My races, are they any good?

[Evil_Sire]

well, I normally spend ALOT of time on the tilesets with my races, but they always seem to look horrible.

like this

and this

and finally this

Also, I spend a hell of alot of time playtesting them, addin an enemy, checkin it works, blah blah blah.

The last one the tileset took around 2 hours, and the gameplay around 1 and a half.

I'm sorely dissapointed with the quality of them, so does anybody have some advice?

[George]

The main problem with your maps is the creativity. There's none. I've been on NUMA for over two and a half years, and every second or third race I've played uses that same loopy style. I'm sure the rest of NUMA is bored with it, too.

Some of your object placement really destroys what little aesthetics there are in the levels. In Thoughtfullness, there were way too many mines and gold, which completely cluttered the map. It's especially important in races more than any other category to place objects sparsely. The random mines in Vault Machine are hideous. Remember, less is more.

In general, you need to work much harder on aesthetics. Clean things up a little, and sometimes try to stick to certain patterns and themes. Races needs to be more innovative these days, so don't recycle the loop formula over and over again, come up with something new. And don't make the route blatantly obvious; that just utterly removes all the fun of playing a race.

If you need some inspiration, have a look at races by dejablue, formica or MARIJNENANDRIES (I hope I spelt that right). They were some of the best authors of their time.