in this course, since it's inspired from CD Special Stages anyway.
So, suggestions:
This one is going to sound wacky but hear me out. This jump + pad in the back makes both the lower cut and the main path irrelevant. You can try removing the boost pad and placing damage sectors in front of both of the ramps.
This way, only an invincibility, ghost, or giant can take this top most route, as it's both the fastest and safest route if you can get up there. It also gives the lower cut a lot more power.
Remove these black arrows, there's no real reason to drop down here. It can remain as an option, but encouraging it will confuse players.
Pull this ledge back to where Suguri is parked, and spread the bounce pads across the entire road. If they don't have enough speed, they'll land on the lower path below, if they have enough, they can continue with the upper route.
Every race we did I missed these two Bounce Pads because the pressure stopped me from committing to it.
Pull those Bounce Pads on the right over here so it's a straight shot. Extend the road below out with a landing strip so they don't have to land on an awkward diagonal turn. (don't forget an arrow down there so they won't get turned around).
Just drag the whole FOF sector over so the wall is closed off, too.
Add a down arrow midtexture here so players feel safe dropping. Going right is a for a UFO, but it's not required. The curve always gave me the feeling I was not reacting fast enough, rather than just opting out of a special item.
Overall, it really is a fantastic theme and course, a nice breath of fresh air from the usual slopey-ness of most courses, while also adhering to the Sonic aesthetic better than most of our official maps.
