The Art of Hosting in Burnout Paradise - PART 2

Part 2: Hosting Races – The basics

In this article I will try and unleash the full power of the Burnout Paradise Event Editor and hopefully enable the reader to create his or her own races online. Originally I was going to go straight on to the advanced stuff but after reading forums and talking to lots of people online I realize that I first need to explain in detail how to setup a race using the Burnout Paradise Event Editor. You can actually create other races than the default ones, races can have checkpoints and YES; it is possible to make races with laps!

Creating a race

There are three ways to start hosting an online race in Burnout Paradise. Select one of the following options from “Easy Drive”

1. Freeburn Online -> Create Match. Then go back into Easy Drive and select ”Create Race”.
2. Player Match -> Create Match.
3. Ranked Match -> Create Match.

After selecting one of the options above you will end up in the Burnout Paradise Event Editor.  The first thing to do is to decide whether you want to load a previously saved or raced event or create a new one.

Create new event

We are going to create a new event. The first thing to do is to customize the event options.
The following settings are available:

1. "Round" - Number of rounds. This can be set to a number between 1 and 5.
2. "Host Car Lock" - Can be set to either “Open” or “Host’s Choice”. If you select “Host’s Choice” you will select the car for all the racers. This can be cool if you want to do a F1 Racer only race or maybe a Hot Rod race. I would advice against using this in Ranked Races and if you do you should make it clear to everyone what you are doing before you start the race. Open means that the player can select the car within the boundaries of the “Car Limit” option (see below).
3. "Car Limit" - This limits what kind of cars the players can select. The following values are possible; Learner, License D, License C, License B, License A, Burnout (all cars available). Please note that the player will only be able to select cars that he or she has actually unlocked. If the player has unlocked any sponsor cars they will also be available provided they are in the correct license group.
4. "Traffic" - Possible values are On and Off. Lots of people want traffic to be off. Remember that you are the host and if you want to race with traffic on you should do so. Personally I prefer traffic to be on since it makes the races much more fun and unpredictable.

When you have selected the event options press A to continue to the "Route Editor".

In the lower left corner of the editor information about the current "route distance" and "time to race" is shown. The "time to race" estimate is normally about twice as long as it actually will take to race it. So if the estimate is 3 minutes it will probably take 1.5 minutes to race it in a Burnout class car.

To set up a quick route using one of the Criterion Games predefined routes do the following:

1. Choose "Select Paradise Drives".
2. Use the d-pad or left stick to select the route you want. Pressing left or right moves the start West or East, up or down moves the start North or South.

3. Press A to select the route.

4. Select "Next Round" and repeat from step 1 to select the route for the next round.

When you have done this for all the rounds select "Done" and then "Done" again (you can also select save, this will be covered later in the article) and you have created an online race event.
You can start the race by selecting "Start Race" from Easy Drive. You can also cancel or view the event from Easy Drive.
When you have created a new race it is a good idea to wait a minute or two to start it so the other players get time to familiarize themselves with the routes. Players can view the routes by pressing start and then selecting "View Race".

Checkpoints

Most of the predefined routes are just point to point races. Some of them are good races but when you have done them a couple of times it can get a bit boring. To make your own race do the following. Instead of selecting "Select Paradise Drives" in the "Route Editor" choose "Edit Route". You then get the option to add up to 15 checkpoints and edit the start and finish line. I suggest that you set the start line and finish line first. Then add one or two checkpoints (Right Trigger adds a checkpoint). Making routes that have a good flow to them and does not have too many hairpin turns takes experience and skill and will be covered in the next part of “The art of Hosting in Paradise”.

There is also a Randomize function that moves the selected checkpoint, finish line or start line to a random position. If you just do a one checkpoint race and don’t want to think too much about the route you could just do randomize on the three points.

Load event

In the event options screen you can choose to load a saved or recently played event. You do this by selecting "Load Paradise Drive" (press X).

You can either select a "User Created" event saved by you or you can select a "Recently played" event. Use the left and right button to toggle between the two categories. You can have a maximum of 10 events in each list (Custom Drive 1 – 10)

When you have selected the category you want you select the event by pressing up/down on your d-pad or left stick. If you want to see all the routes in the selected event you can flip through them pressing left/right on your d-pad / left stick.

Unfortunately there is no way to select individual routes in an event. This means that if not all the routes you want to do are in the same event you will have to manually create them. I really hope that this will be fixed in an update so we can mix whatever routes we want in an event without having to manually recreate them every time.

When you have found the event you want press A to load it. You will now be given two options.

1. "Done" – Select this if you don’t want to edit any of the routes in the event.
2. "Edit" – Select this if you want to edit any of the routes in the event.

If you select "Edit" you will be taken to the Route Editor as described above.
 
If you select "Done" you will be given two choices "Done" and "Save". Select "Save" to save your event. There are 10 save slots. Select one and press A. You can now start the race by selecting "Start Race" from Easy Drive.

Summary

You should now be able to host races online. The next article in this series will be about how to create quality fast paced races that minimize the risk of getting lost. This also includes some multi-lap race suggestions and some hints about what shortcuts to avoid. Finally I will reveal some of my favorite routes and try and explain how to choose routes that give the races a good flow.

To be continued...